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Key statistical concepts
To be confidently used in medical decision-making, test methods must meet tough standards of statistical reliability.
Precision and Accuracy
Statistical measurements of accuracy and precision reveal a test’s basic reliability. These terms, which describe sources of variability, are not interchangeable. A test method can be precise (reliably reproducible in what it measures) without being accurate (actually measuring what it is supposed to measure), or vice versa.
A test method is said to be accurate when it measures what it was supposed to measure. In technical terms, this means it is able to measure the true amount or concentration of a substance in a sample.
Picture a bull’s-eye target with a dart correctly hitting the centre ring and you see what an accurate test produces: the method is capable of hitting the intended target.
A test method is said to be precise when repeated determinations (analyses) on the same sample give similar results. When a test method is precise, the amount of random variation is small. The test method can be trusted because results are reliably reproduced time after time.
Picture a bull’s-eye target with darts all clustered together – but not in the centre ring – and you see what a precise but inaccurate method produces: the method can be counted on to reach the same target over and over again but the target may not be the one intended. When the method is both precise and accurate, bull’s-eye!
Although a test that is 100% accurate and 100% precise is the ideal, in reality, this is impossible. Tests, instruments, and laboratory personnel each introduce a small amount of variability. This amount of variability does not usually detract from the test’s value as it is taken into account.
Specificity and sensitivity
Specificity and sensitivity reveal the likelihood of false negatives and false positives. To be effective a pathology test is expected to detect abnormalities with certainty. How likely is it that an individual has the disease that the test suggests? What are the chances that an individual has a certain disorder even though a test for it was negative?
Sensitivity is the ability of a test to correctly identify people who have a given disease or disorder. For example, a certain test may have proven to be 90% sensitive. That is, if 100 people known to have a certain disease are tested with that method, the test will correctly identify 90 of those 100 cases of disease. The other 10 people who were tested also have the disease but the test will fail to detect it. For that 10%, the finding of a “normal” result is a misleading false-negative result. A test’s sensitivity becomes particularly important when you are seeking to exclude a dangerous disease.
The more sensitive a test, the fewer “false-negative” results it produces. A false-negative result fails to identify disease states even though they are present.
Specificity is the ability of a test to correctly exclude individuals who do not have a given disease or disorder. For example, a certain test may have proven to be 90% specific. If 100 healthy individuals are tested with that method, only 90 of those 100 healthy people will be found to be “normal” (disease-free). The other 10 people also do not have the disease, but their test results seem to indicate they do. For that 10% their “abnormal” findings are a misleading false-positive result.
This makes it necessary to confirm a diagnosis that requires dangerous therapy, and a test’s specificity is one of the crucial indicators.
The more specific a test is, the fewer “false-positive” results it produces. A false-positive result can lead to misdiagnosis and unnecessary, possibly challenging or life-altering, diagnostic procedures and therapies.
Although few if any tests succeed in diagnosing disease correctly 100% of the time, most tests produce only a small proportion of false-positive or false-negative results. Laboratories are required through laboratory accreditation to use the most sensitive and specific tests available. | <urn:uuid:f3ad05e7-eb7a-4623-9b57-4308f0e46333> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.labtestsonline.org.au/understanding/features/reliability/start/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933691 | 836 | 4.28125 | 4 |
Life Aboard Ship, Dispatches From South of the "Roaring Forties"
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
16:20 EST, 58.0 S, 60 07.5 W
We retrieved all our traps (six, in two strings of three each) that were set in 500m (1625 ft.) of water. They were pretty successful, probably because we prevented larger critters from getting to the bait. We got six toothfish (otherwise called Chilean sea bass, but they are not bass nor even close relatives). Some of them are relatively big (more than three feet), but considering that toothfish reach over two meters (6+ ft.) length and 400 pounds, these are small guys! We have tanks to keep them alive (see photo) and are using them to obtain specimens of tissues. We sacrificed one last night. Virtually all of the organs were used for experiments or study by different research groups. The brain, intestine, heart, blood, spleen, pancreas, kidney, muscle, gills, testes, and other parts were all dissected immediately after the fish was killed.
Three fairly small (3 ft) toothfish are kept alive aboard the NATHANIEL B. PALMER. Better known in the U.S. as Chilean Sea Bass, these sharp-toothed predators can grow to over 6 ft. long and weigh more 400 lbs.
There is a very valuable, widespread fishery for them, and they are heavily exploited. One of the problems in managing this fishery is that it's not only international (Chilean, Falkland = UK, Antarctic, Argentine, and South African waters) which makes it hard to have similar regulations and coordinate fishing controls, and very widespread, which makes it difficult to patrol adequately, but it's also partly in international waters where there is little authority controlling fishing. There are also "pirate" trawlers that operate illegally in national waters of these countries. Despite the best efforts of the nations involved (and they are increasing), the toothfish is considered overfished and appears frequently on environmentally friendly "do not eat" lists.
As I write this we are not far south of the Falklands, fishing a Blake trawl, which is a small relatively damage-proof steel-frame trawl. Ours is about four feet wide. Because of its toughness we are using it as an exploratory net before we do anything else, hoping to minimize damage and loss of our other more fragile (and larger) nets. This is the second tow at this location; the first one worked well and caught some interesting critters, so we are making a second. Weather today is pretty sloppy (winds around 30 knots). We are going to set the traps again, but the slop will have to come down before the skipper will agree to recover them. It's a risk - we may have to abandon them if the weather isn't better by Sunday.
I wish I could send more photos, because we really are doing many interesting things. The problem is that we have limited e-mail (via satellite, three times a day) and no internet at all. When the cruise started we were all given a total e-mail budget for the cruise, and if I send too many photos, it will disappear before the end and I will be presented with a bill before I leave the ship in Capetown. | <urn:uuid:4711ee63-ac30-468f-8cc5-0a4c765efe58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boatus.com/cruising/ICEFISH/052604.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975095 | 700 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Changing Lives One Performance at a Time
How your donation is inspiring a new generation of musicians
Fourteen years ago Alice Chance attended a Musica Viva In Schools concert at Meadowbank Public School. It was an experience which would irrevocably change her life.
The performance by the period ensemble, Sounds Baroque
, captivated the then 5 year old Alice, who was particularly smitten by the viola di gamba, a 15th century instrument played by Sounds Baroque
member, Jennifer Eriksson. Inspired by what she had seen and heard, Alice rushed home to her parents and insisted that she wanted to learn the ‘volupitty gumpa’.
Jennifer Eriksson was duly contacted, but she advised Alice’s parents to start the budding musician on a simpler instrument such as the violin (which would be more accommodating to a 5 year old’s little fingers) and to get back to her once Alice was ready to make the transition to the more difficult period instrument. Alice’s wish was fulfilled nine years later when she began to study with Jennifer Eriksson and finally had the opportunity to learn the instrument which had left such an indelible impression nearly a decade earlier.
In 2011 the arc of Alice’s musical journey from enchanted audience member to senior music student saw her become the first HSC student in 25 years to perform on the viola di gamba. The young music lover’s persistence and hard work was duly rewarded when her HSC results revealed she had earned a Band 6 (the highest score possible) for music. The honours continued when her duet for viola da gamba, O Pastor Animarum
, which Alice composed and performed for the HSC, was selected for inclusion in the Annual HSC “Encore” concert. “Encore” performers represent those students judged by HSC examiners to be the best in New South Wales.
Accompanied by her teacher, Jennifer Eriksson, Alice performed the duet at the Sydney Opera House in March of this year before two packed halls of 3,000 young people. To our knowledge, this is the first time the viola da gamba has featured at this event.
As a fitting end to this wonderful story, Alice received a scholarship to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2012 and is presently studying composition.
Through your support over 300,000 children every year – children just like Alice - are being transported on a musical journey, by 30 professional Musica Viva In Schools ensembles who specialise in musical styles as diverse as, African, Indonesian, Latin American, jazz, a capella, Irish Folk and classical . For every child like Alice who is inspired by these concerts to learn an instrument or even become a professional musician, there are thousands more for whom the experience will engender a life-long passion for music.
As a Musica Viva donor you can take pride in the fact that your support is not only helping to foster our future musicians and composers, it is also cultivating future concert goers and music devotees, each of whom, in their own way, will help to maintain Australia’s artistic vibrancy.
Alice Chance with teacher Jennifer Eriksson | <urn:uuid:c04ade38-1739-43e1-888f-576d6d020455> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.musicaviva.com.au/support-us/changing-lives-one-performance-at-a-time | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964348 | 674 | 1.796875 | 2 |
When the Internet came along, many businesses felt that direct mail no longer held any value. After all, the customers were all heading online, and the smart companies needed to follow them there.
Perhaps that is why all those early web users were faced with a barrage of banner ads, flashing text, animation and graphics every time they went to their favorite site. These ads were attempts to get the attention of viewers, and they worked – at least for awhile.
The problem is that website visitors quickly learned to tune out the advertising messages that surrounded them. That in turn made the ads less effective and more costly for the companies that continued to run them. Web marketing was still a viable business, but it was far from the road to riches so many Internet pioneers had promised.
These days the marketplace is even more saturated, with more and more companies trying to find a niche in the new digital world. That market saturation has many companies rethinking their marketing strategies and looking for methods that provide a greater return per dollar spent.
That is why so many companies are starting to tailor their advertising messages in an attempt to provide every customer with exactly what he or she wants and needs. Not too long ago this kind of personalization would have been impossible, but today it is increasingly cost effective for even small firms.
The reason for the change lies in the vast amount of data that is now available to companies of all sizes. Consumer information is a huge business, and smart companies are increasingly tapping into that wealth of information to find out exactly what their customers want and which marketing methods will be most effective.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, traditional mail continues to have an important place at the table – both in terms of market exposure and in terms of customer response. The key to the success of any marketing campaign is to provide the customer with relevant information and deliver that information in the proper format. In many cases the best format is a simple and inexpensive postcard rather than an email or other electronic communication.
The never-ending march of technology has provided companies with both challenges and opportunities. On one hand the widespread availability of Internet access has made it easier than ever to reach customers. On the other hand, many of those potential customers have long ago learned to tune out email promotions and marketing messages, and that can make reaching those consumers extremely difficult.
That is why a combination approach is often the best strategy. By combining highly targeted electronic communications like special offers, coupons and discounts with old fashioned mailed postcards, companies can reach those consumers who are most likely to respond to their offers. That kind of targeting can reduce marketing costs while improving the return for each dollar spent. | <urn:uuid:6a3b02f8-f93f-49cf-861c-9a65a2e89737> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.magiclogix.com/blog/marketing-in-the-digital-age-how-smart-companies-are-learning-what-their-customers-want/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972649 | 534 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The sounds take the Naval Academy graduate back to the nights when he was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and sat around a fire teaching fellow servicemen songs such as Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance."
But there was a time when the 28-year-old Baltimore man wasn't sure if he would be able to play the guitar again.
Snyder was blinded in September 2011 when he stepped on a bomb during a mission in Afghanistan. His friends raised more than $2,000 and worked with C.F. Martin & Co. to create a one-of-a-kind guitar.
Snyder received the instrument Monday at the company's Pennsylvania headquarters.
He played confidently in front of his brother and a friend, his fingers manipulating the strings of the custom-made guitar emblazoned with a Purple Heart medal and the insignia for a Navy bomb disposal officer.
"Holy cow," Snyder said."This is so cool."
Unlike a typical guitar, which uses small dots to help the player count the frets, the so-called Purple Heart guitar has indentations on the back of its neck. The tactile markers allow Snyder, who earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, to navigate the fretboard and place his fingers in the proper location.
Snyder never took guitar lessons and couldn't read music but was starting to teach himself the guitar before deployment. He spent six years in the Navy, including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Playing the guitar was a way to bond with others in his unit, and Snyder spent hours teaching songs like Oasis' "Wonderwall," which some men hoped to play to impress their girlfriends when they got home.
The lessons came to an end when Snyder was trying to exfiltrate a unit and stepped on an improvised explosive devise. He woke up days later at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, unable to see. Though doctors were initially unsure if Snyder would regain his vision, they eventually determined he will be permanently blind.
Snyder tried to stay optimistic and sent friends a photo of himself holding a small Martin travel guitar to show that he was recovering. He mentioned the idea of someday getting a Braille-like guitar to John Keirle, a friend he met during special operations training.
That idea stuck with Keirle, whose father-in-law works at Martin. He talked to Martin staff and began a fundraising campaign to pay for the custom job through a message on Facebook. Soon, he had so many donations he had to cancel people's checks.
"That's a testament to your character," he told Snyder.
Keirle kept the guitar a secret for months but another friend accidentally told Snyder he was getting one. Though the surprise was foiled, Snyder still had no idea his gift would be custom-made by Martin — maker of professional-quality acoustic guitars played by world-class musicians — that he would meet Aaron VanWhy, the man who designed it, and get a private museum tour from Martin's chairman, Chris Martin.
"I'm actually kind of shaken," Snyder said Monday. "I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart."
Snyder, whose scars from his injuries are slightly noticeable behind his glasses, is in the process of retiring from the Navy. He works at a startup software company in Baltimore.
A swimmer, Snyder won two gold medals and a silver last summer at the Paralympic Games in London. He was selected to carry the American flag for the U.S. team during the closing ceremonies.
He also competed in the 2012 Warrior Games, a competition for wounded, ill and injured service members in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Though he's continued to play the guitar, it's been a struggle to find a full-proof method for placing his fingers on frets that he can't see.
Now, Snyder plans to play along with his younger brother, Russell. The music helps return a sense of normalcy to his life, he said.
"It gives me something that I used to be able to do well." Snyder said. "And now I still can." | <urn:uuid:aa8df3b9-d3b8-42fd-831a-577242aa2490> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wdbj7.com/topic/bs-md-martin-guitar-brad-snyder-20130112-52,0,616205.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9865 | 841 | 1.90625 | 2 |
To the people wondering "Hey, how do marching bands handle non-even time signitures?", the answer is, mostly they don't. Most stuff I've ever played, or heard played, is generally metrically simple.
After that, how it is handled is up to the choreographer, of course. The easiest solution, if you insist on playing something funky, is to be standing still at the time. But beyond that, you really can do anything you want with training and practice, it's just that you don't have an infinite amount of training and practice time. Nothing stops you from marching around to a 7/4 song, except that you'd have a lot of learning and training and practicing and possibly the odd collision resulting from fighting years of habit...
... and ultimately, the crowd probably wouldn't care in the slightest, so why bother? Crowds like sticks being tossed around and fancy maneuvers and dance steps and a bit of shouting and cheerleaders (if at all possible), not musical complications like non-standard harmonies and metric complications.
(Edit: Someone will probably make some sort of comment about "collision", and I'm about to go to bed local time, so: My personal best is trombone-on-trombone, full-on bell contact with a full-speed 180 contact... while wearing braces. I'm not sure how you can beat that, for sheer concentrated impact with a band instrument. I was out of commission for two days, which, all things considered, probably wasn't that bad. Braces + trombone was already a bit masochistic...) | <urn:uuid:9ba8f467-bd6f-4ca6-aec0-c0ac2be0a0df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?p=547830 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968097 | 330 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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( Originally Published Mid 1800s )
Techically, a wrinkle is a looseness of the skin, caused by the failure or attenuation of the under structure. This definition, however, applies only to such of the lines in the human face as are formed in extreme age by the degeneration of the muscle as well as by impairment of the fatty tissue. It is a mistake to suppose that all wrinkles indicate old or advanced age. It is a fallacy to suggest that wrinkles and lines are not indications of temperament and character. We are each one accountable for the lines and crow's-feet on our faces, for they are the most faithful and unerring record of our past.
The muscular contractions of the brow or cheek cause the lines, and it is fortunate that there are among them those that indicate good and beautiful attributes.
When you see a man or a woman with a wrinkled face, you may be very sure that every line is a telltale. The lines that indicate a sense of humor are easily enough recognized, even in early youth. They are never unpleasant. They are not the lines of a silly simpering girl, who, unless she mends her ways and ceases to giggle, will develop into a woman who is accompanied through life by an idiotic grin.
It is absolutely impossible for a woman of charity, benevolence, and humanity to look like an avaricious or spiteful woman. When you see a woman with a spiteful face, you may be certain her countenance but reflects her character.
The lines that indicate a love of gossip are very readily recognized. There is a certain droop to the mouth which a woman's face will always take on just after she has asked if you have heard the latest about Mrs. So and So. It does not need any explanation from me to describe the lines that tell the story of an irritable, fretful nature. They are always drooping, just as mirthful, happy lines are upward curves.
The lines in the face that indicate revenge are also always drooping and malicious looking. In such cases, there is usually a line from the nose to the lower corner of the mouth, and several fine oblique lines upon the broad part of the nose.
A cynical face is marked by an upward sneering line at the mouth corners, and usually by the network of small lines which indicate a general contempt for persons and things.
The talker's wrinkles commence in and near the lower cheek, and run down under the chin from side to side. The straight up and down lines furrowed in the brow denote sternness and sharpness.
Horizontal lines across the forehead are an indication of a conscientious struggle to do right.
Diagonal lines, crisscrossed in the middle of the brow, mean small frets and worries. After sixty, one should expect wrinkles. Up to that time they may properly be considered premature. I do not hesitate, to say, however, that the treatment necessary for their obliteration is largely a moral one. For example, I do not believe it possible by any external agency to eradicate malicious wrinkles until after the subject has reformed her ways, nor do I think revengeful lines will yield to massage.
In other words, it comes to this-that an ill-tempered woman cannot have the lines provoked by her lack of amiability taken away until she ceases to exercise the muscles that reflect her thoughts and have caused these lines.
A good woman cannot possibly look like a bad one, and a bad one, over thirty-five years of age, in my opinion has never looked like a saint.
The general treatment for wrinkles which have been induced by illness and care or anxiety, is great cleanliness, nutritious food, out-of-door exercise, and the internal cultivation of an equable temper and a happy spirit.
Whatever tends to promote the general health and to increase the deposit of fat in the skin tissues of the face, tends to obliterate lines and wrinkles, and to restore the firmness and beauty of the skin. Attention to the diet is of the utmost importance, and massage is of great benefit.
Properly administered, there is no agent so successful in obliterating lines and wrinkles, as massage. There have been a number of mechanical appliances invented and manufactured to take the place of manual massage. I advise the manual treatment whenever it is possible to secure it. Electricity is a great skin stimulant and therefore an important adjunct to massage.
Where the skin is dry and wrinkled as well, it requires a tissue builder. For this purpose the skin food is better than any other emollient I know of. The skin food should be applied during the massage. Formula as follows:
White wax . . . . . 1 ounce.
Melt the first five ingredients together, take off the fire, and beat until nearly cold, adding, little by little, the benzoin, and lastly the orange flower water.
A NEW CURE FOR WRINKLES
A so-called new method for obliterating wrinkles and furrows, which as usual turns out to be a revival and modification of an old one, is termed the bandeaux system.
As the name implies, the treatment is performed by the aid of bandages.
According to a famous French authority the marks of age noticeable in the shrinking of the fatty tissues under the chin and that are such a source of misery to each woman, as well as the creases in the brow and the droop of the mouth, may be indefinitely warded off if the subject will each night wear during her sleeping hours a set of bands especially devised for obliterating the ravages of time from the forehead and throat.
These bands resemble very much those that form the under part of the headdress of the Sisters of Mercy or Charity.
In Paris, where the new system is flourishing, they may be bought readily, and I have seen several sets that have been imported to this country, although I do not think they are yet for sale in America.
They are made of firm white linen and are about three and a half inches broad after they are folded several times and ready for adjusting.
A set of beauty bands consists of three strips each for chin and brow.
WARTS AND MOLES
These blemishes are sometimes merely pigmentary, sometimes both. pigmentary and hairy. They may be elevated above the skin, or level with it. Usually they are congenital, and are then known as naevi or birthmarks, but, in some circumstances, they develop in childhood or even later. The coloring matter which constitutes them is deposited in the deeper portion of the subcuticle, so that a scar usually results if they are removed either by the knife or by the actual cautery-hot iron. Ligature by means of a silk or silver thread tightly wound round the root of the excrescence is a method applicable to large pendent warts, which, thus treated, shrivel and drop off, when the base can be cauterized with a nitrate of silver stick. Common warts without a pedicle, may be removed by repeated applications of strong acetic acid, nitric acid, caustic potash, lunar caustic in pencil, tincture of chloride of iron and hydrochloric acid. In applying any of these remedies, care must be taken not to touch with them the surrounding skin, else a stain or scar may result. It is best to isolate the wart or mole before putting on the caustic, by spreading a thin layer of soft was or spermaceti over the adjacent surface. All the agents enumerated are liable, it must be borne in mind, to leave permanent marks behind them, and, in case of moles on the face, these marks may after all prove to be more disfiguring than the original blemish.
Children and young people who suffer from abnormally moist hands sometimes have multiple warts of various sizes on the fingers or hands. In the treatment of these the internal administration of arsenic and other medicines is often advisable, combined with the local application of a paste made of precipitated sulphur, glacial acetic acid, and glycerine in equal parts. This paste must be freshly made at the tine of using, and spread over the warts. But the best of all treatment of moles, warts, and other pigmentary or excrescent blemishes is electrolysis. The mode of operation is the same as that just described in the case of superfluous hairs, only that when applied to solid growths of skin more than one sitting is invariably necessary, and the duration of the galvanic action should be continued as long at a time as it is found bearable.
"Port wine" marks, which usually are amenable to no other treatment, may be removed in a similar manner, so also may naevi of other kinds, liver stains, obstinate freckles, and even local skin disease, when independent of general ill health. Affections of the cuticle characterized by thickening or infiltration are those which best lend themselves to the influence of the galvanic current. The powerful modification thus produced on the circulation, absorption, and nutrition of the tissue may even, Dr. de Watteville thinks (" Practical Introduction to Medical Electricity"), be brought to bear successfully on such forms of dermal affection as acne, eczema, neurotic baldness, chilblains, and herpes.
Electrolysis is especially valuable as a cure for cutaneous vascular formations, whether congenital or acquired. This kind of skin complaint is not uncommon, often ap pearing in mature life and in connection with acne or some other generalized affection of the kind. It consists of patches of dilated blood vessels situated in the subcutaneous tissues, irregular in shape, and varying in color from dark purple to bright pink. These patches may appear singly or in numbers on any part of the face or person, but they are most commonly seen on the nose or cheek. Their aspect is that of a fine network of distended veins, tortuous and serpentine in appearance, and more or less distinctly outlined. The affected part often burns and assumes a shiny look. Vascular marks of this character, whether recent or congenital, can be entirely eradicated by the galvanic battery, after all other known methods have been vainly tried. Moreover, the use of caustics, blisters, heated irons, and knives often causes suppuration, is always more or less painful, sometimes, indeed, violently so, and is liable, after cicatrization, to leave disfiguring scars. The pain caused by electrolysis is, as already stated, slight, and with some patients amounts merely to a disagreeable sensation; in every case it ceases immediately after the removal of the needle, and scarcely ever scars. Sometimes the cuticle which has been the seat of the naevus or of the mole assumes a thick, white, coagulate appearance, but this is not conspicuous, and is wholly unattended by contraction of the skin. The eradication of small and superficial formations, whether protuberances or vascular patches, by electrolysis, is never followed by permanent marks when the operation is ably performed. Considering, therefore, the manifest advantage of this method of cure, its rapidity, simplicity, safety, efficacy, and superior results, as well as the absence of all hemorrhage, and the insignificance of the pain caused by it, I think it the one to be advised.
A scar left by a wound or ulcer is generally more or less permanent, but usually it becomes much slighter by age, and in case of a young person by increased development of the surfacial muscles and perhaps even more by the deposit of fat in the cellular tissue. Massage is very efficacious if properly performed and I have certainly seen some scars removed by massage and the application of almond oil very slightly ioduretted.
Glycerinated lotions of bichloride of mercury are sometimes advantageously substituted for the oil. If the scar is not a very deep one it may almost be banished by gentle daily friction, no attempt should be made to treat the scar until the tone of the part is thoroughly reestablished, and friction should always be preceded by warm ablutions with bland soap and soft water.
The removal of smallpox marks, particularly of old ones, is disputed as a possibility by some authorities. Personally I have not yet seen pox marks absolutely removed; I have seen them greatly lightened. In the ordinary cases the continued use of a tepid, glycerinated, ioduretted lotion twice a day, or daily, gentle friction with warm oils, slightly ioduretted, will produce a manifest improvement and ultimately will at least in part remove them. The more active treatment should be pursued with great caution, and no one should attempt self-treatment.
This treatment consists of painting the surface of the skin by means of a soft camel's-hair brush, with tincture of iodine (simple or compound). The ioduretted lotion being used daily as before during the interval. Or the scar may be wetted once a week or oftener, according to the effect produced, with acetic acid sufficiently strong to cause a superficial inflammation and subsequent peeling of the skin. Instead of acetic acid a solution of nitrate of silver is sometimes employed at intervals of twelve or fifteen days, but, owing to the temporary black- ening of the cuticle it produces, it can only be used when the subject can enjoy seclusion for a few days after each application. The skin will turn black on exposure to the light after the nitrate of silver has been applied, the blackened surface peels off in a few days leaving the skin under it of increased delicacy and of its natural color. This treatment is safe enough in skilled hands but it should not be attempted by amateurs. I want now to put myself on record in this matter of the indiscriminate use of strong acids by persons who know nothing about their chemical strength or action. No man or woman should apply nitric, acetic, chromic, sulphuric, salicylic, or any strong acid of kindred nature who has not an intelligent understanding of their action and reactionary effect. Scars and pittings are, it is claimed, also removed by electricity which is used in conjunction with lotions. I should not advise this heroic method until after manual massage with lotions had been given a very fair trial. | <urn:uuid:3ee0cb78-6be3-4b46-97f9-0c72720a9061> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oldandsold.com/articles03/beauty18.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958738 | 3,011 | 2.625 | 3 |
|HARRISBURG, Pa. – With the recent discovery that the invasive aquatic alga known as didymo or “rock snot” has spread further down the Delaware River, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) is reminding anglers and boaters that cleaning their gear is the easiest, most effective means of preventing the alga from spreading to other waters.
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) last week confirmed that on April 18 one of their biologists discovered large didymo blooms over a 40-mile stretch of the Delaware River extending from the area near the confluence with the Lackawaxen River (river mile 279) downstream to the vicinity of Dingmans Ferry Bridge (river mile 239). This section of river includes portions of two National Park units: the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. With this discovery, blooms of Didymo are now in approximately 100 miles of the river.
“We may not be able to eliminate didymo from the river, but we can do our best to slow its spread and to prevent it from spreading to other waters,” said Bob Morgan, the PFBC’s ecologist who studies aquatic invasive species (AIS). “Didymo cells can easily attach to any items or equipment contacting the infected water, including fishing tackle, waders and the bottoms of boats. It takes only one didymo cell to start a new colony of the agla. We urge anglers and boaters to ‘Clean Your Gear!’ before leaving a water and entering another one.”
The PFBC recommends that anglers allow exposed equipment to completely dry before entering new waters. Allow equipment to dry to the touch, and then allow it to dry another 48 hours. Thick and dense material like life jackets and felt-soled wading gear will hold moisture longer, take longer to dry and can be more difficult to clean. Soaking equipment in hot water containing dishwashing detergent (2 cups detergent/2.5 gallons of water) for 20 minutes also will kill harmful AIS.
Cleaning boats and equipment with hot water (maintained at 140 F) by pressure washing or soaking is another effective method. If hot water is not available, a commercial hot-water car wash also makes an ideal location to wash boats, motors and trailers. At the other end of the temperature range, freezing items solid for at least 24 hours is effective. If cleaning, drying or freezing is not practical, please restrict the equipment’s use to a single waterway. For more details on how to stop the spread of didymo, visit http://www.fishandboat.com/water/habitat/ans/didymo/faq_didymo.htm. For more information on how to clean your gear, visit http://fishandboat.com/cleanyourgear.htm.
The PFBC is coordinating with the DRBC, scientists from N.Y. and N.J., and the National Park Service to identify appropriate next steps, including further sampling of the river to determine if there are additional areas with didymo.
Didymo is not a public health hazard, but it can cause ecological damage by smothering other organisms which also live on the riverbed and support the food web for the resident fish community. It’s been called “rock snot” because of its gooey appearance. Its scientific name is Didymosphenia geminata. | <urn:uuid:00f36235-1330-4309-87de-9ea222807244> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fish.state.pa.us/newsreleases/2012press/didymo.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919928 | 738 | 2.46875 | 2 |
What Students Need to Know About Refunds
Students expecting refunds from Financial Aid should start seeing information on their myLSUE accounts as Tuesday was the first official posting by the university. The process is one that raises the most questions around campus.
If the university owes a student funds because their aid is greater than tuition, here is what happens:
First the school must wait 14 class days to verify the enrollment of the student. This is to prevent loan runners: students who accept their aid, get their refunds, and never show up for classes. The 14-day wait allows the university to ensure that students are actually attending classes.
After the 14th day, financial aid begins processing and verifying that a student is attending class and is eligible for a refund. This process can take up to 1 to 2 weeks because of the large numbers of students that need to be checked. That leads to the first official posting of the semester, which many students should see on their myLSUE accounts. The first posting was Tuesday, February 19, 2013.
The posting includes a message on their myLSUE accounts displaying a listing of the type of aid posted, the amount of aid, and a time frame in which the students should get their refund check.
"The Business Office takes over and has to verify information as to addresses, the balance of aid is correct and so forth," said Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Donnie Thibodeaux. "Once that is finished, that information is then sent to LSU Baton Rouge. LSU Baton physically prints the checks for us."
The verification process by the Business Office can take 2-3 days due to the large number of students that need to be verified in the first posting.
Thibodeaux added that once checks are printed in Baton Rouge, they are then sent back to Eunice and a sorting process begins. Checks for students who owe the university or Bengal Village are pulled.
According to Thibodeaux and the Financial Aid Office, the address used to send a student's check is the address that the admissions office has on file for them.
Students will receive notification that the Business Office has a disbursement of their funds.
"That doesn't mean that the check is here," said Thibodeaux. "That means that we've actually requested the check. It takes a few more days from the time the disbursement is on their account to the time they receive their check."
The whole process can take up to 2 weeks, and then it begins again.
"If they did not get notice of disbursement on February 19th that means that [the Financial Aid Office] is working on processing their financial aid. The problem being one or two things. Either they were late applying for the financial aid through FAFSA or there is a problem with their financial aid in regards to verifying information."
That is why the University has several postings during the semester. If a student was not part of the first posting, Financial Aid will explain what prevented their funds from being including in the first round of refunds. Students should contact the Financial Aid Office at 550-1282. | <urn:uuid:62ee26eb-7382-4008-bfe7-10f39e328d1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lsue.edu/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/site.php?pageID=109&newsID=210 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975413 | 638 | 1.5625 | 2 |
You Wrote a Novel Now What? Revising and Submitting Your Work
Saturday, December 8 | 2:00-4:00 PM | Traverwood Program Room | Grades 6-Adults
Writers: here's your chance to get tips on revision and submitting your work for publication. Dan Wickett, co-founder and executive director of Dzanc Books, discusses what he looks for in submissions; what things automatically put a writer in a hole; and things he's learned about revisions from books that Dzanc has published.
Author, poet, and Pioneer and EMU creative writing teacher Jeff Kass will discuss revisions and what he's learned about submitting work. In April 2011 Dzanc books published Jeff’s book Knuckleheads. There will be plenty of time for Q & A with Dan and Jeff so bring your questions -- whether you are a writer, an aspiring writer, or just curious about the writing process!
This event is held in conjunction with November's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). | <urn:uuid:ad24b697-d999-4ecc-8617-f31e05bc02b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aadl.org/node/219762 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946077 | 214 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Increasingly popular as a dietary option to lower cholesterol, plant extracts known as phytosterols may lower LDL (bad) cholesterol by as much as 9%, according to a new study. Whether these extracts can help reduce the risk of heart disease or heart attacks has yet to be determined.
Phytosterols, which decrease the intestinal absorption of cholesterol and decrease total and LDL cholesterol levels in the bloodstream, may be one dietary option for lowering cholesterol. Phytosterols occur naturally in vegetable oils, nuts, whole grains, and legumes but are also added to many food products such as margarine spreads and dairy products. But how much of these products a person should eat and which have the strongest cholesterol-lowering effects has been unclear.
While phytosterols may lower cholesterol, it is not known whether the plant extracts can help reduce the incidence of heart disease and heart attacks. Although no direct evidence is available yet for the ability of phytosterols to lower coronary heart disease incidence, the well-documented cholesterol-lowering effect of phytosterols is the basis for recommendations to include phytosterols into strategies to lower LDL cholesterol concentrations.
Tips for heart-healthy cholesterol
See a doctor. Get your cholesterol checked and discuss your risks for high cholesterol and heart disease with your doctor. Always check with your doctor before beginning any new dietary or exercise program.
Choose foods wisely. For most people, diet is the most important factor when it comes to lowering cholesterol. Avoid foods with high saturated fat and cholesterol content and choose an abundance of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Increasing foods that contain soluble fiber in your diet such as oatmeal may also help lower cholesterol.
Lose excess weight. Weight loss contributes significantly to cholesterol lowering and reduces your risk for heart disease and many other chronic diseases. If you are overweight see a doctor for help on how to lose and maintain weight loss.
Exercise regularly. Regular exercise can help reduce LDL cholesterol and raise HDL (good) cholesterol. Work out 30 to 60 minutes every day to optimize cholesterol and reduce your heart disease risk. | <urn:uuid:572ca039-2eac-4581-978d-34e14163d9b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.womenetcetera.com/ViewBlog.asp?memberID=4159&ID=2792 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934299 | 429 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Despite the difficult economic climate, Holcim reports that it has remained committed to sustainable development, as shown by the fact that:
its 2010 carbon dioxide target was achieved ahead of schedule
80 per cent of its product portfolio is now composite cements
thermal energy derived from alternative fuels continues to increase
its Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate has been reduced by 74 per cent since 2004
productive partnerships are in place with IUCN and ICRC.
The report also looks to the future and details new targets for further carbon dioxide reduction per tonne of cement, for Biodiversity Action Plans to be introduced for sensitive sites, and Community Engagement Plans to be developed by all Group companies.
The report has been assured against the AA1000 standard by an independent assurance provider. It includes feedback from various stakeholders and verification of carbon dioxide emissions and OH&S data by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The report has additionally been checked by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for an A+ application level against the GRI G3 reporting framework.
The Group has been named in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for seven years and again received the SAM Gold Class classification for 2009.Further information can be obtained from http://www.holcim.com/sustainable | <urn:uuid:d41c1a76-9600-4876-bd25-a62305a6873c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reportalert.info/reportprofile.php?ID=31033&year=2010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957034 | 258 | 1.554688 | 2 |
It seems Jane Austen-ites are abuzz with a new book, titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!, that turns Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, et al into zombie killers. According to an article in today’s Times, the novel retains about 85 percent of Austen’s words, twisting them to fit the zany context. Hence Austen’s famous first line reads, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
According to the publisher’s description, the novel is a “delightful comedy of manners” accentuated with plenty of “bone-crunching zombie action”:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.
The novel is slated to come out in April.
The book also got some play on the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me this week during the “Bluff the Listener” segment, in which a listener was tasked to choose which of three stories about classic works of literature being “improved” was true. Listen here.
This story is already all over the blogosphere, so here are just a couple examples of what others are saying about this spoof: | <urn:uuid:febcb194-6243-4ef0-bf43-8b3967267eca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rc.umd.edu/blog_rc/?tag=spoof | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940133 | 467 | 1.59375 | 2 |
You focus your energy and effort on a task and stick with it until it is finished. Determination is using your will power to do something when it is not easy. You are determined to meet your goals even when it is hard or you are being tested. With determination we make our dreams come true.
Photo and video contributed by:
You are practicing determination when you:
Believe what you are doing is important
Set goals for yourself
Stay focused without being distracted
Keep going if it gets difficult
Ask for help when you need it
Finish what you start
I am determined. I set goals and keep going until I achieve them. I get things done. I stay focused on my purpose.
The "Wild Horse" perfectly defines the "Virtue of Determination". The stallion and other horses in this video do not give up the fight to be free and to live out their lives in "Freedom". It is a hard reality of what the horses experience during a roundup as such. They do not want to be seperated and pulled apart from other herd members and will fight some times to death, to remain free. Pure, honest and authentic as this is the"Nature of the Horse".
Children do have a "voice" and care about wild horses.We invite you to review our top stories from our 1st International Writing Competition - Subject Wild Horses inspired by "Atticus - the Wild Stallion from Deadman, British Columbia, Canada.
To learn more about the 52 Virtues which VFTH will be uploading to our web site visit the Defining the Virtuesweb page. | <urn:uuid:df164150-4921-4f3c-8c25-9be452675b91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voiceforthehorse.com/viewcategory/688 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947441 | 330 | 2.375 | 2 |
The group, which called itself "The Eternally Prosperous," "Perfect Fountain" or "Flowering Visitor," is accused of extorting "protection quotas" since 2011 from supermarkets run by Chinese immigrants in Argentina, according to news agency EFE.
The joint operation between Chinese and Argentine police has already recovered more than $1.6 million taken from supermarket owners.
A group of suspects allegedly involved in the scheme, believed to have recently fled from Argentina, were detained by police in Fujian province, eastern China.
As a follow-up to the operation, the Chinese Security Ministry will set up a joint office of Chinese and Argentine police dedicated to combating crime committed by Chinese criminals in the South American nation, according to EFE's report.
InSight Crime Analysis
Reports of Chinese "mafia" threatening Argentina's significant Chinese population (around 70,000) and committing violent crimes have become increasingly common in recent years.
According to an investigation by La Nacion and a report by magazine Clarin, both published in 2010, Chinese gangs hire local hitmen to enforce highly profitable extortion rackets within the immigrant community. InSight Crime reported on the arrest of one such group in Buenos Aires in 2011.
Chinese-owned grocery stores have become a popular target. Such supermarkets have become common in Argentina since the nation's economic crisis, selling household products at prices cheaper than the big chains, and employ a large proportion of the country's Chinese population.
Police and judicial sources told La Nacion that every Chinese citizen opening a supermarket in Argentina is forced to pay Chinese mafia between $40,000 and $60,000. The Chinese gangs are also accused of human smuggling and trafficking, charging Chinese citizens thousands of dollars to be illegally brought into Argentina.
While reports of crimes are common, reports of arrests are far less so. According to a 2011 Clarin investigation, the language barrier, lack of police investigation, and the proliferation of victims unwilling to speak out have created an environment of near total impunity for Chinese criminal organizations in the South American nation. The announcement that China and Argentina may soon increase their collaboration in tracking organized crime is thus welcome news. | <urn:uuid:283daef5-563b-4465-89ff-7d9a35c5b2be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/chinese-mafia-ring-brought-down-in-argentina | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959655 | 438 | 1.609375 | 2 |
WASHINGTON, DC – The Republican Party has some potentially winning themes for America’s presidential and congressional elections in November. Americans have long been skeptical of government, with a tradition of resistance to perceived government overreach that extends back to their country’s founding years. This tradition has bequeathed to today’s Americans a related rejection of public subsidies and a cultural aversion to “dependence” on state support.
But Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other leading members of his party have played these cards completely wrong in this election cycle. Romney is apparently taken with the idea that many Americans, the so-called 47%, do not pay federal income tax. He believes that they view themselves as “victims” and have become “dependent” on the government.
But this misses two obvious points. First, most of the 47% pay a great deal of tax on their earnings, property, and goods purchased. They also work hard to make a living in a country where median household income has declined to a level last seen in the mid-1990’s.
Second, the really big subsidies in modern America flow to a part of its financial elite – the privileged few who are in charge of the biggest firms on Wall Street.
Seen in broad historical perspective, this is not such an unusual situation. In their recent bestselling economic history, Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson cite many past and current cases in which powerful individuals attain control over the state and use this power to enrich themselves.
In many pre-industrial societies, for example, control over the state was the best way to assure wealth. And, in many developing countries endowed with valuable natural resources, fighting to gain control of the government has proved a very attractive strategy. (I have worked with Acemoglu and Robinson on related issues, though I was not involved in writing the book.)
The traditional mechanism of state capture in much of the world is violence. But that is not true in the United States. Nor is it the case that US government officials are typically bribed in an open fashion (though there have been some prominent exceptions).
Instead, special interests compete for influence through campaign contributions and other forms of political donations. They also run large, sophisticated media campaigns aimed at persuading policymakers and the public that what is good for their special interest is good for the country.
No one has succeeded in the modern American political game like the biggest banks on Wall Street, which lobbied for deregulation during the three decades prior to the crisis of 2008, and then pushed back effectively against almost all dimensions of financial reform.
Their success has paid off handsomely. The top executives at 14 leading financial firms received cash compensation (as salary, bonus, and/or stock options exercised) totaling roughly $2.5 billion in 2000-2008 – with five individuals alone receiving $2 billion.
But these masters of the universe did not earn that money without massive government assistance. By being perceived as “too big to fail,” their banks benefit from a government backstop or downside guarantee. They can take on more risk – running a more highly leveraged business with less shareholder capital. They get bigger returns when things go well and receive state support when fortune turns against them: heads they win, tails we lose.
And the losses are colossal. According to a recent report on the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, prepared by Better Markets, an advocacy group that pushes for stronger financial reforms, the cost to the US economy of the financial crisis – caused by financial institutions’ reckless risk-taking – amounts to at least $12.8 trillion. A big part of this cost has come in the form of jobs lost and lives derailed for the bottom 47% of the American income distribution.
Former Utah Governor and Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman addressed this issue clearly and repeatedly as he sought – unsuccessfully – to win his party’s nomination to challenge President Barack Obama. Force the banks to break up, he argued, in order to cut off their subsidies. Make these financial institutions small enough and simple enough to fail – then let the market decide which of them should sink or swim.
That is an argument around which all conservatives should be able to rally. After all, the emergence of global megabanks was not a market outcome; these banks are government-sponsored and subsidized enterprises, propped up by taxpayers. (This is as true in Europe today as it is in the US.)
Romney is right to raise the issue of subsidies, but he badly misstates what has happened in the US during the last four years. The big, nontransparent, and dangerous subsidies are off-budget, contingent liabilities generated by government support for too-big-to-fail financial institutions. These subsidies do not appear in any annual appropriation, and they are not well measured by the government – which is part of what makes them so appealing to the big banks and so damaging to everyone else.
If only Romney had turned popular disdain for subsidies against the global megabanks, he would now be coasting into the White House. Instead, by going after the hard-pressed 47% of America – the very people who have been hurt the most by reckless bank behavior – his prospect of victory in November has been severely damaged. | <urn:uuid:32ab5a57-7cd0-47c0-8c17-63ccfee0d9d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mitt-and-the-moochers-by-simon-johnson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973267 | 1,080 | 1.953125 | 2 |
December 31, 2001
The population of Burundi has suffered from ongoing civil war since 1993. About one-sixth of the population-or 800,000 people-have been either voluntarily or forcibly displaced by the ongoing conflict. This massive population displacement has exacerbated the spread of disease and malnutrition in many parts of the country. In September 2000, a severe malaria epidemic hit Burundi. Before the epidemic ran its course by the early summer of 2001, more than 3 million cases had been counted in a population of 6.5 million people. The disease reached epidemic proportions in 9 of the country's 16 provinces: in November alone, 720,000 people fell ill countrywide. Between the onset of the epidemic and the end of the crisis in April 2001, MSF treated more than 1,200,000 patients and sprayed more than 30,000 homes in an effort to control the mosquitoes that spread the disease. If the epidemic's direct causes were natural-a deadly mix of parasite-carrying mosquitoes and climatic factors-its indirect causes were man-made. Virtually all vector control was stopped in 1993, the year the country fell into war.
The welfare of thousands of Chechens who have fled the conflict in their homeland for refuge in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia worsened over the course of 2001. As intense fighting continued inside Chechnya for a third year, attention and sympathy have waned for the estimated 150,000 displaced Chechens currently living in collective centers, with host families, and in tent camps in Ingushetia. Since February 2001, the Russian federal government has insisted that new arrivals from Chechnya, estimated at as many as 500,000 in 2001, are "economic refugees" and ineligible for federal aid. Many of the displaced are living in deplorable conditions because host families have evicted those who can no longer pay rent and shelters are ill-prepared for winter conditions. A recent MSF survey of 440 families living in 70 of the 188 settlements throughout Ingushetia, as well as of 150 families living with Ingush hosts in the city of Malgobeck, found that 80% of the displaced shared latrines with at least 20 other people. In one tent camp in the city of Nazran, more than 430 people shared one latrine. More than 50% of those living in host families had no more than three square meters of space per person-well below international standards for refugees and displaced (3.5-4.5 square meters). More than half of those surveyed living in tent camps inhabited tents that had leaky roofs and holes in the walls-amid harsh winter conditions. The ongoing fighting in Chechnya and the condition of displaced civilians inside Chechnya and in Ingushetia have received scarce attention from the media and the international community in the past year.
In the spring of 2001, China launched a "strike hard" campaign to crack down on "illegal migrants" along the Sino-Korean border. The new policy has worsened the already-precarious situation of as many as hundreds of thousands of North Koreans who have fled to China from their famine-stricken country. Thousands of refugees have been rounded up and forced to return to North Korea where they face possible persecution including interrogation, "reeducation," imprisonment, and even capital punishment. China has increased the fines and prison terms for Chinese and ethnic Koreans who offer assistance to North Korean refugees in China, and inhabitants of the border region have been mobilized to denounce North Koreans and the people sheltering them. North Korean refugees live in constant fear of being caught and forced to return to the oppressive humanitarian conditions in their country. Chinese authorities continue to refuse permission for aid agencies to reach North Korean refugees in the border areas.
Massacres, kidnappings, extortion, and roadblocks are an everyday fact of life in Colombia, particularly in the countryside. Combatants from the government and rebel groups are engaged in an undeclared civil war that has had devastating effects on the civilian population trapped in the middle. Health care centers have been destroyed or lack the medical staff, drugs, and material necessary to offer adequate care. The exodus of displaced people toward cities is ongoing. In the urban areas-so-called "invasion slums"-where the displaced settle, they are again confronted with violence and lack basic services such as health care, clean drinking water, and sanitation facilities. Nearly 2 million people have been pushed from their homes since 1985, with more than 300,000 people displaced in 2000 alone. In isolated villages, acute diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections, malaria, and skin diseases are common, and basic health needs including vaccinations, reproductive health care, and prevention of malaria and dengue fever are rarely addressed. Despite the conflict's impact on the population, the international community has paid scarce attention to the needs of civilians in Colombia; the war is not recognized as such and neighboring states have returned Colombians seeking refuge.
A brutal civil war has been waged in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) for the past five years. Foreign armies and Congolese armed groups are locked in power struggles that are siphoning off much of the country's vast natural wealth in the process. Caught in the middle are the 53 million Congolese civilians. After decades of government neglect and war, the country's health system is in a state of complete collapse. An estimated 2.5 million Congolese are displaced inside the country, many of them outside the reach of aid workers. Families stripped of their coping mechanisms are more vulnerable to infectious disease and malnutrition. Outbreaks of meningitis, cholera, measles, and malaria are common, and the incidence of sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS is rising rapidly. Hospitals and medical equipment are scarce, and many rural communities are totally without health care. A single Congolese doctor typically serves approximately 25,000 people. One in four children die before reaching the age of five; less than half of the population has access to clean drinking water. Average life expectancy is only 45 years. An epidemiological survey conducted by MSF in 2001 found extremely high mortality rates in areas throughout the country. In Basankusu, an area near the frontline under rebel control, nearly 10% of the global population died over a 12-month period, with the rate climbing to almost 25% for children under five.
In 2001, an estimated 14 million people died from communicable diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, kala azar, and sleeping sickness, for which there are few effective or affordable medicines. More than 90% of these deaths occurred in the developing world, where many of the drugs currently used to treat these diseases are old and increasingly ineffective due to resistance. Other available drugs are highly toxic or difficult to use in resource-limited settings. For some diseases, no medicines exist. Over the past 25 years, fewer than 1% of the more than 1,300 drugs approved for sale were developed to treat tropical diseases. Research and development of new drugs for these diseases is at a virtual standstill because the millions who need them live in poor countries and do not constitute a profitable market for the pharmaceutical industry. TB kills at least 2 million people each year; yet, the last truly innovative treatment was developed more than 30 years ago. Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds; yet, the high price of newer, more effective drugs contributes to the continued use of old, ineffective medicines, even in places where resistance levels have reached 80 to 90%. The treatment for kala azar was developed 50 years ago and resistance levels have risen to 70% in some regions. Even when effective treatments do exist, they are often priced beyond the reach of those who most need them.
What is MSF Doing About Neglected Diseases?
The 1951 Refugee Convention was reaffirmed in Geneva on its fiftieth anniversary this year, but Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sees evidence of an alarming disregard for the terms of this convention and the protection of refugees worldwide. With growing frequency, those fleeing conflict do not have the opportunity to seek asylum and find safe refuge. Refugees are being contained within national borders and trapped within the violence they are trying to escape. From Afghanistan to Zambia, the rapid growth in the number of internally displaced people is testament to the increasing reluctance of countries to open borders. As wealthy countries refuse to share the financial responsibility for protecting and assisting refugees, poor states that neighbor countries in conflict are less likely to open their borders and to care for people who cross them. Many states interpret the Refugee Convention in the most restrictive manner rather than as a means toward offering genuine protection to those fleeing persecution. There are currently an estimated 21.8 million refugees and 20 to 25 million internally displaced persons worldwide.
Since 1991, Somalia has experienced the complete collapse of its central government, the death or displacement of at least two million people, and a brutal civil war that has destroyed much of the country's public infrastructure and productive capacity. Despite the existence of a transitional national government, the country remains fractured, with various warlords and warring factions in control of various parts of the country. Somalia ranks near the bottom of the United Nations' human development index. The health care system, along with all state services, has collapsed. Most doctors have fled the country, and, apart from staff working with nongovernmental agencies, no doctors or nurses have been trained in Somalia since the outbreak of war. The only available public or free health care is provided by the few humanitarian organizations still working in the country; this is wholly inadequate, though, as large parts of the country remain completely cut-off from humanitarian aid. Diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, meningitis, and kala azar are rampant. Recent indications show that an estimated 750,000 people, mainly in the southwestern part of the country, are at risk for malnutrition because of an increasingly alarming food shortage brought on by a third consecutive lower-than-normal rainy season and ongoing fighting.
Sri Lanka's 20-year-old civil war has taken the lives of more than 60,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. After a lull in the fighting during 2000, attacks and violence increased again in 2001. Every month, civilians are killed, injured, or maimed by landmines, unexploded ordnance, or outbursts of fighting. The psychological impact of the war is profound. A survey conducted by MSF in camps for displaced persons in the northern town of Vavuniya revealed that substantial numbers of people had been directly exposed to the violence of war, either through witnessing or being injured by an act of war, being displaced by the fighting, or losing a loved one. The suicide rate in the camps is nearly 3 times higher (103.5 per 10,000) than in the rest of the community. Overall, Sri Lanka has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Despite the highly developed health care system that functions in parts of the country, most health professionals have fled the North where clinics and hospitals are in serious disrepair and woefully undersupplied. The breakdown in the health care infrastructure has exacerbated the spread of disease: in the most affected areas, malaria has risen twenty-fold since the beginning of the conflict. One in five children born in the conflict area suffers from low birth weight. Both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil opposition forces have failed to meet the health care needs of the Sri Lankan people caught in conflict.
West Africa has been experiencing a highly volatile refugee crisis for more than a decade. An ongoing conflict in Sierra Leone has pushed an estimated 330,000 refugees into Guinea over the last 10 years and displaced many others inside Sierra Leone. Civil war in Liberia from 1990 to 1997 forced 235,000 Liberians to flee to Guinea, where more than 100,000 remain today. In early 2001, MSF called attention to the deteriorating situation of hundreds of thousands of mostly Sierra Leonean refugees stuck in a volatile area of Guinea near Gueckedou, or "Parrot's Beak." Without adequate protection or the offer of resettlement to safer areas, large numbers of the refugees fled the area on their own, many returning to unstable areas of Sierra Leone. In the spring of 2001, fighting between government forces and armed groups in northern Liberia's Lofa County-an area fraught with civil war, population movements, and cross-border incursions by armed groups from Guinea and Sierra Leone-prompted the exodus of approximately 150,000 people to the southern part of the country. Since August 2001, there has been an increase in violent clashes between armed groups in and around Lofa County, displacing thousands more to camps in the surrounding counties, including some 8,000 to Jenne Manna in southwest Liberia. Cut off from adequate assistance and trapped between armed groups, displaced persons in Liberia and throughout West Africa are increasingly left with little or no protection or security.
© 2013 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) | <urn:uuid:e8bf708d-55d1-4ac1-a65c-0e66697e8a6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/article_print.cfm?id=1445 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959263 | 2,659 | 3.140625 | 3 |
The H1N1 (“Swine flu”) vaccination programme introduced in Scotland in October 2009 had a positive effect in reducing the number of hospital admissions and deaths as a result of H1N1 infection, according to an Article published Online First in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme.
The researchers used detailed data collected by Scottish health agencies to examine the effect of H1N1 vaccination on the Scottish population. Vaccination showed clear association with protection against pandemic influenza, and a 20% reduction in hospital admissions due to influenza-related disorders. While only 16% of the people studied were vaccinated during the study period, the researchers found that 77% of people who had been vaccinated avoided contracting the H1N1 virus.
When analysing rates of hospital admissions, the researchers took into account admissions not only for flu-like symptoms, but also the related conditions of pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cardiovascular-related disease, reflecting the fact that flu can often complicate (or be complicated by) these pre-existing conditions in vulnerable patients.
According to lead author Dr Colin Simpson, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, “Our findings help strengthen the international evidence base for the effectiveness of H1N1 vaccination programmes and the future distribution of pandemic influenza vaccines. Policy makers ought to be encouraged that our vaccine estimates obtained are similar to those reported for seasonal influenza. However, despite the best efforts to encourage the most vulnerable to be vaccinated, there were low rates of uptake in the very young and pregnant women who were most susceptible to the pandemic.” | <urn:uuid:701bd956-7a9e-4ea9-a80f-dc655cfd34b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120626/Swine-flu-vaccination-programme-a-success-in-Scotland.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960253 | 347 | 3.25 | 3 |
Join our two French students, Marieke Foissart, Charline Comparini from AgroCampus, Renne, as they describe their first turtle hatchlings…..
This morning we saw our first turtle nest hatching on Anse Corail. It was a really good experience to see all these small turtles running on sand and scrambling over all the obstacles.
Footprints are like giant craters to a hatchling...
It’s really impressive how very small things for us cause big troubles to them: foot prints, coconuts, rocks and rubbish are a real nightmare for them!
And small rocks are mountain ranges!
Once they hatched, they begin a really funny dash across the beach. Who’s going to be the first in water?! Nothing is settled yet… It depends on the goodwill of waves and currents.
Two of the hatchlings make it to the sea...
Unfortunately, only twenty one young turtles from this nest made it to the water; three were too weak and died and twenty one eggs hadn't hatched.
But still that's 21 new turtles at large! | <urn:uuid:775054cb-6383-47a4-8fb2-b3fa75af5675> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seychelles-turtles.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953254 | 226 | 2.578125 | 3 |
In my previous post, I wrote about my process of deciding where to place Henry Inman’s portrait of Chippewa chief No-Tin, which is now on view in our gallery displaying American decorative arts and portraiture from the early 1700s to the early 1800s.
I decided that situating this historic individual in the midst of relative contemporaries was paramount for his debut in our galleries, even though space proved a little tight in our front gallery. What made the options for placement somewhat limited was the exciting opportunity to install at the same time an original drawing of No-Tin—made from life for his portrait by a different artist, Charles Bird King. Rather than show the two works exactly side by side, I placed them adjacent to each other on two different walls, so each can be seen independently.
The links between King’s small drawing and Inman’s stately oil are fascinating, and their histories are interconnected but distinct. In my previous post I had mentioned that No-Tin was a Chippewa chief who came with his tribe’s delegation to Washington in the mid-1820s. Thomas L. McKenney, then head of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, commissioned King to make portraits of the Indian chiefs for a national Indian gallery. No-Tin sat for King, who drew the vivid chalk-and-charcoal portrait in preparation for his own painting of No-Tin.
King’s portrait and those of over 130 other Indian chiefs were all on permanent display to the public in the War Department offices in Washington, D.C. Later they were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, where they were all destroyed by fire in 1865. But it was the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 that encouraged McKenney to make the portraits in the Indian Gallery as widely available to the public as possible. He planned another commission and knew that only a successful artist, one more accomplished and ambitious than King, could produce the kind of compelling paintings that would become well known outside Washington. That artist was Henry Inman. | <urn:uuid:85561657-9d57-4f9b-99f6-170bfb7bfd1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lacma.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/a-place-for-no-tin-part-ii/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=c8d80d4293 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9795 | 431 | 3.046875 | 3 |
About this Blog
The purpose of this Transparency Blog is to discuss various ways in which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could provide information to the public about what FDA is doing, the bases for FDA’s decisions, and the processes used to make agency decisions. The blog is expected to run for the next six months (June through November 2009). We will provide blog posts and updates over the coming weeks asking for your feedback on these topics. The first blog post is to inform you of this process and our policy. Thereafter, we will be asking for your feedback on specific topics.
FDA is establishing a Task Force to develop recommendations for making FDA processes and decision making more transparent to the public and the Task Force will hold a public meeting on June 24, 2009. Prior to that meeting, we will be posting questions for you to comment on that will inform the work of the Transparency Task Force. Following FDA’s June 24 public meeting on transparency, we will provide information on this blog about the public meeting, including comments from the meeting, so that we can get additional feedback from you. The Task Force will continue to use your feedback to inform its work during the next six months.
We encourage your comments; your ideas and concerns are important to ensure that a broad range of Americans are active and informed participants in the discussion.
Task Force Actions
The Task Force will take the following actions:
- Seek public input on issues related to transparency;
- Recommend ways that the agency can better explain its operations, activities, processes, and decision making, compatible with the agency’s goal of appropriately protecting confidential information;
- Identify information FDA should provide about specific agency operations, activities, processes, and decision making, including enforcement actions, recalls, and product approvals;
- Identify problems and barriers, both internal and external, to providing useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision making to the public, taking into consideration health literacy and the needs of special populations;
- Identify appropriate tools and new technologies for informing the public;
- Recommend changes to FDA’s current operations (e.g., internal policies and procedures, standards, information formats, and guidance) to improve the agency’s ability to provide such information to the public in a timely and effective manner;
- Recommend legislative or regulatory changes, if appropriate, to improve FDA’s ability to provide such information to the public; and
- Submit a written report to the Commissioner on the Task Force’s findings and recommendations.
Implementation of the Task Force’s recommendations should make agency actions, decisions, and underlying processes more transparent to the public, while still meeting the agency’s goal of appropriately protecting confidential information. Further, implementation of the recommendations should also reduce the need for requests by the public for agency information under FOIA.
Report to the Commissioner
The Task Force will submit a written report to the Commissioner approximately six months after the task force is convened.
Membership of the Task Force
The Task Force will include the following individuals to provide high level, agency-wide representation:
- Principal Deputy Commissioner (Chair) – Joshua M. Sharfstein, M.D.
- Center Directors;
- Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition – Stephen F. Sundlof, D.V.M., Ph.D.
- Center for Veterinary Medicine – Bernadette M. Dunham, D.V.M., Ph.D.
- Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research – Karen Midthun, M.D. (Acting)
- Center for Drug Evaluation and Research – Janet Woodcock, M.D.
- Center for Devices and Radiological Health – Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D. (Acting)
- Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs – Michael Chappell (Acting)
- Chief Counsel – Michael M. Landa, J.D. (Acting)
- Chief Scientist – Jesse Goodman, M.D., MPH (Acting)
The Blog Team Also Consist of:
- Katie Burns – Blog Coordinator | <urn:uuid:86a8d2a6-dc0e-4467-a726-a2a62a004795> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fdatransparencyblog.fda.gov/2008/11/10/about-this-blog/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=8ef4095fcf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901939 | 845 | 2.1875 | 2 |
For years, Microsoft Word was the very definition of an industry standard: the first and only name in word processing. But as the focus of computing began to shift online, Microsoft missed the boat—failing to provide a version of its software that allowed users to access, edit, and share their documents from the cloud. Google Docs now has a firm grip on that market, but last year Microsoft finally got its head in the game with an impressive offering of its own.
Docs.com, unveiled in the spring of 2010, is an online hub that allows anyone to use the most popular Office programs (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) as full-featured web apps. The site was built in partnership with Facebook, and the social network's sharing features are fully integrated with the apps—allowing you to collaborate on projects with members of a group, or post a spreadsheet to a colleague's Facebook wall.
Docs.com is still technically in beta, but the service just hasn't been able to catch on. If only it had come along two years earlier. | <urn:uuid:8270dcfb-adfb-492b-becc-eb513f9a8831> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.complex.com/tech/2012/03/failure-to-launch-5-brilliant-microsoft-products/5-docs-dot-com | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97497 | 218 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Factsheet: Non-timber Forest Products and Livelihoods
Communities surrounding the Eastern Plains Landscape (EPL) make their living from subsistence farming and the collection of forest products such as resin and honey. In order to preserve these practices, WWF works with communities to establish sustainable management of non-timber forest products. Through these efforts WWF simultaneously preserves the EPL and supports local livelihoods.
Read the NTFP factsheet for more details. | <urn:uuid:3e26181e-ea22-4c36-b153-ae061f7d164b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/greatermekong/publications/?207310/Non-timber-Forest-Products-and-Livelihoods | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910958 | 93 | 2.6875 | 3 |
In this modern age of social media mania, employers can often learn more about an applicant through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Instagram than they would ever learn through traditional, professional means. For example, most job applicants can feign maturity and utmost professionalism during an hour-long job interview; how they present themselves on their social media pages, however, is more likely to reflect their true decorum. So, the questions become if, and to what extent, employers should use social media sites in deciding whether to offer employment to potential hires.
There is no denying that the desire to uncover the true character of any applicant is tempting. Why shouldn’t an employer be able to deny an offer of employment based upon a candidate’s imprudent, publically shared photos or posts on social media sites? The answer to this question would be simple if the only knowledge an employer ever gained from an applicant’s social media site was information demonstrating that the applicant was not the most qualified. Unfortunately, however, the information that should disqualify an applicant is almost always surrounded by other information that can expose an employer to potential liability.
For example, by just scanning through an applicant’s social media page, even the least technologically savvy employer can ascertain information that is unlawful to consider in any employment decision and that would not necessarily be obvious during the in-person interview process. This information includes, for example, an applicant’s age, religion, national origin, marital status, pregnancy status, disability, sexual orientation (some state and local jurisdictions), or gender expression or identity (some state and local jurisdictions). Moreover, depending on the jurisdiction, how an employer obtains the information and what information an employer used as the basis of the decision can also be legally problematic. Several states, for instance, have laws that prohibit employers from taking an adverse employment action based on a prospective employee’s lawful conduct when they are off duty.
So what is the employer to do? If an employer does not wish to simply forego potentially valuable information by avoiding social media sites altogether, it should take some basic steps to minimize the likelihood of claims. To minimize the likelihood of a charge of discrimination, for example, employers should do the following:
1. Implement a standard written search policy to identify how the various sites will be searched and what information will be considered
2. Assign an individual who is not involved in the hiring process to review social media sites
3. Have that individual forward only information that may be lawfully considered in the hiring process to the hiring decision makers
4. Keep uniform records of what disqualifying information was obtained through the social media sites
5. Ensure the consistency of employment decisions based upon such information
6. Become familiar with the specific laws of their jurisdictions to determine the existence and extent of any “off-duty” laws
7. Never attempt to evade or circumvent an applicant’s privacy settings to collect social media information. This includes impersonating a “friend” or creating a false profile to gain access to the applicant’s information.
Finally, if the employer wishes to minimize liability by hiring a company that provides background reports to conduct the social media background check, it must understand that pre-employment social media background checks may give rise to liability under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. As such, companies that provide background reports to employers—and employers that use such reports—must comply with this law as well.
Accordingly, employment decisions based upon information gained through an applicant’s social media site is not without risk. If the employer takes the appropriate steps to minimize that risk, and conducts the social media search in accordance with all federal, state and local laws, however, social media checks can be a valuable tool in the hiring process. | <urn:uuid:1ba8d398-679b-4e21-a0f1-cd02cc330856> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insidecounsel.com/2013/02/11/labor-should-you-use-social-media-to-screen-job-ap?t=regulatory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933476 | 772 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Editor: Budget crisis in Florida. What budget crisis? While Governor Rick "I Wasn't Indicted" Scott tries to slash education funding from kindergarten to the university, FSU football coach and state employee "Jumbo" Fisher gets a jumbo 5,000,000 dollar pay raise. I guess football coach is a more important job than teacher, firefighter, EMT worker, police officer, nurse or doctor (but not as important as Managed Health Care Provider CEO).
The mission of colleges and universities is to educate, not to win national championships. Or am I wrong? Why not eliminate athletic scholarships and with the money saved, provide more academic scholarships, that is, if we really believe in education. (Yes, I realize some athletic programs are money-makers for their respective schools, but that is not a justification unless these schools declare that they are also para-professional training camps for major league sports.) Should a student want to participate in a college sport, great. First, get into the school, and then go try out for a team. (This is how it works in the Ivy League.) If our goal as a society is to better educate our youth, I don't see how para-professional sports programs at major institutions of higher learning accomplish this. We should be encouraging all children to pursue academic achievement and they should be rewarded for it. The Record provides front -page coverage for local high school "signing days," and entire school days are interrupted for a signing ceremony. Where are the academic acknowledgements? Does Menendez High School hold an assembly for scholars who have "committed" to major academic institutions? Does The Record report on the suspenseful wait for a valedictorian's college choice or are only football player's deliberations worthy of newsprint? Five million bucks buys a lot of classes for students who choose college because they want to learn something. | <urn:uuid:ea3684ee-ccf6-4b69-8f8f-4960c13961ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://staugustine.com/opinions/2011-02-23/budget-crisis-hasnt-hit-fsu-coachs-salary | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963475 | 380 | 1.609375 | 2 |
How are you checking yeast health? From what I've read, the methylene blue stain is not accurate below 95% viability.
I've read that too. It is "not accurate" to some level. Even the American Society of Brewing Chemists calls it not accurate.
If by "not accurate" you mean that it is not exact then I agree. There is some error, but that error can be determined so that the accuracy is known.
It is very dependent on the strain and how much Methythele Blue that is used. WLP004 and WLP566 stain just fine with 0.03% MB, but EC-1118, and WLP650 are better with 0.06% and 0.1% respectively. It's also very dependent on the operator. MB staining is very difficult to use on some strains, and there doesn't seem to be one concentration that works for every strain. If you use too much it will actually start to kill some of the weaker yeast cells. The method isn't perfect, but it has it's place.
I have a blog post on this coming up. | <urn:uuid:daafead2-b7ac-42cc-9516-0bb2408a7586> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=14175.0;prev_next=prev | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982458 | 232 | 1.765625 | 2 |
White Flint II – What is the Big Idea?
Planners are making good progress on community planning work this spring. We transmitted the Planning Board draft of the Wheaton Sector Plan and an amendment to the Clarksburg plan focused on retail staging. Coming soon are Takoma Langley and Kensington, and, later this year, Burtonsville. And if our budget request is funded, Chevy Chase Lake will follow, then the start of several new plans over the next year including Glenmont, Gaithersburg East/the Montgomery Village Sector Plan and White Flint II.
I have been questioning staff as we embark on new planning efforts, asking, What is our Big Idea? What will this planning effort achieve? And, because we cannot ask these questions in a vacuum, What would we want to achieve without constraints versus with constraints?
My last post, “Federal Highways,” outlined the Montrose Parkway underpass (or overpass, depending upon which way you are traveling). The graphic below superimposes one of the sketch plans we received for a several-block area in the heart of White Flint over the area occupied by the Montrose underpass. It is apparent how much land the underpass “sterilized” for future growth, housing, revenue and more importantly, the real impact it has on the possibilities for the White Flint II area.
The White Flint II Sector Plan has as a major constraint that will dictate what can be achieved. That constraint is the barrier the underpass has created. It is, in effect, White Flint’s Berlin Wall.
Ten or 15 years from now, as White Flint hits its stride, there will be plenty of destinations drawing people into the area. Some will take transit, but most will drive. They will seek out parking and walk along new pedestrian-friendly streets lined with windows and activity. Many will work and live in this emerging community.
Will those same people look north to the White Flint II area and say, “Hey, let’s go shop or eat over there?” And if they are making this decision, will they walk? No way. It will be a barrier just like the photo above. As the new streets and activities emerge in White Flint, they will not extend the grid across the underpass.
Would you really drive one-quarter or one-half mile north and find a new parking spot in White Flint II to shop or eat? It’s unlikely you’d find something there that will not already be in White Flint. And this is the challenge of White Flint II. What can it become? What can happen there that will make it distinct from White Flint?
This question would be different if the Montrose / 355 intersection had remained at grade. The street grid could have extended north to south. The building infrastructure could have created a seamless transition across the intersection, not much different than say Georgia and Colesville Road in Silver Spring. People could and would walk across the area into White Flint II because the transition would be lined with active uses day and evening.
So as we prepare to look at the White Flint II area, we have to take a hard look at what is possible. We have White Flint becoming known as NoBe (North of Bethesda), we have Rockville to the north, with White Flint II mostly in the middle. Will it be SORo (South of Rockville) or can it establish it’s own identity? Can we expect the same demand for high-rise construction in White Flint II as in WF I? Will traffic modeling reveal that White Flint I occupies the bulk of the available and projected road capacity?
Or should we expect more like Twinbrook Station, a recent successful project north and east of White Flint at lower densities with a residential focus? Should this be the future of White Flint II, with splashes of retailing that are more convenience-focused than destination oriented? Will there still be a market for destination retail like the Container Store north of Montrose?
Several property owners own land both north and south of Montrose. How they lease south of the road in White Flint I – whether to big box retailers or smaller retail – will have a big impact on what happens to the north in White Flint II. That model does not fit into the urban character of White Flint. Property owners will lease according to the market, and will avoid investments that compete with other uses in the area. This will not only impact the retail market but the residential market as well.
If White Flint I is to be higher density condo and rental, there may not be enough market share for both areas in the next 15 years. Perhaps White Flint II will be about managing expectations, meaning it may take awhile for the collective vision to emerge. This is the approach that we are investigating for the Long Branch neighborhood, where the near and long term goals are differentiated by the actions we can take to create incremental change.
Maybe 20 years from now the Montrose underpass may be MoCo’s elevated expressway. The mistake realized decades later in places like Seattle, Toronto and San Francisco, where lots of money was invested to reverse the damage and open up new opportunities for creating better environments for people, not autos.
There are lots of things to consider when we start the White Flint II Sector Plan.We hope for engaged conversations with property owners, residents and business operators — all of whom will help guide the possibilities that White Flint II can be. | <urn:uuid:142fb726-54e0-4dba-91fe-5a3199b290e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-director/?p=551 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946862 | 1,119 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Palazzo del Bargello was the first public building in Florence under the Commune. It was built for the Capitano del Popolo. It took this name when it became the residence of the Capitano di Giustizia, that is, chief of police, and therefore the site of the jails, in 1574.
Built in two stages, in the 13th and 14th c., the earliest section incorporated an existing tower, known as the Torre of Volognana, set at the corner of what is now the Via Ghibellina. The stern palazzo, restored in the 19th c. now houses the Museo, one of the most notable collections of art in the world, especially for Renaissance sculpture, and in particular Tuscan Renaissance sculpture.
The entrance, from the angled tower, leads you into the Medieval Courtyard, the first corner that arouses a suggestive artistic and architectural interest. On the wall that leads to the first floor one can notice the coat-of-arms of the Podestà which followed each other through the years at the head of the Faction of the People.
In the centre, presently containing a well, there was once the gallows. From the courtyard you enter to the first room dedicated to the works of the Florentine maestros such as the Tondo Pitti or the Bacco by Michelangelo or the Mercurio and la Firenze vittoriosa su Pisa by Gianbologna.
After the wonderful sculptures of this first room, you proceed to the first floor from the stairway of the courtyard. The first room is the Room of the Ivories (la Sala degli Avori), which contains the ivory pieces of the Carrand collection: 265 pieces dated between the 5th and the 17th centuries, among which there are sacred and pagan themed diptychs, panels, caskets and wings.
You then continue to the second room, the Real Treasure of the Bargello (Forziere of the Bargello): a collection of precious treated works, which belong to the Carrand collection.
On the right side there is the entrance to the Chapel of Maria Maddalena and the Sacristy, a room which was reserved to the condemned waiting for their execution. The frescos of the school of Giotto are of great value and enrich the room. From the Treasure (Forziere) of the Carrand collection you enter the Islamic Room (la Sala Islamica) which contains a collection of oriental carpets and objects.
The next room is the Room of the Council (la sala del Consiglio): the heart of the administration activities of the city for about forty years after the Council of the Republic of Florence took its place (Consiglio della Repubblica di Firenze), today it contains the sculptures of the artists who lived in the 15th century Florence.
Following along we find the Room of the Majolica's (la Sala delle Maioliche) which, from 1888, contains exemplars of the workshops of Urbino, Siena, Orvieto and Firenze.
On the second floor, the first room is dedicated to Giovanni della Robbia: it contains terracotta sculptures and a collection of medals donated by the Dukes of Florence. You then proceed to the Room of the Arms (la Sala delle Armi), a rich collection of weapons for attacks and defences of medieval origin.
Followed by the Room named after Andrea della Robbia, the Room of the Small Bronzes (la Sala dei Bronzetti), the Room of Verrocchio (la Sala del Verrocchio) and, at last, but not least precious the very famous Room of Medals of Florence (Medagliere di Firenze), a rich collection of medals, which in the Renaissance age were commemorative medals of buildings, events and personalities of the Renaissance years.
The history of the city and of the age, well narrated and expressed through the works of the Museo del Bargello draws the visitor towards an overview of the Renaissance, which made Florence become one of the capitals of art.
For any information:
Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Via del Proconsolo (055 282902).
Closed on Mon. Admission: 4,00 euro. | <urn:uuid:acf8d93b-9b6e-4778-b0d7-32ecbe0b5853> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firenzealbergo.it/JP/Experience-Florence/art-culture/pages/Museo_Nazionale_Bargello.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919603 | 912 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Even more than when he’s performing on stage, Steven P. Jobs’s passion for personal computing comes through when he talks about the years he spent cajoling his designers to build what he presented today as the world’s “thinnest” computer.
Along with David Pogue, the Times technology columnist, I spent a half-hour with Mr. Jobs after he introduced the MacBook Air this morning at the Macworld Expo. And as is frequently the case with Apple products, he pronounced the three-pound aluminum-clad portable to be one of the best things his company has ever designed.
“I’m going to be the first one in line to buy one of these,” he said. “I’ve been lusting after this.”
The company’s design team went through roughly 100 design prototypes to find the right form, he said. Both he and his lead designer, Jonathan Ive, were not certain that they would be able to fit the computer into the package that they came up with.
Earlier, during his keynote presentation, Mr. Jobs went to great lengths to extol the engineering effort that had gone into reducing the size of the basic computer to fit inside the computer, which tapers in thickness from .76 inch down to .16 inch. The circuit board is about the length of a pencil, he said, and he brought Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, on stage to congratulate him for his company’s work in significantly shrinking the packaging of the Core 2 Duo microprocessor that the MacBook Air is based on.
Still, the machine is a reversal of field for Mr. Jobs, who in the past has insisted that less-than-full-featured laptops are undesirable. Today Mr. Jobs was unwilling to compare the MacBook Air to the original Dynabook vision, a portable prototype idea first conceived of by the computer scientist Alan Kay. He would go no further than asserting that this is the most elegant computer the company has created, right down to the four rubber footpads that support it.
Some of the competitors’ machines are so flimsy, he said, they require a fifth or even sixth pad to keep from sagging.
Mr. Jobs can be like that when he assesses the competition.
Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
He was equally skeptical about Google’s decision to develop smartphone software. Google bought a small start-up called Android several years ago, and a team of developers is now putting the finishing touches on an open-source smartphone operating system designed to rival both the iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.
“Having created a phone, it’s a lot harder than it looks,” he said. “We’ll see how good their software is and we’ll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted.” In seeking not to get locked out of the mobile phone world, “I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It’s just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners.”
One of the remarkable qualities that Mr. Jobs has is his ability to continue looking forward and not focus on the past. For its Apple TV set-top box, “Take Two” is a great example of the computer impresario’s ability to recast an anemic first effort with great fanfare. Apple not only cut the price of the box from $299 to $229, it entirely revamped the user interface to a simple text display that is stark even by Mr. Jobs’s Spartan aesthetic.
The message now is that when it comes to television, the solution is “all about movies.” That can be seen in the movie icons that now fill the screen of the Apple TV display, allowing viewers to choose and rent titles to download.
The model will not extend to cable television, he insisted. “We’re not going to go there with the cable cards,” he said, referring to the relatively open cable industry connectors that are gradually allowing companies like TiVo to replace the standard set-top box. “That whole industry, their go-to-market strategy is pretty loopy, and it’s fractured,” he said. “Our model is like DVD.”
Mr. Jobs saved his greatest compliment today for his former archrival Bill Gates, who
has now largely retired will retire from Microsoft this summer.
“Bill’s retiring from Microsoft is a big deal,” he said. “It’s a significant event, and I think he should be honored for the contributions he’s made.” | <urn:uuid:24e1f58c-3343-455b-86be-e392d73a93dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/?scp=1&sq=steve+jobs+kindle&st=cse&apage=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96758 | 1,105 | 1.601563 | 2 |
A traditional December event around the world, Handel’s Messiah is synonymous with Christmas music. The most famous oratorio ever written, Messiah was composed in 1741 in less than three weeks. It became Handel’s most beloved masterwork. Written as a meditation on the idea of a Messiah, rather than a narrative drama about the life of Christ, Handel's Messiah represents, for many, a deeply loved annual tradition to share with friends and family. From the thrills of the "Hallelujah Chorus" to the dazzling "But who may abide the day of His coming" and the exquisiteness of the soprano aria "I know that my Redeemer liveth," Messiah is replete with joyful sincerity.
Tickets: General Admission tickets are $25, $51 and $87, and are on sale now at
www.coloradosymphony.org, the Colorado Symphony Box Office: (303) 623-7876 or (877) 292-7979 or in-person in the lobby of Boettcher Concert Hall in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Hours are Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Location: All performances are at Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church,1980 Dahlia Street,Denver.
Night-of-Show Purchase: Patrons are strongly encouraged to purchase in advance, as seats are limited. Any remaining tickets will be available for sale at the church door before the performance. Doors to the church will open 90 minutes prior to performance.
About Suzanne Ramo, soprano
Lauded by the San Francisco Chronicle for an ease with coloratura that one hears "blazing forth brightly" as well as her "lyrical phrasing sweetly rendered," soprano Suzanne Ramo brings her crystalline soprano to Orff’s Carmina Burana with Ballet Austin, returns to the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra for the title role of Donizetti’s Rita, and sings Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen with Texas A&M International University in the 2011/12 season. Recent performances for the soprano include Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with Berkshire Opera; Musetta in La bohème with Utah Opera; Violetta in La traviata, Micaela in Carmen, and further performances of Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus with Amarillo Opera; Madame Mao in Adams’ Nixon in China with the Colorado Music Festival; Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with City Opera of the Quad Cities; and Naiad in Ariadne auf Naxos with Tulsa Opera. A prolific interpreter of oratorio repertoire, Ramo has joined the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under the baton of Nicholas McGegan for Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge, Modesto Symphony for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Stanford University as guest soloist for Mozart’s Mass in C minor, as well as the Strata Trio for Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen at Concerts at the Point in Massachusetts.
About Adriana Zabala, mezzo-soprano
As the title character in the American premiere of Dove's The Adventures of Pinocchio at the Minnesota Opera, Adriana Zabala was recently praised by The Wall Street Journal as showing "tremendous stamina and boy-like flair." The New York Times hailed her as "a vivid, fearless presence," and the L.A. Times as "extraordinary"
About Steven Sanders, tenor
Hailed by Opera News as "dynamic" and The New York Times as "impressive,"
About Robert Gardner, baritone
American baritone Robert Gardner has appeared with numerous opera houses and symphony orchestras in the U.S., Europe, and Asia including New York City Opera, Washington National Opera, Bavarian National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Colorado, Central City Opera, Aspen Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Palm Beach Opera, Edmonton Opera, the Munich Philharmonic, and the major symphonies in Pittsburgh, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, San Diego, Santa Rosa, New Haven and Kansas City, the Northeast Pennsylvania Philharmonic and the Daejeon Symphony in South Korea. Originally fromDenver, he has been described as “a superb young artist” by WGBH Radio.Gardner is the 2007 winner of the Lili Boulanger Memorial Award. A 2001 Pro Musicis International Award winner, he is also the winner of the 1999 William Matheus Sullivan Foundation Award, the 2000 Gerda Lissner Award, and the 2000 Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition.
Scott O’Neil, resident conductor
Colorado Symphony Chorus
Duain Wolfe, director
Suzanne Ramo, soprano
Adriana Zabala, mezzo-soprano
Steven Sanders, tenor
Robert Gardner, baritone
Tuesday, December 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, December 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, December 18 at 5:30 p.m. **SOLD OUT**
# # #
The state’s only full-time professional orchestra, the Colorado Symphony embraces a tradition of musical excellence by presenting a diverse array of symphonic performances throughout the year. The Colorado Symphony performs in Boettcher Concert Hall and throughout the Front Range, presenting outstanding education and outreach programs, as well as Masterworks, Pops, Holiday, Family, and the exciting new Inside the Score and Symphony on the Rocks series that have attracted a historic level of first-time concertgoers. By presenting music that is both timeless and inspiring, the Colorado Symphony is attracting more diverse and younger audiences than ever before. The increasing popularity of Colorado Symphony concerts not only re-affirms the artistic excellence of the orchestra, but also reflects the Symphony’s relevance to its Colorado community and deep-rooted enthusiasm for symphonic music felt by so many individuals across the region. | <urn:uuid:6c508db3-4e08-483c-862e-2be1a19e09a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prlog.org/11726181-colorado-symphony-presents-messiah-by-candlelight.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90444 | 1,302 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Serving Alderwood, Long Branch, Mimico and New Toronto
The Lakeshore News, January 5, 1972
Narconon Attacks Area Heroin Use
A Toronto anti-drug group called Narconon is preparing to move into the Etobicoke-Lakeshore area in an attempt to stop "hard core drug and heroin users."
Phil McAiney, Narconon deputy director Canada, told The News that heroin use is becoming a problem of such proportions that officials are in a quandary as to how to stop the traffic in drugs.
"Last year in Toronto, police figures stated there were about 100 heroin users but now they say we have 1,000," Mr. McAiney said Monday.
That is a conservative figure. We estimate it more around 3,000 and this use of heroin is spreading to the suburbs. No doubt about it."
Mr. McAiney said Narconon was launched in Toronto a year ago and now has a staff of 10.
Mr. McAiney said Narconon is a "drugless" program which tries to instill confidence which "allows people to cope with personal problems by introducing a sense of self-assurance about the present and an ability to better handle the world around them."
Other Articles from 1972: | <urn:uuid:52ec2bfb-019c-41fb-bc1a-6e82c6a5a58a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.narconon.org/history/1972/narconon-heroin-use-area.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958691 | 268 | 2 | 2 |
Innocent V. Petrus a Tarentasia, born in Tarentaise, towards
1225, elected at Arezzo, 21 January, 1276; died at Rome, 22 June, 1276. At
the age of sixteen he joined the Dominican Order, and he won great
distinction as a Professor at the University of Paris, whence he is known
as Doctor Famosissimus. He is the author of several works dealing with
philosophy, theology, and Canon law, some of which are still unpublished.
The principal of these is the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter
Lombard. I have used the edition, Toulouse, 1652. | <urn:uuid:77744666-22db-4fe2-bd58-0a6f5c444b2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/part_I/notes/n0015.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972652 | 144 | 1.546875 | 2 |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Too great a capacity for production of commodities or delivery of services in relation to actual need: the problem of overcapacity in many large industries.
“And when they do stop, they'll drown in overcapacity, and they won't be building new skyscrapers for a very long time.”
“But that didn't address broader industry concerns, such as overcapacity in the auto-parts industry.”
“That suggests that the investment boom of the past few years has not led to the kind of overcapacity that heralds a corrective plunge in investment as seen during the "lost decade.”
“The amount of damage that has been done to the Asian infrastructure and financial system and the enormous overcapacity which is in existence can't be dealt with in a matter of months.”
“And that brings us to the old chestnut of 'overcapacity' in Europe.”
“You've probably been noticing some people talking about "overcapacity" in the finance industry, and in a sense this is what they're talking about.”
“While I personally believe that their efforts could have been better spent on stabilizing their servers and working out those infamous "overcapacity" issues, the change is a good one.”
“Much of that "overcapacity" has been driven by an orgy of capital spending and the artificial peg of the Chinese renminbi to the US dollar to protect the export-led manufacturing industry.”
‘overcapacity’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
Looking for tweets for overcapacity. | <urn:uuid:36342b12-611d-4710-b46d-9329dc97ed76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/overcapacity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963351 | 349 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Abu Dhabi: If you’ve been to the Abu Dhabi Media Summit 2012, you’ll see that the Arab World is home to a good number of entrepreneurs in the region where nascent ideas have been turned into successful businesses. However, entrepreneurship still has a long way to go in this part of the world.
One of the main challenges facing entrepreneurs in the Arab world today is having access to capital.
“There is some, but it needs to be massive because for entrepreneurs to build their businesses they need people who are going to bet on the idea,” said Fadi Ghandour, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aramex.
Ghandour called on investing in youth early on, where by the time they graduate they have the entrepreneurial skills they need to start their own business. “It’s an emergency because it is about jobs and there is 27 to 28 per cent unemployment in our youth in the Arab word... without creating proper employment opportunities for your youth you will have problems.”
The obstacles that faced Habib Haddad, CEO of Wamda, came into the digestion of what Wamda is today, a tool that empowers entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa. The company has an early stage fund that invests in startups.
“We invest in startups, around half a million dollars in each startup. We’ve done about 10 investments this year in companies across the Arab world and we’re very much hands on,” he said.
However, according to Haddad, investment alone is not enough. “It’s investment and mentorship.”
The company, which is supported by Abraaj Capital, currently runs a number of programs and products which help startups set up, run, and grow a company.
According to Ghandour, for entrepreneurship to really kick off policy makers need to make sure the markets are unified, where there’s free movement of entrepreneurs and where free trade in the region is allowed. “It’s very difficult now in many of the Arab countries for an entrepreneur to get a visa,” he said. “There also needs to be bankruptcy laws… If you won’t give them [entrepreneurs] protection, they won’t start their business.”
There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of hype around entrepreneurship in the Middle East, yet those who are venturing into it say there’s a lot more action needed.
“We’re at the point of barely being aware of it. Everyone talks about it, but there are no steps on the ground.” | <urn:uuid:0ff2ba73-18cf-459a-a3a7-b812f3b8535b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gulfnews.com/business/media-marketing/entrepreneurs-in-the-arab-world-facing-obstacles-1.1088019 | 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 | 0.96514 | 558 | 1.8125 | 2 |
"Firsts," "Oldests," "Biggests"
ABOVE: A vessel of Sächsische Dampfschiffahrt, Germany's oldest fleet of
Normally we don't
use press releases in our editorial coverage, but the Dresden Tourist Office
has put together a release titled "Dresden - A Record-Breaking City" that
deserves wider circulation. Here's a lightly-edited and abridged version:
The first German Pilsner beer
The Radeberger Exportbier-Brauerei brewed Germany's first Pilsner in the late
19th Century. (That beer is now Dresden's leading brew.)
Germany's first beer mat
Rudolph Sputh of Dresden patented an "absorbent wood-fiber beer-glass coaster"
in 1892, ending the enmity between beer and tablecloths.
The world's first bra
In Saxony, it's said that beautiful women grow on trees, but their beauty is
need of direction and support. On September 5, 1895, Fräulein Christine Hart
applied for the first patent on a "bodice to keep the breast in shape."
largest Protestant church on the European continent
Saxony was in the forefront of the Reformation, and it strove to become the
"Protestant Rome" with the massive domed Frauenkirche. (By the time the church
was built, the ruling dynasty of Saxony had long reverted to Catholicism.)
The first single-lens reflex camera
In 1936, the Kineexacta (developed in Dresden) was introduced at the Leipzig
fair. The Pentacon camera works didn't survive the political changes of
1989-1990, but another innovative photographic tool--the Noble panoramic
camera--is manufactured in Dresden.
The world's first toothpaste tube
Dr. Ottomar Heinsius put paid to tooth powder in 1907 with the first
mechanically-produced tooothpaste,which was sold in the Löwenapotheke pharmacy
on Dresden's Altmarkt.
The world's first mouthwash
In 1893, Dresden industrialist Karl August Lingner developed Odol mouthwash,
which is still sold in the original style of bottle. (Lingner later bought three
palatial mansions overlooking the Elbe and built the German Hygiene Museum.)
world's oldest fleet of paddle steamers
Sächsische Dampfschiffahrt, a.k.a. the Saxon Steamship Company, has been
in business since 1836. It currently has eight historic paddlewheel steamers
(some more than 120 years old) and two modern motorships. The company's
excursions include local cruises and longer trips to Meissen and Decin (in the
The world's oldest hillside suspension railway
The first passenger-carying hillside suspension railway was built in Dresden
between 1898 and 1901. It extends 274 meters or just over 300 yards from
Körnerplatz in Dresden-Loschwitz to a viewing platform in the area known as
The world's first coffee filter
Melitta coffee filters were invented and patented in 1908 by Melitta Beltz,
a 35-year-old Dresden homemaker.
The first industrially-produced condensed milk
The Pfund brothers developed condensed milk for coffee in 1886; long-life
pasteurization was introduced in 1900. Pfund's Dairy Shop, built in 1892, has
been described as "the world's most beautiful milk shop." It's still in business
as a cheese shop.
Germany's oldest Christmas market
was combined with commerce in Dresden as early as 1434. The result was the
Striezelmarkt, which was named after a type of fruity bread that later became
the famous Dresden Stollen.
Every year, on the second Sunday in Advent, the
world's biggest Stollen is cut. Apart from Stollen, handicrafts such as wooden
toys from the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge), ceramics from Lusatia, and
gingerbread specialties such as Pulsnitzer Lebkuchen are sold at the
Striezelmarkt Christmas Market.
The first European porcelain
In 1709, working in the vaults of the Dresden fortress under pressure from
the Saxon Elector, Augustus the Strong, alchemist Friedrich Böttger invented the
first European white porcelain, which was also the world's first hard porcelain.
To keep the recipe secret, manufacturing was moved to Meissen Castle, but
industrial espionage was rife even then, and porcelain was being made all over
Europe within a decade.
The world's biggest porcelain frieze
Fürstenzug, or Procession of the Princes, represents ruling members of the
Wettin dynasty over 800 years. It's 102 meters (335 feet) long, is made of
25,000 Meissen porcelain tiles, and was designed in 1907 by Dresden art
professor Wilhelm Walther.
The world's largest porcelain collection
The Porcelain Collection in Dresden's Zwinger contained more than 50,000 objects
at the time of Augustus the Strong (1694-1793) and is even larger today.
Augustus further enriched his collection by trading 500 of his best soldiers to
the rival state of Prussia in exchange for more than 150 vases.
The oldest stage equipment in Germany
The Schauspielhaus Theatre, erected in 1912-13 opposite the Zwinger, houses the
oldest fully-functional technical stage equipment in Germany. The hydraulic
stage machinery survived World War II. (It's also worth noting that the
Schauspielhaus Theatre was heated by Europe's first district-heating power
Dresden Werbung und Tourismus GmBh
Top, 3rd inset, 4th inset photos copyright © DWT/Christoph Münch. | <urn:uuid:09133d7b-c297-487e-bf03-154444bdbb05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://europeforvisitors.com/germany/dresden/dresden-trivia.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932951 | 1,282 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Oldest restaurant in Huntsville still makes good, juicy burgers
The oldest restaurant in Huntsville smells like sauted onions on a flat grill when Marian Harreld walks into the dining room.
She and a relative, Ann Lane, head for the table by the front door, both of them unsure of the last time Harreld ate at the cafe.
The cafe was smaller then. The hamburgers were bigger.
The menu consisted of hamburgers made of mustard, onions, salt and ground beef, as she recalls.
Now, there are also chili dogs, chili burgers and slaw dogs, among other things.
"It was down at the Big Spring," she says. "It was a railroad box car, on the right going up the hill."
She is 94 and known to many in her family as "Mammy."
She is retired from Redstone Arsenal, where she worked until she was 81. She still drives through town in her 1991 Cadillac and plays cards at the country club.
Her favorite food is fried chicken.
"I've got a good appetite, and I can eat anything I want," she says. "It hasn't killed me yet."
She plans on living until she's 100 and beyond.
"I don't drink, don't smoke, don't chew and don't dip snuff," she says. "Someone told me, 'Better get you another doctor.' "
Harreld is here on a Thursday afternoon because she wants to tell Pam Milam, the owner of Big Spring Cafe, about the cafe's first days in business.'
It's the 80th anniversary of the opening of Big Spring, a box-shaped building on Governors Drive.
The original location, opened by Troy Baucom, was a railroad box car at 119 South Jefferson, near the Big Spring Canal in downtown Huntsville.
From there, the cafe moved to 115 South Gallatin St., then to its current location in 1970.
"This is the first time I've been here since they moved," she says.
The restaurant has two tables and 16 bar stools, all of them occupied as Harreld prepares to order.
Behind the counter, Milam's son, Gavin, takes orders. His mother went home, he says, because she opened the cafe for breakfast around 4 a.m.
Harreld orders a hamburger, fries and water.
"I know all that Mr. Baucom had was hamburgers when he opened," she says. "It must have been a better quality of meat because they were so good."
On that first day at the cafe, she figures she went downtown with her father, Claude David Phillips, a longtime employee of the Coca-Cola bottling plant and city alderman.
She was 13 and a student at East Clinton Grammar School. Her family lived on East Holmes Street, where she was born in 1914.
"About all I remember being down here was the Big Spring," she says. "People used to drive their cars into Big Spring and wash their cars."
Just then, her meal arrives. The waitress tells her to be careful with the fries.
"They're hot," she says.
She examines the hamburger, peeling back the bun.
The first thing she notices is the onions.
"They were stingy right here with the onions," she says.
She takes a small bite of the hamburger, then another.
"They're juicy," she says. "They're as good as ever. This is a good hamburger."
She finishes the hamburger and almost all of the fries, then pays the bill, which comes to less than $3.
She digs into the purse for the money and hands it to Gavin Milam.
"I'm 94, but I don't think about dying," she says. "I've got a place at Maple Hill Cemetery already reserved. That's going to be my residence, Maple Hill Cemetery."
Among the reasons she doesn't think about dying: She's too busy with her daily rounds.
"I can go wherever I want to," she says. "I drive very slow so I don't get caught."
Says Lane: "Now, Mammy, you're telling a story. You drive fast. She whizzes past us on Whitesburg."
Today, though, Lane has driven.
As she and Harreld head to the parking lot, Harreld sees Gavin Milam behind the counter.
"Tell your mother a 94-year-old woman was in here to see her," Harreld says. "Tell her I'm coming back to have her juicy hamburgers." | <urn:uuid:b4103791-2fef-4c4d-b93f-b34ca06da388> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.al.com/go/2008/07/big_spring_cafe_celebrates_80.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987363 | 973 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Remember to call and schedule the program at least two weeks in advance.
Discuss the upcoming trip with your students and how this trip relates to your classroom studies.
Be sure to inform the chaperones of your expectations and that the docents may be requesting their help. Be sure to provide and background information on the program, the location of the museum, and transportation and parking options.
If possible, visit the museum before your class trip to orient yourself and explore the exhibits and facilities.
We are a small museum located on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. Programs and workshop take place in one of our four exhibit galleries, and each program is approximately one hour long. All programs and workshops are presented by trained staff, students, or volunteers.
Lunch facilities are available at the University Memorial Center, right next to the museum. If the weather is amenable, there are also several outdoor areas to eat. Unfortunately, the museum itself does not have any spaces that are appropriate for student lunch. Please ask for directions on where to eat when you schedule your visit.
Following the program or workshop, you are welcome to explore the museum on your own. When you are back in your classroom, we recommend you discuss the program with your students. Discuss the positive and negative experiences of the visit or questions the program may have raised. This is an excellent opportunity to have your class journal about their experiences.
We encourage students to bring their families to the museum. | <urn:uuid:69cfb73c-d626-41e9-b886-da9ad0493223> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cumuseum.colorado.edu/education-tours/planning/most-of-your-trip | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953942 | 296 | 1.953125 | 2 |
This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information:
you and us
Defeat Diabetes Foundation
150 153rd Ave,
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
Certain Diabetes Therapies May be Associated with Pancreatic Cancer Risks
Posted: Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Metformin appears to reduce the risk for pancreatic cancer in patients with diabetes, whereas insulin therapy appears to increase the risk, according to the results of a large case-control study.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of death from cancer for both men and women in the United States. Although Type 2 diabetes mellitus can occur as a consequence of pancreatic cancer, the study authors write that there is accumulating evidence strongly supporting its significant role in pancreatic carcinogenesis. Although the association between Type 2 diabetes mellitus and several types of human cancers is well established, few studies have investigated the role that antidiabetic therapies might have on this relationship, explain the authors.
Two recent epidemiologic studies have found that diabetic patients treated with metformin (a biguanide that reduces insulin resistance) were less likely to develop cancer, but those patients treated with insulin or sulfonylurea were more likely to die of cancer. However, those studies did not specify the types of cancer affected.
The authors write, "To our knowledge, no studies have been reported on the association of antidiabetic therapies and pancreatic cancer risk in humans."
For this study, the investigators looked at 973 patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma (including 259 diabetic patients, 87.6% of whom were white and 59.7% men) and 863 healthy control patients (including 109 diabetic patients, 91.5% of whom were white and 63.2% men) who were already part of an ongoing hospital-based case-control study at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center from 2004 to 2008.
The frequencies of use of insulin, insulin secretagogues (e.g., sulfonylureas and meglitinides), metformin, and other antidiabetic medications (including thiazolidinediones) were compared between patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma and control patients. Unconditional logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the risk for pancreatic cancer.
Results showed that with adjustments for potential confounders, diabetic patients who had taken metformin had a 62% reduction in the risk for pancreatic cancer compared with those who had never taken it (odds ratio [OR], 0.38; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.22 – 0.69; P = .001). This difference remained statistically significant when the analysis was restricted to patients with a duration of diabetes for more than 2 years or those who never used insulin.
In contrast, diabetic patients who had taken insulin or insulin secretagogues had a significantly higher risk for pancreatic cancer, at 4.99- and 2.52-fold higher (P < .001 and P = .005, respectively), compared with diabetics who did not take either drug.
An increase in pancreatic cancer risk was also detected for thiazolidinedione users versus never users, but the difference was not statistically significant (P = .213).
"Because pancreatic cancer is a rapidly fatal but a relatively uncommon cancer, epidemiologic research on this disease is challenging," write the authors. However, "If the finding that metformin is protective against pancreatic cancer is confirmed [in future studies], metformin may offer a tool for the primary prevention of pancreatic cancer among people with [Type 2 diabetes mellitus]."
Limitations of the study included potential recall bias (as a result of the case-control study design) and the data possibly not being generalizable (because the study was conducted in a single tertiary-care referral hospital). In addition, "Our study design could not show whether the reduced cancer risk is due to less severe diabetes that led to the choice of metformin or due to better-controlled diabetes by use of metformin," write the study authors. "More detailed history on time and duration of each type of antidiabetic therapy use is required to address this question."
In an accompanying editorial, Yu-Xiao Yang, MD, MSCE, from the Division of Gastroenterology in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, writes, "A novel and riveting finding of this study is the apparent protective effect of metformin against pancreatic cancer."
He explains, "It is interesting to note that, although both metformin and the [thiazolidinediones] reduced insulin resistance, the [thiazolidinediones] did not seem to be associated with a decreased pancreatic cancer risk in the current study. This argues against the possibility that the protective effect of metformin...is mediated solely through improving insulin resistance."
Source: Diabetes In Control: Gastroenterology. 2009;137:482–488, 412–415.
Costa Rica Travel Corp. will donate a portion of the proceeds to and is a sponsor of Defeat Diabetes Foundation.
Send your unopened, unexpired test strips to:
Defeat Diabetes Foundation
150 153rd Ave, Suite 300
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
Analyze nutrition content by portion | <urn:uuid:7cc18b74-f9bb-4d84-9230-a2b0fc78cdff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defeatdiabetes.org/news/view.asp?catid=3703&subcatid=5335&id=57185 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941038 | 1,116 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Jean-Baptiste Lully Collection
This project was conceived in 1996 both as a multimedia thematic catalog of the UNT Music Library's collection of early editions of operas and ballets by the French Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), and as a nucleus for collecting information useful to anyone studying those works. A pilot version of the Lully Web Project has been on the web since 1997.
With the assistance of a grant from TexShare, we have since scanned the scores and present here full-text versions of all of the volumes in the collection.
In his position of service to Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste Lully played a significant role in the development of French opera. His works remained historically important during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and have fueled a revival of French baroque music. We hope that this collection of first and second edition prints - themselves a witness to Lully's popularity in the seventeenth century - will continue to provoke interest into the twenty-first. | <urn:uuid:09439488-f634-48be-a88e-2315b8f6d726> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.library.unt.edu/collections/music/lully | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954552 | 213 | 2.1875 | 2 |
(CNN) – Sarah Palin is taking heat Wednesday for appearing to overstate the role of vice president, saying in a recent interview that she would be "in charge of the Senate" should John McCain win the White House.
The comments came in an interview with Colorado TV station KUSA in response to a third-grader's question, "What does the Vice President do?”
"[T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom," she said.
The comments have drawn criticism from Democrats and liberal blogs which note the actual role of the vice president when it comes to the Senate is simply to cast a tie-breaking vote in the event of a stalemate. According to Article I of the U.S. Constitution, the vice president is the "President" of the Senate, but has no executive position when it comes to presiding over the chamber.
Donald Ritchie, a historian in the Senate Historical Office told CNN that Palin's comment was an "overstatement" of what her role would be.
"The vice president is the ceremonial officer of the Senate and has certain ceremonial functions including swearing in new senators and can vote to break a tie," he said. "It’s a relatively limited role. It's evolved into a neutral presiding officer of the Senate.
Ritchie also noted recent vice presidents have played a behind-the-scenes lobbying role on Capitol Hill for an administration's policies, but called it "somewhat limited."
"It's not comparable to the Speaker of the House who is certainly in charge of the House," he said. "The slogan that political scientists use is that the House is ruled by the chair and the Senate is ruled by the floor…the senators are in charge of the Senate."
Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Palin, said the Alaska governor was simply answering the question in a way a third-grader could understand.
"Governor Palin was responding to a third grader's inquiry," she said. "She was explaining in terms a third-grader could understand that the vice-president is also president of the U.S. Senate."
In an interview with CBS earlier this month, Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden also said he hoped to play an influential role in the legislative branch if Barack Obama wins the White House.
"I hope one of my roles as vice president will be as the person actually implementing Barack Obama's policy. You gotta get the Congress to go along with it," he said. "And it's presumptuous to say, but I know it pretty well. And I think I am fairly respected on both sides of the aisle." | <urn:uuid:7d69de4a-9843-4e4b-b102-02ad6c3a8eea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/22/palin-takes-heat-for-saying-vp-in-charge-of-the-senate/comment-page-42/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981876 | 577 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Unlike the International Calendar (the Gregorian Calendar), which is based on the months, the Chinese calendar is based strictly on astronomical observations of the Lunar cycle (the phases of the moon). The new Chinese year begins the second new moon after the Winter Solstice; meaning January or February of the Gregorian calender. Thus, those born in either of these months may actually be born in the Chinese year of the previous animal.
Examples: My daughter was born February 6, 1972. 1972 is the year of the rat. However, it did not become the year of the rat until February 16, 1972. So my daughter was born in the Chinese year of the pig/boar; 1971.
My niece was born January 13, 1971. 1971, as already stated, is the year of the pig/boar. Though the year of the pig/boar did not begin until January 27, 1971. So my niece was born in the Chinese year of the dog; 1970.
If you were born in January or February; not to worry. This program is accurate enough to pick up the correct animal sign for you. If you would like to confirm your animal sign refer to the Chinese Lunar Years
The Chinese years are grouped under 12 animal designations and are based on a legend regarding Lord Buddha. As he was getting ready to depart Earth he summoned all the animals to bid him farewell. Only 12 arrived and he honored them by naming a year after each animal in the order of their arrival:
Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.
The animal ruling the year of your birth has a major influence on all aspects of your life. It is said "this animal hides in your heart". The time of day and the season of birth also have some influence.
To discover what the Chinese animal says about you, select month, day, year and hours (optional, but beneficial to learn the animal of your birth hour) of your birth, and click submit button.
NOTE: It seems we have been having problems with the accuracy of this script with the years before 1960. The script seems to still be accurate for those born in January or February (based on before the new year has begun. To make sure of your date check my Chinese Lunar Years page.)
For those of you born after the new year has begun and before 1960 when you are using this script, after you hit submit, look at your date of birth right above the animal graphic (left side of the table above the animal graphic). It may possibly be a year later. If that is the case go back to where you submitted your year and put a year earlier. Example: I was born in 1946, but in doing this it came up with me being born in 1947. So I redid it using 1945 and it came up correct. Note, there is no problem month, day, or time or from 1960 on. They are correct.
We have gone over the script again and again and can not find the problem. It worked fine and then something happened, but no change ever happened in the script. So we are baffled. But fortunately we did find a solution to rectify the matter by for those born before 1960; just use the year before you were born. I do apologize for the inconvenience and no this does not make you a year older. | <urn:uuid:fe8e4c27-2978-4884-a550-c088bf6b3e4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.circle-of-light.com/chineseastrology/chinese-signs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978469 | 692 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Radiation Oncology Services
External Beam Conventional Radiotherapy
External beam conventional radiotherapy, otherwise known as teletherapy, is the most frequently used form of radiation therapy. The patient sits or lies on a couch and an external source of radiation is pointed at a particular part of the body. Kilovoltage (also known as Superficial of Deep) x-rays are used for treating skin cancer and superficial structures. Megavoltage x-rays are used to treat deep-seated tumors (e.g. bladder, bowel, prostate, lung, brain). Megavoltage electrons are mainly used for treating lumpectomy scars and others surgical scars after a tumor is removed surgically.
Do you have questions about Radiation Oncology Services at Palomar Health? Visit our Patient Resources page or contact us! | <urn:uuid:ba6e15cf-5822-47e5-8488-29d506ba5af1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.palomarhealth.org/ContentPage.aspx?nd=155 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926752 | 172 | 2.375 | 2 |
I would also like to bring to light that scientists who utilize animals for laboratory research give those animals the utmost care, just like a farmer does his livestock. While here in Australia, I've had the chance to do a lot research with sheep and most recently, I helped perform fat biopsies on some crossbred ewes. The surgery was not unlike one that would occur in a regular hospital.
Each surgery used a new set of sterilized surgical equipment and lots of sterile surgical guaze.
The area where incision will be made is shaved, then cleaned with iodine and alcohol and finally, treated with an analgesic so that the sheep won't feel any pain.
During the surgery, covers are placed around the area and the scientists and researchers wear surgical gloves so the entire process stays clean. In this picture, Hyatt is suturing the tiny incision that was made to collect the sample. After he has finished the sheep will be treated with antiseptic to ensure that no infection ensues.
Regardless of your position on animal testing, you should know that research animals receive special care and are not treated badly. Scientists and researchers care about the animals that have been entrusted to us; just like farmers and ranchers.
Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~ | <urn:uuid:21c1d7bb-fa3d-4d99-814f-98d3bf5aaf03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://buzzardsbeat.blogspot.com/2011/05/scientists-care-too.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973858 | 261 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Rescuing the Children: The Story of the Kindertransport (Hardcover)
This important book tells the story of how ten thousand Jewish children were rescued out of Nazi Europe just before the outbreak of World War 2. They were saved by the Kindertransport — a rescue mission that transported the children (or Kinder) from Nazi-ruled countries to safety in Britain.
The book includes real-life accounts of the children and is illustrated with archival photographs, paintings of pre-war Nazi Germany by artist, Hans Jackson, and original art by the Kinder commemorating their rescue.
About the Author
Deborah Hodge has written more than 25 books for children. Many of her books have won awards and been published internationally. Her picture book, Lily and the Mixed-up Letters, was chosen by IBBY as an Outstanding Book for Young People with Disabilities. She also won the Information Book Award from the Children’s Literature Roundtable of Canada.
Deborah specializes in writing engaging nonfiction for young readers and loves the challenge of using few words to explain big thoughts. Deborah is a former teacher and curriculum writer for the BC Ministry of Education. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Praise for Rescuing the Children: The Story of the Kindertransport…
“…Neither melodramatic nor sentimental, the simple, accessible prose reveals the historical realities of how ‘non-Jewish children [were] taught to love Hitler and to hate Jews,’ along with the heartbreak of saying good-bye and the fact that most of the rescued would never see their parents again…. Even with all the books out there about the Kindertransport, readers will grab this exemplary title for historical research and for personal reading.”
— Starred Review, Booklist
“Fitting neatly into primary-classroom units about World War II and the Holocaust…. Then-and-now portraits … with a mix of period photos and paintings by Kinder artist Hans Jackson, provide plenty of visual witness to those dangerous times and the children caught in them. A quick but systematic overview, well-endowed with both visual and documentary supporting material….”
“Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time…. Explaining the Holocaust is never easy, but Hodge does an outstanding job of describing the horrors of what was happening and then putting them in a historical context that is comprehensible to even young students with only a passing knowledge of the period…. “
—School Library Journal
“…Deborah Hodge pieces together some of the remarkable tales told by the children who lived because they escaped from the Nazis. What is most striking about Hodge’s book is how she weaves what the children themselves relate into her narrative. In their own words, they offer readers insight into the trauma of leaving their families and friends behind, journeying to a place where they didn’t speak the language and felt foreign and alone, unsure what was happening back home or whether they’d ever see their parents or siblings again.”
– Canadian Children’s Book News | <urn:uuid:0eedc55b-cda5-4fb1-98e4-e863444d69ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookpassage.com/book/9781770492561 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95432 | 641 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Hey Mr. Green,
I volunteer at our local SPCA thrift shop and have gotten everyone into recycling (at least at the shop). But I'm not sure what is best to do with the wood products that are not suitable for resale, and so are put in the dumpster. I live on several acres and could bring them home to burn. So the question is which is worse: fill a landfill or fill the sky with smoke? --Vicki, in Brazoria, Texas
It’s probably best to send the wood products to a landfill instead of burning them. Because they are often slathered with paint, varnish, and glue, burning might release toxic chemicals into the air. Those chemicals could also damage the pollution controls in your wood stove. Since you’re obviously a conscientious environmentalist, I do assume you have an EPA-approved stove or firebox. But if you have an older, highly polluting stove or fireplace, don't burn anything in it--just replace it. For more information on how and why to get safer woodburners, see my blog, “A Very, Very Hot Topic, or ‘I Miss My Lung, Bob’ ” at http://sierraclub.typepad.com/mrgreen/2008/01/hey-mr-greenin.html
Some would argue that it’s best not to burn wood at all, because even efficient stoves still pollute much more than, say, natural gas and propane, while releasing more carbon dioxide into the air per unit of heat. But I’m less concerned about this than about the pollution from the 19 million barrels of oil we burn every day while fighting wars to keep it flowing our way, not to mention 2.6 million tons of coal per diem. When in God’s name is this country going to wake up and get a rational energy policy?
But there may be other, higher, nobler possibilities for your old wood than dumping or burning. You might try to rustle up woodcrafters, artists, or sculptors who can use those ostensibly unsalable wood items. These wizards do remarkable things with “found objects,” stuff we less creative types dismiss as utterly useless. For example, check out some of the artwork by my old friend Tony May, emeritus professor at San José State University at http://artshiftsanjose.com/?p=619 or http://tonymay.net/ Dumpster diving, curbside retrieval, and cruising thrift stores is an integral aspect of the guy’s work because it provides him with a treasure trove of raw material. (I’ve known him since the bygone days when he could leap into the tallest dumpster at a single bound.)
There’s a serious eco-message embodied in such artistic efforts: Reusing objects encourages an ethic of cherishing and conservation instead of adding to the effluvia of the modern economy, while it can also express a melancholy view of the sheer waste of said economy. A master of this sort of brilliant redeployment of cast-off material as art is Michael McMillen. You can learn more about him at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/michael-c-mcmillen-artist_b_743942.html. As Sierra Club founder John Muir said, "all things are hitched," and for me that includes art and the enviroment. | <urn:uuid:0e900e1d-4629-46c6-8b43-3f9a0b8fc550> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sierraclub.typepad.com/mrgreen/2011/05/dump-or-burn-whats-best-for-unusable-wood-products-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935422 | 733 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Life stinks for Marylanders
The brown marmorated stink bug has made itself Maryland’s least welcome invader of 2010. Fat from feasting on orchard and soybean crops, flocks of the Asian alien have invaded homes and gardens, causing more than a foul odor.
“The populations this year have been astronomical when compared with years past,” says Dr. Joe Fiola, specialist in viticulture and small fruit for the University of Maryland Extension. “Multiple bugs per fruit, whereas with green stink bugs [the garden variety] you would see one or two to a tree.” | <urn:uuid:b9450204-dd9d-438e-aa67-5a72190f0c63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bayweekly.com/category/article-category/features/creature-feature?page=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901884 | 127 | 2 | 2 |
Here is one thing government is very bad at: pricing. This is why the Pentagon pays too much for things. This is why Cash-for-Clunkers sold out instantly.
Government officials go into a market (1) often required to buy something, (2) always paying with someone else’s money, and (3) artificially constrained in how much they can shop around.
When a California court ordered the state prisons to hire more psychiatrists, the prisons starting shopping for them. The high wages drew psychiatrists away from state mental hospitals, which then had to pay more to retain talent.
The result of the bidding war: one state psychiatrist ended up pocketing $822,000 of California taxpayers’ money in a year.
Bloomberg News reporters Freeman Klopott, Rodney Yap, and Terrence Dopp tell the story of how California’s state psychiatrists became rich from:
a bidding war after a federal court forced the state to improve inmate care. The prisons raised pay to lure psychiatrists, the mental health department followed suit to keep employees, and costs soared. Last year, 16 California psychiatrists, including Safi, made more than $400,000, while only one did in the other 11 most populous states, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The article is the second in a series on state-level spending. Yesterday’s story more broadly discussed state employee pay. | <urn:uuid:223f388d-75e4-49cf-847b-b351f79e82ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2515784 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944149 | 288 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Wah Wah Springs we followed the road almost due west across Pine Valley to Potsum Paw Springs, then west on the so-called "Old Bailey Wood Road," between the Indian Peak and Mt. Home Range leading into Hamblin Valley. We went to Frisco for our...
All the machinery for mine and mills, all the supplies and food for the camp, was freighted from Milford, more than 150 miles away. The agent, directly in charge of these shipments and supplies of all kinds, was P. B. McKeon, located at Milford. It...
ing, perhaps, the water level dropped and alfalfa seed could not be grown. The farmers then, of necessity, began farming on a more practical scale. There were crops of all kinds of grain, corn, alfalfa and potatoes. These are the principal crops at...
Vegetation on these arid ranges is composed chiefly of low shrubs and grasses belonging to what is known as the salt-desert shrub plant association. Most of these ranges are used by sheep and cattle during the winter when other ranges are covered...
September 13, 14, 15, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-Entrance examinations.
September 1S, Monday-Registration of students.
September 19, Tuesday-Instruction begins.
November 30, December 1,...
September 12, 13, 14, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-Entrance Examinations.
September 17, Monday-Registration of students. September 18, Tuesday-Instruction begins.
November 29, 30, Thursday,...
OFFICERS OF THE BOARD.
DAVID R. ALLEN.
LEWIS S. HILLS.
JAMES SHARP, Chairman.
MOSES THATCHER. FRANK PIERCE.
WALDEMAR VAN COTT. WILLIAM W. RITER.
OFFICERS AND INSTRUCTORS.
JOSEPH T. KINGSBURY, Ph. D.,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY.
WILLIAM M. STEWART, M. Did.,
PRINCIPAL OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.
MILTON BENNION, B. S.,
PRINCIPAL ON THE SOUTHERN BRANCH.
THE SOUTHERN BRANCH
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
University of Utah.
By an act of the Legislature of the State of Utah, approved March 11, 897, it was provided that a branch of the State Normal School be...
22 SOUTHERN BRANCH OF THE
LABORATORIES AND APPARATUS.
The biological laboratory is provided with compound microscopes, dissecting microscopes, accessory instruments, and chemical reagents.
The physical laboratory is furnished with all... | <urn:uuid:26300053-9688-4c8c-af41-137d88dfc294> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.li.suu.edu/cdm/search/searchterm/1900/mode/all/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919968 | 586 | 2.203125 | 2 |
'WiseDame' a Hack for Safety
J'aime Ohm entered the contest on a whim. Twenty-four sleepless hours later, she'd beaten 450 others to win September's TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon.
The marathon hack was held during TechCrunch's popular bi-annual web innovation conference. Ohm (E'10) was accompanying fellow alum Frank Denbow (CS'08), who informed her she'd gain free admission by competing.
Tempted, Ohm took a look and thought it could be fun.
"I'd been thirsting for some developer collaboration like at CMU, when you have people around you 24/7 and can say, 'Hey, I'm working on this,' or 'What do you think of that?' — which is amazing."
One of few women in her field, Ohm recognized an unfulfilled need — a simple, reliable way to improve personal security, particularly for women. She created the beginnings of WiseDame — an iPhone app with capabilities to alert loved ones of your whereabouts when you can't.
"Yes, there are some safety apps. Most developers, though, don't think about physical safety because most developers are men. It is a daily concern for women. I am tapping into some functionalities that others haven't tapped into."
WiseDame was so well-received that Ohm has indefinitely postponed her job interviews to strike out as an entrepreneur. She's developing her app for commercial availability and hopes to have it ready for consumers sometime next year.
It's exciting, especially for someone who graduated just months ago. While at CMU, Ohm chose to pursue a degree in electrical and computer engineering (ECE).
"I wanted to do something that applied my interests in math, the sciences and computers, and to understand systems from top to bottom," she explained. "I felt that ECE would give me both hardware and software understanding — an overview of the whole stack. I was right — ECE gave me that."
She also discovered an unforgettable community of support and friendship.
"CMU provides an amazing community of developers. Materials engineers. Hardware and software engineers. Chemical engineers. I miss that a lot." | <urn:uuid:220f363c-bc31-46f5-8deb-ac76810cac77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/health/2010/fall/wisedame.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973027 | 457 | 1.71875 | 2 |
"So, how do you tell a story in the digital age that stands out, captures people’s attention and gets them to act, engage with your institution? My favourite story for quite some time now and one I’ve been showing in workshops around the world is the story of the Troy public library."
Ok -- the author here isn't writing anything revolutionary. So you can skim the text. But watch the 2.5 minute video! It's the reason I selected this piece.
The video is brilliant -- and a perfect example of how story triggers can make a difference in social causes and social cause marketing.
The video is about a library. It is controversial. Now I am a big fan of libraries so I was rooting for it (my personal bias). And the video itself is a really good example of a digital story.
I say 'story triggers' because the library used story elements and metaphors that sparked stories within the viewer's/reader's brains. The library did not actually tell a full-blown story yet the public reaction was immediate and powerful.
Go watch the video! Then share what you think.
This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it
Via Karen Dietz | <urn:uuid:0cc9dcf3-d531-4562-9927-b6932ceab63f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scoop.it/t/interesting-reading?tag=video | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943147 | 268 | 2 | 2 |
1001 Inventions: A Conference to Celebrate the International Launch (25-26 May 2010)
1001 inventions: Muslim Heritage in our World
International Conference to be held at the Science Museum, London
25-26 May 2010
The Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation (FSTC) organizes an International Conference on Muslim Heritage in our World during 25-26 May 2010. This academic meeting will be held on the occasion of celebrating the International Launch of the new blockbuster Exhibition 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in our World in the Science Museum, London.
The highly successful interactive exhibition has attracted over one hundred thousand visitors in its opening weeks at the prestigious Science Museum in London, and will soon begin a world tour of capital cities. To mark this auspicious occasion, FSTC holds a high profile conference and and jointly with the Science Museum holds an evening reception at the Science Museum, London.
Since its opening on 21st January 2010, the exhibition and its complementary award winning short film, 1001 Inventions and the Library of Secrets, starring Sir Ben Kingsley, have attracted unprecedented interest from around the world. The film alone was downloaded and viewed over one million times in the first month of it being aired on the internet.
Similarly, the exhibition has received an overwhelming degree of attention from the world's press, including wide coverage from leading papers and television channels such as The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Samanyolu, and NBC. The exhibition has also the honour of receiving many VIP visitors, including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Prince Hasan of Jordan, and various ambassadors.
1001 Inventions aims to spread the message that for a thousand years, from the 7th century onwards, exceptional scientific and technological advancements were made in Muslim civilisation. Men and women of various faiths worked together, building upon the inventions and discoveries of ancient cultures and making breakthroughs that helped pave the way for the European Renaissance. These examples are intended to inspire today's youth to seek achievement in the fields of science, and to promote inter-cultural appreciation and mutual understanding, by celebrating our shared scientific heritage.
The conference is expected to welcome a range of international speakers who will debate different themes related to Muslim heritage and its relevance to modern civilisation. It will consist of keynote lectures and short presentations. This will be an ideal occasion to highlight the importance of the ongoing research in the large field of Islamic studies, especially in science, technology, history, culture and the Muslim contribution to present civilisation. Besides highlighting seminal results of research, the conference will also be the occasion to call attention to necessary further research.
Sessions The three sessions of the conference will be as follows: - Session One will run from 1pm to 5.30pm on Tuesday 25th May - Session Two will run from 9am to 1pm on Wednesday 26th May - Session Three will run from 4.00pm to 5.30 pm on Wednesday 26 May.
A special Inaugural lecture will be held by the world renowned historian of Science, George Saliba, Professor of Islamic and Arabic studies atColumbia University, New York. Lecture title: Arabic Science in the Earliest Italian Scientific Academies Date: Wednesday 26 May 2010 Venue: Science Museum, Director's Suite Time: 4.30 pm - 5.30pm This session of the conference will have a limited number of places for non-delegates. Prior booking and registration are required at:
Summaries of the presentations will be published on the academic website of FSTC, MuslimHeritage.com
For more information, please contact:
The Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation | <urn:uuid:ff63b544-ad40-4699-a081-8cda23494ddf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.muslimheritage.com/features/default.cfm?ArticleID=1209 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931156 | 757 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Over at Slate, Neal Stephenson charts a brief, fascinating history of the rocket, starting with Hitler's V-2 during the second World War and ending with today's sophisticated rockets, capable of launching complex communications satellites that can cost up to $100,000 a pound. But here, Stephenson explains, we find ourselves locked in:
To employ a commonly used metaphor, our current proficiency in rocket-building is the result of a hill-climbing approach; we started at one place on the technological landscape-which must be considered a random pick, given that it was chosen for dubious reasons by a maniac-and climbed the hill from there, looking for small steps that could be taken to increase the size and efficiency of the device. Sixty years and a couple of trillion dollars later, we have reached a place that is infinitesimally close to the top of that hill. Rockets are as close to perfect as they're ever going to get. For a few more billion dollars we might be able to achieve a microscopic improvement in efficiency or reliability, but to make any game-changing improvements is not merely expensive; it's a physical impossibility.
There is no shortage of proposals for radically innovative space launch schemes that, if they worked, would get us across the valley to other hilltops considerably higher than the one we are standing on now-high enough to bring the cost and risk of space launch down to the point where fundamentally new things could begin happening in outer space. But we are not making any serious effort as a society to cross those valleys. It is not clear why.
Intresting stuff, though I read Gravity's Rainbow one time in college so obviously none of this is news to ME. [Slate] | <urn:uuid:b41d36a9-6803-48d3-9eec-0fdbfb83d180> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gizmodo.com/5754910/a-brief-history-of-rockets-and-why-theyre-not-getting-any-more-advanced | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956702 | 350 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Earl Weaver managed the Baltimore Orioles from 1968 to 1982. - Getty Images
Earl Weaver managed the Baltimore Orioles from 1968 to 1982. Here’s a look at his managing career from the view of a Tiger fan.
Earl Weaver took over the reigns of the Baltimore Orioles from Hank Bauer mid way through the 1968 season as the Tigers were on their way to the World Series. Bauer had led the Orioles to the World Series in 1966. They were a perennial contender and the Tigers’ primary rivals from that ‘68 season into the early seventies.
There are some good reviews of the impact that Weaver had on the game of baseball, including this excellent article from Beyond the Box Score at SB Nation. I’m writing from the perspective of a Tiger fan who saw Weaver as a nemesis, and the leader of my favorite team’s chief rival.
I sort of got my wheels as a Tiger fan during the 1967 season. The Orioles were the defending World Series champions, led by triple crown winner Frank Robinson. ‘67 was a long, hot summer in Detroit, as riots spread and fires burnt down much of the city. Pictures of the war in Vietnam were on the evening news, brought to us by Walter Cronkite, and the Huntley- Brinkley report. Pretty much all we had to cheer for was our baseball team, and they staged quite a battle.
The Tigers were in a dead heat, a three way race with the Orioles and the Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant, with the winner set to face Bob Gibson’s Cardinals in the World Series. Weaver was the colorful first base coach of the Orioles that summer. The Red Sox won the pennant on the last day of the season, leaving the Tigers and Orioles tied for second place, just one game back. Carl Yasztremski won the triple crown this time. Little did we know that no player would again accomplish that feat for another 45 years.
Frank Robinson was injured during the ‘68 season, which my friends and I viewed as sort of offsetting the Tigers’ loss of Al Kaline, although the loss of Robinson was actually much greater at the time. The Tigers gradually pulled away and opened up a ten game lead by the fourth of July, and it was shortly after that time that Bauer was fired and replaced by Weaver. I recall the comments by Ernie Harwell and George Kell that Bauer could hardly be blamed, as the Tigers deserved credit for playing great baseball and Bauer couldn’t be faulted for Robinson’s injury.
The Tigers held a comfortable lead down the stretch, and the attention of Tiger fans turned to whether Denny McLain would break Dizzy Dean’s record of 30 wins. He did, and I was at the game sitting behind the Tiger dugout, behind Bowie Kuhn, and David Eisenhower who was dating Julie Nixon at the time. I learned all about magic numbers as I rooted for Baltimore to lose. Weaver’s Orioles finished second that year, 13 games behind the champion Tigers.
The following season, 1969, Weaver’s Orioles bolted out to a big lead and left the Tigers in second place, 19 games back despite winning 90 games. Mike Cuellar was voted the league’s co-Cy Young winner with Denny McLain, and it was game on for Tiger fans whenever we’d face the Orioles.
For the next three years, the Orioles won the newly formed American League’s east division every season. I was happy to see them lose to the miracle Mets in 1969, and none too thrilled when they beat Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine for Weaver’s only World Series title in 1970. The Tigers finished second two of those three seasons, but the Orioles were in the World Series every season.
I had the lineups for the Tigers, and their chief opponents, the Cardinals, Red Sox and Orioles all studied in those days, and to this day, I can rattle them off better than I could name my own cousins. Or at least my second cousins. The Orioles had Boog Powell, the monster sized first baseman, with Frank and Brooks Robinson, and three pitchers who were considered the best rotation in the league at the time. Dave McNally, Cuellar, the young Jim Palmer who would fight with Weaver seemingly every time he was taken out of a game. Then they added Pat Dobson, who was a relief pitcher on the champion ‘68 Tigers. All four of those guys won 20 games apiece in the 1971 season, something that hasn't been done since.
At the center of it all was Weaver. The colorful, angry white haired manager who was always arguing with the umpires, throwing temper tantrums and getting ejected from the game. We knew when he came out of the dugout that he wasn’t going to just have a conversation. He was going to have a fit. 91 times he was tossed from the game- I wasn’t counting at the time, but it was certainly a regular occurrence.
Now, here’s the main thing, as a Tiger fan. In 14-1/2 seasons as manager of the Orioles, Weaver’s teams won the division five times. They finished first or second twelve times. They had a winning record every single season. I was happy enough some seasons when anyone but Baltimore won the World Series. And they didn’t win it again until 1983, the season after Weaver retired, and they haven’t been back to the World Series since.
Weaver was famous for "pitching, defense, and the three run homer". He had no time for sacrifice bunts, stolen bases, or a hit and run. I’d like to claim that I recognized the wisdom of his philosophy at the time, but that’s not the case. Not until decades later, when sabermetric concepts slowly crept into my logic, and I read more about his baseball philosophy, did the pure genius of Earl Weaver become clear to me.
The fact of the matter is that the ranting white haired crazy manager of our nemesis was a genius, well ahead of his time. I knew that he studied match ups and he liked using platoons even if it meant sitting star players at times. And I knew that his teams were always beating my team by a few games every season. Only in retrospect can I appreciate what I had been watching.
For most of my time as a kid and as an adolescent, I thought that the only thing good to ever come out of Baltimore was Al Kaline. At least until Mickey Tettleton joined the Tigers, and just about then I was out of college and soon out of Michigan. Friends have joked with me that I had to leave Michigan for the Tigers to win again, which they did the very season that I left, and Earl Weaver was gone from Baltimore.
It occurred to me as the Tigers were putting something together in the early 80's, that Detroit had sunk to the bottom, not really contending for about ten years while the Orioles managed to stay on top. Boog Powell was replaced by Eddie Murray. Davey Johnson was replaced by Bobby Grich. Cal Ripken replaced Belanger, and they seemingly had a closet full of Cy Young contenders like Palmer, Steve Stone, Mike Flanagan, Scott McGregor, and Mike Boddicker. One thing was constant- Earl Weaver.
I was a nine year old boy when Earl Weaver took over the manager’s job with the Orioles, and he stayed in that job almost as long as I lived in Michigan. I’m sure that these memories will ring true for any Tiger fan who lived through those times. I’m not sure how this all comes across to those who didn’t, but that’s my perspective on Earl Weaver. May he finally rest in peace. | <urn:uuid:e554853f-549d-44de-8085-26c82ff7e0ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blessyouboys.com/2013/1/21/3897422/remembering-earl-weaver-1930-2013?ref=fangraphs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98582 | 1,634 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Neither Mitt Romney nor President Barack Obama has an economic plan that's popular with independent voters, according to a national poll released Wednesday.
The Washington Post/ABC News survey indicated 54 percent of independents have an unfavorable view of Obama's plan for the economy, with 47 percent saying they view Romney's economic plan unfavorably. Thirty-eight percent viewed Obama's plan favorably, compared to 35 percent who felt the same about Romney's plan.
The economy consistently ranks as voters' top issue heading into November's general election, beating out national security and social issues as the problem at the forefront of Americans' minds. A disappointing jobs report from May and Europe's debt crisis have both contributed to financial unease heading into five months of heavy campaigning from Obama and Romney.
The survey showing negative marks for each candidate's economic plan reflected strong racial divides among Americans - White voters were split on Romney's plan, with 42 percent viewing it favorably and 42 percent viewing it unfavorably. Minority voters were far less positive. Sixty-eight percent of black voters, and 48 percent of Latino voters, viewed the Republican candidate's plan unfavorably.
Both groups gave much higher marks to Obama - 81 percent of black voters, and 59 percent of Latino voters, view the plan proposed by the Democrat incumbent favorably.
Romney, however, has greater room for improvement than Obama - 16 percent of all adults said they were undecided on his economic plan, while only 7 percent were undecided on Obama's.
The Washington Post/ABC News poll was conducted by telephone from 1,007 adults between June 6-10. The sampling error was 3.5 percent. | <urn:uuid:6a4486fd-1c7d-4fd2-b448-03180deda8b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickorlando.com/news/politics/Candidates-economic-plans-get-negative-marks/-/1637100/14798334/-/me6p30z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96954 | 331 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Ext uses the latest and greatest web 2.0 methods, such as ajax, which has built in parsers for JSON, XML, text and possibly some other formats. Ext allows for the creation of desktop looking interfaces with just som simple notation(Ext is probably not the first project to do this)...this in my opinion is one of the greatest things Ext has to offer. The simple notation way of creating these interfaces allows for rapid deployment of interfaces, and takes the GUI creation out of the hands of the developer, and allows the developer to focus on getting the data to the front end.
Alot of chatter has been generated in the past couple of months on the decision to change the licensing model. The most current version of Ext uses the GPL 3.0 model in my opinion it may have not been the greatest of choices for a license however it still allows you to create open source applications. And if you want to build an application that you will be selling for $ you can purchase a license which will ultimately help support the project and only make it better.
In my opinion the Ext documentation could take a lesson from the PHP documentation and add common examples in this notation style format, for the various things you may want to do with an object/widget/datastore.
In the end Ext is a great product with a bright future and just needs to polish its documentation as well as it has its interface objects. | <urn:uuid:fb667edf-0361-4e38-9ac3-5868a8bd9b4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.donaldorgan.com/2008/06/extjs.html?showComment=1214920020000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935483 | 288 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Parque Solar SPEX occupies a 195 hectare site between the municipal districts of Mérida and Don Álvaro. It is set in pastureland with very favourable conditions for the production of solar power, due to the lie of the land and grid accessibility.
In terms of its applied technology, using a dual axis sun tracker system, it is the biggest plant ever designed worldwide, with an output of 30 MW and a total investment of nearly 250 million euros.
Solar Parks of Extremadura, S.L is a 50% joint venture based in Badajoz, formed by the Extremadura company ecoEnergías del Guadiana, S.A. and the German bank Deutsche Bank AG. The solar park has been totally grid connected within the tariff range regulated by Royal Decree 661/2007, making it a local milestone and worldwide benchmark.
The park has a total output of 30 MW with a dual axis sun tracker system. The energy is fed into a 132 Kv high voltage transmission line through a new substation called "El Judío", custom built for that purpose.
The photovoltaic material has been handpicked with the most rigorous standards of quality and reliability in mind. Our collaborators are sector leaders at world level.
Supporting structure: The dual axis sun tracker has been entirely developed in Germany and has then been optimised and made by Grupo Eco specifically for this project, setting up an assembly site for that purpose in Extremadura. Each of the trackers is made up by a structure of high-resistance steel bearing a 130 m2 panel.
A new 132/15 kV substation called "El Judío", with an 80 MVA output has been built to lead off the power produced by the three plants. This substation is connected to the 132 kV "Mérida-Orellana" transmission line. | <urn:uuid:2de9996d-dc7e-4598-bf97-8a02473c9fb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grupoeco.net/EcoProyectos/parque-solar-merida-en.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943494 | 388 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Hospital care is a vital part of the health care system. Typically, the federal government establishes the national health care standards that jurisdictions must meet. However, in most parts of the country, provincial and territorial governments are responsible for providing hospital and acute care services.
At CIHI, we collect and report on clinical, administrative and financial data from hospitals providing inpatient and outpatient hospital care in Canada.
Emergency and ambulatory care
Medical care delivered on an outpatient basis. It is one of the largest-volume patient activities in Canada, making it a key component of the continuum of health services in Canada.
Acute inpatient care provides necessary treatment for a disease or severe episode of illness for a short period of time, with the goal of discharging patients as soon as they are stable.
Serves people who may not be ready for discharge from hospital but who no longer need acute care services. Also known as extended care, chronic care or complex continuing care, this type of hospital care provides ongoing professional services to a diverse population with complex health needs.
Care for both short-stay and long-stay rehabilitation patients.
Each year, CIHI and registered organizations collect and analyze data related to the health of Canadians and the Canadian heath care system. To facilitate improved access to timely data, CIHI offers data-submitting organizations a reporting tool. It enables registered organizations to electronically submit and access their data through a secure website.
Applications available through Client Services eReporting are
A web-based analytical environment that gives clients access to enriched, facility-identifiable data from several of our data holdings. Through a dynamic bundle of content and functionality, CIHI Portal enables decision support and planning by providing the tools for customized comparative reporting.
CIHI Portal integrates four distinct services
Secure and fast access to submission reports for the Continuing Care Reporting System (CCRS), the Home Care Reporting System (HCRS) and the National Rehabilitation Reporting System (NRS).
Get answers to your questions. Use eQuery to search for an answer or to submit your questions about CIHI’s programs and products, including Classifications, Case Mix, DAD, NACRS, CCRS, HCRS, OMHRS, NRS and CIHI Portal.
An interactive tool developed by CIHI to estimate the average cost of various services provided in hospitals.
This tool provides information nationally, by jurisdiction and by patient age group. The cost estimates represent the estimated average cost of services provided to the average patient. They include the costs incurred by the hospital in providing services but exclude physician fees, since physicians are normally paid directly by the jurisdiction and not by the hospital.
NACRS is the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). Ambulatory care is one of the largest-volume patient activities in Canada. Recognizing the need for data about this sector, CIHI developed the NACRS database. NACRS provides hospitals and community-based organizations with a standard data collection and reporting tool to capture data for ambulatory care visits, including day surgery, outpatient clinics and emergency departments. Data are available from 2001 onwards.
Just over 685,000 children made more than one million visits to EDs in Ontario in 2005–2006. Newborns and babies up to one year of age had the highest proportion of ED visits (802 per 1,000 children). This high visit rate reflects that 42.6% of newborns and babies up to one year of age came to the ED more than once in the year. The lowest rate of ED visits—279 per 1,000—was for children aged 10 to 14 years.
While most children made only one ED visit in the year, almost one-third (31.8%) made two or more visits. Almost one-quarter (23.5%) of children that made more than one visit to the ED in the year returned to the ED within 72 hours of their previous visit. Of these 218,106 children, we found that: • 34.1% were aged 1 to 4; • 45.7% had been triaged as requiring less- or non-urgent care at their initial visit; • 48.7% had registered between 4 p.m. and 12 a.m. during their initial visit; and • 12.6% had left the ED prior to their completing their initial visit.
ED patients are triaged based on a protocol which is designed to systematically ensure that those who need the most immediate care are assessed by physicians first. For our analyses, the five-level triage rating was used as a proxy to describe the severity of illness or acuity. More than half (55.1%) of children were triaged as requiring less urgent (level IV) or non-urgent (level V) care and less than 1% (0.3%) were triaged as requiring resuscitation (level I). While less than 1% of all children who visited EDs in Ontario were triaged as level I, PAHSCs saw the largest percentage of patients triaged as level I (0.6%). This was nearly three times the percentage seen in low-volume EDs (0.2%) and double that seen in high-volume EDs (0.3%).
Approximately 8 in 100 Canadians were hospitalized in acute care hospitals in 2006–2007, compared to 11 in 100 Canadians 12 years ago. This represents a decrease of 27.8% since 1995–1996 and a decrease of 4.2 % since 2005–2006 (figures adjusted for age and sex). | <urn:uuid:8faee3c0-5727-44c9-ab71-c80adf38bd0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/internet/EN/SubTheme/types+of+care/hospital+care/cihi016803 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959363 | 1,139 | 1.914063 | 2 |
It is difficult for some people to come into the show ring to judge a breed other than their own and to leave behind the prejudices they have developed in their breed. It has happened on more than one occasion that a person judging Canaan Dogs will say, "But they don't have feet like a .....", or "They don't carry their tail like a ...." Coat colour prejudice can be another issue where a certain coat colour is preferred (or disliked) in their breed and they allow that to affect the way they judge Canaans.
When a breed standard calls for something that would be considered a fault in most breeds, such as an undershot bite or a bowed front, judges will accept that in the standard. They will allow for a show of feistiness in a terrier, but they will not tolerate wariness when shown in our breed and will argue with other points in the standard as well. We have had judges say that they disagree with our standard and refuse to judge by it! They would never do so with another breed. Understandably, it can be difficult to not allow preconceived notions and prejudices affect the way one judges any dog, but one shouldn't be judging if they are unable to do so.
Breeders and judges alike should take a share in the responsibility of preserving this amazing breed the way nature intended it to be by breeding and judging properly.
Judging - This is an overview and not a point-by-point breed standard illustration.
The Canaan Dog is a medium-sized dog of the pariah dog type. It should be well-balanced, with moderate angulation and most importantly, should look like it has the potential for survival in the desert. Males should look masculine and bitches should look feminine.
This should bring a definte picture of the type of dog you are looking for. When the dogs enter the ring, the judge should look at them with this picture in mind. Are there any dogs in the class which can be eliminated from top honours because they do not fit this picture? Any dog that is overly large or heavy, or conversely, has too little substance in proportion to its overall size would not be the best candidate for survival on its own.
In all of the animal kingdom males and females are generally easy to tell apart. For example, it is the lion that carries the heavy mane; a stallion looks physically quite different from a mare; and it is usually the male bird that carries the brightly-coloured plummage. You should be able to tell with ease which Canaan is a male and which is a female. Even a larger female can be very feminine (not weak or snipey) in the head and a smaller male, quite masculine without coarseness.
You've had your first overall impression and now you ask the dogs to be moved. The Canaan Dog should move with a brisk natural trot which demonstrates agility and stamina. Are any of the dogs exhibiting hackney movement indicative of a straight shoulder? Are any overextending and striking their forelegs with their hind indicative of more angulation in the rear than in front (not well-balanced) or being too shortly coupled? Remember correct movement is essential in the Canaan Dog. Correct movement is indicative of correct structure. There are far too many judges who do not seem to be able to recognise correct movement. If this is a problem for you, attend another KC conformation and movement seminar and really pay attention this time around.
Now it is time to examine each dog individually and correct approach will make all the difference in the world Anyone judging dogs should know not to wear perfume or aftershaves, which often contain oils and pheromones which are offensive to the dog. Dangling jewelry is a no-no as are billowing skirts and overcoats. I have seen judges who should have known better wearing dresses in the ring that billowed right over the dog's head! This is all commonsense and applies to judging any breed of dog, but surprisingly, some people just don't think about these things before going into the ring. Oh, a smile would not go amiss either. Too often you see judges in the ring looking like they are carrying out some kind of punishment. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, please don't do it!
Canaan Dogs, as with several other breeds, do not like prolonged direct eye contact. This is a very dominant gesture and can unnerve even the seasoned show Canaan. Perhaps surprisingly to some, acting hesitant can also be unnerving as the Canaan will feel that there must be something wrong if you are acting in a way they perceive as fearful.
A very young Canaan Dog starting its show career will, in all probability, be quite outgoing. However, though the timing may vary, it is usually aroung the ten-month of age mark that a Canaan will start to go through their adolescent fear period and will start to back off from the judge. A mistake many well-intentioned judges make is to ask the handler to restack their dog when this happens, but with each attempted approach by the judge, the dog will back off again. It is far better if the judge allows the young dog to sit, then runs their hand over the dog, and then ask the handler to restack the dog. In better than 90% of the time, the dog will then stand (albeit still a bit apprehensively). It is the initial approach that unnerves the youngster as they don't know whether or not the judge poses a threat to them. Given time, the Canaan will become more confident. But this can take anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years depending on the owner's reaction to the dog's behaviour as well as the judges'. I have yet to meet a Canaan in the UK that would pose a threat of biting even when displaying nervousness (and if there is one they should not be in the show ring or in anyone's breeding programme), so please don't be afraid to approach a nervous Canaan. Your understanding approach can make or break this youngster's future show career.
An adult Canaan should be willing to stand for the judge. Though you do get the exceptions, most Canaans may not seem overjoyed about allowing a stranger to go over them, often looking right through the judge as though he/she doesn't exist. A slight drawing back of the head on initial approach should not be faulted. You start with the head checking for the proper wedge-shape, the breadth of which should be in balance with the dog's overall proportions. You also check for the correct low ear-set and correct ear shape. The eyes should be dark and slightly almond-shaped. Not only does a round eye spoil the looks of the dog but the almond eye has a function, reducing glare just as squinting your own eyes in the bright sun does for you. Though a black nose is preferred, allowances are made, even in the motherland, for a snow nose on a light-coloured dog. A true snow nose usually darkens with exposure to the sun and lightens during the winter months. Next the Canaan should have full dentition with a scissor or level bite.
Going down you look at the dog's front. The Canaan should have a deep, but not overly broad chest. There are far more fronts in the breed that are too narrow rather than too broad, though I have seen one or two of the later. The dog's forelegs should be straight with feet facing forward, the shoulders oblique and muscular with elbows close to the body. The feet should be catlike with hard pads. A note here, Canaan Dogs' nails do tend to grow quickly as in their natural environment they would be digging in hard ground. Therefore their nails are generally longer than in other breeds.
As you move over the dog you feel the shoulders, and then examine the coat for correct texture and undercoat. Though the standard calls for a coat which is straight, harsh and medium length, there are, to all appearances, two types of coat. The reason for the difference is that the coat is allowed to be anywhere from 1/2" to 1-1/2" in length. The shorter coat will appear to be flatter-lying while the longer coat, combined with a dense, woolly undercoat will stick out, not unlike a husky. Because of the undercoat, these coats will also feel different. Both coats are correct. What is not correct is lack of undercoat. Obviously undercoat will vary according to season and will not be as thick in a dog that is moulting or just finished moulting.
The topline should be level and firm with the tail set on high. Correct tail set is far more important that tail carriage. Too often judges have judged our breed on tail carriage alone. We have video footage of World Shows to demonstrate that not all Canaans (including some international champions) will carry their tail over their back when in a show ring. We show these videos at our seminars to prove that it is not just true of English Canaans, but of Canaans from around the world. Granted the Canaan on the move looks very good with the tail curled over its back, and if you have two dogs of equal merit in every way, by all means give the top honours to the dog with the happy tail carriage. But all we ask is that you do not judge on tail carriage alone. We have had judges admit that they put up on dog for that reason only. You must look at the entire dog and aesthetics should not weigh as heavily in your judgement as construction and movement.
You now look at the rear. The stifles should be well-bent, hocks well let down and the buttocks should be lightly feathered. Are the dog's front and rear in balance?
It is now time to move the dog. Most of you will call for the dog to move in a triangle and then straight up and down. It is essential that you watch the dog as it moves away from you and comes back towards you. Nice side movement is in itself not enough. I have seen dogs with nice side movement that actually crossed in the rear and paddled in the front. Remember, correct movement is essential.
You've gone over each dog and now it's time to make your final evaluation. Don't hesitate to check that shoulder again or to move a dog again to make sure you get it right. Remember to weight all faults against the idea that the dog should look like it has potential to survive in the desert.
Now make your placements confident that, at least in your opinion, you have done the right thing.
TOP OF PAGE | <urn:uuid:a6354686-4bbb-459c-aa10-4f9388e17662> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.canaandogclub.co.uk/judging.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969883 | 2,196 | 2.328125 | 2 |
The Digital Children’s Folksongs for Language and Cultural Learning project
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The Folk DC project is a European Union project designed to motivate young language learners to engage with language learning through using Folk songs, and activities around the songs, in 10 European languages.
Your students can take part in this motivating project that culminates in a simultaneous, live concert in 5 countries, streamed over the Internet to audiences all over Europe.
The Digital Children’s Folksongs for Language and Cultural Learning project (Folk DC) is a European Union project designed to motivate young language learners to engage with language learning through using Folk songs, and activities around the songs, in 10 European languages.
The project culminates in a simultaneous, live concert in 5 countries, streamed over the Internet to audiences all over Europe. School choirs will sing folk songs in non-native languages that will be streamed to the other concert venues and also made available to an Internet audience.
The project will introduce an understanding of the number, richness and culture of other languages at the earliest possible age when children start to learn a foreign language and thus begin to understand the meaning of additional languages. It will engage children in a fascinating and engaging activities that will resonate in to the future and answer the need for materials that can directly engage and motivate children to enjoy their learning.
The “Folk DC” project will research and collect children’s folk songs in 10 European languages and produce a pedagogical toolset for teachers to use with their students that includes:
- Lyrics, translations, background story, music score, recordings
- Activities to stimulate children’s language and cultural awareness
- Singing practices to enhance musical communication
- ICT training for recording and sound effects.
The resources will be completed in cooperation with schools, piloted and perfected; uploaded on the project’s website and widely disseminated to schools as an Autonomous Teacher Training Tool kit (ATTT).
Schools will be able to use the ATTT and create audio and video recording of their school choirs singing the project folk songs. These can be uploaded on to the Internet and shared as an open source.
Five Workshops will be organized by the partner institutions for local teachers and teachers from other EU countries who may apply for grants to cover expenses. A Telephone Technical Support Service will be active for a period offering technical and content related support to teachers using the ATTT.
A synchronized Concert will be organized in five prestigious venues in London (UK), Adana (TR), Sastamala (FI), Prahova (RO), Madrid (ES). These will feature a local school choir, distinguished folk singers and a projection of the concerts from the other four locations.
Schools who cannot attend the live concert will be invited to view the concert online via webinar software.
Joining the project
Educators can join the project either as piloting schools, involved in the concert or just using the resources produced. | <urn:uuid:c7b97c28-c6cf-4a3e-871a-1f52053e96fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elearningeuropa.info/en/project/folk-dc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921301 | 618 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Spain MILITARY JUSTICE
Sources: The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook
During the Franco regime, military courts were competent to try a wide array of political crimes by civilians, including terrorist acts and offenses against military honor by the press. Martial law was invoked frequently, enabling military courts to prosecute civilians charged with participating in strikes, demonstrations, and subversive meetings. In accordance with the requirements of the new 1978 Constitution, an organic law passed in 1980 abolished the jurisdiction of military courts over civilians. In addition, common crimes committed by military personnel were to be tried in civil courts, and sentences imposed by military courts were subject to review by the Supreme Council of Military Justice and by the civil Supreme Court as the final court of appeal.
A completely new Military Penal Code was adopted in late 1985. The new code introduced safeguards comparable to those of the civil criminal system, including the appointment of defense counsel and a ban against degrading punishment. It distinguished between conduct of a criminal character that was subject to criminal justice and disciplinary infractions that were to be handled by the military commands. The new code reduced the jurisdiction of military courts in the area of political crimes, such as rebellion, and it placed limits on the defense of obedience to legal authority in connection with illegal or unconstitutional acts. The death penalty was abolished for all but certain crimes committed in wartime, and even in such cases the death penalty was not to be mandatory.
Data as of December 1988
NOTE: The information regarding Spain on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Spain MILITARY JUSTICE information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Spain MILITARY JUSTICE should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA. | <urn:uuid:44b7f43d-c307-4ede-b8b9-752f2de78303> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.photius.com/countries/spain/national_security/spain_national_security_military_justice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964434 | 361 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The series has not produced any ‘findings’ as such (it was a seminar series after all, not a research project). However, we are claiming the following ‘clarifications’ of key issues around literacy in the digital university:
1. Conceptualisations of ‘literacy’ amongst educational developers concerned with digital technologies in teaching and learning continue to reflect a polarisation between those who take an ideological (literacy as social practice) and those who adopt an autonomous (literacy as individual competence) perspective.
For example, researchers exploring textuality in digital contexts, and practitioners concerned with the development of skills in digital communication and information management, seem to share little in terms of theoretical assumptions, methodologies, goals and outcomes.
This does not mean, however, that there cannot be any dialogue between researchers and practitioners coming from these different perspectives. The seminars have shown that the two agendas can co-exist productively. Viewpoints can meet over the discussion of principled means of describing practices that teachers and learners engage in when they do ‘university business’ online. Both perspectives can benefit from the analysis of quantitative as well as qualitative data, and from engagement in reflexive as well as analytical deliberation.
2. The idea of the ‘digital university’ is not a given. New conceptualisations of the institution and its practices have emerged from the attempt, during these seminars, to circumvent the differences in disciplinary and pragmatic orientation described above.
These include the concepts of: digital scholarship, the borderless institution, and post-human pedagogies. These keystone concepts will need to inform any research agenda that is developed on the basis of what has gone on in these seminars. | <urn:uuid:efeeede6-8c99-4415-b61c-1fec47e0504b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://literacyinthedigitaluniversity.blogspot.com/2011/10/lidu-final-report.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950764 | 350 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
The making of plans calls for thought, debate and commitment in advance of action. Plans describe a path of actions, often undertaken by many different parties, intended to achieve a certain purpose. Ideally they are an amalgam of the commitments by the parties responsible for the proposed actions and the will of the parties likely to be affected by those same actions. The field of urban studies and planning is about the making of plans for the physical, economic and social development of places and regions, and it is about the implementation of those plans.
Large projects call for large and complex plans. The stories of how large projects are conceived and built is the core subject. We will bring together issues of technology, politics, economics and culture. Big projects and their large and complex plans magnify the obstacles confronting their realization, and they sometimes make the benefits and dis-benefits easier to see. The stories about big plans will speak to the questions of leadership and personalities; to the knowledge base that underpins a big plan; to the new technologies that big plans invent and test; to the opposition they raise and the threats they face. And, inevitably, the stories about big plans raise the question of alternative approaches to the conceptualization and realization of urban and rural change. The classes in this subject will tell and discuss all these stories.
Skillful leadership is often an essential ingredient of a big plan. The course shall examine the roles played by the main actors in formulating and carrying out a plan. Similarly, we shall take note of people who raised doubts about the plan, worked against it, or delayed action. Big plans also tend to involve many organizations; we shall look into the operations of those that were important to each story.
We are concerned with the knowledge base underlying big plans; that is, what did the planners have to know in order to set a course of action, and how did they find the answers to their questions? We are interested as well in the technologies associated with plans. We shall take note of technological solutions that were formulated and ask what made them more or less feasible, and what steps were necessary to put a technological solution into effect.
Big projects often face serious threats before they are completed. Sometimes these take the form of an unanticipated crisis resulting from changes in the politics or economics of a situation; sometimes they result from difficult technical problems that demand innovative solutions. We want to understand the close calls and narrow escapes that threatened to stop projects midstream.
These plans and projects raise many issues for consideration: authoritarian and participatory styles of planning, ways of generating public support, staging strategies for projects that take many years to complete, environmental impacts, political accountability, health and safety factors, and social equity.
At the beginning, we will set the stage for understanding big plans by looking at the notion of planning. We then look at contrasting organizational structures and the changing attitudes and cultural biases toward "top down" and "ground-up" planning and implementation. The class will then study ten or so large-scale urban projects in depth--studying the making of plans and their implementation through an examination of the thinking, politics, economics and commitment that has led to these large-scale urban projects. Field trips are scheduled on three Friday afternoons to visit each of the Boston projects.
The projects that will be discussed are recent. They will typically be presented by a person who played a key role in the project. Slides and videos will be used to make the presentations vivid. In most cases, two successive class meetings will be devoted to each project: in the first, the lecturer will present the story of the planning and realization of the project; in the second, the class will discuss the project, with the lecturer as a resource to the discussion.
For the final paper, students, in teams, will develop their own big plan strategy for a contemporary local issue.
Readings for each week are provided.
In preparation for the presentation and discussion of each major project, each student will be expected to answer -- on one page only -- a few questions on the project. Unless otherwise stated, this one page paper will be handed in at the beginning of the first class on that project.
Rather than holding a midterm examination, we will have a review session on March 19 where we will talk about the commonalities and differences between the projects presented thus far. You will be asked to come to class with your own construct or framework for how you see the projects relating to each other, and to the Big Plan planning and implementation processes.
There will be a final paper, prepared by a small team of students, on North Allston due on Wednesday, May 7. These papers will be presented and conclusions drawn in the two class meetings on May 7 and 12. We will invite special guests to the final presentations.
In this course you are expected to learn from the readings, to listen to the presentations, to enter into the debate of the class, and to develop your own thinking on the subject of planning strategies. This course will not present a number of facts to memorize, and there are few absolute truths. The presentations and readings will, however, have distinct points of view, and from these divergent vantage points you should develop your own understanding--to guide you in thinking about planning and to inform your role as urban citizens.
The thoughtfulness of the ideas presented by you is of greatest importance, but quality of presentation should not be overlooked. The weekly one-page papers, class participation, and the final paper and presentation, will each contribute about equally to the grade awarded in Big Plans. | <urn:uuid:e574c297-9c66-4cb9-aa71-64c1633dd413> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/urban-studies-and-planning/11-123-big-plans-spring-2003/syllabus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959388 | 1,147 | 2.953125 | 3 |
A California earthquake early warning system now being tested accurately predicted the ground shaking in San Francisco a few seconds before the city felt the Oct. 30, 2007, magnitude 5.4 quake near San Jose, according to a statewide team of seismologists.
Active early warning systems already created in places like Japan, Taiwan, Mexico and Turkey automatically stop elevators at the nearest floor, halt trains, isolate hazardous chemical systems and machinery and move people to a safer location or position.
According to Richard Allen, University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of earth and planetary science and one of the leaders of the early warning testing being conducted by the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN), the California system, if fully implemented, could provide similar services through information transmitted via TV and radio networks, the internet, cell phones and other closed circuit systems.
Allen discussed the ongoing tests of a statewide early warning system today (Monday, Dec. 10) during a media briefing at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. He and his California colleagues will present further details during three scientific sessions today and tomorrow.
Current testing of the system should be completed by July 2009, providing the state with an estimate of the likely accuracy and warning times that the system could provide in future earthquakes should a public warning system be built.
CISN is a collaboration that includes UC Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory, the U. S. Geological Survey, the California Institute of Technology, the Southern California Earthquake Center based at the University of Southern California and the Swiss Seismological Service.
Earthquake early warning systems are designed to provide a warning that arrives seconds to tens of seconds prior to earthquake shaking. The Japan Meteorological Agency recently turned on its first national earthquake warning system, in October 2007, bringing to four the number of nations providing rapid warning to mitigate the impacts of earthquakes, Allen said.
In California, CISN is testing three early warning algorithms on real-time seismic networks across the state to determine how effective such warnings could be. ElarmS, the algorithm being testing in Northern California, detected the Oct. 30 Alum Rock quake - the largest earthquake in the San Francisco Bay region since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake - and estimated the magnitude of the event to within 0.5 magnitude units using only 3 or 4 seconds' worth of data. ElarmS also predicted the distribution of ground shaking across the region with errors less than one unit on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, Allen said.
Even with the algorithm's 15-second processing delay, ElarmS predicted the ground shaking intensity a few seconds before the peak ground shaking occurred in San Francisco. Work by the CISN early warning group has shown that this delay could be reduced to less than 5 seconds, Allen said, meaning that in a repeat earthquake, Oakland and San Francisco could have about a 10-second warning.
In a repeat of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, on the other hand, warning systems like those being tested by the CISN could provide a 10- to 20-second warning to Oakland and San Francisco, where 84 percent of the casualties and much of the damage occurred. San Jose would have less warning time. Because the amount of warning depends on the distance of the quake's epicenter, earthquakes to the north of the Bay Area, such as those on the San Andreas or Hayward-Rodgers Creek faults, would provide San Jose with more warning than Oakland or San Francisco.
Allen noted that the success of a statewide warning system hinges on the density of early warning-capable seismic stations. Although there are many seismic stations in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, almost none of these have the necessary dataloggers to provide the fast data delivery that would be required. Similarly, lack of early warning-capable stations all along the state's fault systems lessens the ability to warn metropolitan regions about more distant earthquakes that still might cause substantial damage in metropolitan regions.
The CISN study will recommend technical requirements for such a system.
Japan's system, for example, uses around 900 seismic stations. California, by comparison, currently has approximately 260 stations that could be upgraded to an early warning capability.
Source: UC Berkeley
Explore further: Origins of human culture linked to rapid climate change | <urn:uuid:4ebf094c-4aa2-4053-ad77-bec3528cc41a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/news116608100.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93269 | 869 | 2.765625 | 3 |
|The "cathedra" of the Bishop of Rome: the seat of the Pope's treaching office|
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.
The Basilica of St. John Lateran is the cathedral of Rome. This is not St. Peter's, but it is the Pope's cathedral.
Also called the Church of Holy Saviour or the Church of St. John Baptist, it was the baptism church of ancient Rome. It was built in the time of Constantine and was consecrated by Pope Sylvester in 324.
This feast became a universal celebration in honour of the basilica called "the mother and mistress of all churches of Rome and the world" (omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput) as a sign of love for and union with the See of Peter.
The photos of Canadians at St. John Lateran were taken on October 22, during and following the Mass of Thanksgiving for the canonization of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.
* * * | <urn:uuid:acb375f2-3f82-4052-973d-d7809c7b0c27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archbishopterry.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-popes-cathedral-is-church-of-our.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965313 | 225 | 2.46875 | 2 |
World Forestry Congress
The World Forestry Congress
The next congress will take place in 2015 in South Africa.
Rome, 24 September 2012: The Director-General of FAO, José Graziano da Silva and Pieter Willem Mulder, South African Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Water, today signed a Cooperation Agreement allowing FAO and South Africa to begin preparations for the 14th World Forestry Congress to be held in September 2015 in Durban.
"By 2015 we expect that the Congress will present an opportunity for the global forestry community to raise awareness and analysis of key issues that will face the sector then. We will be pleased if the outcome will include new ways to address technical, scientific and policy actions within the forestry sector, ” Mulder said.
The first World Forestry Congress was held in Rome in 1926 and has generally taken place every six years since then. Gatherings serve as a forum for governments, universities, civil society and the private sector to exchange views and experiences and to formulate recommendations for implementation at national, regional and global levels. The Congress also provides an opportunity for the sector to produce an overview of the state of forests and forestry in order to discern trends, adapt policies and raise awareness of issues among decision-makers, the public and other parties concerned.
Its functions are advisory, not executive, and participants attend the Congress in their personal capacity. The implementation of recommendations is a matter solely for those to whom they are addressed in light of their own particular circumstances - governments, international organizations, scientific bodies and forest owners, among others. The outcomes are brought to the attention of the FAO Conference which may consider endorsing, through a resolution, any declaration emanating from the Congress.
These prestigious events produce high quality papers, are recognized for their insightful deliberations and are known for reaching broad consensus on authoritative, although not binding, policy and technical advice to governments and international organizations. The Congress:
- brings together knowledge and experience to give guidance on the formulation and implementation of forest policy;
- expresses views which may help research organizations to identify future areas of study and international organizations to plan future work;
- promotes the elaboration and world-wide acceptance of technical standards such as an international forestry terminology, a uniform classification of forestry literature, and consistent research methods.
|World Forestry Congress XIII||FAO, Argentina||18 October 2009 - 23 October 2009||Argentina||Buenos Aires||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress XII||FAO and Canada||21 September 2003 - 28 September 2003||Canada||Québec city||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress XI||FAO and Turkey||13 October 1997 - 22 October 1997||Turkey||Antalya||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress X||FAO and France||17 September 1991 - 26 September 1991||France||Paris||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress IX||FAO and Mexico||1 July 1985 - 12 July 1985||Mexico||Mexico City||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress VIII||FAO and Indonesia||16 October 1978 - 28 October 1978||Indonesia||Djakarta||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress VII||FAO and Argentina||October 1972||Argentina||Buenos Aires||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress VI||FAO and Spain||June 1966||Spain||Madrid||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress V||FAO and US Forest Service||1960||United States of America||Seattle||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress IV||FAO and India||11 December 1954||India||Dehradun||English, French, Spanish|
|World Forestry Congress III||Finland||10 July 1949 - 20 July 1949||Finland||Helsinki||English|
|World Forestry Congress II||Hungary||1936||Hungary||Budapest||English|
|World Forestry Congress I||Italy||1926||Italy||Rome||English|
The Congress and FAO
FAO Council selects the host country in accordance with established criteria. Under the guidance of the Council, it is fully involved in the preparation of the Congress, although the main responsibility for organization lies with the host government. In addition, FAO establishes an advisory committee of experts around the world to consult on the theme of the Congress, the structuring of the Technical Programme, and on the identification of invited speakers and authors. It also appoints an Associate Secretary-General to work with the Secretary-General from the host country to prepare for the Congress.
FAO further assigns technical secretaries to collaborate with those designated by the host country to deal with aspects related to the technical programme, including the review of invited and voluntary papers and the servicing of Congress sessions. The Organization also assists the host country to widely disseminate outcomes and facilitates any follow-up, including monitoring and reporting at the next Congress on the implementation of recommendations. | <urn:uuid:85738bae-520d-452a-8268-a2285c07d582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fao.org/forestry/wfc/en/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905635 | 1,029 | 2.328125 | 2 |
2 September, 2011
What is driving these misplaced perceptions is a lack of perspective�perspective which comes from a larger view they cannot see and which the animal protection movement has failed to provide. If they took a step back, if they allowed themselves to see what is happening nationally, if they kept an open mind and stayed informed about the successes of the No Kill movement, they would see something else entirely. They would see the "big picture"�which reveals that there is not an epidemic of uncaring in the population-at-large, but in fact, quite the opposite. That there is a way out of killing and that a No Kill nation is not only possible, it is happening in communities all over the United States and it is well within our reach on a national scale.
Roughly eight million dogs and cats enter shelters every year, a small fraction compared to the 165 million in people�s homes. Of those entering shelters, only four percent are seized because of cruelty and neglect. Some people surrender their animals because they are irresponsible, but others do so because they have nowhere else to turn�a person dies, they lose their job, their home is foreclosed. In theory, that is why shelters exist�to be a safety net for animals whose caretakers no longer can or want to care for them. And the majority of animals who enter these shelters can, and should, be saved.
Imagine if shelters provided good care, comfort, and plenty of affection to the animals during their stay at these way stations funded through tax and philanthropic dollars by a dog- and cat-loving culture. And imagine if all shelters embraced the No Kill philosophy and the programs and services which make it possible. We would be a No Kill nation today.
Already, there are many No Kill cities and counties. Several of these communities doubled adoptions and cut killing by over 75 percent�and it did not take them five years to do so. They did it virtually overnight. But what happened in these places is not happening in most communities. Not because it isn�t possible, but because it has not been a priority for shelter managers and bureaucrats. In these shelters, unmotivated and uncaring employees shirk their duties: they fail to feed the dogs and cats; make them sick by cutting corners on cleaning protocols; leave them in squalor; and show open hostility to volunteers who could help by socializing, grooming, and giving the animals the love and attention they deserve. These shelters refuse to make adoptions a priority, choosing to kill the animals out of expediency.
Tragically, many animals experience neglect or abuse for the first time after they enter shelters. The sick and fearful animals rescuers often see are the victims of the shelter�s abuse. They see new animals coming in and the old ones leaving in body bags. And they blame the public, although the shelters refuse to implement simple, common-sense alternatives to killing. What they don�t see, unless they live in a community whose shelter has embraced a culture of caring and lifesaving is a shelter filled with adopters, volunteers, well-cared-for animals, feral cats at sterilization clinics, puppies and kittens at offsite adoptions, clean cages, and kind, welcoming staff.
The contrast between a regressive, kill shelter and a fully functioning No Kill shelter could not be starker. But because they don�t see the latter and have been repeatedly told that the former is the "best we can do," they ignore plainly inhumane treatment and accept a system of sheltering that is nothing short of medieval. If they had a larger perspective�a progressively run, lifesaving shelter to compare to the one they are familiar with�they would see that the tragedy is actually the nation�s sheltering system, run by uncaring directors, civil-service and union protected shirkers, and politicians who have abdicated their fiduciary duty to ensure that these institutions mirror the public�s values, which are, in reality, incredibly humane.
The sad fact is that our perceptions do not always reflect the truth because we can misconstrue what we experience. For instance, I recently met a veterinarian who was convinced that feral cats are suffering horribly. I explained that after twenty years of feral cat advocacy and work in the animal sheltering field, I found little evidence to support such an assertion and that, in fact, several studies reveal that they are by and large happy and healthy and enjoy a good quality of life. I asked if her perception might be obscured: Since she does not participate in feral cat spay/neuter clinics, she sees only sick or injured feral cats and never encounters the vast majority, who are thriving. "I never thought of that," she said, leaving me with the hope that I had planted a seed that would blossom into a new, more positive, and more accurate perspective.
Many in the humane movement suffer from a similarly limited perspective because of the work they do and where and how they spend their time. The problem appears larger and more pervasive than it is. Visiting poorly performing shelters on a regular basis, they lose sight of a broader, more accurate perspective of how most people really feel about animals.
They fail to realize that there are more people who care than do not care and that most people are decent to animals, concerned about their welfare, and can be trusted with their guardianship. They ignore that people spend $48 billion every year on their animals, a number that grows even as most other economic sectors are plummeting. They ignore that people miss work when their pets get sick. They ignore that people cut back their own needs during difficult economic times because they can�t bear to cut back on the needs of their animal companions. And they don�t recognize that No Kill success throughout the country is a result of people�people who care deeply.
People who volunteer at the shelter, who foster needy animals, who donate money even in times of economic uncertainty, who adopt from the shelter because their shelter welcomes them�by being clean, encouraging volunteerism, asking them to foster, treating them politely, and making it easy for them to adopt. Communities where shelters have boldly and sincerely proclaimed their desire to become No Kill have found an eager public ready to help make it a reality.
In fact, evidence of caring is often all around those who believe that others don�t care enough about animals, but they can�t recognize it as such or dismiss it as the "exception." Though they constantly encounter "exceptions," they don�t assimilate what it means. They fail to reach the proper conclusions even when the people who adopt the animals they rescue send letters and photographs, and thank them repeatedly for enriching their lives. They fail to recognize this when they see people at the dog park, or crossing their paths on their morning dog walks around the neighborhood. They even fail to recognize them in the stories, the care, and the embraces at their own veterinarian�s office�the waiting rooms never devoid of people, the faces of scared people wondering what ails their animal companions, and the tears as they emerge from the exam rooms after saying good-bye for the last time.
They don�t see that books about animals that have touched people�s lives are not only written in ever-increasing numbers but are best sellers because people do care, and the stories touch them profoundly. They don�t see that the success of movies about animals is also a reflection of the love people have for them.
They fail to see how people were terrified as news spread of the pet food recall in 2007, when tainted pet food from China made their companion animals sick. And while animals were killed by tainted food, they were not the only ones to get hurt. Their caretakers suffered too: thousands of caring, helpless people witnessed the anguish of their pets because their government and a government overseas betrayed them for industry profits.
If they would only open their eyes, these animal rescuers would see that shelters that have fully embraced the public and implemented the necessary lifesaving programs, have proved that there is enough of this love and compassion in every community to achieve No Kill despite the irresponsibility of the few.
If those who rescue animals but remain opposed to No Kill took genuine stock of what was around them, they would see that while any case of an individual animal suffering abuse or neglect at the hands of a human is unacceptable and tragic, the number of these incidents is small compared to the number of dogs and cats loved, pampered, and cared for by the American public. To therefore use the plight of a tragic few to legitimize and endorse the systematic killing of millions by our nation�s corrupt and broken animal shelter system is not merely misguided; it is egregious. And it institutionalizes abuse and neglect by failing to challenge the actual causes of the horrible situation they encounter in regressive shelters. Ultimately, by supporting these shelters, albeit na�vely, they grant absolution to those truly responsible for animal suffering and killing, and help perpetuate these tragic outcomes. In short, they make things worse by failing to demand better, and by failing to support those who are.
Ironically, though they see themselves as loving and caring, their hearts are closed. Blinded by dogma, they filter everything they see and everything they experience through the belief that animals are victims of uncaring and cruel people�and their belief that it is a problem of such scope and magnitude that the only way out is killing. As a result, they condone a real problem�mass killing�as a "solution" to a phantom one.
What makes this point of view especially disturbing is the illogical leap it causes people to make from a false assumption (animals are suffering in overwhelming numbers) to a violent conclusion: mass killing is acceptable, indeed desirable. Because even if the first assumption were true (it is not), the conclusion simply does not follow. There are many, many possibilities in between to combat it�education, adoption, redemption, sanctuary, rescue, rehabilitation�that are ignored simply because the notion that killing is the "logical" outcome has dominated the sheltering dialogue for so long and so completely. It is regarded as acceptable and inevitable even though it is the most unnecessary, extreme, and inhumane of all responses.
Even if a case could be made that the public does not care, embracing death for these animals remains a non-sequitur. While these rescuers work to stop animals from suffering, they inadvertently champion the same attitude towards them that allows for such abuse�indeed, that perpetuates it: the idea that animals do not matter, that their lives are of little value and are easily expendable. Their assumption that animals must be killed in shelters undermines the entire principle which should be motivating their rescue efforts. Animal cruelty is horrible not only because of the pain and suffering of animals but because it often kills them. And killing animals is the ultimate betrayal. To "rescue" them from abuse and potential killing only to advocate for killing makes no sense whatsoever. Even if they are not convinced of the viability of No Kill alternatives, to be responsible advocates, they are nonetheless obligated to try, especially since it works in many communities.
In the end, their argument comes down to the belief that there are fates worse than death. And, sadly, too many people in rescue work accept this notion, even though it is patently false, and incorrectly assumes only three choices are available: killing at the pound, killing at the hands of abusers, or being killed on the streets. Working hard to end the scourge of abuse and neglect�and to punish the abusers�is not mutually exclusive with saving the lives of the innocent victims. In fact, the moral imperative to do one goes hand in hand with the other.
Yet in rescue work, some argue that death for the animals is a way out of suffering, forgetting that the right to live is inviolate. These people ignore that what they seek for animals they would never seek for themselves or other people. They ignore that no matter what the context and all through history�in Cambodia, Germany, under the Taliban, in Serbia-Croatia, in Rwanda, as in Darfur�despite the savagery, people cling to life, they cling to hope, and none of the survivors (and none of their rescuers) would suggest they should have been "humanely euthanized" by their liberators. To suggest such would perpetuate the violence and abuse.
While cruelty and suffering are abhorrent, while cruelty and suffering are painful, while cruelty and suffering should be condemned and rooted out, there is nothing worse than death, because death is final. An animal subjected to pain and suffering can be rescued. An animal subjected to savage cruelty can even become a therapy dog, bringing comfort to cancer patients, as the dog fighting case against football player Michael Vick shows. There is still hope, but death is hope�s total antithesis. It is the eclipse of hope because they never wake up, ever. It is the worst of the worst�a fact each and every one of us would recognize if we were the ones being threatened with death. And it is an arrogant abuse of our power over defenseless animals to think it is our right to make such a determination for them.
I am not na�ve. I understand that the method of killing is important, and if we lived in a two dimensional world of shadows�if we lived in Plato�s cave�where the choice truly was nothing more than to be killed inhumanely or to be killed in a less brutal way, we would pick the latter. Although I have called repeatedly for the end of shelter killing, I have also supported efforts to abolish cruel methods of doing so�which too many shelters have refused to do. But that is not the choice presented. The choice is not, as rescuers contend, a choice between continued suffering and death at the pound. This is not what the animals face. Once they are rescued from abuse, more suffering should no longer be an option.
No one argues that shelters should leave animals to their abusers or that we adopt animals out to them. Everyone agrees that abuse is terrible, something no animal should endure. Of course, they must be rescued from these horrible fates. But once rescued and taken into protective custody, the question becomes: Do we give them a second chance and find them homes? Or, do we allow them to become victims yet again by killing them? Why the leap to arguing that because they experienced abuse in the past, they should be killed now? Or that all the other animals entering shelters should be killed? It is patently illogical.
In essence, champions of the "fates worse than death" argument advocate a "solution" of the mass killing of millions of animals as a response to the abuse or neglect suffered by some animals, which does absolutely nothing to erase the abuse that has already been done. How is killing some animals a prescriptive against future abuse, when we cannot know nor predict when or where it is about to occur, unless we exterminate all animals, everywhere, to guard against the possibility of it ever occurring again? Taken to its logical conclusion, it would mean killing every dog and cat in every shelter. This is not only an obvious obscenity; it is to propose a slaughter with no end.
Yet despite these disturbing and misguided views, I do not believe that such people are necessarily beyond rehabilitation. Certainly, I do not legitimize their point of view, nor do I believe that future generations will look back kindly on their support of killing, even in light of their false perceptions. Ultimately, it does not matter to the dog or cat being injected with poison by a shelter worker whether the motivation is lack of caring, laziness, cowardice, politics, or a real belief in the need to do so. The consequences are the same�death�and equally tragic irrespective of who is doing the killing and why it is being done. Yet even though they are absolutely wrong, we should not give up trying to rehabilitate them, because, in the end, they can become allies.
What they need is perspective�a larger view they cannot see from the trenches about the incredible success all around them: That the four million killed in shelters do not tell the full story. That the story is also about the 165 million dogs and cats in homes. That the kitten abandoned in a dumpster is overshadowed�though no less tragic for it�by the great lengths people go to when their animals are sick or by the compassion of those who inevitably come forward to give that kitten a second chance. That while the shelter in their community is killing at an astonishing pace, shelters in other communities have stopped when they embraced, rather than condemned, the larger public, and committed themselves to ending the killing by asking the public for help.
It is incumbent on No Kill advocates to help them see the bigger, more accurate, and more optimistic picture. Because unlike the lazy shelter manager or the uncaring shirker or the self-serving politician, these people care about animals and can change in earnest. They can become believers. And when they do, they become a further force for change. We must continue to expose the fallacy of their beliefs�that the choice is between an expedient shelter death or slow suffering on the streets or in the hands of abusers; that in order to be No Kill, shelters must warehouse animals because there are too many for the too few available homes; and that, even if those were the choices, it is acceptable for activists who claim to speak on behalf of animals to accept or champion for those animals that which neither they, nor the animals if they could speak, would accept: death.
And so we come back to the primary principle of the humane movement: Animal shelters must be the safety net, not an extension of the neglect and abuse animals face elsewhere. And like other service agencies that deal with human irresponsibility, shelters should not use that as an excuse to negate their own responsibility to put in place necessary programs and services to respond humanely, and therefore, appropriately.
This is the perspective they need. And with enough of it, they�ll eventually see. Eventually, they, too, will be liberated from pessimism and share in the optimism, the hope, and the tremendous potential this truth offers our animal friends. They�ll have their epiphany when they finally see through the fog under which they have lived: the condemnation of the public that has been ringing out so deafeningly for decades that is has drowned out the truth and legitimized the killing. It may take some time�time and perspective�but it is our solemn duty as No Kill advocates to give it to them until they do, even while we vociferously oppose the deadly policies they currently champion.
purchase, Irreconcilable Differences, | <urn:uuid:4c936613-c028-47d4-92a7-ad6fd8fd6670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://animalliberationfront.com/Practical/Pets/Fallacy-FatesWorseThanDeath.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96979 | 3,863 | 2.21875 | 2 |
What's your favorite healthy snack?
How about frozen grapes. They are like candy. Try them out. If you have a sweet tooth, they are a great way to satisfy the bad sugar cravings.
I live in the Cowichan Valley and have access to an organic blueberry farm. In season I buy pounds and pounds! of blueberries, freeze them and then have them not only for making yummy things but just to snack on frozen. Amazing little frozen bursts of health.
It's an unusual snack for some people and it is high in fat. It's a concentrated food. An average avocado has about 300 calories and 30 grams of fat, 12 grams of carbohydrates and 4-5 grams protein. But the creamy, soft, silky flesh is very satisfying with a little bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper. It's actually an anti-stress fruit because of it's high B-complex profile except B12. Plus 14 minerals including potassium, magnesium, iron and copper. But don't eat the whole fruit, it can add excess fat and weight.
I love all kinds of fruit. Sometimes I cut up strawberries, mangoes, bananas, and apples and pour fresh orange juice over top for a delicious fruit salad. My husband makes yummy smoothies too with frozen bananas, strawberries, vanilla yogurt, and a splash of orange juice.
Good one Lila, recently I had peaches that were wrapped in prosciutto with a basil leaf inside. The peaches were then grilled and then finished with a balsamic reduction. Can you fantastic...oh ya!
I have to say, the balsamic reduction really added a nice touch...here is a recipe for anyone that wants it.
There is nothing better than during fig season to stuff some beautiful ripe figs with goat cheese and then wrap them in proscuitto, then warm slightly under the broiler or on the grill till proscuitto is slightly crisp on the edges. Fantastic!!!! Combine with a nice glass of Fume' Blanc and absolute heaven!
Did you know that eating fresh cherries can cure gout? My hubby loves meat, cheese and all the greasy stuff and refuse to eat anything green, so he gets gout every few years. Fresh cherries is a tasty cure for some people. Alternatively, you can brew celery seed as tea, steep it in a hot flask & drink it all day for at least 3 days or until the gout goes away.
These are a quick and tasty snack, just take a few leaves of belgian endive, sprinkle with a few pieces of nice blue cheese or goat cheese if you prefer, then drizzle with a tiny bit of raw golden unfiltered honey. Honey that is raw and unfiltered is high in antioxidants, amino acids and essential minerals.
Great idea Patricia..sounds quick and easy. Did you know that Rouxbe has a similar recipe...I guess great minds think alike :-)
Here is the link to the recipe I am referring to for anyone that wants it - http://zotyapa.rouxbe.com/recipes/72-belgian-endive-salad/text
I don't really snack ever. However, I do enjoy making appitizers or simple accompaniments to a meal that can be considered or used as snacks. I enjoy fruit and pastries as snack-like foods. Brushcetta is one of my favorite little snack-like appitizer foods. I make it fresh and authentic - it is actually a very healthy snack. I also like to serve fresh steamed artichokes with a simple, light, and healthy dipping sauce (many times consisting of olive oil, garlic, and herbs). I also enjoy many homemade dips and/or salsas such as hummus, guacamole, mexican tomato salsa, Thai peanut sauce, tapenade, pico de gallo, roasted red pepper and garlic spread, and one of my favorites - baba ganoush (a middle eastern grill-roasted eggplant dip). I commonly serve these with slices of fresh vegetables, homemade pita or flat bread, and/or meat kabobs. I also make many extemely exotic small snack-like dishes such as Japanese maki (sushi), grilled Greek halloumi (a special cheese that is grilled and served with lemon and pita), or Thai mieng come (a Thai appitizer consisting of greens stuffed with shrimp, lime, spices, and a Thai sauce). I also enjoy baking fresh bread or other pastries such as muffins and biscuits. Drinks are also popular in my kitchen such as special mixtures of fruit juices, sparkling water, and sometimes milk or cream. Tea is the most popular drink in my household. My family and I drink a various amount of teas in the morning, during meals, for dessert, or just to warm up. We usually enjoy it with honey and sometimes milk. We also drink a lot of iced tea flavored with lemon or lime. Salads, soups, and stews are also daily enjoyed. Although I personally don't snack throughout the day, I definitely enjoy a wide variety of very healthy and flavorful (mostly ranging from extremely exotic) snack-like dishes.
I know it requires no cooking, but not everything has to. A quality food can be good enough on its own. Sometimes, when I am pressed for time, I'll have a couple glasses of milk while working on something instead of a meal.
My 3 year old son will take a handful of whatever frozen vegetables I have open in the freezer. He also will chow down on baby carrots (I can't cut up big ones, he won't eat those, just the machine made and bagged "baby" ones. and I always keep a bowl of fresh fruit on the floor in the kitchen (yes, the floor - he can reach it that way without taking up valuable counter space - I have a teeny kitchen).
(please note, that if there are fruit snacks around, he will ALWAYS choose those first, and all candy has to be out of arms reach! lol) | <urn:uuid:ba7f08fb-0e2a-4cc3-a56a-fc690fd57077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rouxbe.com/community/forums/10/topics/247?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96166 | 1,267 | 1.875 | 2 |
KYLE, CLAIBORNE (1800–1867). Claiborne Kyle, early Texas politician and settler of Mountain City, Hays County, was born on August 8, 1800, in Hawkins County, Tennessee, the son of Maj. John William and Rebecca (Young) Kyle. His parents had been early settlers in Tennessee and were large landholders there. Kyle married Lucy Bugg in 1829 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, and the couple had nine children. After leaving Tennessee, the Kyles lived in Alabama and Mississippi, where their children were born. Kyle served as state senator in Marshall County, Mississippi, from 1837 to 1841. After a friend for whom he had posted bond absconded, Kyle and his family were placed in great financial difficulty, which precipitated their move to Texas about 1844. The family spent a year in Gonzales, then lived in Austin from 1846 to 1850, when they moved permanently to Hays County. In Texas, Kyle was a member of the Travis County District Court grand jury in 1849. In November 1850 he served on the first grand jury of Hays County and as county treasurer. He also served in the fifth Texas Senate (1853–54) and in the Texas House of Representatives during the Civil War. Five of Kyle's sons fought in the Civil War. One son, Fergus Kyle, founded the town of Kyle, served as captain of Terry's Texas Rangers (the Eighth Texas Cavalryqv) during the Civil War, and replaced his father in the Texas House, where he introduced a bill to save the Alamo and a bill to establish Southwest Texas Normal School (later Southwest Texas State University) at San Marcos. A daughter, Lucy Emma, married Maj. Edward Burleson, Jr., and their son, Albert Sidney Burleson, became postmaster general under the Woodrow Wilson administration. In Hays County Kyle's family built an unusual four-room log house near Kyle, Texas, which has been restored and is open to the public on special occasions. In 1863 Lucy died, and Claiborne died in 1867. Both are buried on land they donated to establish the Kyle Cemetery.
Annie Doom Pickrell, Pioneer Women in Texas (Austin: Steck, 1929). Ann Miller Strom, The Prairie City: A History of Kyle, Texas, 1880–1980 (Burnet, Texas: Nortex, 1981).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Barbara Donalson Althaus, "KYLE, CLAIBORNE," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fky02), accessed May 19, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:7499e778-31ad-4a34-a86b-d662ae795500> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fky02 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971048 | 574 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Engineers have constructed the 300ft-long pedestrian bridge at 9,977ft above sea level on Mount Titlis in central Switzerland.
It has been built to mark the centenary of a cableway that connects two nearby towns, Engelberg and Gerschnialp.
The cableway began operating in January 1913.
Entrance to the 3ft-wide bridge, which cost 1.3 million Swiss francs (£900,000) to build and will offer views of a 1,600ft deep abyss, will be free. It is due to open on Dec 7.
"Europe's highest suspension bridge will allow us to bring guests a step closer to the Alps and let them experience the height, vastness and majesty of the mountains from the most impressive of platforms," the local tourism authority said on its website.
Heavy snowfall may force the closure of the bridge for a few days at a time, engineers said.
"Undertaking construction work at 3,041 metres above sea level is extremely challenging and the ability to keep to a schedule is determined largely by the weather," the Titlis tourism association said.
The steel and concrete needed to construct the bridge was transported to the top of the mountain by cable car and helicopter. | <urn:uuid:68f4a96f-661f-4acf-b28d-998ab571933d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/9720879/Europes-highest-suspension-bridge-to-open.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957302 | 253 | 2.375 | 2 |
Apple has tightened up security in its Safari Web browser following recent patches to Adobe's Flash technology.
As part of an update that went out yesterday, OS X will now block older and thus vulnerable versions of Flash, forcing users to update to the latest version if they wish to view Flash-based content. In order to block older versions of the software, Apple is using its Xprotect malware scanner, which is built into Mac OS X and can spot and quarantine known malware.
The move comes roughly a month after Apple began blocking older versions of Oracle-owned Java on OS X over security concerns. That issue proved to be a bit more complex, with Apple last week saying that it too was targeted as part of an organized hacking attempt that capitalized on Java vulnerabilities, but did not target the company's customers.
(via The Loop) | <urn:uuid:2548f5e6-eb28-4f51-bd00-26be465a354b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57572176-37/apple-now-blocks-older-versions-of-adobes-flash-player-in-safari/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954895 | 169 | 1.710938 | 2 |
However, he said that Everett's case could represent one more step in understanding how inducing hypothermia may help those with spinal cord injuries.
"A lot of the therapies that we have been trying for the last 10 years have failed clinical trials," Dietrich said. "The future of therapies is that we can use mild hypothermia in combination with some of these drugs [to] actually produce a beneficial effect."
And together with the other treatments, the therapy may have gone a long way in preserving Everett's function.
"It is likely that this specific patient benefited from early management, including the moderate hypothermia, early decompression of the spinal cord through the surgery and stabilization of the damaged spinal segments, and demonstrated with the movement of his arms and legs that he had an incomplete spinal cord injury," Haak said.
"This type of injury has a good potential for neurological improvement over time, and is great news for the patient, his family and friends, and the medical team that is caring for him." | <urn:uuid:bdd47d64-c598-4e3b-956f-b9e945b188b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3592871&page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974345 | 207 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Tip 1: Buy pressure-treated lumber with the right amount of treatment for the job
Pressure-treated lumber is the logical choice for the structural part of your deck—the posts, joists, beams and other members you normally don't see. Pressure-treated lumber can support more weight and span longer distances than cedar, redwood or other woods commonly used for building decks. It's also much less expensive.
Pressure-treated lumber is rated according to the pounds of preservative retained per cubic foot of wood; the higher the number, the better the protection against fungi and insect attack. Select boards with the preservative concentration suitable for their use.
The three common ratings:
- Above-ground use (.25, sometimes .15). Typically used for decking, fence and railing material.
- Ground-contact use (.40). Typically used for posts, beams, joists and, again, decking.
- Below-grade (.60). Typically used for support posts that are partially buried below grade and for permanent wood foundations and planters.
Your boards will be tagged with the concentration and treating solution used. Use .40 material if you can't find .25. CCA (chromated copper arsenate) is being phased out because of health concerns. ACQ (Alkaline Copper Quat) and other preservatives are replacing it.
Tip 2: Avoid treated lumber that has a lot of heartwood
Since heartwood—wood from the center of the tree—is denser, it accepts pressure treatment less readily than sapwood—wood cut from the outer edges. This isn't as great an issue with dimensional lumber like 2x10s and deck boards; these boards are thin enough that the preservatives are usually driven throughout. But with 4x4 and 6x6 posts, the preservatives may not penetrate the dense heartwood. However, it can be difficult to find posts not cut from heartwood.
Tip 3: When buying cedar or redwood decking, select boards cut from heartwood
Heartwood contains the natural preservative oils that give these woods their resistance to decay and insect attack. Heartwood in these species is the darker core of the tree. Sapwood —lighter in color and cut from the outer edges of the tree—lacks these natural oils. If you're purchasing redwood, you may find two grades. Look for lumber labeled “heartwood common,” which has more heartwood than “construction common.”
Install deck boards “good side up.” Some swear deck boards should only be installed “bark side up, ” the theory being, if a board cups, boards laid “bark side up” will warp into a hump that water will run off rather than a dip where water can settle. But tests have shown there are many reasons boards cup and they don't always cup according to “bark side. ”
Tip 4: Buy wood that's dry
If you're buying treated wood, buy boards that have had time to dry after they've been treated. Boards still saturated with the water used to carry the wood preservative into the wood cells can be literally twice as heavy as dry wood. The extra weight makes wet boards harder to work and to cut, and they shrink when they dry. This means joists can “rise up” out of their hangers, making them bouncier and less well supported. Fasteners can loosen and your deck can wind up with uneven and unsightly wide gaps between the boards. If you're unsure whether a board is too wet, compare its weight with that of an untreated board the same size; if it's twice as heavy and feels damp, it may need time to dry. You can “sticker” the wood and let it dry for a few weeks (see photo). For deck boards, look for wood that's labeled KDAT (kiln dried after treatment).
Tip 5: Use posts with some heft, especially if your deck is more than 2 ft. off the ground
Tall decks look spindly and awkward perched on 4x4 posts. Use 6x6 posts instead; they look and are more solid and substantial. They'll also last longer and support extra weight if you add a structure to your deck somewhere down the road. And avoid posts that already have a twist or bow; chances are the defect will only get worse.
Tip 6: Every type of deck board has its pros and cons
There are three main categories of deck boards, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
The rich, natural color of redwood and cedar looks fantastic when the deck is new. These woods are also naturally stable and tend to lie flat with minimal checking or cracking. But natural woods will turn gray within the first year or two unless you regularly maintain them with a sealer or finish. They're also softer and more likely to get scratched and gouged when you drag furniture across them or shovel them in winter. This decking is more expensive.
This material is strong, long lasting and the least expensive of your options. But often boards that aren't kiln dried after treatment will shrink appreciably after they're installed, creating wider spaces between the boards. And treated lumber has a greater tendency to crack once in place; apply a water repellent every year or two to stabilize it. Treated lumber is the least expensive.
Composite deck boards:
Composite boards are made from wood and plastic (often recycled materials) and resist rot and insect attack. Since there are no defects, there is very little waste, and many now come in a variety of colors. They have their drawbacks, however. Not all brands are code compliant in all communities. Some people object to their homogenous look and “plasticky” feel. And like any other outdoor material, they can become dirty and stained; expect to do an occasional pressure washing. And the colors do tend to fade eventually. Composites are more expensive.
Tip 7: Consider all three dimensions when selecting your deck boards
Width: Six-inch wide boards are ideal in most cases. Four inch wide material takes longer to install, creates more gaps and requires a lot more fasteners—but you can use it. Eight inch wide boards, because of their greater width, have more of a tendency to crack and cup; avoid using them.
Thickness: Radius-edge, 5/4 material (which can measure anywhere from 1 to 1-1/4 in. thick) has become extremely common. In most cases, it requires a joist spacing of 16 in. for proper support. If your joists are spaced at 24 in. or you're running your deck boards at a diagonal, you may need to use 2-by (1-1/2 in. thick) boards. Avoid boards that are only 3/4 in. thick. They have a wimpy feel underfoot even with closer joist spacing.
Length: When possible, buy decking that can run the full length of your deck. All lumberyards and home centers carry 16-ft. deck boards, but many also stock or can order 20- and 24-ft. boards, though they may cost more. Full-length material allows you to avoid butting boards end to end, which can invite trouble; the ends of boards are more absorbent, slower to dry out and more susceptible to rotting, swelling and splintering. Fasteners driven close to the ends also tend to split the wood, making the ends even more vulnerable.
Tip 8: A little curve, twist or crown to your joists is OK (but “scalped edges” and uneven depths are a pain)
It's actually preferable to use joists with a slight crown, an upward bow of 1/4 to 1/2 in. (Figure A). Joists will settle and sag slightly as they support weight and movement. A perfectly flat joist will wind up with a dip. Check the crown by sighting along the edge of the board. Then check that crowned edge for scalped edges, called “wane” (see photo).Wane on the bottom of a joist is OK, but wane on the top means there's less wood for driving fasteners into—and you can't butt two deck boards on an uneven joist.
The depths of joists can vary by as much as 3/8 in.; the 12-ft. long 2x10s at your lumberyard may measure 9-1/8 in. in depth, while the 16-footers measure 9-1/2 in. Deck boards secured to uneven joists will flex more and the fasteners will creak and pop. Use joists that vary less than 1/8 in.
Tip 9: Perfect deck lumber doesn't need to be perfect
You can be too picky. It's OK if 5 percent of your boards are “ dogs”. Lumber with moderate defects can be used.
Deck boards: If a deck board isn't perfectly straight, you can work the bow out of it as you nail it to the joists. And if there's a foot or two of bad material, you can cut out the defect, then use the resulting two shorter pieces for a smaller area of the deck, stair treads or landings.
Framing: Set aside your straightest joists and use them for the perimeter of your deck. If you have joists that are curved or twisted, straighten them with blocking or as you install the decking (Figure A). Extremely bowed or knot-filled boards can, again, be cut up and used as blocking or as joists for smaller landings and deck sections.
Tip: As you haul your material from the driveway to the back yard, stack it into piles of “pretty” and “ugly”, then use them accordingly.
Uses for less-than-perfect lumber
Figure A: Uses for Less-than-Perfect Lumber
Use lower quality lumber where it's not visible or for shorter spans. Sometimes you can straighten warped boards.
Note: Figure A can be downloaded and printed from Additional Information below.
Back to Top
Tip 10: Buy straight, solid 2x12s for your stair jacks
Be fussy here. Look for material that's straight, with no splits or large knots. You'll cut deep triangles into each 2x12 to accommodate the treads; avoid splits along the top edge and knots along the lower edge, which can weaken the already thinned body of the jack. | <urn:uuid:8c16996f-9d78-4507-81a3-9028eec9a3ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.familyhandyman.com/DIY-Projects/Outdoor-Projects/Decks/Deck-Materials/how-to-buy-deck-lumber | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957257 | 2,197 | 2.03125 | 2 |
For the past few years, the Iowa State University Library has subscribed to the Archive-It service for the long-term preservation of university web content. Archive-It is a web site preservation program that allows institutions to select and permanently capture html-based web pages. Created by Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive, the goal of Archive-It is to save born-digital information on web sites and to serve as a web archiving tool.
In 2008, Archive-It introduced a special program designed for K-12 students to preserve digital information. The goal of the K-12 Web Archiving Program was to educate students about not only what web sites should be saved for future research, but how would you choose what to preserve? Currently in its second year, 15 schools in 13 states participate in this competitive program which allows students to learn how to make these decisions and “help them to develop an awareness of how the Web content they choose will become primary sources for future historians studying our lives,” according to the program’s web site.
Special Collections and University Archives Head Tanya Zanish-Belcher saw the call, and forwarded the request on to Sarah Passonneau, Assistant to the ISU Library Dean and recommended that Ames Middle and High Schools consider applying. Sarah worked with Dr. Lance Wilhelm (Technology Director at the Ames Community School District), to complete the application, and Ames was one of nine community schools selected for the project.
As Jayne Staniforth, an Extended Learning Program teacher at Ames Middle School, said “My students view internet documents differently now. They are more aware of the continually changing nature of the Internet and the impact that has on history. They felt empowered to speak for their generation about what is important to them, what they value and how they communicate.” She also noted the process showed that “their opinion mattered to a larger audience not just their peers.” Middle school student Laura Graveline felt “she realizes how important the internet is to our generation.” Fellow student Moriah Cooper exclaimed, “It feels like what you were doing actually counted for something, because future generations will be able to see what was important to us. It’s a record.”
Ames High School collections: http://www.archive-it.org/k12/8AmesHS.html
Ames Middle School collections: http://www.archive-it.org/k12/9AmesMS.html
For more information about Archive-It, see the vendor’s FAQ and additional information at http://www.archive-it.org/. To see ISU’s preserved web sites, please go to: http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/collections/webarch.html. | <urn:uuid:64d85aca-74d5-4afe-84a2-49e036ad7364> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://isuspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/making-connections-to-preserve-the-digital-past/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=a4d6f3de1a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949 | 580 | 2.640625 | 3 |
BOURG, ABRAHAM, deputy representing Upper Cobequid, Nova Scotia, 1720–26; b. at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.) 1662, son of Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry; married in 1683 Marie Brun, daughter of Vincent and Marie Breaux; date of death unknown.
Abraham Bourg was one of the deputies chosen by the Nova Scotia Council to represent the Acadian districts in 1720, under the governorship of Richard Philipps*. He was apparently released from his duties in 1726 at his own request, because of lameness and infirmity. On 16 Sept. 1727 he, Francis Richards, and the deputies Charles Landry and Guillaume Bourgeois refused to take the oath of allegiance to George II. Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence Armstrong maintained, moreover, that they had assembled the inhabitants a day earlier than they had been ordered. Armstrong charged that “instead of persuading them to their duty by solid arguments of which they were not incapable they [the deputies] frightened them . . . by representing the oath so strong and binding that neither they nor their children should ever shake off the yoke.”
For their alleged opposition they were committed to prison. It was ordered that Bourg, however, “in consideration of his great age,” should be allowed to leave the province as soon as possible, but without his goods. As the others were released after a short time, it appears unlikely that Abraham Bourg actually left. An oath of 1730 bears a signature which may be his. It is not known when Bourg died, but it may have been after 13 April 1736, when Marie Brun’s burial record identifies her as the wife (not widow) of Abraham Bourg.
Archives of the Bishop’s House, Yarmouth, N.S., Registre de baptêmes, mariages, et sépultures pour la paroisse Saint-Jean-Baptiste à Annapolis Royal, 1727–1755 (copy in Archives de l’université de Moncton). AN, Section Outre-Mer, G1, 466 (Recensements de l’Acadie, 1671, 1686, 1693, 1698, 1701, 1703 [Port-Royal], 1714 [Cobequid]; copies in Archives de l’université de Moncton). PANS, MS docs., XVII, Letter of Lawrence Armstrong, 17 Nov. 1727 (printed in PRO, CSP, Col., 1726–27); XXII, 150, 153, 160, 216ff. (printed in N.S. Archives, III). PANS, Oath of loyalty to George II, 1730 (no.7 in box of original oaths). | <urn:uuid:a3210cf2-7594-4fc9-aabe-84580ea401ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=667 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936817 | 595 | 2.21875 | 2 |
VIDEO: More than 100 People Plunge into Lake to Start 2012
As part of the annual Polar Bear Dip, a crowd ran into Lake Michigan together on New Year's Day; this year many also remembered the event's creator, who died in October.
Twenty-five years after the Port Washington Polar Bear Club was founded by John Brinovec, more than 130 people participated in the dip dedicated to his memory.
Brinovec died in October, after doing the plunge until he was 82. Polar Bear Club President Jon Crain and Vice President Tony Matera wore Brinovec's old club t-shirt and sweatshirt to keep warm before and after their dunks.
Members of the Port Washington Dive Team kept watch as the crowd ran in and out of shallow area between the shore and dock off of New Port Shores.
With a lighter turnout than some past years, people speculated the Packer game and snowy weather kept some indoors doing the 2 p.m. dive. | <urn:uuid:fc19ae96-6342-4e56-b917-7d725174d279> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://portwashington-wi.patch.com/articles/video-residents-polar-bear-plunge-into-the-lake-to-start-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977084 | 205 | 1.585938 | 2 |
From HandicappedPets.com Reference Pages
If you often have pet laundry you can't wash right this minute, a diaper pail for a handicapped pet
may be your answer.
A diaper pail is a big help if you have an incontinent pet and use towels, washcloths, or cloth diapers
. Diaper pails were common in homes with babies before disposable diapers became popular. Today you may not be able to find one in a store, but you can make your own.
How to make a pet diaper pail
Get a large sturdy pail with a lid
A 5-gallon painter's bucket with a carry handle works well. They are sold in the paint department at the building supply store. You can use the basic snap-on lid or pay a little extra for a heavy duty lid.
Fill it 2/3 full of water
This leaves room for the laundry and makes it easy to lift. Water weighs 8 lbs. per gallon, so if you fill a 5-gallon bucket 2/3 full it will weigh about 26 lbs.
Pour in 1/2 cup of borax
Borax is sold in the laundry aisle of the grocery store. (Do not confuse it with boric acid, which is used for pest control and is harmful to pets.) Borax has been used for diaper pails and laundry for generations. If you want to add chlorine bleach to the pail, use as little as possible because it is hard on your fabrics and you risk ruining your clothing if you splash yourself.
Put it in a convenient place
Often the most convenient place for a diaper pail is in the bathroom.
How to use a diaper pail
Use your diaper pail to hold soiled pet laundry until you are ready to wash it. This way the laundry will not smell, or grow germs, or set stains, or tempt your other pets to get into it. For example, you may put a towel in your pet's crate and change it every day. If the used towel is clean enough, it can go into the regular laundry pile. But if it has food on it (or urine or solid waste or medication or blood spotting) it will go into the diaper pail.
Scrape off any excess solids first. If your pet has diarrhea, do what our grandmothers did. Carry the soiled item into the bathroom, hold it by the corner, dip it in the clean toilet water and swish it around until the worst of it is gone. Flush and repeat as needed, then put it into the diaper pail. Rinse blood spots thoroughly in the sink before putting them in the diaper pail.
When you have enough in your pail to justify running a load of laundry, put on your rubber gloves, tip the pail into the toilet without dumping the laundry (the borax water will still be fresh even after several days), squeeze as much water out of your laundry items as you can, and go put them in the washing machine.
Rinse out your pail, fill it with more water and borax, and it is ready to use again.
Advantages of a diaper pail
A diaper pail saves time
If you use a diaper pail, you do not have to do laundry as often. You can do it when it is convenient. Also, you do not have to spend as much time treating stains because the diaper pail presoaks your wash.
A diaper pail saves money
A basic painter's bucket and lid is under $5.00 (USD). If you buy a better quality lid, it is a little more. Twenty Mule Team Borax is $3.00 a box at the grocery store in the laundry aisle. You use only 1/2 cup each time you refill the diaper pail so it lasts a long time. You can save money on disposable products such as baby wipes, paper towels, incontinent pads, and disposable diapers by washing and reusing cloth instead.
A diaper pail is good for the environment
Having a diaper pail allows you to reduce the amount of waste you send to the landfill because you can use reusable supplies instead of disposable ones. It also allows you to avoid the chemicals found in baby wipes if you prefer. Borax is a natural product that does not contain phosphates which harm the environment.
Clorox and borax
I have old white wash cloths used as urine cloths from expressing my pup. I soak them in a small pail with a few tablespoons of borax, a splash of bleach, and some water. The cloths go into the regular wash with other whites. The borax is amazing stuff, as there is absolutely NO ODOR on the cloths after washing with other whites.
Vinegar or baking soda
I have a diaper pail too, although now with Kat AND Bombon I am having to do an "animal" wash every day anyway! <snip> You never see Borax on sale here in Spain <snip> but I found out that you can use vinegar or baking soda too.
Borax in the water works well. I also used Washing Soda, but preferred Borax. If you pour it outside at home, the borax is picked up as a toxin in plants, so keep it away from garden ground and pastures. Probably better to send it down the drain. Water treatment plant should handle this, and we had no problem with a septic tank and drain field system.
I used regular cotton baby diapers, folded to look like a kotex pad and kept them on with a male wrap. Worked like a charm. Had to have a diaper pail and do the laundry often but it was much cheaper than disposable pads and Simon did not try to eat them. Often dogs will try to devour their disposable pads once they are wet. | <urn:uuid:d1241a5d-e9ba-4c69-9aa4-d9a206f1d792> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.handicappedpets.com/pet-care-articles/handicapped-pet-equipment/22-diaper-pail-for-a-handicapped-pet.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943995 | 1,227 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Egypt’s Copts Channelling Anger into Civic Engagement
by Lina Attalah, special contributor
Egyptian Christians hold a blood-stained portrait of Jesus Christ during a protest late on January 2, 2011 outside the Al-Qiddissine (The Saints) church in Alexandria.
(photo: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
In April 2006, hundreds of Egypt’s Alexandrian Christians gathered to mourn the death of 78-year-old Nushi Girgis, a Christian who was stabbed at St. Mark and St. Peter’s Church during one of a series of attacks on churches in the city that year. As the crowd walked down the street, chanting religious hymns, people began throwing stones from their balconies. The scene quickly turned violent, pitting Muslims against Christians.
Four years later, although largely invisible, the tension still looms. We saw a resurgence of violence last week with the bombing of the same St. Mark and St. Peter’s Church, which took 23 lives and injured many more people. Egypt’s Coptic Christian families worry about their lives in a nation that has become a contested home. The current wave of violence could mark a crossroads for this community with regard to its sense of political engagement which, for a long time now, has been dormant.
The government is currently trying to wipe out the mounting tension by deploying a discourse of national unity and describing the aggression against the Christian minority as coming from outside the nation. Al Qaeda’s recent threats against the Christians of Egypt have given some resonance to this claim.
But this state-engineered discourse is not resonating among the country’s Christian community, whose increasing bitterness is fast becoming politicised. In the past two days, protesters denouncing the attacks have taken to the streets, vehemently speaking out against Mubarak’s regime and its security apparatus for their consistent failure to protect the nation’s Christian community.
While Coptic anger should not be misinterpreted as a sign of overall political dissent, the act of taking to the streets frames the tension along clear political parameters. This is particularly interesting given the decades-long state-engineered process of trivialising politics amongst citizens by co-opting religious institutions, such as the Church, by giving it full authority over the religious and social aspects of Egyptian Christians’ lives in exchange for preaching de-politicisation. This has consequently led to the Church playing a large role in Egypt’s Coptic community, encouraging its members to congregate, to become isolated and to direct concerns to religious authorities as opposed to civil leadership, resulting in a decreased interest in politics over time.
The anger generated by recent events has the potential to reverse this political apathy amongst Egypt’s Copts and could result positively in renewed civil engagement. The fact that their anger is directed towards the regime, as opposed to their fellow citizens, is healthy and could lead to greater solidarity between fellow Egyptians of all faiths.
Already these tragic deaths have moved thousands of Egyptians — regardless of faith — to change their Facebook profile pictures to an image of the crescent surrounding the cross, symbolic of the fraternity between the two religions. Various initiatives are calling for Muslims to accompany Christians to Christmas mass on January 6, preceding Coptic Christmas which is celebrated on January 7, and to shield them against any possible aggression.
Yet, the most crucial way that Muslims can show their solidarity with Christians is to take a political stance against the regime’s divide-and-rule tactics. While it is difficult to imagine that the current tensions — which are right now taking place along religious lines — will soon be secularised, recent events can at least showcase how the state’s constant stifling of freedoms is only breeding dissent. The state must forgo old tactics in order to make space for concessions. This is a moment that should be seized by Christians and Muslims alike.
Lina Attalah is managing editor of the Al-Masry Al-Youm English edition in Cairo, Egypt and covers issues of migration, refugees, border conflicts, and minorities. She has written for Reuters, Cairo Times, the Daily Star, and the Christian Science Monitor and worked as radio producer with the BBC World Service Trust in Darfur, Sudan.
A version of this article was written by the Common Ground News Service on January 4, 2011. Copyright permission is granted for publication. | <urn:uuid:52a25fb6-a98d-453d-aeeb-886443821145> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.onbeing.org/post/2608368582/egypts-copts-channelling-anger-into-civic-engagement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964497 | 906 | 1.742188 | 2 |
“Written,” shot, and edited on the iPad… Let the adventure begin.
“Written,” shot, and edited on the iPad… Let the adventure begin.
New Washington Daily Telegraph From Aug 1, 2584 Headline reads:
Following the results of yesterday’s first galaxy-wide general election, seven Southern Systems have declared their intentions to secede from the union.
“On the 1st day of August, in the year of our lords 2584, the Governorship of Filtair Prime states that the South shall be excluded from the common territory of the Einberry. We solemnly declare that the Union heretofore existing between this System, and the other Systems of Northern Einberry, is dissolved, and that the System of Filtair Prime is a separate and independent System: with the power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which an independent System may of right do.”
The Systems of Filtair Prime, Polchebel, Broultdyn, Therunia, Hat’eto, Daninei I, and Daninei II have seceded from the United Systems of the Einberry, effective immediately! The senate and houses of each System worked tirelessly into the night passing resolutions seating Governor Markus Ashwater as the first President of the Confederate Systems of the Southern Einberry, and making Filtair Prime their designate Capital Planet.
Condemnation by federal officials, including a statement from president-elect Lincoln calling the move illegal and anarchistic. “Secession is an illegal act, by which the Southern Systems have declared only an attempt at anarchy, not their own depiction of democracy. The people of the South are merely afraid, but forget that it is only that fear which they need abolish. Remember, we are not enemies, but friends. We must NOT be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
The President-Elect has declared that all Fleet ships and bases in the Southern Einberry is still Federal property, and has ordered all Fleet personnel North of the declared “confederate border.” While most fleet ships have flown to the border for patrol, Fort Sumter, a heavy-weapons complex in Filtair Prime, remains the only Union fort in Confederate territory. Located on the northern tip of the Aleskel Belt, Fort Sumter lies in the heart of the system’s main bodies. The base is home to 2500 men, women, and children currently waiting for relocation north of the border.
“These personnel are now an occupying force in a sovereign country,” said Attorney General Tinvec, of Filtair Prime. “It is our responsibility, to the people of F Prime, to ensure no rouge elements threaten the stability of our beloved capital system.” Tinvec, now Attorney General of the CSSE, expressed the Union’s need to respect their sovereignty, “Legality is not an issue when the very government sworn to protect systems’ way of life, is the very threat those systems need fear. When the future of our systems is jeopardized, a people must rise up to change the thing that has put them in jeopardy.”
A Confederate Fleet has amassed around Fort Sumter in Filtair Prime, mostly made up of AshCorp-produced capital and support ships. The question now remains, what will happen in the new capital system? Will the CSSE see Fort Sumter as a threat and make an attempt to take it for their own purposes? Or will the confederacy allow fleet operations to continue in their capital?
With tensions at their highest point after centuries of peace, a Federal spokesperson assures us that all diplomatic efforts are being exhausted in finding an end to this stand off.
ELISIAN GATES- 237 people died today, and the death toll is rising, as the maiden voyage of Wright Lines’ experimental flagship Andromeda’s View I, ended in tragedy. The pride and joy of the billionaire Dr Joseph Wright, who also perished in the explosion, the Andromeda’s View was the first of the brand new “hub-jumper” class ship- able to navigate the galaxy’s most notable sights along its 14-day cruise by jumping from point-to-point along the way.
The ship was conceived and built by Wright, who had previously built an entertainment empire with his cruise line, Wright Lines. One of seven ships, the Andromeda’s sister ships have been dry docked in lieu of an investigation into the accident.
From all accounts, the flight was completely without incident up to the point when for unknown reasons, the Andromeda burst into space. Lifeboats were not deployed, and for all accounts this was a surprise… leading investigators to look toward total jump-systems failure.
No comment has come from the FTSB as of yet, however a statement from Wright Lines was issued stating:
“In light of this terrible accident involving the Andromeda’s View I, Wright Lines extends its sympathy to those affected by the tragedy. An investigation has begun in cooperation with FTSB officials, and hopefully and explanation for this loss will allow for some closure.
We send our deepest condolenses to the Wright family as well, Dr Joseph Wright was the father of modern space leisure, as well as three beautiful children, and loving wife Arloa.”
A fund has been started for the families of those lost in the tragedy at Elisian Gates at the Bank of New America.
Experimental boat, the USE Southern Star, was launched 6 weeks ago, and had been to sea for just over a month when she disappeared from all nets. She was the first ship to be built by Ashwater Corp, the eponymous company owned by the governors of Filtair Prime. The last of the Ashwater clan, Markus Ashwater is still in preparations for handing over the governorship to the newly-elected replacement body.
“The experimental nature of the Southern Star includes net-jamming technology that in effect cloaks a craft from sensors, appearing only on visual nets- which are only short-range.” Says an inside source at Ashwater, who chose not to reveal themselves as they are mentioning more than they are contractually allowed.
The source claims the Southern Star is the modern version of the ancient submarines, which could navigate the Earth’s waters through the use of sonar. Before net-sensors where deployed to map the reachable. If so, this boat could pose a leap forward in space technology.
UPDATE: Officials from Ashwater Corp responded with this quote: The USE Southern Star lunched 6 weeks ago in the capital Sector of Filtair Prime. Her maiden course took her out past the Broken Hub, to the mines of Sector 231 on a routine patrol. A month into her voyage, the Southern Star experienced catastrophic navigational problems that required a physical firmware and hardware upgrade. A tug boat was dispatched to dock with the Star and she is currently in dry dock. Re-Christening and a re-launch will occur in the coming weeks. As to reports of the craft’s experimental nature, they are highly exaggerated. The Southern Star does have a ground-breaking new net-deployment technology; however any references to net-jamming or cloaking are completely fictional. | <urn:uuid:67e0226b-352d-44ae-80fc-aaa85bf4a8a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://toomblog.com/category/fiction-serial/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956739 | 1,539 | 1.859375 | 2 |
From the start, a scene with a young child who steps into a psychiatrist’s salon because of a gender identity “problem” already seals the reader’s fate to a gloomy foregone conclusion. The young child is Claudine, the eponymous character of Ryoko Ikeda’s 1987 4-part manga and the central subject of much intrigue and heartbreak. The reason for the aforementioned psychiatric help: Claudine de Montesse is 10 years old and believes she’s a boy.
Seeing that Claudine is far from a maladjusted pre-adolescent, the psychiatrist suggests maintaining casual contact with the child, keeping an eye from afar as it were on Claudine’s social development. The story unfolds years following their first meeting where we now find Claudine the apple of his father’s eye, and being every bit the elite French gentleman who loves his horse-riding and hunting.
Handsome with bottle-gold bird’s nest hair, Claudine is a hit with the ladies and pursued by one young woman after another. But none take his fancy until Maura, the maid, arrives at the family doorstep covered in snow that we see them sharing “a moment”; eyes meeting and tongues tied. There is awkward but endearing chemistry between the two as Claudine towers over tiny Maura, and in the way his moodiness is offset by her manic pixie dream girl-like charm. They share their first kiss when Claudine’s mother catches them. Aghast and scandalised by their homoerotic and class transgressions, Claudine’s mother sends Maura away for good, leaving him heartbroken and wandering the streets of Paris in search of love and acceptance.
Two more passionate affairs follow and end disastrously. Cecilia, the mature librarian who shares his love of books and intellectual banter cheats on him with Claudine’s father of all people. Sirene, the sultry ballerina who lives with him as a ‘housemate’ runs away with Claudine’s older brother. To add insult to injury, Claudine is reminded by his ex lovers of the ‘truth’ that he is after all “a woman” and hence has no future of successful romantic entanglement with another women. Broken and devastated, Claudine seeks a lifeline, his psychiatrist, who could reassure him that he really is a man. But alas, the psychiatrist disappoints: Claudine is told he is an “imperfect” man who is “not quite right”. The humiliation and despair drives our hero to take his own life one snowy night.
As a fan of shojo manga that deals with “difficult” gender issues, I had found in Claudine …! a goldmine of themes: young love, betrayal, homosexuality, melodrama of operatic proportions, and the all predictable tragedy. The twee French backdrop – a standard quirk of many Japanese manga – serves as a fantastical safe space for young female readers to sympathise with our transfemale protagonist’s trial and tribulations. The tragic denouement is typical of non-normative romantic pursuits in fiction in which our protagonist’s death sends a grim message that romance belongs to cis-gendered heteronormativity. To reside outside its exacting boundaries is to invite trouble and doom.
Claudine is eulogised by his psychiatrist as someone quite extraordinary in life, but ignores his own hand and those of others in Claudine’s suicide. There is something self-serving about waxing lyrical about the dearly departed like Claudine as a person of exceptional beauty and intelligence, someone who was all man but in body. Had someone like him been alive, the reality of embracing him into the fold of society would be more cumbersome for some people. Revering him in death is more convenient. There is no doubt that a fictional fantasy on transgender identities is every bit a reflection of our collective heteronormative attitudes in which every tragic death symbolises a victory for hegemonic, dominant values.
You can read Claudine …! online here. | <urn:uuid:c8f16fae-3df5-46c2-b153-63302568e760> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dgreymatter.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/claudine-a-transgender-tragedy-for-girls-a-critical-review/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958734 | 869 | 1.5 | 2 |
Summary: This comprehensive manual has been written for preservice and in-service crisis interveners and all frontline workers in criminal justice and social services who come into contact with people who believe that their lives are falling apart. This edition has been revised and updated to reflect the latest developments in the field. Although the book primarily focuses on criminal justice agents, especially the police, the principles and guidelines presented are applicabl ...show moree in a number of settings. Unlike other books about crisis intervention, this book deals extensively with the special considerations involved in intervening in nonsecure field settings. Step-by-step procedures, numerous examples, and role plays teach readers how to intervene in crises involving victims of crime, intimate partner violence, child abuse and neglect, elder maltreatment, suicide, and school violence. The intervener is also provided with information on self assessment and coping with the stresses of frontline work. New to this edition is a statement of objectives at the beginning of each chapter, a summary at the end of each chapter, a set of learning activities for each chapter, and appendices which include useful World Wide Web sites, guidelines and scenarios for role plays, and a sample course outline for instructors. ...show lessEdition/Copyright: 3RD 03
More prices and sellers below. | <urn:uuid:25fc12e9-5350-4819-b1e9-032cbd605733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.textbooks.com/Crisis-Intervention-Contemporary-Issues-for-On-Site-Interveners-3rd-Edition/9780398073619/James-E-Hendricks-Jerome-B-McKean-and-Cindy-Gillespie-Hendricks.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93097 | 258 | 2.1875 | 2 |
10-03-2007, 21:18 #1
Sun, Zen, Chan... as a martialartist...
Different pronunciations(Korean, Japanese, Chinese) for a Chinese character, meaning meditation. I guess Zen is the most common pronunciation among them.
Not only Buddhists, but also Martial artists practice this. Nowadays even lots of many ladies do this as a diet-practice here in Korea.
I think all of us, as martial artists, know about Zen, and many practice it either.
I also practice it as often as possible. Usually I take a legs-crossed sitting posture like Buddha when I do that. Not quite easy sitting for many Western people. Not easy for Eastern people, either, thesedays. After some moment, I feel my legs are paralyzed, and later no more feeling. Just dull and numb. As I know it's a natural process, so just endure. But still it's not easy. And sitting for hours. Sometimes fall in sleep.
Freedom. Tranquility. Transcendence. Satori. No mind. Void. Emptiness. Etc.
But, how to get that status?
Some say Danjun breathing. Some say the third eye concentration. Some say upraising the force from the anus to the top of the head along the vertebrae. Etc.
You may practice some of them. I think all means are OK as they are developed in their own reasons. I also adopt some of them for my own practice.
My understanding as a Moodoin(Budoin, martial artist) for Zen practice is to reach the status to be non-discriminating and accepting.
Nondiscriminating and accepting all. Narrowly speaking, Life and Death. More narrowly, To Be as It Is. As we like to say even in fight.
As I practice HKD, I prefer saying Oneness.
Last edited by rockstream; 10-03-2007 at 21:20.SungBook Bae
Ulji-Kwan Hapkido Sabum | <urn:uuid:0c20988a-4cea-43df-b9f8-ce312b3f10f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.budoseek.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?22293-Sun-Zen-Chan-as-a-martialartist&mode=hybrid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958531 | 432 | 1.648438 | 2 |
|Motto: "Harmony And Industry"|
|Area||0.80 sq mi (2 km2)|
|- land||0.80 sq mi (2 km2)|
|- water||0.00 sq mi (0 km2)|
|Density||2,470 / sq mi (954 / km2)|
|- summer (DST)||CDT (UTC-5)|
|Wikimedia Commons: Rockdale, Illinois|
According to the 2010 census, the village has a total area of 0.80 square miles (2.1 km2), all land.
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,888 people, 762 households, and 473 families residing in the village. The population density was 2,377.4 people per square mile (922.7/km²). There were 826 housing units at an average density of 1,040.1 per square mile (403.7/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 82.89% White, 0.85% African American, 0.48% Native American, 0.37% Asian, 10.86% from other races, and 4.56% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 21.98% of the population.
There were 762 households out of which 30.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.0% were married couples living together, 10.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.8% were non-families. 31.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.11.
In the village the population was spread out with 25.2% under the age of 18, 9.4% from 18 to 24, 32.3% from 25 to 44, 20.6% from 45 to 64, and 12.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 101.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.4 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $39,954, and the median income for a family was $47,232. Males had a median income of $35,761 versus $24,375 for females. The per capita income for the village was $18,738. About 7.7% of families and 9.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.1% of those under age 18 and 4.5% of those age 65 or over.
Emergency service
The village's fire suppression services are operated by the Rockdale Fire Protection district. EMS is provided by Kurtz Ambulance Service, and law enforcement by Rockdale Police.
- "US Gazetteer files: 2010, 2000, and 1990". United States Census Bureau. 2011-02-12. Retrieved 2011-04-23.
- "2010 Census U.S. Gazetteer Files for Places – Illinois". United States Census. Retrieved 2012-10-13.
- "American FactFinder". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2008-01-31. | <urn:uuid:10ea40a5-0b1f-4d3a-8509-2d6f4b05f086> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockdale,_Illinois | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961252 | 701 | 2.203125 | 2 |
News digestSolar energy
The city is hosting a free workshop March 19 on residential solar energy and energy-efficient lighting. It will include an overview by Peter Shoemaker of PG&E about residential solar energy, how it works, average costs and how to determine if a home is best situated for its use; a discussion on how rebates and incentives work; and information about the Energy Upgrade California program and the benefits of a whole house energy assessment. Vendors will be available to answer questions.
The workshop takes place from 10 a.m.-noon at the Pleasanton Senior Center, 5353 Sunol Blvd. Call 931-5506.
Amador Valley High Athletic Boosters are hosting the Special Olympics East Bay Regional basketball, track and volleyball tournaments March 19-20, and volunteers are needed. It is the eighth year for the Boosters to host the events, which will take place at the high school and at Pleasanton Middle School.
To offer help, email email@example.com with your name, address and telephone number; specify whether adult or state age if under 18; indicate if you are with a group such as Leadership, National Charity League, Amador Valley High School or Foothill High School, Boosters, etc.; and include the day and times you can work. For more information call Special Olympics Coordinator Ken Mano at 846-4381 (evenings) or email firstname.lastname@example.org.
Transit Fair aimed at seniors
Senior discount passes will be available
The sixth annual free Transit Fair being held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 17 at the Pleasanton Senior Center will feature local agencies such as WHEELS, AARP, the ACE Train and others who will have information on transportation options. Veronica Conley, ombudsman for the Department of Motor Vehicles, will be the keynote speaker at 10:30 a.m.
AAA of Northern California and the Senior Center are sponsoring Free Car Fit assessments, which are free evaluations for seniors over 65. Those interested in an evaluation should call 931-5365 to make an appointment. | <urn:uuid:ce2e3085-aecd-4f69-a8da-5f458dbcbd3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pleasantonweekly.com/story.php?story_id=7936 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911366 | 435 | 1.546875 | 2 |
CAROLLA — Officials in Currituck County are considering reducing the number of trips allowed to watch the wild horses on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reported (http://bit.ly/QgJG7P) officials are considering authorizing larger vehicles for the trips to see the wild horses of Corolla.
Nine companies advertise four-wheel-drive vehicles to see the wild horses. That attracts about 3,000 people a day in the summer. The state made the horses a featured attraction in tourism advertising.
Residents of the north beach communities often have complained about the traffic and the disturbance.
Currituck County commissioners are considering an ordinance that could cut the number of tour vehicles permitted from 46 to 25. Operators would be allowed to use larger vehicles so they could serve the same number of customers. | <urn:uuid:66d8d7a4-f653-4b47-891e-4f96ff0836df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jdnews.com/in-other-news/currituck-county-wants-to-limit-horse-visits-1.26594 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929791 | 175 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Windows is the current standard as a platform, but alternatives, such as Macs, are widely used and accepted on campus and in Manning Hall. We encourage you to choose the operating system with which you are most comfortable. Please see the links at the left for answers to common Mac questions.
Support. There is more campus support for Windows users; UNC services, access to resources, and support experience are Windows-centric. However, CCI laptops now include Macs. The SILS Help Desk staff are well-versed in different operating systems, including Macs, and though we can't solve all problems, we are glad to do our best to help you.
Windows-only software. Some SILS classes use software that only runs on a PC, so having a non-Windows system means you will have to seek workarounds or other systems to complete assignments. The ITS Virtual Lab service offers many Windows application to Mac users through a simple browser interface.
Alternatively, Mac users can install Windows virtualization software (such as Virtual Box, Bootcamp, Parallels or VMWare) in order to run Windows-only programs on their computers. Using virtualization software, students can install a Windows operating system on their Mac and then install Windows applications on top of that. It is expected that students will have virtualization software installed BEFORE it is needed in classes. Please note that the process of installing virtualization software and applications can take several hours. The SILS DreamSpark (formerly MSDN-AA) program is available for downloading Microsoft operating systems and applications.
- My Computer
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- Using SILS Servers | <urn:uuid:81475b22-5483-468c-8d3c-550562e04a5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sils.unc.edu/it-services/macs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928875 | 349 | 1.882813 | 2 |
[Edu-sig] Software Engineering for everyone? -- In a way
Dennis E. Hamilton
Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:18:14 -0800
I support what you have to say here. I do think there is something
important to provide in a high-school curriculum about what engineering
involves, but it doesn't have to be very heavyweight. I am thinking of
three things: accountability, collegiality, and predictability.
I worked as an engineering aide right out of high school. (Well, I had two
quarters of college, and the calculus plus high-school drafting classes got
me the job.) The engineer I was working for wrote everything down. I spent
all of my time, until I got to write some programs (we were self-teaching
ourselves FORTRAN), creating graphs and charts for the data we were
producing off of an IBM 701 computer system. Everything was signed and
bound and filed. I never forgot that. I hated the tediousness of the work,
and I never forgot it. And I was never afraid to ride a Boeing 720 when
they were later produced.
In "Introduction to the Personal Software Process," the Watts Humphrey
book, the first thing that students are asked to do is record their time and
keep a log book. As many years on-and-off that I have seen and used
engineering log books, I started all over again when I picked up the
Introduction to PSP about two years ago as a way to sharpen my individual
practices. I am in log book #19 right now. It takes me one-to-two months
per notebook. Just in recording adjustments to my own computer
configuration and wanting to be able to recover or recreate an installation
on another machine, the log books have been a lifesaver. I also find that
it doesn't work to keep notebooks on-line. It is something I use on the
side even when my computer system is hosed and there are other things taking
up my screen real-estate.
My point is that there is something around accountability, keeping track of
what was done and what happened, and also getting present to how ones
energies are invested in activities, that are valuable and that can be
introduced when young people are interested in what the activities of
software development and software engineering are.
I would look for a way to provide this in the context of young people
learning their own ability to accomplish something by exploration and doing.
Providing accounts for what was done and what was involved is an important
aspect of getting a sense of the responsibility with which software
engineering is undertaken. I would not tie it particularly to software. It
applies in science and engineering generally, and I would want young people
left with a sense of that, even if they never pursue a technical career
I also notice that an important aspect of open-source projects is that
there is an opportunity to provide a high level of accountability simply in
keeping it all together and having a structure by which what is available
and what is being worked on can be inspected. This may be the right level.
For me this was an unnatural act, and I resisted it mightily. I recognized
it as an important aspect of producing useful results, so I kept practicing.
Now it is second-nature for me.
I have been looking for a better word than this. I am giving up that
I say that most human activities of any scale are cooperative activities.
I notice as a software developer that I easily maintain the illusion that it
is all about me and my own innate creativity, and if those other jerks would
get out of my face it would all be perfect. I know that is hogwash, yet I
constantly see how I organize my life as if it were true that I exist
independently from everyone else, a pack of intruders. (Even typing this
note has as much or more self-gratification in it than any sense of being
part of something bigger than myself and participating in a community.)
In my first serious programming job (as a "Clerk Typist A" student
programmer -- they hadn't invented programming positions yet) after the
engineering aide experience, the faculty member I worked for was creating a
handbook of software by collecting what was available and republishing it
with documentation. We were also cleaning up the disparate sources so that
the programs and routines could be used together as part of a coherent body
of work. I loved it and hated it all at the same time.
In my first "hacking" project we actually forked, as had many others, a
piece of open-source software. It was the SOAP II Assembler for the IBM
Model 650 Computer System. Hudson, High, and Hamilton produced the SOAP H
version by taking advantage of the fact that the source code and
documentation for the assembler were printed in the back of the manual. We
did the usual thing: inspected the code and figured out ways to tighten it
up enough so that we had some free memory in our ~10k machine to add the
goodies we wanted. My contribution was to build a linking loader for the
assembled programs, based on what I had seen of the FORTRAN II BSS Loader.
I recall not being very good about teamwork in this project, and I was
always holding up the parade by being off doing stuff on my own, and slowly.
One of the things I noticed is that programming skill is often learned by
working from existing code. It becomes important to have good examples. At
some point, one has developed a practice of refinement and adaptation that
begins to show up as craftsmanship. This is not a solitary activity, no
matter how much we go through it individually. And for it to work, we must
be willing to submit our work to the adaptation and refinement of others.
Sooner rather than later. When I first met Donald Knuth, he talked about
some of the most beautifully-crafted programs he had ever read. One program
was one that I had used, the Bell Labs Interpreter for computational work on
the IBM 650.
Ever since "The Psychology of Computer Programming" and the introduction of
inspection, I have been more and more inclined to submit my work to the
inspection of others, as early as possible. I have always been gratified
when a colleague came to me and requested doing a code walkthrough of
something being worked on. This where code walkthroughs were not (yet) a
formal part of the team's work process. I also notice that when I go dark
(I love that expression), I have completely closed up and gone inward where
there is no community support at all. These days I can catch myself by
noticing that the date on the last completed page of my notebook is not
recent. Today (03-27) the last entry is 03-25, and the previous was 03-23
and that was the last one of any substance.
I haven't gotten rid of the fear of rejection, of being humiliated by doing
something stupid in public, or any of that. What I have learned is that I
don't have to stop because of that, and I persist more all of the time.
Every time I write one of these long notes, I am apprehensive about how it
will be received. It's as if the newbie hesitations (which I don't recall
having that strongly as a newbie) and the desire to look good never leave.
I am just playing a bigger game where that stuff all comes up, and I play
So I want to point out a key aspect of collegiality. It is not just that
we are always always always building on the work that comes before us, and
that such work was made available for us to work on. That's no small thing.
I want to emphasize that software development is actually more of an
empirical and, yes, social process than those of us with as much
introverted, intellectualized viewpoint as myself can easily or willingly
recognize. I notice, for example, that as much as I follow principles of
the PSP and bring myself to be accountable, my work is not nearly as
effective as when I have collaborators who hold me to account. When I go
dark, I am in the dark. Someone else can interrupt me (and I will resist),
and that can happen more quickly and usefully than waiting for myself to
snap out of it. I also notice that I always get something out of
discussions of ideas and projects, if I am willing to be vulnerable enough
to talk about my half-baked ideas and be authentic about what concerns me.
It helps immeasurably to have a community in which to do that. I also know
a wonderful secret: there is nothing better for mastery of a subject than
teaching it to others -- because they will teach it to you. I think the
great athletic coaches know this, along with their profound commitment to
and respect for their players.
In the context of CP4E, I think the simple practice of sharing ones work,
learning to inspect the work of others, and having our own work checked is a
big deal. The open-source philosophy is also applicable here, as well as a
source of great worked examples (though not all open source code is that
great.) And having that be all right and a desirable, let alone
permissible, way to produce an effective result is an important thing to be
exposed to when young. And be accountable for what is original and what
isn't and acknowledge the support that occurs in teamwork. These are
practices that I think are very important to demonstrate in a practical,
simple way. There are many exercises for demonstrating the diversity and
insights that are available with cooperative approaches. I don't know what
would instill an appreciation for how interdependent we actually are. I
would look at that, though.
I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction. I like to say that Robert
Heinlein taught me to read. In all of that reading, I thought of being on
the moon or going to Mars as something that would be a personal, individual
act. The reality of space flight and the magnitude of the enterprise that
it took to have human beings walk on the moon and return just wasn't the way
I dreamt it would be. Today I can be moved to tears about the magnificence
of that undertaking and the contributions that so many people made in so
many ways that brought space flight to reality. I say there is not anyone
who participated in that effort whose contribution did not matter. That's
new thinking for me. (And not original, either.) I want to see some sense
of the possibility of collegiality in the way CP4E is introduced in schools.
It is something to get to the point where one can actually specify
something and design it without having ever built it first. It takes
practice and experimentation and some sort of conceptual shift where one can
do that reliably. It's a big leap from not knowing what line of code to
write first in ones early teething. Then building it first becomes a
seductive habit that is very hard to shake. It's very interesting to get to
the point where one can specify something and trust that it can be built
without having any idea how!
For me, predictability in software development is more than this. It has
to do with a lot of quantitative methods and metrics. It has to do with
refinement of requirements through design and construction. It is certainly
tied to accountability and collegiality. And being able to predict effort
and the time it will take to have a completed result.
I don't want to emphasize predictability too much, but I think it is also
something valuable to instill an early appreciation for.
It may be that the simplest first principle here is divide-and-conquer.
Creating interface agreements and sharing modules in a larger project of a
team might be enough. That does lead to critical predictability of a kind.
And it can be useful to see what happens over time and in the face of
I found a very cool book on project management once (I think it is the
50-minute book on Project Management from Crisp Publications). It is very
simple and very straightforward. There is a video that goes with it that
demonstrates project thinking using a small company's move to new quarters
as an example. It is really great. It is also easy to forget and revert to
other ways of doing things. It is also, in my experience, very difficult to
project manage a one-man-band. It helps to have more players.
I don't know if I would promote estimation very heavily, but maybe it would
be valuable for kids to try predicting the size of programs and learn how to
refine that as the work proceeds.
I would look for examples in "real life," like getting homework or papers
done on time, though, and working from outlines first, something that I
remember as a challenge when I was a high-school student. Or managing ones
training for a sporting event or team activity. Or producing a
community-service or performing arts activity.
The outline for this note is the first paragraph. I wrote that. Then I
let the note "write itself." Not very predictable. It helped though, in
that I did occasionally use that three-point list to ask myself what was the
point of each part and when was I going to make it. Satisfying, but low in
predictability. Unless I notice and use that data in further work. I've
just put it in my notebook.
Dennis E. Hamilton
tel. +1-206-779-9430 (gsm)
From: email@example.com [mailto:firstname.lastname@example.org]On
Behalf Of Greg Ward
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2000 06:12
To: email@example.com; firstname.lastname@example.org; email@example.com
Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] Software Engineering for everyone?
[ ... ]
I'm *not* speaking out
against testing software (or debugging, or thinking about what you're
going to do before doing it, or other good practices); I think that
should be taught from the beginning.
And I'm not speaking out against "anal-retentive software-engineering"
practices, like rigorous, full-coverage testing, formal design and code
reviews, etc. etc. IMHO "extreme programming" falls into this camp,
although it seems to me rather less anal retentive than most other
software methodologies. It's still a methodology, though, and Kent Beck
(I'm in the middle of his book on XP now) says so.
I *am* speaking out against trying to teach full-blown software
engineering techniques to high-school students who are just getting
their first taste of writing code. Yes, teach them to understand the
code before (and while) they write it, and teach them not to trust it
until they've tested it, and teach them how to fix it when it doesn't
work. But don't go pulling in all the industrial-strength machinery
that the SEI espouses, because it just isn't necessary for writing Excel
macros or throwaway Python scripts -- which is what an awful lot of
people who come out of CP4E will probably end up doing.
[ ... ]
True. The further you get from a throwaway script to do your homework
to implementing a phone-billing system, the more SEI-style bureaucracy
you need. However, that sort of software engineering bureaucracy
probably belongs in the undergraduate CS curriculum, not at the high
Edu-sig mailing list | <urn:uuid:a114913c-f2fd-4648-b867-11eb362bc10b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2000-March/000295.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968116 | 3,410 | 1.953125 | 2 |
This is a huge mistake. Depriving yourself of food until the main meal only increases the likelihood that you will be starving by the time you sit down to eat. The end result could very well be overeating. On the contrary, individuals who eat a healthy breakfast such as cereal with low-fat or skim milk and fruit, have been found to lose weight and keep it off successfully at much higher rates than those who skip breakfast.
Studies also show that people who eat at least four small meals, or "minimeals," per day are significantly less likely to be obese than those who do not.
Fill Up on Low-Energy Density Foods
If you're fearful that eating tiny portions at your holiday dinner will leave you feeling hungry and frustrated, there is another, more realistic option: filling up on foods with low energy density. According to the Mayo Clinic, there are both high- and low-energy density foods, which the body digests differently. With high-energy density foods, one can accumulate calories very quickly from modest portions.
These are foods that are high in fat and sugar. However, low-energy density foods such as leafy vegetables, beans, fruits, whole grains, fish and skinless poultry, can be eaten in larger quantities and result in fewer calories being consumed. So go ahead and eat until you are satisfied, but make wise food selections.
Don't Place Food on Display
It is tradition in many households to set food out on the table in bowls and on platters when it's time to serve dinner. This is a no-no for persons who struggle with overeating, according to Auburn University Professor and nutritionist Barb Struempler. Leaving food out on the table only increases the likelihood of going back for seconds, even when you are no longer hungry. Struempler recommends that you serve plates from the stove and put food out of sight immediately after dinner has ended.
The most important thing is to have a plan and stick with it. By incorporating some of the aforementioned strategies into your daily life prior to the holidays, you'll be more likely to make wiser decisions at the dinner table when the big day arrives. | <urn:uuid:98fc22bd-fee8-4648-8ad2-a0a6321fa69e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcvb.com/holidays/How-to-avoid-overeating-at-holiday-dinner/-/17013108/1751204/-/item/1/-/1uv0sg/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971124 | 440 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The Who concert disaster
U.S. Bank Arena (formerly the Riverfront Coliseum)
|Date||December 3, 1979|
|Location||Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA|
The Who concert disaster took place at the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 3, 1979, as part of the band's U.S. tour, the first in three years and their first performance in Cincinnati since 1975. Eleven fans (Teva Ladd, 27; Walter Adams, Jr., 22; James Warmoth, 21; Phillip Snyder, 20; David Heck, 19; Stephan Preston, 19; Peter Bowes, 18; Connie Burns, 18; Bryan Wagner, 17; Karen Morrison, 15; and Jacqueline Eckerle, 15) were killed by compressive asphyxia. Twenty-three other fans were injured in the rush for seating at the opening of the sold-out concert.
Attending the performance were a total of 18,348 ticketed fans. Just 3,578 of the tickets were for reserved seats, while 14,770 tickets were for unassigned seats or general admission, also known as festival seating. The benefit of unassigned seating is that a concertgoer could get a great seat, if he or she was determined enough to either arrive early, or push to the front; however, this proved deadly on the night of the concert. Many fans arrived early, and waited outside the Riverfront Coliseum in bitter-cold conditions. As the crowd heard the band performing a late sound check, many mistakenly believed the concert was beginning. This began a rush toward the entryway doors from the back of the crowd, causing some at the front of the crowd to be trampled as those pushing from behind were unaware the doors were still closed. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that only a few doors were in operation that night. According to some reports, the building management had limited the number of entryways due to union restrictions, as well as concern for concertgoers sneaking past the ticket turnstiles. The band members of The Who didn't learn what had happened until after their performance ended. The families of the victims sued the band, concert promoter Electric Factory Concerts, and the city of Cincinnati. The suits were settled in 1983, awarding each of the families of the deceased approximately $150,000 each, and approximately $750,000 to be divided among the 23 injured. The city of Cincinnati also imposed a ban on festival seating, with minor exceptions, for the next 25 years.
The incident was the subject of a book, Are The Kids All Right? The Rock Generation And Its Hidden Death Wish, as well as a second-season episode of WKRP in Cincinnati called "In Concert." It also inspired scenes in the film Pink Floyd—The Wall, whose 1982 premiere was attended by The Who's Pete Townshend.
In 2004, the city of Cincinnati permanently repealed its long-standing ban on festival seating, a move which has been criticized by some. The goal of lifting the ban was to attract more big-name acts. However, the city now mandates there must be nine square feet per person at a venue, and the number of tickets sold for each event are adjusted accordingly. Additionally, no memorial was ever erected at the stadium for the victims of one of the then-deadliest concert disasters in American history.
Paul Wertheimer, the city's first Public Information Officer at the time of the tragedy, and only two years older than the oldest victim, went on to serve on a task force on crowd control, and later founded Crowd Management Strategies in 1992, a consulting firm based in Los Angeles.
- Johnson, Norris R. "Panic at 'The Who Concert Stampede': An Empirical Assessment." Social Problems. Vol. 34, No. 4 (October 1987):362-73
- Chertkoff, JM; RH Kushigian (1999). Don't Panic: The psychology of emergency egress and ingress. Praeger. pp. 79–83. ISBN 0-275-96268-7.
- Cincinnati Council Repeals festival seating ban
- Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 August 2002 Bruce Springsteen Concert (editorial)
- Miles, Barry; Mabbett, Andy (1994). Pink Floyd the visual documentary. London: Omnibus. ISBN 0711941092. | <urn:uuid:6a44db77-7485-4c46-ab30-cccff0040ecb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959139 | 899 | 2.0625 | 2 |
meteoblue expresses all temperatures in degrees Celsius (°C). Pure water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C on 0 meters altitude above sea level (m asl). Conversions into other scales can be made on request.
The temperature forecast is made for the temperature expected at the given location and altitude, if measured according to WMO (World Meteorology Organisation) guidelines, at 2 meter s above ground, if not otherwise indicated. Other altitudes are indicated in the legend.
Feels like temperature
The apparent (or "feels like") temperature (°C) is the perceived temperature, which people experience under the forecast conditions. It is composed of a heat index and a wind chill factor. The heat index (HI) calculates the temperature the body feels when heat and humidity are combined; it rises with actual air temperature and relative humidity, which make it increasingly difficult for the body to remove the excess heat through sweating. Exposure to direct sunlight can increase the HI by up to 10°C. When the heat index exceeds 37°C, the body will need extra help for removing heat to avoid heat stress and collapse. The wind chill factor calculates how much heat is removed from the body through air movement. It generally reduces perceived temperature compared to the actual.
The meteoblue "feels like" temperature is a combination of both effects. Under windy conditions, the perceived temperature is lower than the actual temperature. Under moist (and mostly hot) conditions, the perceived temperature is higher than the actual temperature - conditions are then is described as "muggy" and occur mainly during summer and in the tropics, principally around the equator (e.g. in Indonesia, Kenia, Ruanda, Congo, Brazil, Peru).
Daily temperatures are summarised as Minima and Maxima. These are the highest and lowest hourly values from the forecast. Actually measured maxima or minima can be up to 2°C higher or lower, since the temperatures can still vary between the hours. | <urn:uuid:b50fd5e7-07d9-492b-87da-13ee69b7adde> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.meteoblue.com/en_US/content/278 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901483 | 412 | 3.546875 | 4 |
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Monthly Honor Roll of Users Editing the Wiki
CZ:How to Collaborate
From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium
Citizendium is a collaborative community. Your knowledge, with the next person's, and the next, build and shape, re-build and re-shape, the articles of this compendium.
So, how do a bunch of strangers manage to create a coherent encyclopedia article? Generally, it's like this: you see that a sentence needs rewording; so you reword it. You see an article that needs a whole new section; so you add it. You find that an article has much flabby prose; so you make it concise. Or you just know a lot about a particular subject and see much to change; so you go through and make a thorough overhaul. Many people can do all of those things to the same article, and something excellent can result.
Working closely with others often requires sensitivity and finesse. You might have deleted a sentence it took someone else five minutes (or five hours) to craft. Resentment and anger are often the immediate responses when someone else changes "your" words. Harsh words, abusive language, and other unpleasantness can happen. But it doesn't usually happen on Citizendium, and it doesn't have to happen. Polite discussion is key. We can avoid unpleasantness as a rule because we are all committed to working together. We know that working together means changing other people's work, making compromises, or (far better) coming up with a creative solution that satisfies everyone. The fluid nature of the text and writing allows for such creative, positive solutions.
To collaborate effectively, please look at the talk page regularly. Be polite and respectful. If you are angry, calm down and take a break before you write or do something rash. And if you are dealing with a person who really is unreasonable, do not "take matters into your own hands" by cussing the person out, but ask a constable to intervene (at firstname.lastname@example.org). That's what they're there for--to calm folks down and come to a sensible solution to complex problems of interaction.
We need to collaborate more
Many articles, especially from newer recruits, could obviously use help of a sort that would be obvious to any of "the regulars." If you are concerned about the project being as good as it can be, then please review recent changes regularly, linked on the left side of every wiki page and "poke in" and see what others are doing. Give both positive feedback and constructive criticism. If you notice that a new person is misusing categories or templates, or uploading something that isn't an encyclopedia article, or committing some other little error, just give a little (polite) guidance. A friendly word or two goes a long way.
Also, if you see an article that someone is evidently working hard on, that piques your interest--then you can dive into editing the article. It isn't owned by its main developer. Of course, it's always best to understand the narrative under development--so, read the article--and to make your contributions as high-quality as possible, but nobody owns any article.
But we can't expect collaboration
Bottom-up, unassigned, at-will collaboration means that you can't expect others to help out. They will if they want to. You, who would like comments on your work, might not think of comments on your contributions as "work," but commenters might view it that way if it was something they felt obliged to do.
How to get collaborators
If you want collaborators and don't have any, you can:
- Post to Feedback Requests.
- Post on your workgroup mailing list (link found on the left).
- Ask individual editors for comments. Consult the Workgroups page for lists of authors in different subjects. This might help bring them out of the woodwork, you know. It's something we particularly encourage!
- Editors have agreed to let Citizendium-Editors be used for feedback requests. So, editors, if you want to get input on an article or on a particular content question, you can always ask there.
Editors need to be bold
It is possible that what keeps a lot of editors from getting involved is that they are thinking of CZ articles as "someone else's inviolable text." That would be the case if we were constructing an anthology using a wiki, where each person is responsible only for his or her own assigned pages, and no one does anything else other than offer feedback. But CZ isn't an anthology.
Instead, we are engaged in "strong collaboration." That means that no individual or group of individuals is assigned to work on an article; the group of people who happen to work on an article is (or can be) ever-changing; people decide individually which article they want to work on; it isn't decided from above. (For more about this concept, see here.)
- It really is all right for you to edit someone else's text. It is not an insult or a violation of anybody's rights to have their text edited. In fact, it's usually received as a sort of compliment. (See Group Editing for more, and this blog post for more about the psychology here.)
- Editors (and authors), it's all the more OK for you to comment on someone else's text, on the talk page.
But editors also need to be open to collaboration
The flip side to the failure to understand the nature of wiki collaboration, on the part of some editors, is that when someone does get involved, they start to as it were "claim ownership" over what they're working on. This not only drives away other contributors, it is contrary to our fundamental policies.
Just remember, garbage isn't permanent. The existence of a little bad writing, bias, and inaccuracy is not an emergency that must be fixed immediately, at the cost of lost contributors. It should be removed, to be sure, but it is more important that we retain our fellows and keep them motivated. It's not an either-or proposition, either. We can politely correct our fellows without driving them off.
As a rule of thumb, it is better to discuss what is wrong with a piece of text on the talk page before you hack it to bits, and give the others a chance to respond first. Giving notice in this way isn't necessary if you are making small edits, but if there is any "hacking" going on, it is necessary; it certainly helps smooth the wheels of discourse. Sometimes the criticized party will make the necessary changes themselves. Sometimes, they'll be upset and will need calming down; you'll have to negotiate. Of course, you needn't ask permission before you add to an article. It's deleting or drastically altering that needs advance explanation. Again, you aren't asking "permission," as if there were an owner who had to agree to your change. Instead, you are explaining yourself for anyone who is interested; it's just a matter of courtesy.
For large amounts of deleted text, we require a fairly detailed explanation at the same time (or just before) you make the deletion. Unexplained deletion is actually contrary to our professionalism policy.
But we would prefer that people collaborate more actively, and make a few faux pas, than always "asking permission" and doing nothing. In short, please practice active, exuberant collaboration, and be open to it. | <urn:uuid:720cc654-c91d-411a-b9cd-58517f1c922a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:How_to_collaborate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964785 | 1,577 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Lights, color, action!
November 26, 2012
Consider Saturn, in many ways the most wondrous planet. Color images taken by the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft of the late 70s still far outshine most of the monochrome images sent back from Cassini. The public wants to see and feel something awesome, something that tells them something new yet relatable about the universe around them. The key elements behind great nature films are amazing scenery, artistically filmed in gorgeous color, through living, moving pictures that progressively reveal those new environments to us. A rich, orchestral soundtrack amplifies the emotional story. Turn off the sound next time you view a nature show to feel the difference. So it’s not just a matter of what new worlds we should explore, but how. We should include artists, musicians and visual storytellers into the design of new missions. And we should encourage the public to participate directly by giving them access to the cameras and manipulators. We need many eyes and sensibilities to bring the story back to everyone on Earth. YouTube shows the power of such crowd sourcing. Because new missions cannot be just about pure science. They need to inspire the world.
They are Watching the Skies for You!
Our researchers, worldwide, do absolutely critical work.
Asteroid 2012DA14 was a close one.
It missed us. But there are more out there. | <urn:uuid:42b33110-e366-4326-9542-7769dbb49099> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.planetary.org/connect/infinite-visions/Lights-color-action.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934173 | 286 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Posted Jun 13, 2006.
Activities can enrich children’s lives and expose them to many opportunities for future success. But too many activities can create stress and exhaustion, spreading children too thin. According to a study from the University of Michigan, children as young as 3 have notably less down time than children of the same age twenty years ago.
“Down time” is time when there are no set activities; time is unstructured and reasonably free. Children who don’t have much free time probably don’t have enough time simply to be children. Family time also gets squeezed out as more activities are added to an already full calendar. Many experts believe that family time is the glue that holds family members together.
How can parents make sure young children are not overscheduled and protect family time?
In the long run, children’s best interests are not served by an overly busy schedule that overshadows family and down time.
In his book The Intentional Family, William Dougherty argues that parent leadership can keep families connected and strong. He writes, “An intentional family rows and steers its own boat rather than being moved only by the winds and current.” As you make a plan for rowing and steering you are setting the direction for your family’s future.
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© Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
University of Illinois Extension | <urn:uuid:778cf8c7-94b8-4693-a693-140be9db6f31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://parenting247.org/article.cfm?ContentID=1130&strategy=4&AgeGroup=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96384 | 299 | 3 | 3 |
Introduction to Equestrian Sports offers parents and riders who are new to the scene detailed descriptions of what is involved in each of the four main disciplines: hacking/showing, dressage, showjumping and eventing. It is equally beneficial for those wanting to change from one type of competition to another.
Each discipline description includes how it originated, its current status, types of classes, levels of competition, what rules apply, who runs the competitions and how they are judged.
'Ground rules' are explained, based on the author's considerable experience, to help take the mystery out of competitions, such as how to find out what competitions are taking place and how to enter, which classes are being judged, what to wear, what to do when you arrive, where best to park, where you can and cannot warm up, checking your gear and reporting to the judge.
Other topics include how to prepare for a competition, from one month before to the night before the event, and the equipment required to compete, from choosing a horse to what rugs will be needed. Finally, illustrations of arenas, website links and examples of competition programs are provided to help beginner riders further understand their chosen sport.
Introduction to Equestrian Sports is not another 'how to ride' book, but a practical, hands-on guide to make equestrian competitions enjoyable for all riders.
"Introduction to Equestrian Sports is not another 'how to ride' book, but a practical, hands-on guide to make equestrian competitions enjoyable for all riders." Horses & People Magazine, 2008
"Excellent tips throughout this book offer insights and knowledge that would normally be gleaned only through participation. Well organised and visually appealing… It is also an excellent guide for spectators, since it provides detailed information on scoring." CHOICE Magazine, October 2008 | <urn:uuid:ae0739db-6fa6-430c-bb5e-6ba8909aef5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/18/pid/5842.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957798 | 372 | 2.703125 | 3 |
September 13, 2010
Styx Bassist Raises HIV Vaccine Awareness
Gay, HIV-positive Styx bassist Chuck Panozzo is now a spokesman for GeoVax labs to raise awareness for its HIV vaccine research, Advocate.com reports. “The hope is for a vaccine that can be taken once a year at much less cost than current treatments allow, and one that can be readily available to patients around the world,” said Panozzo. GeoVax concluded Phase 1 clinical human trials for a preventive vaccine. A Phase IIa trail of the vaccine is expected to be completed by 2011.
To read the Advocate.com article, click here.
Search: vaccine, Styx, GeoVax, research, Ohase 1, human trials
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[Go to top] | <urn:uuid:7ac1abf4-abd0-436c-ae4c-2f9a90b05b76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poz.com/articles/Vaccine_Styx_HIV_1_19094.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919256 | 180 | 1.5 | 2 |
Obama's policies threaten to turn Afghanistan in to Vietnam Mark II
Barack Obama has announced that he intends to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by 2012. Toby Harnden, the Telegraph’s US Editor, reported that this is an act of “triangulation and political calculation rather than military judgment”. And it is not an isolated incident. To students of US foreign policy, it might seem eerily similar to the decisions that President Lyndon Johnson took in Vietnam. It is another instance of military policy being dictated by electoral logic.
When Barack Obama came out against the Iraq War in the 2008 elections cycle, it was convenient to simultaneously commit himself to bringing peace and liberty to Afghanistan. He didn’t want to look cowardly or out of step with the War on Terror zeitgeist. So the candidate borrowed John Kerry’s narrative that Iraq was unwinnable but Afghanistan was a sure bet. That way Obama could satisfy the peacenik grassroots while convincing independents that he was strong on defence.
Johnson made a similar calculation in Vietnam. In the 1964 elections, he succumbed to dove-baiting by the Republicans by intellectually committing the US to the defence of South Vietnam, which was menaced by its Communist northern neighbour. But he also pledged not to send in ground-troops – a triangulation that made his conservative opponent, Barry Goldwater, look like a warmonger in comparison. The flimsy paradox of supporting-yet-not-really-supporting the South couldn’t be maintained in the face of increased communist aggression. In 1965, Johnson began bombing the communist-controlled areas and raised troop numbers. But still he worried about the impact a high death rate might have on his re-election chances, so he limited the war and committed only the money and numbers necessary to sustain the status-quo – against the advice of his generals. Stuck between winning the war and pulling out, Johnson chose compromise. Against his design, thousands of US soldiers died as a result.
Of course, it’s always tricky to draw parallels between conflicts. But Obama’s reduction only brings the number of troops serving in that arid hell back to pre-surge level. It is a compromise that is morally akin to Johnson’s and it arises from the Democrats’ age-old fear of looking weak on defence. It is American soldiers who will pay the price of that paranoia. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam in the 1960’s, the US government is allied to a domestic regime that is corrupt and maybe beyond democratising. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, the war is unwinnable by the vague set of goals attributed to it. That nation has resisted every foreign effort to re-order its culture that history has thrust upon it – British, Soviet and American. The will for secular democracy is lacking and the terrain is treacherous. No wonder some conservatives are saying that this is the wrong war. Now that the Taliban has been dislodged, the real base of terror is Pakistan. Maintaining the West’s perilous grip over a mound of earth in some Afghan province hardly seems worth the blood and money.
But once entered in to, the game of politics must be played to its hopeless conclusion. Electoral logic dictates that the Republicans must oppose everything the incumbent Democrat does – even if their own hawkishness propelled him into that position in the first place. In the 1960s, the GOP vacillated between a “bomb ‘em back the stone age” and a “bring our boys home” position, each predicated on the belief that “new leadership” should supplant Johnson and bring an end to the war as soon as possible. George Romney – Mitt Romney’s pappy – entered the 1968 Republican presidential primaries as a peace candidate; Ronald Reagan stepped in at the last minute promising to hand the entire United States government over to the military. Richard Nixon straddled the two positions in his wicked, brilliant way, producing a compromise that prolonged the war for another four years. And so the endless game of move and counter move goes on – and the body count will mount until the consensus breaks down.
For triangulation gone wild, take a look at Ann Coulter’s latest appearance on the O’Reilly Factor. She attacks America’s presence in Afghanistan … and then says that the US ought to invade Iran instead. It’s a comment coloured by her usual, wonderful line in irony (Ms Coulter also suggests invading Canada), but it speaks to the unreality of the debate. The Republicans are opposing Obama’s reduction from all angles. Some, like John McCain, say it’s an act of cowardice. Others, like Rand Paul, feel it doesn’t go far enough. And most of them are decrying the Libyan expedition – an extraordinary 180 for the party that designated Arabia ripe for civilising just ten years ago. Policy is being dictated, just as it was 50 years ago, by electoral logic. The Republicans must find something to dislike. And Barack Obama, who should have withdrawn from Afghanistan upon his election, must now limit military operations to whatever costs as few as lives as possible while still keeping the Kabul branch of Chase Manhattan open for business.
Girl Guides drop God and country from their pledge. Now Satanists and anarchists can go camping, too
June 19th, 2013 10:47
Syria: the West shouldn't arm people who eat people
June 18th, 2013 12:17
The Syria intervention exposes Obama's habit of doing 'too much, too late'
June 14th, 2013 12:01
The Sesame Street guide to dealing with a parent in prison. Watch this and try not to weep
June 13th, 2013 19:38
E-cigarettes will never catch on because they just aren't sexy
June 13th, 2013 13:44 | <urn:uuid:d0d73986-96fb-4648-9667-f42d929b6a1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100093477/obamas-policies-threaten-to-turn-afghanistan-in-to-vietnam-mark-ii/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960248 | 1,214 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Johannesburg - South Africa and Botswana need to work together and ensure successful implementation of decisions taken in the past, President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.
Welcoming Botswana's president Ian Khama at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Zuma highlighted the importance of ensuring the regular review of all bilateral agreements.
Zuma said both countries had worked hard to deal with various challenges of economic growth and development.
"We have normalised diplomatic relations after 1994," he said, naming amongst other achievements the establishment of a joint permanent commission for co-operation in 1993 and the signing of 19 bilateral agreements.
Other achievements registered were in the field of good governance, food security, water, education and health, he said.
"We are pleased with the growth and friendship, solidarity with neighbour leaders and mutually beneficial co-operation between our two countries."
Zuma said this had established a firm base. Special emphasis should be placed in enhancing trade and assisting each other in expanding business opportunities. This would lead to tourism and investment promotion.
Botswana was one of the homes for many freedom fighters who fled the brutality of the apartheid regime, Zuma recalled.
Both leaders were currently in a meeting and later in the afternoon will make their way to Freedom park where Khama is to lay a wreath with a silent guard of honour. | <urn:uuid:37c82308-486a-4eb2-a3a5-bf2ad456bca3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Khama-in-SA-to-strengthen-relations-20101005 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967768 | 276 | 1.914063 | 2 |
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If you feel pain while performing these stretching exercises, please stop and consult your doctor.
The easy exercises below can help relieve tension and soreness. Take a few minutes each day to do them right at your desk. They'll loosen up your muscles, keep you more alert, and make a big difference in how you work and feel.
With your hands in front of you, make gentle fists. Point your knuckles toward the floor and hold for a few seconds.
Straighten your fingers and point them down. Feel the stretch in your lower arms.
Slowly point your fingers up toward the ceiling. Hold for a few seconds.
Relax and gently shake your hands out.
Repeat all steps 3 times.
While standing or sitting, drop your arms to your sides.
Gently shake out your arms and hands for a few seconds. Relax. Repeat 3 times.
While sitting, slowly rotate one foot at the ankle, 3 times clockwise, then 3 times counterclockwise.
Rotate the other foot 3 times in each direction.
Relax and repeat 3 times with each foot.
This exercise can be done while standing on one foot. Make sure to support yourself for balance. | <urn:uuid:5f02034a-bf5e-42b2-9ee7-5e15481e1289> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.einstein.edu/einsteinhealthtopic/?articleid=85579&articletypeid=3&healthtopicid=-1&healthtopicname=healthsheets | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913025 | 272 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Verne Q. Powell was the kind of man who could melt his wife's silverware to make a flute—which he actually did in 1915. The professional flutist and self-taught flute maker, a native of Kansas, worked for the Wm. S. Haynes Company in Boston making wooden flutes and piccolos, but when his offer to buy the company was rejected, he created Verne Q. Powell Flutes, Inc. in 1927.
Since the company's founding, Powell flutes and piccolos have been known for their brilliant synthesis of innovation with traditional qualities. Advances in flute construction at Powell have included their patented Aurumite 14k alloy, introduction of the Cooper scale to their instruments, the Soloist and Venti headjoint styles, and more recently a pinless mechanism for the right hand, and the patented "Zinki" system for extruding flute holes.
Every innovation, however, is weighed against the question, "What will it do to the Powell sound?" A new idea is accepted only if it enhances the musical value of a Powell instrument.
Flute soloist Doriot Anthony Dwyer says, "There has always been a special sound to a Powell flute which I feel is ringing and true. It's a wonderful sound that can fill up a hall." That's a tribute to the care with which Powell instruments are made to assure their exacting tolerances—and more importantly their musical performance.
Powell Sonaré flutes, introduced in 2003, match a quality flute body with a hand cut Powell Signature headjoint to make it possible even for aspiring musicians to have a flute that plays exceptionally well.
Sonaré Winds also produce trumpets that deliver the Powell sound to musicians at an affordable price. The trumpets feature patent pending adjustable valve guides and a cryogenic treatment applied to the metal. Many top trumpet performers choose Sonaré trumpets for their outstanding value and performance.
In 1986 musician Steven Wasser purchased Powell Flutes. Under his leadership the Powell tradition of quality and innovation continues. By partnering with top instrument makers throughout the world, Powell is able to bring you high-value musical instruments of superior quality that let you concentrate on what you want to say with the music while they deliver flawless performance.
Student or beginning musicians have special areas of concern, and a musician who is just starting out has seriously compelling reasons to get the best possible instrument. As you are gaining mastery with an instrument, you are actually gaining comfort with numerous macro and micro movements of your hands, breath control, and other activities that are going to be new to you—and very awkward at first.
Woodwind & Brasswind is proud to offer high-quality Verne Q. Powell instruments for musicians from professional to beginner. Powell products for musicians are backed by The Woodwind & Brasswind's 110% Price Guarantee, assuring that you won't find quality Powell and Sonaré instruments at a lower price anywhere else. | <urn:uuid:ebf541cf-2f69-4392-81f3-eccae08c3b29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwbw.com/Powell,On-Sale.wwbw?ipp=12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962236 | 615 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Ginger-provides antiseptic, lymph-cleansing, circulation-stimulating, and mild constipation relief qualities along with a potent perspiration-inducing action that is quite effective in cleansing the system of toxins, which will help keep illness at bay. Ginger is also anti-inflammatory,
Dark, leafy greens like kale and broccoli rabe are seasonal and contain bitter properties that aid in digestion as well as phyto-nutrients necessary for the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to fight off sickness.
Legumes- in the form of beans: Black, adzuki, chickpeas for good quality plant-based protein-good for health and the planet. Soy is an option-but please, organic only. Conventionally grown soy is pretty much grown from genetically modified** seeds as of now. Fermented forms are best in tempe and miso. Tofu is not fermented. Conventionally grown soy has been genetically modified (**ie-its genes have been tampered with to get higher yield and be protected against herbicide damage when the soil it is grown in is sprayed.)
Antibiotic-free, wild fish like salmon, cod, mackerel for their Omega 3 EFA’s. I do not recommend eating tuna, swordfish or shark as these cold water, high fat fish contain higher levels of mercury than salmon and cod as well as the lighter white fish and are becoming endangered from over-fishing by large-scale fishing operations.
Medicinal Mushrooms~Immuno-stimulatory, adaptogenic, antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-allergic, anti-oxidant, and cyto-toxic
Some of the more popular mushrooms...
Reishi (Ganoderma ´lucidum)
Traditionally used to increase vitality and to stimulate the immune system, Reishi has also been used to alleviate asthma and other allergic symptons and to support liver function.
Shitake (Lentinula edodes) This gourmet edible is commonly used medicinally. The main constituents of Shiitake are polysaccharides, but it also contains triterpenes and ergothioneine, Research indicates Shiitake is useful for fighting cancer, immune stimulation, cholesterol reduction and the treatment of HIV. Also a potent antioxidant.
Maitake (Grifola frondosa) a medicinal polypore that is also a delicious (my favorite!) edible being composed of a bracket of soft, over-lapping, fan-shaped fronds. It is best known for its anti-tumor and immune-stimulating properties due to its high levels of beta-glucans. Researchers have found Maitake to help regulate blood glucose levels, reduce cholesterol levels. It is also adaptogenic, assists the body with stress. Possesses strong antioxidant properties
Cordyceps (Cordyceps sinensis) Now favored by Olympic athletes and training enthusiasts to improve physical performance and endurance. Traditionally used to increase vitality, alertness, and virility.
Adaptogens - a class of medicinal herbs that nourish the adrenal glands, thereby improving the body’s resistance against stress. This is my favorite class of herbs because they address health at the deepest level (bone marrow and cells) and can nurture it back to an optimal level of vitality over time, if consumed in the proper amounts. Again, the medicinal mushrooms listed above fall into the Adaptogenic category of medicinal herbs.
Eleuthero root (Eleutherococcus senticosus) helps to reduce stress by improving adrenal function through nourishment of the
adrenal glands, enhances immunity and promotes vitality and strength. Increases energy, reduces fatigue
Not recommended for children.
Licorice-a traditional medicine for the endocrine system and liver. inhibits some viruses, including Herpes Simplex
helpful in bronchial problems such as bronchitis and coughs by bringing up mucus (expectorant) and soothing mucus membranes
safe for children in medicine and food. (Note: eating vast amounts of Licorice can raise blood pressure)
Reishi and other medicinal mushrooms contain adaptogenic properties that are safe for children atcorrect dosage.
Astragalus - a well-known deep immune tonic (used over the long term- a wonderful adaptogen).
And just a word or two to the wise…
Taking herbs as medicine should be a complement to a healthy lifestyle, which includes a diet containing whole foods and drink making up the bulk of your menu.
Eating highly acidic foods frequently (the key word is frequently) meats, alcohol, sweets, flour-based products, coffee, then using medicinal herbs in place of chemical drugs probably will not give you the results you’re looking for.
The lesson here is that there is no quick fix to health - there are ways to cover up and relieve symptoms, but only a healthy lifestyle increases the chance that you will live long and with vitality.
Health is a life long pursuit that is not achieved in a day, a week, or a month. It is a lifestyle that it seems, Mother Nature, is nudging us to discover, for our own good.
Let us each ultimately take responsibility for our own health and vitality – in body and in spirit! | <urn:uuid:0a3a8fb0-4223-4022-8a6b-29c9053a7a8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lilysgardenherbals.com/winterhealth_survival.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925289 | 1,099 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Two discoveries over the course of more than 40 years are now getting credit for revolutionizing the way scientists look at saving and creating life.
The Nobel Prize committee Monday awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine
to Britain's John Gurdon and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka for those discoveries in their work with cells, often called the building blocks of life.
First Gurdon and then Yamanaka showed that mature, specialized cells could be reprogrammed, causing them to revert to an immature, embryonic state and then turned into a different type of specialized cell.
The implications are enormous, allowing researchers to work on technology that could one day allow doctors to fight disease by regrowing tissue in damaged brains, hearts or other organs.
"This year's Nobel Prize awards a discovery that has changed the way we understand how cells in the body become specialized," said Thomas Perlmann, Professor of Molecular Development Biology of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. "It has provided entirely new tools for effective development of drugs and new therapies."
Until recently, many scientists thought the only viable way to do this was to use embryonic human stem cells, which involved the destruction of a human embryo. The discoveries also set the stage for work on advanced cloning techniques and other technologies involved in creating life itself.
"This brings me great joy, but at the same time I feel a great sense of responsibility," said Yamanaka, now at Japan's Kyoto University. "Stem cell research is still a very new field.''
Gurdon's work in 1962 was the first, critical step in demonstrating the process of cell specialization was not set in stone, as long thought.
Using frogs, Gurdon took the immature nucleus out of an egg cell and replaced it with the nucleus from a cell taken from a frog's intestine. Despite the switch, the modified egg cell still developed into a normal tadpole.
The discovery showed that even mature, specialized cells had all the information required to change, first into stem cells and then into numerous different types of cells.
At the time, not even Gurdon, now at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge in Britain, realized how important the discovery would be.
"This work I was involved in had no obvious therapeutic benefit at all," he said. "It was kind of purely a scientific question: Do all our cells have the same genes? There was no prospect of that being useful to people."
It was a theoretical breakthrough, but just what exactly allowed specialized cells to transform remained a mystery.
Unlocking the key
The question lingered for more than 40 years. Then, in 2006, Shinya Yamanaka uncovered the mechanism, tracing the transformation to four specific genes.
Yamanaka took skin cells from adult mice and found by simply introducing a combination of four genes, he and his colleagues could essentially turn back time, transforming a mature, adult skin cell into a stem cell like state.
"The reality is that both medicine and drug research has such great potential," he said. "We have not even really begun to explore all the possibilities in medical and pharmaceutical development." | <urn:uuid:ac9ef811-caeb-4239-b665-c9872f7d71f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/content/medicine_prize_kicks_off_nobel_week/1522300.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965047 | 637 | 3 | 3 |