text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1
value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1
value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dr. Mary Ann Allison presents "Gecyberschaft: Understanding Virtual Community as a Complete Shift in Society" for Microsoft Research.
Dr. Eric Allison talks with Chris McCarus of MichiganNow.org outside the Detroit Historical Museum about Historic Preservation and "New Yorker’s Lessons For Detroiters".
Research and teaching—in business, government, and academia—are fundamental to the Allison Group’s purpose.
Dr. Mary Ann Allison’s research interests and presentation topics include:
Mary Ann provides practical roadmaps to help everyone make better decisions for our children,in our businesses, schools, and government agencies, and—not least—in our individual lives.
Dr. Eric Allison’s research interests and keynote topics include:
Eric is passionate about grounding our fast-moving society by protecting our common heritage.
Information about and examples of our work
Community Revitalization in New Cassel, New York
At the turn of the 21st century, New Cassel suffered from the effects of race, gender, and class segregation and discrimination; a lack of affordable housing; no downtown center; environmental contamination; overcrowded housing; and community despair and discord.
In 2002, after four years of community outreach, education, and organization led by Sustainable Long Island (link) and UNCCRC,* more than 800 community residents and stakeholders developed a comprehensive Vision Plan describing their hopes for New Cassel during a facilitated community participation process.
* UNCCRC—the Unified New Cassel Community Revitalization Corporation—acts on behalf of the community in this renewal process.
Formally adopted by the Town of North Hempstead in 2003, this plan has helped a committed multilevel government partnership raise more than $120 million in public and private funding and guides the ongoing renewal work.
This research was conducted under the auspices of The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University® (NCSS). NCSS is a non-partisan research institution dedicated to promoting objective, academically rigorous study of suburbia's problems, as well as its promise. Mary Ann Allison was the Principal Investigator. Partial funding has been provided by Sustainable Long Island, The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University®, and The School of Communication at Hofstra University.
Eric Allison's most recent book covers such issues as:
Historic Preservation and the Livable City offers compelling evidence that cities, towns, and rural environments that implement historic preservation actually compete at a higher level economically and are more sustainable. They are more attractive to both prospective and current residents as well as visitors. In a world where cities must attract visitors and residents, historic preservation is an important and often overlooked tool.
Social Change and Virtual Communities
Dr. Mary Ann Allison's doctoral thesis Gecyberschaft: A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Emerging Electronic Communities - won the Harold A. Innis Award for Outstanding Dissertation in the Field of Media Ecology.read a 2 page abstract of Dr. Allison's thesis
Practical, warm, and down-to-earth, Mary Ann Allison is an expert at using stories to help a wide range of audiences to bridge the gaps that rapid change brings.
Mary Ann Allison coauthored The Complexity Advantage: How the Science of Complexity Can Help Your Business Achieve Peak Performance, one of the first books to make practical use of the concepts arising in complex systems theory. The Wall Street Journal described it by saying: “Anyone who grasps the concepts in The Complexity Advantage will have the power to change a business in startling ways. ...These are big ideas. I strongly suspect that the insights of complexity science will blaze a bright new trail for business. And there is no better place to start than here.”
Dr. Allison speaks with organizations about how to apply complex systems theory in a practical way. | <urn:uuid:f22478ca-c7f4-4926-b5a1-6c471816efc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allisongroup.com/2010/manilla/research.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916767 | 787 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Background: Although abnormal screening mammograms deleteriously affect the psychological well-being of women during the time immediately surrounding the tests, their long-term effects are poorly understood.
Purpose: To characterize the long-term effects of false-positive screening mammograms on the behavior and well-being of women 40 years of age or older.
Data Sources: English-language studies from the MEDLINE, Web of Science, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ERIC databases through August 2006.
Study Selection: Studies were identified that examined the effects of false-positive results of routine screening mammography on women's behavior, well-being, or beliefs.
Data Extraction: Two investigators independently coded study characteristics, quality, and effect sizes.
Data Synthesis: 23 eligible studies (n = 313 967) were identified. A random-effects meta-analysis showed that U.S. women who received false-positive results on screening mammography were more likely to return for routine screening than those who received normal results (risk ratio, 1.07 [95% CI, 1.02 to 1.12]). The effect was not statistically significant among European women (risk ratio, 0.97 [CI, 0.93 to 1.01]), and Canadian women were less likely to return for routine screening because of false-positive results (risk ratio, 0.63 [CI, 0.50 to 0.80]). Women who received false-positive results conducted more frequent breast self-examinations and had higher, but not apparently pathologically elevated, levels of distress and anxiety and thought more about breast cancer than did those with normal results.
Limitations: Correlational study designs, a small number of studies, a lack of clinical validation for many measures, and possible heterogeneity.
Conclusions: Some women with false-positive results on mammography may have differences in whether they return for mammography, occurrence of breast self-examinations, and levels of anxiety compared with women with normal results. Future research should examine how false-positive results on mammography affect other outcomes, such as trust and health care use. | <urn:uuid:dc173ba2-7a9f-44a6-ae4d-d1322e4da204> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=733934 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951827 | 440 | 1.960938 | 2 |
The diabetic carb-kidney connection
A low-carb diet won't just help diabetics lose weight, seize control of their blood sugar and lower the risk of heart problems--it can also turn back the clock and undo some of the disease's deadliest damage.
And now, a study on mice shows how a modified version of the diet can actually reverse kidney failure--and if it works in humans, it may even eliminate the need for dialysis.
Researchers induced kidney failure in mice with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, then put half on an extreme version of the low-carb diet. These mice got up to 87 percent of their calories from fat, with most of the rest from protein and very little from carbs.
The other half was put on a more typical high-carb diet--much like the human diabetics who've been gobbling down carbs based on deadly advice from the American Diabetes Association. (Read this for more on why you should ignore everything you hear from the ADA.)
After eight weeks, the mice on the extreme low-carb diet were like new rodents-- at least on the inside: Their kidneys had actually repaired themselves, especially in those that had type 1 diabetes.
If this works in humans, researchers say it could actually cure diabetic kidney failure in as little as a month, according to the study in PLoS ONE.
Just one note here: The diet was so high in fat and so low in protein that it's extreme even by the most die-hard low-carb standards. It actually mimics the effects of starvation, and should only be used for a limited period--and only under the close supervision of a doctor.
And if you're not suffering from kidney problems yet, do yourself a favor and get back on track now with a more traditional low-carb diet along with some regular movement--even a simple daily walk through the park.
Many diabetics who surrender sugar, flour, and the rest of the carbs and start moving again find they need fewer and fewer meds to keep the disease under control--and some reach the point where they no longer need insulin or even the dangerous diabetes drugs that come with as many risks as the disease itself.
Just don't forget the bad habits that brought the disease in the first place--and make sure you don't let them creep back in.
About the author
Edward Martin writes House Calls, a daily letter chronicling the most cutting-edge alternative methods for beating diabetes and cancer, to the latest FDA foul-ups and Big Pharma conspiracies.
You can sign up here. | <urn:uuid:0f86f8f3-70fc-45de-a21b-2636860a3b18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthiertalk.com/diabetic-carb-kidney-connection-4003 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954111 | 527 | 2.6875 | 3 |
“It’s not baby-sitting when Daddy does it.”
It’s been seven years, but I’ve never forgotten those words. My neighbor across the street was heading out for work, tall, well-dressed and ready. Her child, a few years older than mine, had just wailed, “But I don’t want Daddy to baby-sit!” She squashed that plaint like a bug, and five minutes later (I was pushing my son on the swing in their front yard) I saw her car head down the driveway.
It’s not baby-sitting when Daddy does it. Who wouldn’t agree with that? The U.S. Census Bureau, apparently. When both parents are present in the household, the Census Bureau assumes for the purposes of its “Who’s Minding the Kids?” report, that the mother is the “designated parent.” And when the designated parent is working or at school, the bureau would like to know who’s providing child care.
If the answer is Daddy, as it was 26 percent of the time when these numbers were last released, in 2005, and 32 percent of the time in 2010, the Census Bureau calls that “care.” But if Mom is caring for a child while Dad’s at work, that’s not a “child care arrangement,” but something else. Parenting, presumably.
“Regardless of how much families have changed over the last 50 years women are still primarily responsible for work in the home,” said Lynda Laughlin of the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. “We try to look at child care as more of a form of work support.” A mother, said Ms. Laughlin, is “not only caring for the child only while Dad works. She’s probably caring for the child 24 hours and so Dad is able to go to work regardless.”
That bears repeating. If, every morning, I go off to work and my husband stays home with a child, that’s a “child care arrangement” in the eyes of this governmental institution. If the reverse is true, it’s not. I asked Ms. Laughlin if the Census Bureau collected data on the hours mothers spend offering “work support” to their husbands. “No,” she said. “We don’t report it in that direction.”
Ms. Laughlin assured me that the Census Bureau is just trying to collect accurate data on how “designated parents” arrange care for their children while they’re at school or at work based on “gender norms.” Yes, as Sara Mead notes on the Education Week Policy Notebook blog, it’s important to track changes and trends in who is caring for children while their parents work. But fathers (apparently this needs to be spelled out) are parents too. Work support goes both ways, and if parents are going to work, parents – of both sexes — need support.
That support (unless you’re a dad who’s free to go to work “regardless,” of course) can be hard to come by. Families living with poverty are spending a greater proportion of their income on child care than families with incomes above the poverty line: 40 percent compared with 7 percent. That’s an ugly statistic, and one that — with 31 percent of poor households headed by single women — reflects the same political and societal assumption about whose job it is to provide “care” for children in a different way. Mothers — just call us “designated parents” — are on the hook every time. | <urn:uuid:f37e6197-e9f9-4101-b801-bb19d8cd89a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/the-census-bureau-counts-fathers-as-child-care/?src=mv&ref=style | 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 | 0.969342 | 799 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Sam Collins reviews
Fire in Babylon
By Stevan Riley
“WE DIDN’T go out to hit people. But people got hit.” Cricket has known plenty of good teams but the West Indian sides of the late 1970s and 1980s still make people shudder.
Fire in Babylon is a marvellous, rhythmic, thumping throwback to that era, when batsmen were unarmoured and bowlers did their best to knock their unhelmeted heads off. No one tried harder than a generation of West Indian quicks newly focused by independence and civil rights and galvanised by Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards. Stevan Riley’s film charts the rise of West Indies from ‘Calypso Collapso’ to ‘Blackwash’ and a decade-and-a-half of dominance.
West Indies begin the film as soft-touches, entertainers humiliated in Australia in 1975 by the aggression of Thomson and Lillee. Lloyd vows never again, and begins building his own “bowling machinery” to “obliterate, rub into the ground and decimate” the opposition. While we know what happened next, Riley’s success is setting the rise of that team against the political upheaval of the time to create a film that is uplifting, inspiring, funny and, given West Indies’ current state, poignant.
Fire in Babylon projects a side with motives beyond winning games of cricket. They are fighting a war against a history of colonial oppression, with Richards’ bat as their sword, and the ball as a bullet. Richards is interviewed alongside Michael Holding, Gordon Greenidge & Co, and speaks with a compelling and renewed passion to justify the film’s comparison with Bob Marley. Thirty years later it still matters as much as Fire in Babylon’s religious connotations suggest.
There are omissions – Frank Worrell (West Indies’ first black captain), Garfield Sobers, Wes Hall and others from West Indies’ past barely warrant a mention, while time constrictions necessitate that the film motors through a turbulent period that included Kerry Packer’s World Series and the rebel tours to South Africa. There is no mention of West Indies’ 1980 tour to England, while it suits the narrative for scenes of the 1984 ‘Blackwash’ to concentrate on the ‘slaves whipping the masters’ rather than the reality of a poor England side.
But Riley is more storyteller than a stickler for cricketing detail, and in Fire in Babylon he rips a great yarn that will appeal to more than just cricket-lovers. His film is a visual thrill – archive footage and colourful graphics are juxtaposed with moody black-and-white photographs and bound by a reggae soundtrack that keeps the film moving at a Holding-esque pace. Of the many talking heads, the lighter contributions of Bunny Wailer and other Caribbean performers complement the ex-players though none can match Andy Roberts for comic one-liners.
At times the bouncers pack as much comic punch as the words, because at the time the rest of world didn’t see the joke. Now, when genuine quicks are rare beasts, it is pure nostalgia. Rarely can brutality have been so appealing as Holding’s run-up in slow-mo.
Fire in Babylon is a very good documentary but above all it is the story of what makes a great sports team: leadership and talent underpinned by a common cause.
Sam Collins is a former web editor of The Wisden Cricketer and one half of video bloggers The Chuck Fleetwood-Smiths, who will appear on Cricinfo.com this summer | <urn:uuid:f6f41bb8-70cb-4a31-aac8-4e21507bba2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.thecricketer.com/?p=26516&WLPageID=1441 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945971 | 770 | 1.539063 | 2 |
IN THE COMMENTS: Some of you think that the cross in this context should be understood as representing health care and not Christianity at all. (Sea Urchin said: "Well, it is a square cross, which I associate first with the picture on my first aid kit.") I hope that if you think that, you also agree — and many don't — with what Justice Scalia said at oral argument in Salazar v. Buono, the case about the cross that the Veterans of Foreign Wars built in the Mojave National Preserve, which is supposed to honor the soldiers who died in WWI:
"It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead... What would you have them erect?...Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"
Peter Eliasberg, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer arguing the case, explained that the cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity and commonly used at Christian grave sites, not that the devoutly Catholic Scalia needed to be told that.
"I have been in Jewish cemeteries," Eliasberg continued. "There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew."
There was mild laughter in the packed courtroom, but not from Scalia.
"I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion," Scalia said, clearly irritated by the exchange.
IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:
There's a theory that the symbol of the red cross was painted on the baseboards of corridors in the great palaces and castles of England during the middle ages and Renaissance to deter people from urinating in those places, a common problem in those times. It was supposed that a person would not want to micturate upon the symbols of Albion and of his saviour Christ. These effluence-protected spots thereby became associated with cleanness, which led to the later use of the cross to connote sanitation and hygiene. This association eventually led to the use of the red cross as a symbol for medical practitioners, once the connection between hygiene and disease prevention was made, that is. | <urn:uuid:eb126dda-2426-4a1c-882c-834284f31d8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/03/resurrection-nyt-runs-obama-cross-photo.html?showComment=1268681852271 | 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 | 0.978945 | 461 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Spain's average yield for its 10-year bonds reached 7% over concerns about its debt load and banking sector.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Spain just can't catch a break. The yield on the 10-year bond topped 7% early Thursday, just one day after Spain's credit rating was slashed by Moody's.
The 10-year yield rose as high as 7.017%, according to Tradeweb. That's the highest level for Spain's 10-year since the euro was created in 1999.
For most of the day, the yield remained close to the 7% mark that has typically been the first warning sign that a bailout may be needed.
Portugal, Ireland and Greece moved much higher before that happened but it still unsettles investors. Of course, Italy's 10-year yield breached 7% back in January but has since backed off that level to hover around 6.2%.
Italy auctioned € 3 billion 3-year bonds at an average yield of 5.3% -- significantly higher than the prior 3-year auction, which yielded 3.91%.
Italy also auctioned € 873 million of 10-year bonds at 6.13%, and €627 million of 15-year bonds at 6.1%. Both were well above the 5.3% and 5.2% yields seen at last month's debt sales.
Still, Spain has taken center stage in Europe's ongoing debt crisis. Late Wednesday, rating agency Moody's downgraded Spain by three notches to just above junk status, citing concerns about debt load and access to financial markets.
Spain's request for a bailout for its banking sector has undermined the credibility of its government debt, helping drive up bond yields, said Joseph Tatusko, analyst and chief investment officer for Westport Resources in Connecticut.
Last week, Spain asked for €100 billion from the European Union to provide a buffer for its ailing banks.
Earlier this week, Fitch downgraded the credit rating of 18 Spanish banks, citing the weak economy and the banks' exposure to bad real estate loans. That came one day after the agency cut its rating on the nation's two largest banks, Santander ( ) and BBVA ( ). And last week, Fitch cut its rating on Spanish government debt to one step above junk status.
All eyes will be turned to Greece this weekend, which is having a do-over election after failing to forma coalition government last month. If the election fails to yield a clear winner, it will likely heighten worries about a "Grexit."
European and Asian markets were under pressure Thursday. European markets closed mostly lower. London's FTSE 100 () fell 0.3% and the DAX ( ) in Frankfurt slipped 0.2%, while the CAC 40 ( ) in Paris managed to eke out a gain of 0.1%.
Meanwhile, the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong closed down 1.2%, while the Nikkei ( ) slid 0.2%. The Shanghai Composite ( ) shed 1%.
U.S. stocks rose, with the Dow Jones industrial average ( ), S&P 500 ( ) and Nasdaq ( ) all trading between 0.6% and 1%.
|Insanely durable smartphone ... from Caterpillar?|
|This country needs another financial crisis|
|Stocks: Looking to Bernanke|
|U.K. can do more to boost economy: IMF|
|Sony shares surge on spin off talk|
|Overnight Avg Rate||Latest||Change||Last Week|
|30 yr fixed||3.65%||3.65%|
|15 yr fixed||2.80%||2.78%|
|30 yr refi||3.64%||3.63%|
|15 yr refi||2.79%||2.78%|
Today's featured rates: | <urn:uuid:b4fa9672-4e92-430a-9773-62f3ea851102> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/14/investing/bonds-spain-europe/index.htm?hpt=hp_bn1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93803 | 802 | 1.539063 | 2 |
It's safe to assume most of the people reading this work in or administer a Windows-centric desktop environment. I say "most" and not "all" because some enterprise desktops use other operating systems for various applications. I speak most specifically of Linux, which began as a server operating system but has made inroads with Linux desktop environments. Here are some of the things that Linux and some of its brethren, such as FreeBSD, offer enterprise desktops.
Linux desktop licensing costs and support
This is the most commonly cited advantage to using Linux, either as a desktop or as a server OS. Most distributions of Linux have no licensing fees; you can set up and use as many instances of the product as needed and pay nothing up front. It's a handy way to make a given system functional without spending money on a software license.
A Linux desktop distribution typically includes productivity software (OpenOffice or LibreOffice), a Web browser (Firefox or sometimes Google Chromium) and a number of other apps that should be familiar to most users.
However, using Linux in this fashion means you're entirely on your own with it. If something goes wrong, the creator of the distribution is under no obligation to help you. You can find help online via a support forum -- either one the distributor runs, or on a general support site like ServerFault -- but again, in the end you're on your own.
If you really need proper support for a Linux desktop environment, you can purchase it from the creator of the distribution or from a consultant or other qualified party.
The best Linux apps for compatibility
As hinted at above, the vast majority of the applications that run well on Linux are open source apps. It's best to obtain them through the application repository for whichever distribution is being used. Open source apps are widely used in enterprises, so depending on your existing software mix, you may find Linux apps that are a close match for what you already have.
Note, however, that very few closed-source, or commercial, applications are built for Linux. The majority of those are enterprise products meant for servers rather than Linux desktop systems (such as those from Oracle).
Linux's design has made it difficult for software vendors to consistently deploy applications, except by targeting specific distributions and revisions of the OS. A few mechanisms exist to run closed-source Windows apps on Linux -- such as Wine -- but no guarantees exist for app compatibility or performance.
Linux and hardware support
Linux and the variants of the Berkeley Standard Distribution of Unix (BSD) maintain drivers for a wide variety of hardware, including devices that no longer have manufacturer support.
Here's an example I encountered: A scanner for which no driver updates had been published for several years was recognized directly by Linux and made useful again. This sort of support is itself a crapshoot, since there's no guarantee that a given device will have support, that its support will be feature-complete or that it will be maintained in a timely fashion.
In the same way, a low-end desktop machine can be repurposed via Linux as a kiosk or as a remote terminal for a more robust cloud-hosted desktop.
Linux and BSD distributions are able to hook into enterprise infrastructures -- for instance, by authenticating against Active Directory -- so they can work where needed.
Note that any back-end compatibility that requires the presence of a specific client application may pose a problem. The biggest example of this is Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange. Outlook can only be run on Windows (or via Wine; see above) and requires its own licensing, so it might be easiest to use OWA for such a client.
Linux desktops and virtualization
Many Linux distributions can run in virtual containers, including Microsoft's Hyper-V, which has specific accommodations for Linux. In addition, some can serve as virtual containers on the desktop. This could allow a desktop user to run Linux as a host and Windows as a guest, with the reverse also being true. Along with multiboot scenarios, such capabilities mean that a given desktop system doesn't have to be devoted exclusively to Linux if the need arises. It can serve multiple duties as needed.
Desktop Linux is often pitched or conceived of as a substitute for Windows, but it might be best thought of as a companion or flanking offering. Its low initial cost makes it useful in situations where a given piece of hardware needs to be online and at least provisionally functional.
Linux also supports a range of applications that might already be in use in your organization. It's always worth experimenting with in a desktop setting, but only to the degree that it actually provides a cost-effective solution to a problem.
This was first published in February 2013 | <urn:uuid:a8e41673-6007-4272-9a04-390def3de30b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/tip/Assessing-the-pros-and-cons-of-Linux-desktop-environments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952021 | 966 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Community Development Division has been folded into Community Services Division.
With the help of members of the community, Carrollton has realized many successes in increasing community sustainability.
Community Development Block Grant
The City annually receives funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program to help fund activities designed to assist Carrollton residents of low- and moderate-income people.
Neighborhood Advisory Commission
The Neighborhood Advisory Commission, or NAC, advises the City Council on matters relating to the Community Development Block Grant Program. The Commission also receives Neighborhood Enhancement Matching Grant Program proposals from neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Enhancement Matching Grant Program
This grant program is aimed at providing assistance to neighborhood organizations on projects that improve the aesthetic appeal of the community. Matching grant amounts of up to $5,000 per neighborhood per year can be approved for projects that improve the public areas of a neighborhood.
Neighborhood Association Registration
Significant component of the community are neighborhoods and the various organizations that represent them. Through the registration process, neighborhoods become eligible to apply for a Neighborhood Enhancement Matching Grant and receive other assistance from the City.
Interested in starting a neighborhood organization? Does your organization wish to create a newsletter or Web site? Neighborhood resources can provide an abundance of information, ranging from how to start a neighborhood association to finance, crime watch to recruitment.
Neighborhood Oriented Targeted Infrastructure and Code Enforcement, or N.O.T.I.C.E., allows the City to place an emphasis on improving the infrastructure of the neighborhoods most in need by targeting resources for the designs and implementation of all necessary street, alley, sidewalk, water and sewer line projects in Carrollton's neighborhoods.
Minor Home Repair Program
The City of Carrollton’s Minor Home Repair Program is funded by the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). These funds are awarded to the City of Carrollton by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This program is designed to improve the sustainability of Carrollton and make the homes of those needing assistance safer and healthier.
City of Carrollton, 1945 E. Jackson Road, Carrollton, Texas 75006 | Tel: (972) 466-3000 | Site Map
The City of Carrollton, Texas is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Thank you for visiting the City of Carrollton, Texas website. | <urn:uuid:5bbbf961-8507-40b6-986e-d9e077260ae0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cityofcarrollton.com/index.aspx?page=223 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915728 | 497 | 1.570313 | 2 |
We often assume that severe congestion equals bad mobility. It's true that increasing congestion means that mobility is worse than it used to be, but often mobility in a highly-congested auto-oriented place is still better than transit-oriented alternatives.
Here's University of Chicago's Robert Bruegmann reacting to the complaints of gridlock-weary Angelinos:
- Even when speeds on the freeway decline to 20 mph, drivers throughout the Los Angeles area move more quickly than they do by car or public transportation at the center of almost any large, older city in Europe or the United States.
Clearly the problem is not that congestion is objectively worse in Los Angeles. It is that the highway builders of the 1950s and 1960s were so successful in building their way out of congestion that people became used to driving across the entire metropolitan area at a mile a minute and made choices about where they lived and worked based on that reality.
When it comes to automobile travel, Los Angeles, perhaps more than almost any other large city in the world, suffers from a deflation of greatly raised expectations. After all, the residents of Paris, New York or Tokyo never even entertained the possibility that they could drive through the center of the city at 60 mph.
Buegmann explains that as the anti-road mentality became more popular, LA decided to spend big on rail transit. And yet transit accounted for less than 2 percent of trips in the LA area in 2003, which is actually a smaller share than 20 years ago:
- Why has this happened? I suggest that it is because so many people are locked into unrealistic assumptions about the way transit worked in the past or could work in the future.
First of all, and contrary to much popular opinion, it is clear that L.A.'s highways were not intended to hurt the central city, as many have suggested, nor were they part of a devious plot to eliminate alternatives to cars.
And we shouldn't be so quick to use a city-vs.-suburbs framework. Economic growth in suburbia need not come at the expense of cities. Cities and suburbs can succeed together.
In fact, as Bruegmann points out in his new book, much urban gentrification took hold thanks to suburbanization. It's only after manufacturing companies moved out of the city that goateed hipsters could turn the vacated buildings into airy lofts.
Back to LA:
- The fact is that Los Angeles had a terrible traffic problem in the 1920s and '30s. Many downtown business owners felt that this congestion was threatening their very existence at a time when investment downtown had lagged and there was fierce competition from outlying centers such as the Miracle Mile or Hollywood.
Not surprisingly, downtown businessmen were highly enthusiastic about plans for a massive superhighway system to bring people downtown more efficiently. Starting in the 1940s, the Los Angeles area embarked on one of the most ambitious programs of highway building in American history.
This campaign was largely successful. Anyone who is old enough to have driven in L.A. or in most other U.S. cities in the 1960s or '70s can testify to the sense of liberation that accompanied the completion of the new roads. Suddenly it was possible, in a matter of minutes, to make trips that had previously taken hours. People in Santa Monica soon thought nothing of accepting dinner invitations in Pasadena. This increase in mobility meant greater choice in jobs, housing and recreational outlets. This, in turn, helped fuel an enormous amount of growth and prosperity in Southern California.
Entire LAT piece is here. | <urn:uuid:b0007965-cae3-4eab-a210-565527f31383> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/blog/show/would-angelinos-really-prefer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98003 | 734 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Taiwan should not follow the economic development model and direction of South Korea, though it should learn from the South Korea experience the benefits of increased government efficiency, Taiwan Institute for Economic Research vice president Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday.
South Korea has concentrated its resources on a few enterprises. However, the achievements of these enterprises do not contribute to South Korea’s overall economic growth, nor do they reflect the nation’s competitiveness, Kung said at a symposium.
The model, although successful in creating the “Samsung empire,” does not benefit small-to--medium sized enterprises, and the benefits are not distributed to the middle and lower classes, Kung said in his presentation on the comparison of economic and development policies in Taiwan and South Korea.
The South Korean government’s policy of pursuing national wealth, while remaining indifferent to public welfare, does not fit Taiwan, he said.
The role that the South Korean government plays in the economy is to “concentrate” and “distribute” resources, while the Taiwanese government focuses more on “integration” and “guidance,” Kung said.
However, Taiwan should try to emulate the South Korean government’s efficiency and determination, as well as its positive attitude toward boosting the competitiveness of South Korean industrial supply chains by developing new techniques and increasing their foothold in emerging markets, he said.
In the future, Taiwan should shift its focus to encouraging innovation in local industries and strengthening human resources, while dealing with competition and cooperation issues between Taiwan and China under a global framework, he added. | <urn:uuid:3efc1f2b-129a-455c-8865-03e2a37ba1ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2012/06/11/2003535016 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947105 | 338 | 2 | 2 |
Courtesy of PurellKate Sullivan, Allure magazine
They are prolific, disgusting, and phobia-inducing-yet they are also immunity builders. Below, some facts that will make you want to wash your hands immediately.
36 B.C.: Year Italian scholar Marcus Terentius Varro published a theory that swamps may breed illness because of "minute creatures that cannot be seen by the eyes."
See more: Top 21 Drugstore Beauty Bargains
590: Year Pope Gregory I invented a post-sneeze prayer-"God bless you"-as sneezing was considered an early sign of the plague.
3: Number of times a day Henry VIII of England ordered that the walls and floors of his son Edward's rooms be washed to prevent illness. Edward died, likely of tuberculosis, at age 15.
18: Percentage of women who died in childbirth at a Viennese hospital in the seventeenth century. When Ignaz Semmelweis, an obstetrician there, made doctors wash their hands with chlorinated limewater before examining pregnant women, the mortality rate dropped to 1.5 percent.
51: Approximate number of people Mary Mallon, a.k.a. Typhoid Mary, infected with the disease during her career as a private cook. Three of those people died.
See more: The 10 Commandments of Mascara
1914: Year Listerine was first sold as an over-the-counter mouthwash to cure bad breath. It had originally been used as a surgical antiseptic, then as a floor cleaner and a potential cure for gonorrhea.
1932: Year actress Jean Harlow reportedly said of producer Howard Hughes, "One day he was eating a cookie and offered me a bite. Don't underestimate that. The poor guy's so frightened of germs, it could darn near be a proposal."
2.2 million: Approximate number of Americans who have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder; the illness often manifests itself as extreme cleanliness.
1976: Year John Travolta starred in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, about a teenager born with SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency).
See more: The 6 Most Flattering Haircuts for Round Faces
59: Episode of Seinfeld in which George Costanza was chastised for double-dipping a chip.
100: Miles per hour a sneeze supposedly projects mucus, according to popular belief.
35 and 39: Miles per hour that the sneezes of MythBusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman traveled.
67: Percentage of makeup testers contaminated with staph, strep, or E. coli on the average midweek day, according to a 2005 study.
100: Percentage that were contaminated on a Saturday, when traffic is highest at a makeup counter.
2: Percentage of contact-lens wearers who used them safely, as reported by Optometry and Vision Science in 2011. Among many violations were showering with contacts in and exposing them to unsterile water.
10 to 15: Seconds after using hand sanitizer that hands should still be wet. Otherwise, the sanitizer is insufficient, according to the CDC.
1,600: Approximate number of germs on each key at an outdoor ATM, according to a Chinese study.See more from Allure:
The 12 Best Eye Creams
10 Hairstyles That Make You Look 10 Years Younger
The Most Flattering Makeup Colors for Brown Eyes
The 10 Most Gorgeous Hair-Color Ideas for Brunettes | <urn:uuid:bfe18c1e-a18c-4ed2-b8b8-6cb9440849e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/healthy-living/germs-history-203500974.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952743 | 740 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Painters are not cameras. But if what you're striving for is realism, what is so different between an illustrator an a camera? This video discusses the painter's ability to manipulate reality for the sake of composition. The example shown in this video is a photograph, but it shows a step by step thought process that mirrors those I use while painting, and can be applied to any subject matter. Also, make sure to check out the Principles of Design videos - because they will help guide you in this process. | <urn:uuid:d9d0712b-6955-46c6-9b89-c9102ca4eef4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ctrlpaint.com/videos/visual-simplification | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92436 | 103 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Bones of Contention
Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan
Publication Year: 2012
Pet mortuary rites are emblems of the ongoing changes in contemporary Japanese religions. The increase in single and nuclear-family households, marriage delays for both males and females, the falling birthrate and graying of society, the occult boom of the 1980s, the pet boom of the 1990s, the anti-religious backlash in the wake of the 1995 Aum Shinrikyō incident—all of these and more have contributed to Japan’s contested history of pet mortuary rites. Ambros uses this history to shed light on important questions such as: Who (or what) counts as a family member? What kinds of practices should the state recognize as religious and thus protect financially and legally? Is it frivolous or selfish to keep, pamper, or love an animal? Should humans and pets be buried together? How do people reconcile the deeply personal grief that follows the loss of a pet and how do they imagine the afterlife of pets? And ultimately, what is the status of animals in Japan? Bones of Contention is a book about how Japanese people feel and think about pets and other kinds of animals and, in turn, what pets and their people have to tell us about life and death in Japan today.
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Cover, Title, Copyright
List of Illustrations
Download PDF (73.8 KB)
Download PDF (96.0 KB)
I would like to acknowledge my colleagues, students, friends, and family who have assisted me in the completion of this book. First and foremost, I need to thank all my informants who shared their experiences with me. Without their stories and gracious cooperation this book would not have been possible...
Download PDF (1.2 MB)
Late in the rainy season, on July 12, 2007, the main hall of Kōsaiji, an Ōbaku Zen temple in eastern Tokyo, is overflowing with visitors. Temple patrons have come to attend the yearly segakie, a Buddhist ceremony commonly performed during the obon season to feed the hungry ghosts. Elderly couples, middle-aged women, and young...
1. Order, Karma, and Kinship: Animals in Japanese History and Culture
Download PDF (421.1 KB)
The Nihon shoki (720), one of the earliest extant written records of Japanese history, contains a myth that explains the divine origins of agriculture, sericulture, and animal husbandry. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, dispatches her brother, the moon god Tsukiyomi, to call on the goddess Ukemochi. Ukemochi faces the land...
2. Masking Commodification and Sacralizing Consumption: The Emergence of Animal Memorial Rites
Download PDF (5.5 MB)
Mr. Watanabe manages Jindaiji Dōbutsu Reien Sekai Dōbutsu Tomo no Kai, the pet cemetery of the World Association of Animal Lovers on the grounds of Jindaiji (Tendai temple, Chōfu, Tokyo). He is also the owner of Suijin’en, a stylish Japanese gourmet restaurant at the foot of the temple. Every year in the...
3. Pets, Death, and Taxes: The Legal Boundaries of Religion
Download PDF (5.7 MB)
On June 17, 2007, I visited Jimyōin, a Tendai temple in Kasugai City in the hilly suburbs north of Nagoya, to attend the monthly memorial service for pets. After the service, the taxi driver who took me back to the nearest train station criticized pet memorial services at temples such as Jimyōin: such rituals served as...
4. Embodying Hybridity: The Necrogeography of Pet Memorial Spaces
Download PDF (2.6 MB)
Ms. N., who is middle-aged and unmarried, lives in Tokyo. In 2006, when her parents passed away in short succession, they were interred at a Buddhist temple. Her father’s cremains filled the last space in the family grave. Ms. N. began to ponder her options for her own future interment. Eventually, the family would...
5. Vengeful Spirits or Loving Spiritual Companions? Changing Views of Pet Spirits
Download PDF (4.5 MB)
Early in the afternoon on Sunday, July 15, 2007, the small main hall of Jikei’in, a Rinzai temple in Fuchū, western Tokyo, with one of the largest and busiest pet cemeteries in the metropolitan area, is crowded with sixty people — mostly middle-aged women and a few young women and elderly men (figure 19). Despite the...
Download PDF (2.5 MB)
Each year on April 8, the Maintenance Association of the Bronze Statue of Loyal Hachikō (Chūken Hachikō Dōzō Ijikai) sponsors the Hachikō Spirit Propitiation Festival (Hachikō Ireisai) to commemorate the spirit of Hachikō (1923–1935), a dog of the Akita breed. Hachikō had gained the admiration of the Japanese public by waiting daily...
Download PDF (430.5 KB)
Download PDF (282.1 KB)
Download PDF (217.9 KB)
Download PDF (301.7 KB)
Publication Year: 2012 | <urn:uuid:9b89e7f9-954e-47cf-95e5-4da6b9277eb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780824837204 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905677 | 1,139 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Hi euroclydon –
First of all, I wanted to say that it is very clear that you are a really smart guy, a meticulous researcher, and a poster who puts a lot of thought into his words.
I’m writing right now because in spite of your clear intelligence, research, and meticulous posts, you really seem to be failing to effectively communicate your arguments in a way that most people in the forum can readily understand. And I’m sensing frustration on both sides of the conversation.
I bring this up because I have several friends and acquaintances with varying degrees of Asperger's Syndrome, as well as one beloved family member. All of them are really smart, amazing people, who engage in passionate, meticulous research, and who sometimes (often) fail to communicate the issues that are most important to them, to the general public.
I could be way off here, and please forgive me if I am, but based on what I’ve seen of some of your posts, I’m wondering if you’ve ever considered the possibility that you might be somewhere on the Asperger spectrum. If you’ve never considered this before, please don’t dismiss me completely until you’ve taken a look at some of the characteristics associated with Asperger's.
I pulled out a few here, that I thought you might find were not that far off. And there is a link to a more complete list below. Thinking and memory
- has excellent long-term memory for facts and routines; often have an excellent memory for dialogue
- might have difficulty with short-term memory
- is logical and detail-oriented; easily able to identify errors
- can focus on tasks intensely; persistent; difficulty leaving tasks unfinished Special interests
- are all-absorbing, narrow interests done to the exclusion of other activities, done with repetitive adherence, or done with more rote than meaning (as a child)
- often include a fascination with facts or numbers, science, or something related to transportation
- often involve a couple lifelong primary special interests; might include short-term, but very intense, secondary special interests; might acquire more primary interests over time so adults might have 4 or more
- are calming and reduce stress (as opposed to an obsession), but might give appearance of obsessive-compulsive disorder Social interactions
- seems content when left alone
- does not understand social cues and thus might act inappropriately, appearing rude, uncaring, and tactless
- might be able to function in one-to-one interactions but not with multiple people
- has strong sense of loyalty; very loyal to friends
- has strong sense of social justice; tends to defend others and causes
- achieves social success by intellectual analysis rather than intuition
- often has a sense of humor as an adult that is not frequently understood by others, often a very dry sense of humor
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_signs_or_symptoms_of_Aspergers_Syndrome#ixzz1xVD5G57B
If I'm way off target here, I apologize. But if not, there are some very specific actions that you might be interested in taking, that might help you learn to better frame the way that you present arguments, so that your intended audience better understands the information that you are presenting. | <urn:uuid:9bca3d65-86fd-48cd-8880-a751ba2bf393> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,22953.msg512919.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961755 | 703 | 1.5 | 2 |
World Give Day is an international holiday and we were so excited when the Riverside Chicks reached out to us from the U.K. to find out how they could take part in World Give Day. They wrote this awesome post and are helping spread the word about World Give Day across the pond. Big thanks to our British Buds!
The Riverside Chicks
We jumped at the chance of making a difference and participate. The smallest amount of giving can have such a huge impact. For example today, I went to the supermarket I saw a girl wearing a cute skirt. I gave her a compliment, she accepted with joy. This is how simple giving can be. By giving you enlighten others to give, hopefully the girl with the cute skirt will complement the next girl that crosses her path.
So if this is all it takes why do so many people refrain from giving? Ignore the homeless guy selling ‘The Big Issue’, look down when we are walking the streets, not speak to our colleagues we pass in the corridors? The 4th May is all about embracing giving! So come on people give a smile, give a compliment, give your time, or give to a charity. | <urn:uuid:21cc9220-c8ef-4fcd-90ff-d30186c98446> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldgiveday.wordpress.com/tag/world-give-day-in-britain/ | 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 | 0.966148 | 242 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Green claims that could be described as 'vague' include:
- "Environmentally" [add adjective], for example, "environmentally friendly"
- "Natural", "pure"
As well as these frequent claims, it’s pretty obscure to claim any of the following terms without any evidence as to why: eco, earth, enviro care, save environment, greener or plant-based. And claiming "chemical-free" sounds silly when even water is a chemical. Treat with caution any claims that are vague and don’t have supporting information.
Here are some more examples:
- "100% natural based actives".
- "We take our environment seriously".
More useful, specific claims might contain reliable information on how much of the product is made from renewable ingredients and evidence they’re harvested sustainably.
- "Up to 40% recycled plastic".
- "Where possible recycled paper is used".
Claims like this might sound great, but don’t guarantee any recycled content.
As for this one — "All manufacturing paper is reclaimed and recycled" — well it's great that the maker is reducing waste, but the paper is still only being used for the first time. At least this one’s specific enough for you to spot the truth: some products just claim 'recycled' without specifying the source. Making use of 'pre-consumer' offcuts from the manufacturing process is different from 'post-consumer' recycling, which finds new uses for used materials.
Even when a claim looks specific and accurate, it can still be confusing if it’s easy to get the wrong first impression. Consider:
- "30% recycled". Is that fabric softener really 30% recycled? With the green and gold logo, you could easily think so. But this only relates to the carton, not the product’s ingredients.
- "Reduces material waste, chemical waste, water or energy use". What is the amount saved? Compared to what?
In summary, don’t rely on vague claims. Businesses should clearly and accurately explain why their products are greener or more environmentally friendly than other similar products.
Claims that have no evidence easily available are committing a greenwash sin too. Such claims include:
- "No animal testing or ingredients".
- "Sustainable forestry".
Animal testing statements don’t have to be certified, and some give little or no detail of what they really mean. "Product not tested on animals" sounds helpful, but individual ingredients in the product might still have been tested on animals. And "not tested" doesn’t mean "no animal ingredients", so if that’s an issue for you, be sure to read the label thoroughly.
Sustainable is a big claim. It deserves information and detail about the reasons for the claim, otherwise it’s too vague. For a practice to be sustainable it has to be able to be sustained indefinitely. Doing well on one environmental impact doesn’t make a product sustainable. In fact, 'sustainable' claims don’t satisfy Australian Standard 14021 for environmental claims.
This claim is seen most often on paper products in relation to forestry management. For example: "Our fibre supplies are from plantations and sustainably managed forests that meet appropriate forestry codes" is one tissue pack’s claim. "Only uses suppliers who conform to high environmental standards" is another example.
Without specific information — evidence about what forestry codes and standards are met, or what "not tested on animals" really means — it’s hard to believe such claims.
Fibs and false impressions
These can include such statements as:
- "Certified environmental claim".
- "Good environmental management".
It’s illegal for a business to make a false representation about the standard, quality, value, composition or history of a product. Environmental claims should relate to real environmental benefits, and shouldn’t overstate them. For example, they mustn’t claim to be certified when they’re not.
In the TerraChoice study it was found that while fibbing wasn’t very common (1% of claims), false claims of certification were the most frequent fibs seen. This includes certification to out-of-date standards or made-up certification.
Woolworths has been under fire from unions and environmental groups for its claim of "sustainable forest fibre" on its Select range of paper products (napkins, toilet paper and kitchen towels).
This is a claim of exemplary environmental performance, and evidence available to the consumer is an official-looking logo and environmental management system (ISO14001) certification. Yet this particular certification is about ongoing improvements to the management process, rather than guaranteeing a high level of environmental performance or sustainable forestry.
Even after a thorough investigation, the ACCC could not form a concluded view about the Select claims. The remedy, to sticker over the claims and eventually remove them altogether, might be a belated win for honesty in marketing, but not the environment.
"Recyclable" and the triangle of arrows (Möbius loop) can be misleading if facilities don’t exist to do the recycling, or if the product simply isn’t recyclable. Plastics marked as recyclable with a '4' or higher in the middle of the arrows still aren’t recyclable in some areas because the facilities aren’t there.
Some products claim to be recyclable, but have so many different materials in them that they won’t be. One brand of razors would contaminate the recycling process if the paper inserts, foil decoration and moulded plastic stand were left inside the packet — an easy mistake to make. And a new laundry liquid bottle, although smaller, might be less recyclable than the old version because it’s now got three different types of plastic.
This can include claims that a product is:
- "Biodegradable" or "Degradable".
Green claims about single environmental issues might be technically correct, but can be a tradeoff for not telling the full or important bits of the story.
“Degradable” This term is seen on some plastic bags. There’s a difference between this, which means a product simply breaks into smaller pieces, and biodegradable, where living organisms can decompose it.
"Biodegradable" can be misleading if the product takes a very long time to biodegrade or requires quite specific conditions. What’s more, the claim may not be of any real benefit to the environment, if the breakdown process proves toxic.
Look for "readily biodegradable", but be aware that the Australian standard for surfactants (soap agents in cleaning products), AS4351, doesn’t require the entire product to degrade, just the soapy bit, which is only a small part of the product. Nor is the standard concerned about the safety of by-products when it does degrade (see Irrelevance below, for more on biodegradability of surfactant claims).
Lesser of two evils
Watch out for claims like this:
- "Reduces use or waste".
For a product implying it’s greener than some other products in some way, the basis for the comparison really should be explained. These claims can sometimes be talking about the lesser of two evils, when there’s a third, even greener option available.
For example: "Elemental chlorine free" (sometimes written as ECF) is seen on things like paper products and nappies. It’s better for the environment than regular chlorine bleaching, but it’s really the lesser of two evils, because chlorine is still involved. There are products on the market that claim instead to be "totally chlorine free" (written as TCF) or unbleached.
It would be easy for consumers to be swayed by irrelevant claims such as:
- and mentioning links with environmental causes.
There are plenty of green icons and official-looking logos that are made-up and irrelevant. There are also products that sponsor or make donations to environment-related causes like zoos and drought relief. Some of these connections can be weak, so don’t let them exploit your concern for the environment.
"Made from a renewable forest resource" Claims like this, which we found on toilet paper don’t help you decide which is the greenest toilet paper — all plants and trees are renewable. It'd also probably be too vague to meet the standard for environmental claims. Toilet paper was also rife with the indisputable but pointless claim of "biodegradable paper".
"CFC-free" CFCs were banned long ago for use in aerosol spray cans, so claiming "CFC-free" is irrelevant. Our investigation still found CFC-free or something similar written on most aerosol products. One company still wants kudos for stopping CFC use in 1976. We think it’d be more relevant to explain how they’re improving their environmental performance nowadays.
"Ozone friendly" The removal of CFCs as a propellant doesn’t mean the entire threat to the ozone layer has been removed, just reduced. Given this, common claims that a product is "ozone friendly", "ozone safe" and "it’s okay to spray" seem to us to be exaggerated.
We saw an "it’s okay to spray" logo a lot. On Mortein Energy Ball Fly Killer, it even appears next to a statement and logo saying the spray is very toxic to aquatic life.
"Biodegradable" All detergents have to meet the Australian standard for biodegradability, so the claim is irrelevant unless the product can demonstrate it goes beyond the requirements. (See Hidden tradeoffs, above, for more on this.)
Then there’s the downright silly: how important is it for "biodegradable carton" to be written three times on an air freshener packet, when the product itself could contain irritants, has many other components and uses electricity throughout its life? | <urn:uuid:90fb8230-28f6-4855-b03f-1550c4199e3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/food-and-health/labelling-and-advertising/sustainability/green-claims-on-supermarket-labels/page.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925479 | 2,138 | 2.71875 | 3 |
How do you stand up against a rule?
Become an activist - set up petitions on Downing Street/ march/demo/campaign - or - amalgamate them - become a councillor/politician and try and change it from the inside. I do both lol.
Raise your right arm at a 45 degree angle and stretch out your appendage. Source(s): Munich. Take the government to court.
by voting them out of office
Don't vote them in!
Keep yourself and your friends and own flesh and blood informed about political candidates governing philosophy, so as not to own as ignorant electorate as what put Barack Obama contained by the presidency. An informed vote is the strongest weapon you have (In a democracy)to prevent a corrupt candidate from coming to power. Source(s): Ignorance destroys! The information on respectively candidate is always in attendance to be ascertained BEFORE they are elected.
- What are the law and rules of putting a few tables/chairs surrounded by a butcher shop to trade?
- What is the christen of the letter-box entity prisoners find food from?
- If you own a flat within an apartment block are you subject to rules if you rent it out?
- Do you ponder we stipulation family similar to Sir Richard the Lionheart and Saladin to brand name peace surrounded by the world?
- Is it wrong to buy porn?
- Is south africa reception aid ? | <urn:uuid:2e2223b0-bef4-456c-96dc-3fef5df06ad1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uklawfaq.com/uklaw/law-3785.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935081 | 295 | 1.726563 | 2 |
With no end to the global funding retreat in sight, new strategies are required to change the way we provide treatment to the world's 33 million people infected with HIV.
On June 7-10, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) hosted a conference, Opportunities to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, to explore opportunities to significantly lower the costs of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Dose finding during drug development often maximizes tolerability but sometimes fails to explore minimally effective dosing. The earliest example of dose adjustment was AZT (zidovudine), which was initially tested at much higher doses (1500 mg daily compared with today's dose of 600 mg daily).1 Back in 1990, activists applied pressure to speed up the FDA's approval of AZT's use at the lower, safer, equally effective dose.2,3
With clinicians, pharmacologists, chemists, researchers, regulatory experts, and community advocates in attendance, discussions included reformulation, dosage optimization and manufacturing along with attendant issues of regulatory pathways and ethical considerations for optimized ARV regimens. If dose optimization and reformulations are proven to be safe, efficacious and significantly cheaper, many more people could be enrolled on first-line ART using existing funding flows -- in effect, more people on treatment for the same drug costs.
A significant step toward dose optimization is in motion with the Evaluation of Novel Concepts in Optimization of antiRetroviral Efficacy (ENCORE) study to evaluate reduced doses of efavirenz which is being conducted at the University of New South Wales, Australia. The study will be conducted through an international research network with sites in high-, middle- and low-income settings. Data are expected by mid-2013. If successful, this could set the stage for cheaper regimens, new fixed dose combinations and most importantly, more people on ART. | <urn:uuid:35f7a352-4a55-48b5-8840-bb266f029a0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebody.com/content/art58069.html?ts=pf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938633 | 389 | 2.28125 | 2 |
or bring their own reusable containers for
beverages. To potentially reduce the environmental impact of employees commuting, RSNA is investigating the feasibility
of installing a bike rack for employees who
wish to bicycle to work.
GREENING THE ANNUAL MEETING
RSNA’s weeklong annual meeting in
November, which drew a record 62,501
professionals and exhibitors in 2007,
provided more green opportunities. There
were bins for badge and lanyard recycling, and materials were printed on
recycled and/or recyclable, chlorine-free
paper with a soy-based ink. RSNA also
worked with the McCormick Place Convention Center and Chicago Restaurant
Partners to offer paper, aluminum and
plastic recycling; reduce light, power
and heating usage; donate leftover food
to a Chicago-area shelter; and use 100
percent compostable cups, flatware and
packaging for boxed lunches.
environmentally friendly practices before
the project was officially launched, but
also by continuing to suggest ideas as
the project moves along. Many employees engage in green practices at home
and want to extend those efforts into the
workplace, Lichtenberger says.
“Employees want to be part of something,” Lichtenberger says. “We want to
encourage our employees to keep suggesting new ideas.”
RSNA considers Going Green an
ongoing process, says Zawaski, rather
than working toward an imaginary point
when the organization has “become
“It is amazing to watch the green
movement evolve not only with RSNA, but
also on a local, national and global scale,”
he says. “The opportunities for organizations to show corporate responsibility just
Lynn Tefft Hoff is senior manager of member communications for RSNA. She may be reached at
COST IS A CHALLENGE
If there is anything that would rein in
RSNA’s ambitious green efforts, it would
be another type of green — the dollar.
While things like occupancy sensors
should eventually pay for themselves
through saved energy costs, Zawaski
says, the upfront cost isn’t inconsequential. “Doing the basics isn’t costly,” he
says. “It’s the larger commitments that
Lichtenberger noted that while
there’s a tendency to believe that helping the environment is not only right but
affordable, too, the reality is that items
like recycled paper and copier toner
often are more expensive than non-recy-cled. Fortunately, RSNA has not balked
at the higher price of doing green business, he says.
“RSNA takes pride in being on the
cutting edge as an association,” says
RSNA Executive Director Dave Fellers,
CAE. “When we pulled together our
entire 23-member executive staff team,
we found a great deal of interest in
coordinating the Going Green project.
It has been a very rewarding experience
for all of us.”
CHICAGO, YOU’RE OUR KIND OF TOWN.
SO WE’VE GIVEN YOU BIG NEW REASONS
TO ATTEND OUR ANNUAL MEETING.
We’ve tailored our big event to bring you only the very
best education. Presentations by the nation’s premier
thought leaders. A more focused learning experience.
More concepts and skills that will pay off immediately
back at the office. General sessions that will inspire
you to think bigger than ever. And plenty of time for
networking and visiting the Expo Hall.
Mark your calendar now to join us August 16-19 in
sunny (but relatively cool) San Diego. We promise
you our best event ever.
EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IS KEY
RSNA personnel have contributed to the
success of the society’s Going Green
movement not only by asking for more | <urn:uuid:16bf45db-81ab-45a4-97a4-bd95d6d23ade> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.associationforum-digital.com/associationforum/200804?pg=39 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910084 | 861 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Do you really want your life to work?
Do you want your life to work? Really, truly, deeply do you want your life to work? Do you really want your life to work or do you want to be right, dominate, have the world work to your wishes, your whims, your point of view? If you are honest then you’d be present to the latter – your focus on being right, validating yourself, dominating others, insisting that the world work according to your fantasies. How has that been working out? Has it brought you peace, freedom to be, self-expression, vitality, connection, love, joy? Are you up for, really up for, having peace, vitality, connection, love, joy present in your life? If so then this post is for you.
People matter – are central to the quality of our life, right?
Have you noticed that you are not alone? Have you noticed that the Earth (amongst other processes) ‘peoples’ and so wherever you are you there are people? People show up wherever you are, right? At home, at work, whilst your are walking, driving, shopping, eating, sleeping watching television…… Is it accurate that you cannot escape from people even when you are on a deserted island? Even on a deserted island, do people show up in your thoughts, do they show up in your feelings? People matter, our relationships with people matter, connection or the absence of it matters, friction-full or friction-free relationships matter to your living, our experience of life. Right?
What is the greatest gift you can grant another?
How do you build great relationships with people? What is the secret? The secret is to grant them a gift, the greatest gift that you can grant another. What is this gift?
1. Let people be. Let every person that shows up in your world be just as he is and just as he is not. What is the access to letting people be? Accept them (looks, clothes, voice, speaking, behaviour, history..) just as they are and just as they are not. Choose to be totally OK with them just as they are and just as they are not. If you let people be just as they are and just as they are not what is likely to show up in your world? Peace? Freedom? Ease?
Are you up for going further – putting more into life, making a bigger contribution and indirectly being granted much more than peace, freedom and ease? Then take on / live / be the following practices:
2. Be a stand for the wonder and greatness of people – believe in them more than they believe in themselves. How can I best point out / show what I am talking about? Read and get present to the following words by Viktor Frankl who has a profound lived understanding /experience of our fellow human beings in all of their manifestations:
“If we take man as he really is then we make him worse. If we overestimate him……overrate man, then we promote him to what he really can be. So we have to be optimists idealists in way so we wind up as the true realists”
If you are willing to make four minutes available to yourself, to treat yourself, then watch this video: http://youtu.be/fD1512_XJEw
3. Belive in and be enthusiastic about the ‘life projects’ that matter to people. Your fellow human being, the one that you are thinking about right now, is not simply defined by who he is, where he came from or what he does. He is much more. A huge part of him is the future he is living into and the ‘life projects’ that inspires him. Yes, I get that he is a teacher, a family man, in his late forties. Do you get that one of his most crucial ‘life projects’ is to be a musician – to pursue a dream he gave up early in life and which really matters to him? ‘Life projects’ are simply possibilities that we imagine, create and project in the future. They are hugely important because they give shape to our being today and influence/shape our choices including how we spend our attention/energy/time. So leave aside your critical mind, your fears, your insecurities and step into the possibilites that you fellow human being (wife, husband, son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, neighbour, colleague, manager…) has created and which give him and his life meaning. Step into that possibility and be enthusiastic. If you are in position to do so then go further – lend a helping hand, help to open doors, to provide resources (including your encouragement), carry some of the load.
4. Be there for the people that show up in your life. Be there during the good times to celebrate – celebrate with them, acknowledge, congratulate, laugh, lift them high ‘onto your shoulders’. Be there for them during the difficult times when stuff does not turn out as they would like it to. Provide: an empathic ear; a solid-warm-friendly shoulder for them to rest their head; create a ladder/scaffold and help them climb up when you judge that the time is right; lead the way up the scaffold, give them your hand and help them to climb up. Do this freely and wholeheartedly and you and your relationship will never be the same again. One of my most enduring relationships was built by literally helping a ‘friend’ climb a mountain – giving up the lead, letting others take the lead, providing encouragement to this friend in words, being a little ahead of him when I needed to be and offering him my hand when he found it difficult to climb up the mountain. We may not speak for many months and the love is there – neither of us have forgotten that day, that experience.
What is the greatest gift you can give yourself?
OK, by now you should be clear that the greatest gift that you can grant the people in your life is made up the following: letting them be just as they are and just as they are not; believing in them more than they believe in themselves; being enthusiastic about and contributing to their life projects; and being there for them.
Now I have as surprise for you. The greatest gift you can give yourself is to grant this ‘greatest gift’ to the people that show up in your life! You might be wondering “What?” Think about it. When you grant this gift to the people that show up in your life and living you get the following treats:
Peace / Ease / Freedom – you no longer struggle with people because you have giving up ‘resisting’ them as they are and as they are not and that shows up as a heavy burden lifted off your shoulder!
Relatedness / Connection / Enthusiasm / Love / ‘Sense of Adventure‘- by choosing to let people be and enter into their lives through encouraging/supporting/contributing to their ‘life projects’ as well as being there for them through the good times and the difficult times you create the space for relatedness, connection, love, enthusiasm and a sense of adventure to show up in your experience of living. Whenever we take part in ‘life projects’ we take part in ‘giving birth’ to something new and this shows up as a sense of adventure – we feel more alive!
My guarantee to you and my challenge for you
I guarantee you that the moment that you grant this ‘greatest gift’ your experience of living will be transformed – the quality of your life will be transformed. To keep this transformed live you have to consciously keep granting this ‘greatest gift’ again and again – every day, every moment. Are you up for transforming the quality of your life? Are you up for taking me up on my guarantee? | <urn:uuid:c73db81a-09bc-460c-9d34-36135068ac3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maziqbal.net/tag/life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973849 | 1,651 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Issue 12 The Enemy Fall/Winter 2003
The Past Is in Flames: An Interview with Rebecca Knuth
Jeffrey Kastner and Rebecca Knuth
“Wherever they burn books,” observed the German poet Heinrich Heine, “they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” These words were written in 1823, more than 75 years before the start of the century in which their prophecy would be so grotesquely fulfilled. In her new book, Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 2003), University of Hawaii professor Rebecca Knuth examines attacks on books and libraries as aspects of larger patterns of ethnocide and genocide. Using case studies from the last century in which book destruction was employed as a strategic instrument of large-scale violence against either external or internal enemies—against Jews within Germany and against other ethnic and national groups throughout Europe by Nazi Germany; by Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia; by Iraq during its occupation of Kuwait; and by China, both through its internal Cultural Revolution and in its annexation of Tibet—Knuth investigates both the symbolic and practical function of books and libraries in zones of military conflict. She spoke with Cabinet senior editor Jeffrey Kastner by phone from Honolulu.
What brought you to the book project?
Libricide began with two questions really—what distinguishes people who mourn the destruction of books from those who destroy them, and how can the ideals of human progress be reconciled with the mass violence and destruction of culture that characterized the 20th century. It seems to me that there’s a lack of analysis in most accounts of the destruction of books and libraries—you get these sorts of emotional witness accounts that describe the damage and then typically proceed to attribute the violence to barbarism. It’s a seductive explanation, but it fails to recognize two critical factors: the political nature of written records and the fact that such destruction often follows a common pattern. The destruction of books and libraries is often goal-oriented and carefully rationalized within struggles between opposing worldviews.Although you point out that there’s a long history of this behavior, your book is concerned specifically with the 20th century.
As I did the research for the book, I began to realize that a pattern was emerging and I could most successfully nail that pattern for the 20th century. It’s parallel to the idea that mass murder has always existed, but in the 20th century we have this newly defined phenomenon of genocide. So when I linked libricide—the destruction of books and libraries—with genocide, I felt that it was important to lay out parameters that I could sustain. I also felt that locating it in the modern era might help shift the discussion away from the model that looks at this whole question of book destruction from the point of view of bibliophiles—of people who have this relation to books as precious objects, who want to run their hands over them—and more in the direction of thinking about free information and open discourse and its relationship to humanism and democratic societies.You note that the destruction of books has been used in both symbolic and also very real and tangible ways within different conflicts.
Yes, it does have a symbolic function, but it’s also practical and pragmatic. A lot of the information that’s destroyed is the type that sustains—historically or culturally—the other side. If you want to dominate an enemy, you have to neutralize or negate them; take away any sort of information that stands up against you and the type of political and social approaches you want to implement, or that supports the memory of whatever system was operative before the conquest.And one of the most interesting aspects of your book is just how many different kinds of contexts you set out.
There’s a very heterogeneous array of behaviors that fall under the rubric of libricide; it’s an activity that has a number of different impetuses behind it and that serves a lot of different purposes. Reactionary ideologies like nationalism, militarism, imperialism, racism, as well as revolutionary ideologies like Communism—all of these are implicated in these instances of destruction. And very often more than one is present in any given situation.The first major incidence of libricide you cite in the 20th century was the German destruction of the library at Louvain in Belgium, during World War I.
Yes. During a six-day period in late August 1914 during which the Germans sacked the city, they destroyed some 230,000 volumes at the library, including a collection of 750 medieval manuscripts and more than a thousand incunabula. The telling thing about that incident was that they destroyed the Louvain library in World War I and then promptly destroyed it again in World War II, almost as if to repudiate any of the outcry over the first destruction. In fact, strategic attacks on cultural institutions were formally incorporated into German war theory through the notion of the kriegsbrauch, which stated that “war cannot be conducted merely against the combatants of an enemy state, but must seek to destroy the total material and intellectual (geistig) resources of the enemy.” The German situation with regard to this is interesting—there were public book burnings held there in the mid-19th century as a means of protesting the government, of expressing the desire for greater freedom.
It’s also interesting for what it suggests about another part of this equation—this strain of book destruction that, for the people who do it, is seen not as a retrograde behavior but as a sign of progressivism; this idea that the past, history, is the enemy that needs to be identified and neutralized.
There’s a lot of precedent for that. As an aside, it’s also a dialectic that informs contemporary views about things like the destruction of the Alexandrian library.How so?
Alexandria was obviously one of history’s greatest libraries—it tried to have a comprehensive collecting policy, to have every major text. It was also a research center; it brought in scholars from around the world, and so it was like a tremendous think tank. There are a lot of stories about how it was destroyed—that it was burned by the Romans, that it was destroyed by the Muslims when they took the city, that they burned the texts to fire the bathhouses. No one is really sure. And just as scholars have argued different positions about its causes, there are also different opinions about its meaning—there’s the idea that it was a horrible loss to civilization, but also that it was an important creative impetus to new growth and study. Those lines of reasoning are also present around the issue of book destruction—individuals involved with extensive destruction of libraries often believe that their ideology demands the expunging of the past, of the old ways of doing things. That it’s a revolutionary process; that it purifies.This would be primarily within a given country, as a kind of internal revolutionary instrument.
Yes, but then you get into this very nebulous thing about what is internal versus external. The kinds of extremist ideologies that employ this kind of destruction often contain some notion that the activity is designed to reunite or reconstitute certain national or ethnic constituencies that have for whatever reason been separated. This was certainly the case with the Serbs, who consciously destroyed libraries, not to mention other aspects of cultural patrimony, in Croatian cities like Zadar, Vukovar, and Dubrovnik. One three-day attack with incendiary devices on the National Library in Sarajevo in August 1992 destroyed more than 1.5 million books. Or the Iraqis, who announced that Kuwait was the 19th province of Iraq. In their six-month occupation, Iraqi troops looted and destroyed every library in Kuwait. By some estimates, 50 percent of all book stocks in Kuwaiti public and school libraries were lost. Also lost was the entire collection of the Kuwait University library, more than half-a-million books, and Kuwait's national archives. Likewise, the Chinese who went into Tibet in the late 1950s and early 1960s—and destroyed what one scholar has estimated to be 60 percent of that country’s extant philosophical, historical and biographical literature—would say that Tibet was an internal struggle.China figures in two of your case studies—the one about Tibet and one that details the internal destruction of books and libraries as a result of the Cultural Revolution.
For me and I think many others, the Cultural Revolution has always loomed as an inexplicable phenomenon, where a country just savaged itself and its extraordinary cultural heritage. What I realized as I went further back was that it all began with the Great Leap Forward—even today, the Chinese are much more reluctant to discuss the Great Leap Forward than the Cultural Revolution. It was ultimately a fight between the moderates and the radicals over the course of the revolution. And revolution, as posed by radicals, chews up books and libraries, chews up culture. There’s also the fact that information props up science and technology, all the things that were to be displaced by revolutionary fervor. I think there are parallels to what happened in Pol Pot’s Cambodia—where they essentially exterminated the entire intellectual class—and the track that Mao was on. Obviously, most ideologues tend to be anti-intellectual. They may value texts if they support their ideology or they may value them on a personal level—as, ironically, did both Pol Pot and Mao—but they’re very leery of the ideas in books. Most battles over the fate of books and libraries are finally battles between extremist ideologies and humanistic democracy—between illiberal ideas and liberal ideas, between repression and human rights. They often stem from anti-intellectual, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-modern, anti-international attitudes. That was definitely motivating the Taliban, which I discuss just at the end of the book. It was also motivating Pol Pot and Mao. It’s actually operative right across the board. When the Nazis had the book fires and Goebbels stood up there and gave his famous speech about burning the un-German foundations of Germany—triumphantly proclaiming, “The past is in flames!”—he was reacting against this whole question of humanism and the impulses towards an international world culture.
Rebecca Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. Her book Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the 20th Century was published in 2003.Jeffery Kastner is a Brooklyn-based writer and senior editor of Cabinet.
Cabinet is a non-profit organization supported by the Lambent Foundation, the Orphiflamme Foundation, the New York Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Katchadourian Family Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, the Danielson Foundation, and many generous individuals. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation by visiting here.
© 2003 Cabinet Magazine | <urn:uuid:9e61887d-5fba-48e0-9f39-76017174e5eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/12/kastner.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967772 | 2,311 | 1.859375 | 2 |
A Lasting Profile of Fidel Castro
Saul Landau's Fidel!, a revealing and cinematic profile of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, is a documentary classic. Originally released in 1969, the film uses original 16 mm footage shot by the director during a week long encounter with Castro, when he was invited by the leader to accompany him on a jeep tour of Cuba's eastern mountains region. The road trip took place just nine years after Castro took power in Cuba, and his revolutionary program was embraced by the Cuban people throughout the island nation, but simultaneously vilified by international powers -- especially the U.S. -- and Cubans living abroad.
During the journey, Castro stops at small towns, farm compounds and rural military bases to engage and bond with the Cuban people. He visits the pre-school he attended, enjoys a game of baseball with a group of local men, converses with Cuban elders and plays with Cuban babies.
While socializing and charming his constituents, Fidel also listens to and addresses citizens' concerns about a wide range of problematic public issues, including pressing concerns about regional isolation due to poor road conditions and limited means of transportation, and the negative impact from those conditions on the distribution of food and other essentials.
For the film, Castro gave Landau full and unprecedented access, allowing the filmmaker to shoot inside his tent, and capture those private and reflective moments that reveal unexpected aspects of Fidel's personality, qualities that are simply not evident in his public appearances.
Landau also includes Castro's on camera commentaries, sequences during which Castro offers advice to political activists, other guerrilla leaders and insurgents elsewhere in the Third World, and coverage of Castro's speech on the 15th anniversary of his attack on Fort Moncada which marked the beginning of the Revolution.
Additional sequences show Fidel surrounded by his close advisors, and there is a good deal of refection about Che Guevara and his death, which had occurred just one year before this documentary was shot.
In the finished film, Landau sets his week-long interview with Fidel into context by mixing his handheld footage with rare and fascinating archival footage gleaned from Cuban sources, including pre-revolutionary scenes of Cuba during Batista's dictatorship, images of Che Guevara, interviews with political prisoners and rarely seen footage of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
History of the Film
Fidel! is a fascinating film not only because of its subject, but also because there has been such a strong reaction to it. From 1969, the year of its completion, to its most recent rerelease, there have been attempts -- some of them violent -- to block it from being seen. In 1970, the film was to have its theatrical premiere in New York at the Fifth Avenue Cinema, but the theater was bombed. Subsequently, the premiere was set to take place at the Haymarket Theatre in Los Angeles, but that theater was destroyed by an arson fire that destroyed the day before the film was to debut. The attacks worked. Many theaters across the nation refused to show the film because their owners and managers feared violent retaliation. As a result, the only cities where Fidel! had a theatrical run were San Francisco (the filmmakers hometown) and Berkeley, California.
When the film was broadcast on PBS stations across the nation (except for the PBS station in Miami, which deferred to the city's exiled Cuban population and did not schedule a showing for Fidel!), a bomb was thrown through a window at NYC's WNET station during the broadcast.
Recently, concerns for the preservation of the film, which was showing signs of deterioration and loss of color, lead to the selection of Fidel! for a complete restoration by the National Film Preservation Foundation. The restoration proposal was made by the University of California Riverside's (UCR) Department of Special Collections & Archives. The fully restored version of Fidel! will be available on DVD and VOD platforms on August 14, 2012. The DVD has appealing extras, including an interview with the director and a 23-minute short directed by Saul Landau with exclusive footage of Castro shot by Richard Pearce.
If You like This Documentary, You May Also Like:
- The Chilean Building (El edificio de los Chilanos)
- Granito: How To Nail a Dictator
- Nostalgia For The Light
- El Ambulante (The Peddler)
- Unmistaken Child
- Traces of the Trade
- Order of Myths
- Which Way Home
- A Small Act
- Title: Fidel!
- Director: Saul Landau
- U.S. Theatrical Release Date: 1969
- US.Broadcast Premiere: 1971
- DVD Release Date: August 14, 2012
- Running Time: 95 mins.
- Parents Advisory: Advisory for content
- Location: Cuba
- Language: English, Spanish with English subtitles
- Distribution Company: Cinema Libre | <urn:uuid:6c828a7e-a4b3-4c74-8729-d1e86328ecfc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://documentaries.about.com/od/revie2/fr/Fidel-Movie-Review-1969-2012.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969849 | 999 | 2.453125 | 2 |
This is the first post of the IRAQ (Iraq, Reasonable Answers for our Questions) series of blog posts. It's about Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime. I think this may help as an intruduction in order to understand the background of what is going on in Iraq now.
In 1958, a year after Saddam Hussein had joined the Ba'ath party, which was founded by Michel Aflaq in 1947, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim. He was sentenced to death in absentia. Saddam studied law at the Cairo University during his exile.
Later on in 1976, Saddam rose to the position of general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government. At the time Saddam was considered an enemy of communism and radical Islamism. Saddam was integral to U.S. policy in the region, a policy which sought to weaken the influence of Iran and the Soviet Union. As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute his duties, Saddam took on an increasingly prominent role as the face of the government both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. He was the de facto ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979.
Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on July 22, 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found spies and conspirators within the Ba'ath Party and read out the names of 68 members who he thought could oppose him. These members were labeled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one and taken into custody. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. The 68 people arrested at the meeting were subsequently put on trial, and 22 were sentenced to execution for treason.
In 1979 Iran's Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas — hostile to his secular rule — were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population. USA was also alerted and pushed Saddam towards declaring war against Iran in order to stop its rising influence. And similar to what is going on now a days, USA started to scare the Arab countries - especially the GULF ones - of the Shiit influence in the area, and as a result of this, many Gulf countries - including Kuwait - pumped money into Saddam's pockets helping him building an aresenal to fight Iran. It's really funny to know that this arsenal was used later on against those specific Arab countries. During this long conventional war, Iraq attacked Iran with chemical weapons and killed many Iranian military personnel and civilians with such weapons.
The Shi'a majority were long a source of opposition to the government due to its secular policies, and the Ba'ath Party was increasingly concerned about potential Sh'ia Islamist influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's Arabizing tendencies. The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which was responsible for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. It was commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother. Since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate perceived opponents of Saddam Hussein.
There are many examples of the paramilitary and police policy of Saddam's regime. In 1977 Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, who is the cousin of both Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr (Muqtada al-Sadr's grandfather) and imam Musa as-Sadr (the founder of Amal movement in Lebanon), was a close ally and supporter of Ayatollah Khomeni, was sentenced to life in prison following uprisings in Najaf, but was released two years later due to his immense popularity. In 1980, after writing in the defense of Khomeni and the Islamic Revolution, Sadr was once again imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime of Saddam Hussein. His sister, Amina Sadr bint al-Huda, was also imprisoned, tortured, and executed. It has been alledged that Sadr was killed by having iron nail hammered into his head and then being set on fire. Al Sadr was excuted in April 9 1980, and Saddam's regime fell to American forces on the same date in 2003.
Al-Anfal Campaign was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein between 1986 and 1989 (during and just after the Iran-Iraq war). The campaign is said to have cost the lives of 182,000 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The campaign was headed by Ali Hasan al-Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The Anfal campaign included the use of ground offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements, mass deportation, concentration camps, firing squads, and chemical warfare, which earned al-Majid the nickname of "Chemical Ali". The Halabja poison gas attack was an incident on 15 March-19 March 1988 during a major battle in the Iran-Iraq War when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces to kill a number of people in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja (population 80,000). Estimates of casualties range from several hundred to 7,000 people. The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times.
Many other examples of the paramilitary and police policy, including the mass graves, and assasinations.
On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait resulting in the Gulf War and United Nations economic sanctions imposed at the urging of the U.S. The economic sanctions were designed to compel Saddam to dispose of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). After the Gulf War Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, together with the resulting postwar devastation, laid the groundwork for new rebellions within the country. In the aftermath of the fighting, social and ethnic unrest among Shi'a Muslims, Kurds, and dissident military units threatened the stability of Saddam's government. Uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi'a southern and central parts of Iraq, but were ruthlessly repressed. In 2005 the BBC reported that as many as 30,000 persons had been killed during the 1991 uprisings, sometimes called Shaaban's Intifada. The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions beyond enforcing the "no fly zones". U.S. ally Turkey opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi'a revolution. Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or militarily from the Persian Gulf War. Saddam routinely cited his survival as "proof" that Iraq had in fact won the war against America. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world, Amr El Abyad as an example :)
Relations between the United States and Iraq remained tense following the Gulf War. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, termed "Operation Iraqi Freedom" by the US administration, began on March 20. The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia and Poland supplied the vast majority of the invading forces. They co-operated with Kurdish forces. Three weeks into the invasion, U.S. forces moved into Baghdad. Initial plans were for armoured units to surround the city and gradually move in, forcing Iraqi armor and ground units to cluster into a central pocket in the city, and then attack with air and artillery forces. This plan soon became unnecessary, as an initial engagement of armor units south of the city saw most of the Republican Guard's armor assets destroyed and much of the southern outskirts of the city occupied. It was clear then that the Iraqis were pissed off of Saddam's regime so that they prefered not to fight the occupying forces than defending the dictator in their country.
Note: Many thanks to the Wikipedia project, which helped me in gathering the historical information used in the post.
Tags: Iraq, Politics, Gr33n Data | <urn:uuid:fc11af15-db42-441e-8303-5c8a9557b826> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gr33ndata.blogspot.com/2006/08/iraq-i-saddam-era.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977976 | 1,920 | 2.53125 | 3 |
An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue.
'Disturbed' by art
This is NOT the David and Goliath that was kicked in at the Milwaukee Art Museum, but it is a painting of the same theme by the same artist, Ottavio Vannini. This one is, in many ways, much more up close and personal, but it makes the point: the subject is disturbing.
I was thinking about the young man who was so upset by the Baroque painting of David and Goliath at the Milwaukee Art Museum that he violently attacked the mural-sized artwork, ripped it from the wall and kicked a hole through it.
My heart goes out to him.
The incident reminded me, too, that so many of us stroll through art museums politely, regarding the things we see there as simply old and beautiful objects.
But art like Vannini's "Triumph of David" was not meant to be viewed as staid and beautiful. It is of an epic battle with a gruesome if triumphant end, a story told with the passion and drama befitting its subject.
In other words, art should provoke a response. Disturb, even. Not the kind of response displayed by the young Pewaukee man, certainly, but a response nonetheless. Art communicates. Viscerally and powerfully. | <urn:uuid:e6a6581e-7fe7-41f9-850f-ecb87af6a693> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/32281704.html?_escaped_fragment_=page=1%26viewAll=0%26sort=oldestfirst%26pageSize=20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959036 | 301 | 1.90625 | 2 |
In May 1968, Bellcomm planners Noel Hinners, Farouk El-Baz, and A. Goetz described a unique post-Apollo mission to the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille region of the moon. The mission would see a melding of manned and automated lunar exploration, yielding results greater than either astronauts or exploring machines could achieve on their own.
Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz invoked an Extended Lunar Module (ELM) capable of bearing 750 pounds of payload to the moon’s surface. During the crew’s first venture outside the ELM, they would rendezvous with a waiting Unmanned Lunar Roving Vehicle (ULRV). The wheeled ULRV, with a mass of between 1,500 and 3,000 pounds, would have landed some 500 kilometers from the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille ELM site some time earlier, then made its way to meet the astronauts, all the while beaming TV images of its surroundings to Earth, charting the moon’s gravity and magnetic fields, leaving behind Remote Geophysical Monitor instrument packages, and collecting rock samples. The ELM astronauts would retrieve the ULRV rock samples for return to Earth.
The Bellcomm planners proposed four candidate traverse routes for the ULRV (map above). For route 1, the automated rover would land in the Sulpicius Gallus region of southwest Mare Serenitatis and strike north through an area of north/south-trending rilles (canyons) and dark, possibly volcanic and young, surface material. The lunar Apennine Mountains would dominate the western horizon as the ULRV rolled northward, gradually entering a region with lighter and older surface materials.
At the contact between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Imbrium, the rover would turn west, then south, so the Apennines would dominate its eastern horizon. The ULRV would pass through hills made up of rocks of the Fra Mauro Formation, which was widely interpreted as ejecta from the immense ancient impact that created Mare Imbrium. Finally, it would carefully pick its way across steep-sided Hadley Rille (also known as Rima Hadley) and park close to the planned ELM landing site near Hadley C. The Bellcomm researchers declared 10-kilometer-wide Hadley C to be a “probable maar” — that is, a crater-like surface feature produced when rising magma comes into contact with subsurface ice or water, generating a steam explosion.
Route 2 would see the ULRV land south of the crater Alexander in northern Mare Serenitatis. The rover would strike southwest toward the Mare Serenitatis-Mare Imbrium contact through a region of hummocky Highland rock units, including probable examples of the Fra Mauro Formation. The route would cross dark materials (possible young volcanics) and light materials (possible rays from young impact craters) before it turned south to follow the same path to the ELM site as the route 1 ULRV.
The ULRV for traverse route 3 would land in southern Mare Imbrium west of the “ghost” crater Wallace, an ancient impact crater mostly submerged by flowing lava in the distant past. The rover would trundle eastward across a bright ray from the young large crater Copernicus, than pass through a crater chain to reach Wallace’s subdued, ancient rim. Once there, it would strike out northeastward across eastern Mare Imbrium, then over the Apennine Bench (a possible volcanic ash or flow deposit), before crossing Palus Putredinis to Hadley C and the ELM site.
Route 4 would begin at the ULRV landing site in central Mare Imbrium, in an area with many new-looking wrinkle ridges. The ULRV would surmount one such ridge on its way to the north rim of the large smooth-floored crater Archimedes. After picking its way through the boulders and crevasses near Archimedes’ rim, the ULRV would turn southwest through a region of exposed bedrock, then would cross hummocky Fra Mauro Formation hills and Palus Putredinis before parking near the ELM site.
The Bellcomm planners identified routes 1 and 2 as having the greatest potential for increasing geophysical understanding of the moon. In addition, route 1 would pass through terrain similar to that at Littrow, another candidate post-Apollo landing site, possibly freeing the proposed Littrow ELM mission to explore elsewhere on the moon. The Littrow is located on the eastern side of Mare Serenitatis.
Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz noted that, in addition to collecting a diverse suite of samples along its 500-kilometer traverse path, the ULRV might be used to survey the ELM landing site, which was located on the Hadley Rille rim at 26° 52′ North, 3° 00′ East (red star on the Hadley C site map above). The ULRV survey might eliminate the need for high-resolution orbital photography of the area. The rover might also act as a landing beacon for the ELM and serve as a radio relay for the astronauts exploring the site, which would contain many places where they might pass behind hills and into trenches, out of line-of-sight radio contact with the ELM.
Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz noted other operational difficulties of the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille ELM site. The most important involved lighting. The ELM would approach the site from the east with the Sun behind it, pass over the Apennine Mountains, then descend almost vertically on the west side of the range. As it descended, it would plunge suddenly into shadow cast by the mountains. On some landing dates, the astronauts might touch down in darkness lit only by sunlight reflected off the Hadley C rim and other features beyond the shadow; in others, they would emerge from shadow into dazzling sunlight just before touchdown.
The scientists were convinced, however, that the scientific benefits of their ELM site would outweigh these difficulties. They wrote that
This site is important among those proposed in that it may provide access to a major portion of lunar history…. Such access comes from over 1 km of vertical relief resulting from the combination of the Apennines Mountains scarp, the rim of the Imbrium Basin[,] and the rille…. This historical sequence may run from materials that constitute original lunar crust to relatively young materials derived from that crust. The oldest crustal materials in the area, possibly exposed in the lower part of the Apennine Front to the east of the proposed landing area, should provide data bearing directly on the problems of the primary physical and chemical composition of the Moon and thus, indirectly, of the Earth.
The scientists noted that the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, had established as a ground rule that only a single Extravehicular Activity (EVA) could take place on the first and last days of a lunar landing mission. The first three-hour EVA (purple on Handley C site map) of the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille mission, on landing day, would see the astronauts walk to the parked ULRV to retrieve the samples it had gathered during its traverse. They would also work together to assemble and point at Earth the umbrella-like S-band antenna, inspect the ELM’s exterior for any damage incurred during descent and landing, deploy “staytime extension equipment” (for example, a small solar array for generating supplemental electricity), and unstow the mission’s twin 180-pound Lunar Flying Units (LFUs).
NASA and its contractors had studied the concept of the LFU, a speedy, manned rocket-powered hopper, for several years by the time Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz made it a critical part of their Apennine Front-Hadley Rille mission. If all went as planned, the ELM would land with close to 1,000 pounds of propellants remaining in its descent stage tanks. At the start of the first EVA of day 2 (green on Hadley C site map), the astronauts would spend 30 minutes pumping into each LFU 300 pounds of propellants from the ELM. They would also load LFU #1 with cameras and film, geologic tools including a 25-pound hand drill for collecting sample cores, and sample containers.
Astronaut #1 would then fly LFU #1 3.3 kilometers to his first stop, the Apennine Front-mare contact, where he would spend one hour collecting up to 25 pounds of samples, including cores drilled to a depth of 10 feet. He would then fly two kilometers to the top of the Apennine ridge, about 500 meters above the ELM. He would spend an hour there collecting another 25 pounds of samples. The Bellcomm planners explained that materials blasted from “depths of several tens of kilometers in the moon” by the Imbrium impact might be draped over the sites he visited. These would, they argued, “offer our best chances to examine ‘primitive’ planetary materials which have not been affected by later planetary differentiation processes.”
Astronaut #2, meanwhile, would deploy the 280-pound Apollo Lunar Scientific Experiment Package (ALSEP) near the ELM. He would also stand by LFU #2 to rescue Astronaut #1 in the event that LFU #1 failed on top of the ridge, which would lie just beyond the five-kilometer “walk-back limit” of the Apollo space suits. Assuming, however, that LFU #1 gave no trouble, Astronaut #1 would fly it 5.2 kilometers back to the landing site and join Astronaut #2 inside the ELM for lunch and rest.
To begin the second EVA of mission day 2 (blue on the Hadley C site map), Astronaut #1 would board LFU #2 and fly 3.2 kilometers west of the ELM to the bottom of Hadley Rille. Astronaut #2, meanwhile, would walk to a point on the Rille rim within sight of both Astronaut #1 and the ELM. He would collect up to 25 pounds of samples and serve as a radio relay linking Astronaut #1 to the ELM and, through the ELM, to Earth. After 1.5 hours of sampling the shadowed floor of Hadley Rille, Astronaut #1 would fly LFU #2 4.8 kilometers to the Hadley C rim. He would spend 30 minutes sampling, then would fly back to the ELM. At no point would Astronaut #1 pass beyond the Apollo suit walk-back limit, so Astronaut #2 would have no need to stand by LFU #1 to mount a rescue.
The fourth and final EVA of the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille mission (yellow on the Hadley C site map) would occur on departure day. After loading LFU #1 with propellants, Astronaut #1 would fly 2.5 kilometers west of the ELM to two sets of crater pairs. After 30 minutes of sample collection, he would fly 1.5 kilometers to a crater on Hadley Rille’s rim, where he would again sample for 30 minutes. Finally, he would fly three kilometers to a “promontory” on the Rille rim, sample for 30 minutes, and fly 1.4 kilometers back to the ELM.
Astronaut #2, meanwhile, would “conduct local investigations” close by the ELM, “adjust ALSEP experiments,” and prepare samples for return to Earth. After returning to the ELM, Astronaut #1 would assist Astronaut #2. After packing up about 100 pounds of samples, they would lift off in the ELM ascent stage, leaving behind the LFUs and other equipment.
They would also leave behind many of the samples they had collected. Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz noted that, while the ULRV would collect some unspecified (but probably large) quantity of unique samples during its 500-kilometer traverse and the astronauts might collect about 200 pounds of samples, the ELM ascent stage could carry only 100 pounds of payload into lunar orbit. This meant that the sample packing process would mostly involve hurried screening, with the majority of the samples collected during the mission being thrown away. They also noted that their EVA schedule was very tight, so that mission success would depend “on everything going with clockwork precision during the crowded EVA periods.”
To solve these problems, they proposed that the ELM for the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille mission be upgraded to permit a 1,000-pound science payload, a four-day surface stay, and 200 pounds of returned samples. This would, among other things, enable addition of a walking traverse to the Apennine Front-mare contact and a 400-pound Advanced ALSEP. Additional staytime would permit more care to be taken in selecting samples for return to Earth; at the same time, doubling the returned sample would make sample screening less critical.
Apollo 15, the first of three advanced J-mission Apollos, landed at 26° 8′ North, 3° 38′ East, about 30 kilometers northeast of the Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz ELM landing site, on 30 July 1971 (image at top of post). The site, close to where Hadley Rille turned sharply toward the northwest, was farther from the mountains than the Hadley C site, eliminating lighting problems. The LM Falcon remained on the surface for nearly three days. Astronauts David Scott and James Irwin had at their disposal no LFU; the concept, though much studied, had gained little traction, in large part because of Astronaut Office opposition.
Instead, Scott and Irwin traversed their landing site using a 460-pound four-wheeled Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). They drove almost 50 kilometers during three EVAs, the longest of which lasted seven hours and 13 minutes. Falcon‘s ascent stage lifted off from Hadley-Apennine on August 2 with a cargo of about 170 pounds of lunar samples. Among them was 15415, “The Genesis Rock,” a 4.5-billion-year-old, three-inch-wide fragment of possible primordial lunar crust.
Apollo 15 was the fourth of six successful manned lunar landings. By the time it flew, budget cuts and policy changes had forced NASA to truncate Apollo and abandon plans for post-Apollo lunar exploration. In an editorial published soon after Apollo 15, The New York Times pointed to the mission’s many achievements and reminded its readers that manned lunar exploration was set to end with Apollo 17. The paper lamented how a “vast and complex technology developed at a cost of billions of dollars over the last decade is being abandoned even as its vast potentialities are being demonstrated.”
A Preliminary ELM/Unmanned LRV Mission Plan for the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille Area – Case 340, N. Hinners, F. El-Baz, and A. Goetz, Bellcomm, Inc., 31 May 1968. | <urn:uuid:30fadd51-c0f5-4838-8b4a-79a10546c843> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/advanced-apollo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951889 | 3,205 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Our largest Dobsonian reflector yet is an ideal combination of three key telescope features: large aperture, convenient portability, and precise GoTo object location. Thanks to its 16" aperture parabolic primary mirror, the Orion SkyQuest XX16g GoTo Truss Tube Dobsonian will astound you with spectacular views of the night sky. Its Orion-designed collapsible Dobsonian base and 8-pole truss optical tube makes transportation of this hefty telescope easy since the entire telescope can be disassembled without tools into small, manageable component pieces that can fit in virtually any standard size car. You'll be able to enjoy the XX16g's large-aperture optics thanks to the accurate, motorized GoTo system which will automatically locate and track any of over 42,000 celestial curiosities within its computerized database of night sky objects.
The powerful, high-tech, and downright BIG SkyQuest XX16g 16" GoTo Truss Tube Dobsonian takes deep-sky observing to new space-penetrating depths. It is the latest and largest in our line of fully automatic GoTo truss tube Dobsonians. For serious amateur astronomers seeking big-aperture exhilaration, state-of-the-art GoTo electronics, and a clever Dobsonian design that is transportable in almost any size vehicle -- the XX16g is an ideal "lifetime" telescope!
Wait, you're thinking, it fits in almost any size vehicle? Yes, you can take this big telescope with you, because both the Dobsonian base and optical tube of the XX16g were engineered by Orion to quickly disassemble - without tools - into easily manageable components, the heaviest of which (base groundplate assembly) weighs 61.4 lbs.
Although its components are designed for convenient portability, we understand that many stargazers will commonly use the XX16g in the backyard or other observing site close to home. With this in mind, we've come up with two different solutions that allow you to easily move the fully assembled XX16g from garage to yard and back again; the Orion Heavy Duty Cart for Large Dobsonians (sold separately), and the Orion Wheel Kit for SkyQuest XX16g GoTo Dobsonian (coming soon).
Both the 16"-diameter (406mm), lightweight parabolic primary mirror and 91mm minor-axis secondary mirror of the SkyQuest XX16g are made of low-expansion glass and feature enhanced 94% reflectivity aluminum coatings for optimal observing performance. The XX16g delivers a giant 77% jump in light grasp compared to a 12" Dobsonian reflector, and even a sizeable 30% gain over a 14" aperture telescope! Those elusive celestial objects you once considered "faint fuzzies" won't be nearly so faint or so fuzzy through the SkyQuest XX16g GoTo Truss Tube Dobsonian! You'll enjoy views that simply cannot be seen in smaller telescopes.
The lightweight primary mirror cools more efficiently than standard flat-back parabolic mirrors, thanks to its thin, curved-back design. The primary mirror is held in place by an open-ventilation mirror cell which also helps the mirror to acclimate quickly. This special mirror cell features three large knurled knobs for easy collimation adjustments, and can accommodate an optional 12V Three Fan Cooling System (sold separately) for even faster temperature equilibration.
While the XX16g is easy to disassemble for convenient portability, once it's assembled it is a very solid telescope. The rigid 8-pole truss tube provides great structural rigidity of the optical tube and virtually eliminates flexure that can affect 6- and 3-pole designs. The XX16g GoTo Dobsonian base utilizes thick, 1" composite wood panels for extra-strong support, and features perpendicular struts that brace the side panels when assembled for rock-solid performance. All base boards are laminated with water-resistant melamine.
The XX16g's SynScan GoTo system includes a database of over 42,000 celestial objects. Dual optical encoders and servo motors in each axis pinpoint any object you select with the backlit hand controller and track its motion. The closed-loop electronics let you slew the telescope by hand if desired, while still maintaining the GoTo alignment. Heavy-duty clutch knobs on both axes can be adjusted to the desired level of resistance.
If you were to point the XX16g Dobsonian optical tube straight up, the telescope eyepiece would be positioned 72-3/8" (6.03') above the ground. Of course, during most observing sessions the eyepiece will be considerably lower than this maximum height, but no matter where you point the XX16g at night, you're sure to be astonished by the bright, sharply detailed views this amazing telescope provides.
The SkyQuest XX16g comes equipped with a 2" dual-speed Crayford focuser with 1.25" adapter, and includes a 28mm 2" DeepView eyepiece and a 12.5mm illuminated reticle eyepiece for precise GoTo system alignment. Other accessories include an EZ Finder II reflex sight, eyepiece rack, GoTo hand controller bracket, 12V DC power cable, and RS-232 cable for firmware updates. A 12V field battery or AC-to-DC adapter (sold separately) is required for motorized operation.
An optional Light Shroud for the optical tube is also available and highly recommended (Light Shroud sold separately). Keep your XX16g optical tube safe and clean during transport or storage with the recommended optional Case Set (sold separately).
It's a BIG telescope you can take anywhere! Get the Orion SkyQuest XX16g and enjoy jaw-dropping views of the night sky in a big yet pleasantly portable GoTo Dobsonian telescope.
Sky at Night magazine, June 2013
"Due to their sheer size, large-aperture commercial Dobsonians often present practical difficulties ...Orion's XX16g overcomes many of these difficulties with an innovative design that enables it to be broken down into smaller and lighter parts."
"One of the best features of this scope is the GoTo system, which allows the scope to automatically seek out any object you select from the handset's database. The motors continue to smoothly track the object once centered"
"The XX16g's innovative design features enhance the appeal of owning a large Dobsonian and we expect to see several at this year's UK star parties"
WARNING! When using a truss tube Dobsonian telescope for solar observing, always use a Light Shroud and a properly sized solar filter. When you install the Light Shroud make certain there are no gaps between the Shroud and the telescope where direct sunlight can reach the telescope mirror. When a truss tube telescope (equipped with a solar filter but no Light Shroud) is pointing near (not at) the Sun, direct sunlight can hit the mirror and focus on the solar filter or other portions of the telescope. This can lead to eye injury or damage to the telescope. Using a Light Shroud protects your telescope from peripheral sunlight.
Before using any telescope for solar observing, make sure to install all dustcaps or other protective covers on all optical components such as finder scopes to keep sunlight from passing through them. Glancing through an uncovered optical system, even for an instant, can cause permanent eye damage. Always install protective caps on all optical instruments if left out during daylight hours.
Limited Warranty against defects in materials or workmanship for one year from date of purchase. This warranty is for the benefit of the original retail purchaser only. For complete warranty details contact us at 800-676-1343.
Visit our product support section for instruction manuals and more | <urn:uuid:8a218d99-a220-4404-8110-5455a9313be8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telescope.com/Shop-by-Brand/Orion-Product-Center/Orion-Telescopes/Orion-SkyQuest-XX16g-GoTo-Truss-Tube-Dobsonian-Telescope/pc/8/c/90/sc/97/p/102659.uts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906923 | 1,590 | 1.695313 | 2 |
By David Siegel Bernstein, PhD
What do you think about people seeing through you (optically—not because you are a shallow person, as you most certainly are not!)? Or, how about cloaking your starship as you sneak past an enemy armada? If you have thought about it, then read on. But beware: the methods of invisibility I’m going to describe are more Klingon than Harry Potter.
The goal of S4F, as always, is to help you understand the science behind plot devices you might use in writing science fiction. There are two scientific ways to render an object invisible—spatial cloaking (space) and temporal cloaking (time). These theories are straightforward and easy to understand; however, the methods of their application are very complex. In science fiction, the opposite is usually true: the application is simple, e.g., we could push a button, or drink a formula (or, gulp wave a magic wand that is sometimes called a sonic screwdriver) and, voila, you’re invisible.
As you may have guessed, the key to invisibility is light manipulation. As light reflects off an object, it carries information about the object such as its size and shape to our eyes or mechanical detectors. So, the goal of invisibility is to prevent tattletale light from passing on these details.
1. Spatial Cloaking
This is where light flows around the object and recombines on the other side—leaving no evidence of its detour. If you were to look at the object, you would only see what’s on the other side. The physics behind this isn’t much different than how refraction makes a straw appear bent in water.
As usual, the difficulty (not so difficult in science fiction) is in the how of building such a cloak. It all comes down to the construction of metamaterials: materials that have properties not found in nature. In spatial cloaking, you need optical metamaterials made from nanotechnology to surround the object. Nanotechnology and metamaterials will be topics in future posts of S4F.
2. Temporal cloaking
Instead of cloaking an object, why not cloak an event? Whenever light illuminates an event, it marks it in time. However, if an event occurred and it somehow managed to leave light unperturbed, then the event is hidden.
How can this be done? Easily—by exploiting a characteristic of light: speed.
Here is how it could work: as light passes through a time lens, it will split, i.e., light scattering—some of the light will speed up and some will slow down—creating a zone of darkness. These separate pieces pass through a second lens, recombining the light streams back together. Then there is no record of the hole or that anything had happened. This is a time gap.
The best thing about temporal cloaking is that you get to use cool phrases like: manipulating the perception of time, time lens, and time gap. All of these are actual concepts in real science.
Now for the difficult question: how can we get it to work? Once again, this isn’t as difficult for a writer as it would be for a physicist. Temporal cloaking requires special lasers and optical fiber metamaterials to disperse and reconstitute light.
See you in time and space… and S4F.
Comments: No Comments » | <urn:uuid:d5a87b8b-0cac-4b8d-83e1-87134ea8bc0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abandonedtowers.com/nonfiction/s4f-invisibility-science-not-magic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946468 | 722 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Looks like the health-cost-control rubber is just beginning to hit the road. This just in from the Health Policy Commission, the independent agency created under the 2012 Massachusetts law aimed at containing health costs:
HEALTH POLICY COMMISSION INITIATES FIRST COST & MARKET IMPACT REVIEW
Partners, South Shore Hospital merger to be examined for potential effects on costs and the health care market
BOSTON – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 – The Health Policy Commission (HPC) today initiated its first Cost and Market Impact Review (CMIR) by notifying Partners Healthcare System and South Shore Hospital that it will examine the potential effects of their proposed merger on costs and the health care market.
“CMIRs are an important tool to enhance the transparency of significant changes to our health care system,” said HPC Executive Director David Seltz. “Almost every day we hear about new developments in our health care market. These reviews help us consider the impact of those developments on health care costs and market functioning. We are committed to conducting them on consumers’ behalf in a timely and thorough manner.”‘Given Partners’ size and high costs, an expansion of that system to include South Shore Hospital, a large, high-cost community hospital, is likely to have a significant impact on the Commonwealth’s ability to meet its health care cost growth goals, and on the competitive market.’
The HPC’s preliminary review of this proposed transaction found that given Partners’ size and high costs, an expansion of that system to include South Shore Hospital, a large, high-cost community hospital, is likely to have a significant impact on the Commonwealth’s ability to meet its health care cost growth goals, and on the competitive market. To enhance public understanding of the potential costs and benefits of this transaction, the HPC is proceeding with a further examination.
“The HPC was set up to be a watchdog to monitor the health care market,” said HPC Chair Dr. Stuart Altman. “CMIRs are one of the ways we will fulfill that important role as we work to build a more affordable, effective, accountable, and transparent system. I look forward to discussing the merits and next steps for this specific review with the commissioners and the public at our June meeting.”
Seltz will report on the CMIR at the Commission’s next public meeting, Wednesday, June 19, 2013, and Commissioners will vote whether to continue with the review. The CMIR will include analyzing information from the parties and other market participants, developing a preliminary report, and issuing a final report. The proposed transaction cannot be completed until 30 days after the HPC issues its final report. The HPC may also refer its findings to the Attorney General for possible further action on behalf of health care consumers.
The response from Partners spokesman Rich Copp: “The proposed affiliation between Partners, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and South Shore Hospital will offer patients in southeastern Massachusetts more coordinated, accessible and affordable health care. We have always anticipated that the Health Policy Commission would review our proposal, and we look forward to taking this next step forward in the process.”
Looking for fine print? The HPC is here and I just signed up to follow them on Twitter at @Mass_HPC. Anybody else feeling extremely intrigued about how this review will play out, and what it will mean for the state’s efforts to contain health costs? | <urn:uuid:87f7c126-c6b7-4e86-9b83-983ef75ceadc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://commonhealth.wbur.org/tag/health-reform-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956017 | 723 | 1.570313 | 2 |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — When Pentagon officials announced plans to send Navy minesweepers and warships into the Persian Gulf for exercises, they carefully tried to avoid framing it as a direct show of force against Iran. Tehran took care of that.
Iranian commanders and political leaders, facing an increasing squeeze from international sanctions, have sharply stepped up threats and defiant statements in recent weeks over the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint at the mouth of the Gulf that is the route for one-fifth of the world’s oil.
While it appears unlikely that Iran is ready to risk an almost certain military backlash by trying to close Hormuz, which is jointly controlled with Oman, the latest flurry from Tehran shows that Iranian authorities see the strait as perhaps their most valuable asset in brinksmanship over tightening sanctions and efforts to resume talks with world powers over its suspected nuclear-weapons program.
In Iran’s view, the strait offers a rare combination of strategic and economic leverage. Warnings from Tehran in the past about possible closure have been enough to boost oil prices to offset the blow of sanctions.
It’s also among the potential flashpoints if military force is used against Iran over its nuclear program. Iran could severely disrupt oil supplies and send the shaky global economy stumbling backward.
“Iran is masterful at keeping the world off balance,” said Theodore Karasik, a regional security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “There are few things that get the world’s attention more than the Strait of Hormuz.”
U.S. buildup in Gulf
The U.S. military maneuvers scheduled for September with ships from about 20 American allies are part of a Pentagon buildup in the Gulf with more troops and naval firepower seeking to rattle Iran and reassure Saudi Arabia and Washington’s other Gulf Arab partners worried about Iran’s influence and power.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards both scoffed and raged at the U.S.-led war games, calling American naval power weak while also complaining that the United States should be pulling its forces out of the region rather than sending in reinforcements.
Adm. Ali Reza Tangsiri, acting commander of the Revolutionary Guard naval forces, recently claimed Iran has full military control over the strait — an unmistakable challenge to Washington and its Gulf allies. He added, however, that Iran has no plans to attempt to disrupt tanker traffic — a nod to ease worries on world markets.
He did not elaborate, but the remarks appear to point to Iran’s efforts to build pipelines to Asian markets and develop new Iranian ports with direct access to the Indian Ocean.
The United Arab Emirates took a similar approach with a pipeline across the desert to the Gulf of Oman on the ocean-bound side of the strait. Saudi Arabia also has the Red Sea as a bypass route, but its main oil facilities are on the Gulf. Other Gulf states, too, must rely on the tanker shipping lanes that thread the strait through international waters.
At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide, but the width of the shipping lane in either direction is only two miles, separated by a two-mile buffer zone.
Iran first escalated its threats over the strait in January after the European Union announced plans to halt imports of Iranian oil.View Entire Story
By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Entertainment News and Reviews from Washington, D.C. and beyond.
Columns from Voices around the World talking about the events, people, politics and social issues that concern us wherever, and whoever, we are.
Video reviews of today's hottest trends in Minecraft (servers and mods) along with a look at the latest video games with your host MCairsoft14 (alias Jerad Zad).
Covering the world of soccer, including the World Cup, Major League Soccer, D.C. United and the English Premier League and other interesting sporting events.
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal
Vietnam Memorial adds four names
Cinco de Mayo on the Mall
NRA kicks off annual convention | <urn:uuid:6ca41d9d-07a1-4c3b-a86d-feb9ef8b3c9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/iranian-threats-to-halt-oil-ships-prompt-us-to-sen/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94305 | 876 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A great question to ask other people: "What are you grateful for?"
Most people are grateful for many things, but this isn't necessarily on the forefront of their minds. It's like the thoughts of being grateful are on the hard disk of their mental computer, but not on the screen of their minds. By asking someone, "What are you grateful for?" they bring the thought of gratitude up to their mental screen.
After some people, when they have answered this question, you might add a comment like, "You are fortunate for that." "That's a wonderful thing to be grateful for." "So you always have what to be grateful for."
(From Rabbi Zelig Pliskin's book: Thank You! Gratitude: Formulas, Stories, and Insights: Artscroll Publishers) | <urn:uuid:058a7727-079d-4bdb-a191-b9c5ca816643> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aish.com/sp/dl/46125542.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972119 | 167 | 2.0625 | 2 |
There are people in The Jungle who try to alleviate other people's suffering. There is that settlement worker who weeps with Teta Elzbieta over her horrible family life and then gets Jurgis a job at a steel plant on the outskirts of town. There is also that doctor working on birth defects, who might have been able to help little Kristoforas had the family only known that he was looking for patients. But there are many, many more people in Chicago's slums looking for help than there are people offering it. The overall impression of suffering – both human and animal – in this book extends in so many directions that surely only a systematic overhaul of the American economic system will solve all these problems. (At least, that's what Upton Sinclair wants you to conclude, since this book is partly inviting you to become a socialist. Thus, the characters' suffering doesn't just make for moving literature. It is also a recruiting tool.)
Because The Jungle makes a case for the importance of collective organizing, suffering always affects a broader network of people beyond the individual.
The economic focus of The Jungle means that all social problems, including racism, gender inequality, and anti-immigrant prejudice, are explained as a result of class difference and exploitation. | <urn:uuid:2979245d-b95b-428a-848c-d1428d7e48d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shmoop.com/the-jungle/suffering-theme.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978834 | 255 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Jared would be proud of me. Whenever I grab lunch to eat in my office, I head over to Subway for a six-inch Veggie Delite with provolone. Just 280 calories. Yum.
Depending on my mood and workload, I usually gobble down my Subway lunch between 12:15 and 1:00pm.
On Monday, though, I started eating at 11:22.
Like any good economist, I asked myself why. What inspired me to eat an hour early? Did I face some new incentive or new constraint that caused me to eat sooner?
No, I didn’t. Monday was a normal day. No new incentives, no new constraints, no other changes.
Except for one other thing: I brought lunch from home. Two slices of leftover BBQ chicken pizza. Also yum.
If you are a well-trained neoclassical economist, your initial inclination will be to search for a subtle link between these facts. Perhaps cold pizza tastes better at 11:22 than an hour later. But that’s not true. Perhaps I ate early because I saved on travel time to Subway. No dice; Subway is only 90 seconds away.
Perhaps these facts are unrelated, a mere happenstance. No again. From long experience I can tell you that I always eat lunch earlier when I bring it from home than when I get it at Subway. It’s a law of nature. Indeed, I have sometimes eaten lunch as early as 10:30 on days I brought it to work with me. This is particularly likely if I put the lunch in my desk, rather than in the refrigerator down the hall.
The explanation for this behavior is, of course, psychological or, in the lingo of economics, behavioral. My lizard brain excels at knowing when food is near. And in getting me to eat it. Millions of years of natural selection didn’t favor creatures that wait an extra hour or two before they grab lunch. If the food is at hand, eat it now.
So every time I bring lunch to work, I set off a battle of wills. My rational, patient, busy self who likes to eat around 12:30, and my primordial brain that wants to eat when the eating is good.
That old brain has, if you will, the upper hand. It knows how to get what it wants. All it needs to do is remind me that food is near. I often feel as though lunch is calling to me from my desk drawer or, slightly more faintly, from the refrigerator. But that’s really the lizard brain doing its thing.
Ignoring that voice takes willpower. But that saps the mental energy I need to focus on my work. To shut my lizard brain up, I have only one choice – to get lunch over with. So on Monday I happily started in on my six slices of pizza at 11:22, washed them down with some iced green tea, and got back to work.
Perfectly rational behavior, I should note, given my urges, yet irrational as well measured against my “real” eating preferences. So it goes in the battle between our inner selves.
But wait. Didn’t I say I brought two slices of BBQ chicken pizza from home? How did I end up eating six?
Don’t worry, I didn’t steal a co-worker’s pizza from the refrigerator (if such thefts are a problem for you, please see this post).
Instead, I played along with another feature of my lizard brain. Eating six slices of pizza is much more filling than eating two. So I divided each of the two large pizza slices into three smaller ones. I then got to enjoy eating six slices, not just two.
I realize that sounds kind of insane. My rational, neoclassical side agrees. But it works. Perfectly rational given my urges, yet irrational as well. Such is life.
Note: Pizza photo from Chocolate on my Cranium. | <urn:uuid:91686138-dba9-49b0-aad3-06447eb2ad13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dmarron.com/2011/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965144 | 831 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Small and mid-sized companies are likely to be disappointed if they look for a new jobs tax credit program to replace the Targeted Employment Tax Credit that expires at the end of the year. "We're not anxious to come out with jobs tax credits," says Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. Roberts says the department has adopted a wait-and-see attitude, confident that the Administration's tax cut proposals will solve the unemployment puzzle.
A recent study of the 1977-1978 general jobs tax credit program is likely to reinforce the department's intention to delay action. The study, conducted by Robert Tannenwald, a former tax specialist for the Library of Congress, concludes that the program was no more cost-effective than the Comprehensive Employment & Training Act (CETA).
The survey also found that many companies earned credits for part-time or temporary workers, when the program was designed to create permanent employment opportunities. "One guy, who hires stand-ins for movies," Tannenwald says, "regularly employs only a few people full time. He made a bundle by hauling extras in off the street."
The survey does provide evidence that the 1977-78 jobs tax credits program helped growing firms grow faster, particularly when cash flow was constraining them. But that evidence probably isn't enough to make the Treasury Department less reluctant to put together another jobs credits program. | <urn:uuid:6f2a4de9-a522-423e-aac7-0bbb387e1a46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inc.com/magazine/19810601/8937_Printer_Friendly.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973196 | 284 | 1.789063 | 2 |
It is my view that most on-line discussion sites are thought of the wrong way. Most are trying to create traditional media on the web but just make it interactive. The web is a new medium, not just an add-on to ExistingMedia?. It should be thought of differently.
FuzzyCommunityModeration? [theory B]
Sites like KuroShin, (also see CommunityOfGlassHouses for futher discussion of the problems with OnlineCommunities), try to solve AbstractThought? by using numbers. You are supposed to score -1 for an article you don't like, +1 for an article you do like, 0 if you are ambivalent to the article and +1(FP) for an article you would like to see on the front page. -1,0 and +1 are absolutes. HumanOpinions? are not absolutes. The -1,0 and +1 on KuroShin are interpreted different ways by different people. If someone doesn't agree with an article they will score -1. If someone thinks an article is badly written they will score -1. But what if you think the article is badly written but you agree with it, what do you score? The problems arise when you try to force the MidPoint? into an absolute.
Only having one scoring system doesn't work either. You are lumping writing style and opinion into one score. Surely you should have two scoring systems - one for style and one for opinion. And if you don't agree with an article, regardless of style or content, then surely you shouldn't be able to vote down an article. You should vote 0 for disagree. AmbivalencyIsAMidpoint? between agree and disagree, not an absolute. Voting 0 for ambivalency is forcing it into an absolute. Ambivalency should score a half (0.5).
There should not be any dumping or posting of articles either. All articles are in a queue, all of the time, and can always be voted on, and are always editable by the article author - so an article could improve through editing and rise in the queue. Everyone votes once for each article. If the article is changed by the owner then everyone can vote again. So it would be possible to vote 1 for well written and 0 for agree/disagree. The higher the score for writing ability the higher the article rises in the queue. The top ten articles or so are displayed on the front page. The opinion vote, along with the style vote, is used for personal filtering. You might want to view stories which are well written but only 10% of the people on the site agree with them - you can then see the minority view of articles. Or articles which are badly written but 90% of people agree with them - you get to see the majority view. You filter the articles to your own tastes. One discussion or community site could then host majority and minority views.
A similar system could be used for moderating comments on articles as well. -- PaulMillar
FuzzyCommunityOrganisation? [theory A]
A FuzzyCommunity is designed to be organic and to evolve 'naturally' - but should start with some sort of underlying struture(?) (detailed below). [Another idea would be to create a FuzzyFaq on a 'discussion' site and then inform others what its all about. They could then have their own site which links to your FAQ etc etc].
If there is chaos then order will return naturally. Do not gripe about perceived 'noise'. Either add or detract to a FuzzyCommunity. Decentralization and fragmentation are key to a FuzzyCommunity.
At the center of a FuzzyCommunity is the main FuzzyFaq. The main site would be a discussion forum of the main FuzzyFaq - each rule having its own discussion link as well as a main, general rule discussion area.
The second level of a FuzzyCommunity would be general topic sites eg Religion, Philosophy, Fiction, Lifestyle etc. Each general topic site would defer to the main FuzzyFaq as well as maintaining its own FuzzyFaq - a sub-set of the main one. Each general topic site would also syndicate the headlines from other general topic sites [max number? all of them?] via RDF/XML. Any article, discussion etc which was straddling general topic areas would be cross-posted to all relevant general topic sites [XML - semantic?], thus the ensuing discussion would be cross-posted as well. Each general topic site would also provide a discussion forum for its own FuzzyFaq. Each general topic site would also provide syndicated headlines of each sub-site under it.
The third level would be sub-sites of the general topic sites eg Religion would break down to catholicism, buddhism, atheism etc. Each sub-site would syndicate headlines only from other sub-sites under the general topic site. Articles submitted which straddle sub-site areas would only be posted on the relevant sub-sites. Each sub-site would have its own FuzzyFaq - and provisions for discussion - and would defer to the general topic site FuzzyFaq - which in turn defers to the main FuzzyFaq.
This could then break down into other sub-sites - each one following the principles laid out for the other sites.
It would try to combine a CommunitySolution, LegalSolution and TechnologySolution in building a FuzzyCommunity.
There would only be one main FuzzyFaq for each FuzzyCommunity. If someone wanted to set-up another main FuzzyFaq then it would have no relationship with other FuzzyFaq sites or communities.
There would be no single program for a FuzzyCommunity site. Each person could write their own program - in their favourite programming language - for their own site - and release the code freely if they desire under any licence, eg [GnuPublicLicence], they deemed fit. The only requirement for a FuzzyCommunity site would be that it follows the FuzzyTheory? laid out here and on the FuzzyFaq page.
In theory a FuzzyCommunity could feature article submission / discussion sites, WebLogs, OnlineDiaries, fiction sites, NewJournalism? sites etc. Anything should be possible as long as it relates to discussion, community and Fuzzy.
A FuzzyCommunity should be more flexible than other online communities or discussion sites and be able to adapt to new users, changing atitudes etc. This is a start and theory only at the moment.
FuzzyCommunity (alternate definition): A community composed of people who do not presently enjoy a real sense of community, and who desire a flexible, adaptable and tolerant community in which they can feel comfortable and even accepted, and who for the time being have placed themselves in contact with others under circumstances and conditions which are loosely if at all defined.
If the community is to evolve naturally, why are you already creating a fixed hierarchical structure and canonical pages? That may not fit the AppropriateMedia. In fact, I recall having this same argument before when comparing WebLogs to wikis. Instead, now I think we should have no rules but colour everything International Klein Blue. Links, text, background. -- SunirShah
At the moment this is all theory. I believe there should be some sort of underlying structure. Perhaps 'naturally' is the wrong choice of words here. -- PaulMillar
What need does all this fuzziness hope to fulfill that can't be fulfilled with your normal freeform Wiki? -- FrancisHwang
True, most of this could probably be fulfilled within a Wiki:WikiWeb but, perhaps, not everyone wants to use a wiki to create a discussion, WebLog or community Wiki:WebSite. If I were to kick this off I would use a wiki [FuzzyWiki?] as my 'site'. The 'dilemma' I have at the moment on this idea is whether to have a proper structure underlying this whole thing or to elaborate on the ideas of a FuzzyFaq and FuzzyDiscussion and then people could either use / alter the my FuzzyFaq for their own sites or create their own, and to have sites which adhere to a the ideas laid out about FuzzyDiscussion. -- PaulMillar
What specifically do you want "proper structure" for?
And why must "proper" mean hierarchical?
This is why I put this info up on a wiki because I wanted these sorts of questions to try and clarify the idea and theory in my own head. At the moment I'm torn between continuing with the structure idea and including the FuzzyFaq and FuzzyDiscussion within that, or dropping the structure and just keeping the FuzzyFaq and FuzzyDiscussion 'philosophy'. A FuzzyCommunity would need some sort of structure, IMHO, and hierarchical would be best for the purposes of syndicating headlines, articles and discussions across the community - general topic sites would syndicate other general topic sites and its own sub-sites; sub-sites would only syndicate from other sub-sites under the general topic site and so on.. Improvements to my ideas are welcomed. -- PaulMillar
Paul, I still don't have a sense of what specific need a FuzzyCommunity is trying to address. I'm not talking about the theory. Theory is only interesting when it's made manifest in specific examples. Maybe you could try finishing this sentence: "I want to have an online community like a Wiki, but a Wiki couldn't work because people might ..." -- francis
It's a 'new' type of community. It is built using the ideas laid out in FuzzyFaq and FuzzyDiscussion but it is not a apecific site design. It could be a wiki, or it could be a discussion site like KuroShin or it could be a WebLog. The sites would also use syndication to share information between them to stop stagnation of discussion and fragmentation of any site, to stop if from getting too big, would be encouraged. It could be a wiki but it's also NotWiki? -- PaulMillar
A community wider than a single site or even a single software paradigm. Bound, however, by the syndication paradigm and formats, which provide the technical infrastructure tying the sites together, and by the FuzzyFaq, providing social infrastructure.
What are the benefits of this? As noted above, the benefit is allowing more interaction between different subcommunities. For example, I'm sure there are various UseNet groups discussing similar ideas to MeatBall. The FuzzyCommunity imagines bridging these communities to the extent that common social norms develop.
I do believe that syndication is the future, and certainly some FuzzyCommunities? will develop, but I question the centralized nature of the primary FuzzyFaq. Certainly this will happen in some instances, but I imagine that most SyndicatedCommunities? will not be FuzzyCommunities? (as defined here to mean a SyndicatedCommunity with a central FuzzyFaq). In most cases I would expect that each site would have it's own different norms, and while there would be some norms which persisted across site boundaries (example: WikiWiki and MeatballWiki both have UseRealNames), I don't expect that most subcommunities would want to actually give up their sovreignty to a FuzzyFaq.
For example; could you see an alliance even of different wikis (say, WikiWiki and most of its SisterSites), all of which point to a certain common set of pages to which define acceptable behavior "within this wiki alliance"? I would expect this would not happen.
However, perhaps a weaker form of FuzzyFaq would work out; one which was not held up as "THE rules", but merely as "a guide to wiki etiquitte"; the FuzzyFaq would note that it was not authoritative, and sometimes individual sites would have norms that different from the FuzzyFaq. In fact, there may even be two or three "most central" FuzzyFaqs floating around within a given FuzzyCommunity, each slightly contradicting the others.
The difference from the scheme given above (theory "A") is that the sites wouldn't consider themselves to be "under" any of the central FuzzyFaqs, and indeed some sites in the community wouldn't follow those norms at all. The hierarchy, also, I don't think would be as strict, although I do think a "fuzzy" version of what was said above (a hierarchy of more general to more specific topics) will develop.
See also Wiki:CategoryFuzzy | <urn:uuid:f7e41d83-f4ad-420d-844f-04d6197d0336> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/FuzzyCommunity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958304 | 2,684 | 2.140625 | 2 |
In addition to grassroots, media and lobbying efforts Citizens in Charge Foundation works through the courts to protect and expand initiative & referendum rights around the country.
Recent and Ongoing Legal Action
- In 2010 the Utah State Supreme Court ruled that the state must except electronic signatures from individuals qualifying to be on the ballot. This was a landmark case that set an important precedent in allowing e-signatures for initiative campaigns around the country. Citizens in Charge Foundation awarded the ACLU’s Darcy Goddard with the August 2010 Lilburne Award for her arguments before the court on behalf of the campaign to allow e-signatures.
- In February 2011, Citizens in Charge Foundation filed an amicus brief in the appeal of the Ni v. Slocum case in California. The case will decide whether or not e-signatures will be accepted as valid for initiative & referendum petitions in California. | <urn:uuid:715ee46b-8fc4-4799-b5e5-720f50d2701d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.citizensinchargefoundation.org/legal-action | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911162 | 178 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Amber Simonton: Empower yourself. And then empower others.
As the first member of her family to attend college, senior Amber Simonton understands the transformative power of higher education. "Once I started college, I really felt like the passion was ignited, like I had an opportunity to have an impact on society," says Simonton, a sociology major from Lynnwood, Wash. "I really feel it's our obligation to give to the world whatever we can. What purpose is there for an education other than to put it into action? Willamette kind of propels us into the next step."
To help others take the next step, Simonton has assisted youths in the Salem community as co-chair of the Willamette chapter of MEChA, a Latino student organization. In addition to raising funds for English as a Second Language classes at a nearby elementary school and mentoring youths at a local middle school, Simonton helped organize the Adelante Latina Educational Empowerment Conference at Willamette. "I'm passionate about MEChA and the work that we do," says Simonton, whose family tree includes roots to El Salvador. "The whole process of organizing the conference was a huge opportunity for our organization."
After graduating from Willamette, Simonton plans to spend a year working for a nonprofit service agency before pursing an advanced degree in social work. One possible career path might involve advocating for education in the Latino community - but no matter where she winds up, you can bet that Simonton will serve as an inspiration to others.
"I've experienced a lot of personal growth at Willamette, and I want to open up those kinds of opportunities to more individuals," says Simonton. "I want to empower people and help them find the resources they need to propel them to their own personal and educational goals." | <urn:uuid:1b24b60e-1671-4301-97a4-861c7c99f846> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.willamette.edu/people/archives/2005/01/amber_simonton.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966271 | 386 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The Report concludes with a number of observations which indicate that while progress is being made, the transition process in Lithuania has met with a number of problems:
Development of democracy: Substantial progress has been made in developing a democratic society. All the main prerequisites such as a multi-party system, free elections, free press and freedom of speech, have been introduced Although weaknesses include political fragmentation, over-centralized Government and the lack of strong NGOs, in addition, lack of money hinders access to information.
Economic reform: The past few years have brought acute economic problems, including rampant inflation and a sharp drop in production. The worst problems now appear to be over, and the macro-economic position is stable, although industry still desperately needs modernization.
Social problems: As a result of transition and the economic crisis, new social problems such as poverty and unemployment have emerged. Incomes are polarizing and becoming increasingly insecure. Taxation policies exacerbate the income disparity.
Education and health: Both these systems suffer from their past legacy, and from economic constraints. Education must adapt to provide new skills, but is losing teachers and prestige. Health problems have increased during transition, but the health system lacks funding and needs reforming.
Social safety net: The Government is working to establish a comprehensive safety net and has recently reformed the pension system. The task is to ensure that any new measures alleviate the current urgent problems, while at the same time laying the foundation for a mature market economy.
Année: 1995 Type: Rapports nationaux Région: Europe et le CEI Pays: Lithuania | <urn:uuid:2cc5aea1-b7a1-46e7-bb93-447bb0b3e636> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hdr.undp.org/fr/rapports/national/europecei/lithuania/name,2887,fr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945192 | 322 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Re-elected President Obama is an avid baseball fan. / H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Sports
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was elated with the re-election of President Obama on Tuesday, but if he had his way, Mitt Romney would be part of the administration, too.
"Just because President Obama is back in power is not as important as all of us pulling together, ''Jackson told USA TODAY Sports. "The best would be for Obama to be president and Romney to be vice-president. We need everyone to come together.
"I get so disappointed when I hear all of the negativity from Republicans against the Democrats and Democrats against Republicans. We need to come together as a nation. Black. White. Hispanics. Jewish. Native Americans.
"We need to have the resolve to work together. It's like when the Yankees have a great team, it helps baseball. When the Knicks and Lakers are great teams, it helps basketball. If the Republicans and Democrats can get together, it will make our country a strong, better place, for everyone.''
Jackson is trying to do his part by hosting his 8th All-Star Celebrity classic in Las Vegas this weekend to raise monies for underprivileged minority students, opening doors in the technology world with his Mr. October Foundation.
"We're trying to help children get to the mainstream of what's going on in the world,'' Jackson said, "and that's technology. The world is moving toward technology. That's where the jobs are.
"When you see some of the top technology companies, you see so few people of color. They are not African American and Latins. They are Indians and Asians. The African-American and Latin-American population makes up 30% of our national population, but only 9% of those people are college educated with jobs in America, and we have only 6% of African-Americans and Latin-Americans in the world of technology.
"We're just not involved, so I'm trying to change that.''
Jackson's foundation funds the calculus program at Eastside College Preparatory in Palo Alto, Calif., and provided five scholarships of $17,000 apiece to the Georgia Tech summer internship program.
"By the year 2018,'' Jackson says, "there will be 1 million job opportunities in the world of technology, but 300,000 of those jobs will go to corporate people outside the U.S.
"We've got to stay competitive, and the only way to get past that is through education and create awareness in the African American and Hispanic American community. We want to mentor and transition studies in their careers. We want to enable students from all walks of like to define their future, and follow their passion.''
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Former MLB legend likes Obama, wants Romney as VP | <urn:uuid:6e23ec76-5b61-4014-87e5-dcad411a233d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sctimes.com/usatoday/article/1690887&usatref=sportsmod?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CSports%7Cp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967604 | 592 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Concho County, Texas
From Ancestry.com Wiki
|This article is a stub. Help us to expand it by contributing your knowledge. For county page guidelines, visit U.S. County Page Content Suggestions.|
Concho is a county in Texas. It was formed in 1858 (organized 1879) from the following county/ies: Bexar . Concho began keeping birth records in 1903, marriage records in 1879, and death records in 1903. It began keeping land records in 1879, probate records in 1879, and court records in 1880. For more information, contact the county at P.O. Box 98, Paint Rock 76866-0098. On the attached map, Concho is located at O9.
For information about the state of Texas see Texas Family History Research. | <urn:uuid:1c4c07dd-c57c-4bd7-8c55-e55bf3535206> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ancestry.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Concho_County,_Texas&oldid=8842 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914649 | 171 | 2.90625 | 3 |
In June 2008, an experimental Department of Transportation program called “Summer Streets” was announced. For three straight Saturdays in August 2008, a 6.9-mile stretch of Manhattan would be blocked off to vehicle traffic. The “summer streets” would allow New Yorkers to walk, ride bicycles, rollerblade, etc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 16, 2008
MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND DOT COMMISSIONER SADIK-KHAN ANNOUNCE “SUMMER STREETS,” A CAR-FREE CITY ROUTE FOR HEALTH AND RECREATION
For Three Saturdays in August, Route from Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park Will Open
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today announced Summer Streets, a new City program that will temporarily open a 6.9 mile car-free route from the Brooklyn Bridge to 72nd Street. Featuring connections to Central Park and other open spaces, Summer Streets will give New Yorkers unprecedented access to the streets for exercise and exploration from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on three consecutive Saturdays in August, the 9th, 16th and 23rd. Major cross-town streets will remain open for vehicles that need to cross the route. The Mayor and Commissioner Sadik-Khan were joined at the announcement by Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Lance Armstrong and David Byrne.
“We anticipate that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors will take advantage of streets temporarily opened for recreation,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We hope the Summer Streets experiment will become as much a part of the New York experience as strolling the Coney Island boardwalk, participating in the 5-borough bike tour, or listening to the Philharmonic in the park.”
“In Bogotá, they call it Ciclovia, or bikeway. In Paris, it’s the Plage, or beach. Here in New York, Summer Streets will literally turn the streets of our city into a pedestrian park,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “The streets themselves are among the most valuable public space that the City has to offer, and finding the room within our existing street space for those on two feet or two wheels is a true application of our goals for a sustainable future under the Mayor’s PlaNYC initiatives and the DOT’s strategic plan.”
As part of Summer Streets, DOT worked with the Police Department, NYC & Co., the Mayor’s Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management, and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit on a plan to redirect vehicle traffic around the route that runs from Lower Manhattan to 72nd Street and Central Park via Centre Street, Lafayette Street, 4th Avenue and Park Avenue. Local streets will remain accessible to residents with vehicles and for deliveries.
Fitness, dance and yoga classes will be held at a central stage along the route, with additional exercise and health activities hosted by community groups at select cross streets. Event sponsors will also organize activities, and bike rental facilities will be available along the route, including at hotels. Rest areas will be stationed along the route for water and bike repair, and serve as meeting areas to link up with friends and family members. At the 72nd Street link to Central Park, the car-free route will occupy the southern half of the road only, while the north side will remain open to two-way vehicle traffic. People on bicycles can access the park and the Hudson River Greenway from the West Side via bike lanes on West 90th and 91st Streets. In Lower Manhattan, bike lanes will connect to the route from the Greenway via Warren, Reade, Hudson, and Chambers Streets.
The Police Department will direct traffic around the route and all parking will be restricted starting at midnight on the day of the event. Additional staff and volunteers will be on hand to facilitate the event.
Transforming traffic lanes into car-free recreation corridors has already been successful in Bogotá, Paris, Tokyo and London. Several cities in the U.S. have similar programs, such as El Paso, Tex., Cambridge, Mass. and soon also Portland, Ore. and Chicago, Ill. For New York, Summer Streets creates an opportunity for residents to experience the city in a healthy, sustainable way while attracting “green tourism” to the city center.
The major cross-town routes that will remain open to traffic are:
East Houston Street
New York (NY) Daily News
Car-free zone for biking and walking runs through city 3 days in August
BY ALISON GENDAR and ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Monday, June 16th 2008, 11:18 PM
The city will turn a 5-mile stretch of Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park into a $1 million car-free haven for bikers, hikers and joggers on three consecutive Saturdays this summer.
“Summer Streets will give us an opportunity to be tourists in our own city and see it anew,” Mayor Bloomberg said Monday. “There might be some minor disruptions here and there, but I think those will be far outweighed by the huge benefits that Summer Streets will bring to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.”
The route along Lafayette St., Fourth Ave. and Park Ave. to 72nd St., then west to the park, will be closed from 7 a.m. to 1p.m. Aug. 9, 16 and 23.
New York (NY) Times
June 16, 2008, 4:58 pm
City to Experiment With Car-Free Streets
By Fernanda Santos
Emulating similar experiments in Paris, London, and Bogotá, Colombia, New York City will close off to traffic a 6.9-mile route from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street on three consecutive Saturdays, giving New Yorkers to a chance to explore and enjoy “car-free recreation corridors” — well, for six hours a stretch, at least.
In making the announcement, the mayor summoned some star power: the cyclist and seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and the musician David Byrne of the Talking Heads, who said he commutes by bicycle daily to his work in SoHo from his home in Midtown.
The route will run from Lower Manhattan to East 72nd Street via Centre Street, Lafayette Street, Fourth Avenue and Park Avenue. Major crosstown routes — including Chambers, Canal, East Houston, 14th, 23rd and 59th Streets — will remain open to traffic. Buses that ride along the 6.9-mile route will be rerouted during the street closings — which have been scheduled for Aug. 9, 16, and 23, from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m.
Standing on a wide stretch of sidewalk outside the uptown entrance to the No. 6 train station on Astor Place, the mayor said of the program: “There might be some minor disruptions here and there, but I think that those will be far outweighed by the huge benefits that Summer Streets will bring to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.”
New York (NY) Times
On 3 Days in August, City Will Try No-Car Zone
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and FERNANDA SANTOS
Published: June 17, 2008
It has been a long-held dream of New Yorkers of a certain (greenish) stripe: the streets of Manhattan free of cars. Now, for a few hours, on a few streets, on a few weekends this summer, that dream will become reality.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Monday that he will create a car-free zone on three Saturdays in August, along a 6.9-mile stretch of streets through Manhattan, from the Brooklyn Bridge, north to Park Avenue and the Upper East Side. Cars, trucks and buses will be banned on the streets along the route from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Aug. 9, 16 and 23. The mayor was careful to describe the initiative, called Summer Streets, as an experiment.
June 17, 2008
Get ready for summer streets in New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying something new this summer in New York City by blocking off nearly 7 miles of Manhattan’s busy streets.
The program is called Summer Street and is a way to get New Yorkers out and about on Saturdays.
The route, stretching from the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan to East 72nd Street along Centre and Lafayette streets and Fourth and Park avenues, will be off-limits to traffic from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Aug. 9, 16 and 23. Several crosstown streets along the route will remain open.
The closed streets will feature bike rental kiosks, rest stops with water and bike repair facilities, along with fitness, dance and yoga classes.
I think it’s a great idea. I wanna see some drag queens and line dancers too!
Posted by Charles Winters on June 17, 2008 12:52 AM
Let me inform you that I am a staunch Muslim following all the Islamic tenets in the right interpretation and spirit and there is no such thing as yoga being ‘haram’ (disallowed) in Islam. In my case, I have found that Islamic yoga is a reality. It is possible to employ the skills of yoga to worship Allah better and be a better Muslim. | <urn:uuid:d6bf35d1-f63d-4dae-8134-10342f77a9a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/comments/summer_streets_car_free_streets_during_summer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941948 | 1,979 | 1.75 | 2 |
The idea that Mind is a world all of its own, non-physical and consisting of a reality equal with or superior to physical reality, originated with Plato in Greece around 500 B.C. There were no such theories around at the time of Zarathushtra for sure.
What is more interesting from a Zoroastrian perspective is to study the latest science of physics. In loop quantum theory - now the dominant theory in physics and cosmology following the demise of string theory - not even space or time themselves are fundamental. What is fundamental is instead nothing but causality itself.
Now if anything was extremely modern with Zarathushtra it was the concept that CAUSALITY is the fundament of existence (the stress on the importance of the ORDER of things). This is something we should focus on instead of trying to force a Platonian dualism into The Gathas where there is none.
2008/12/29 Special Kain
The whole point is that the question whether there are two or more worlds mentioned in the Gathas isn't as important as realising that they couldn't be essentially different from each other. There is only one law, asha, and asha governs all worlds - whether real, potential or merely imagined.
What we have here is functional monism as in pragmatism's notion of functionality replacing the absolute truth. The material world and all those fancy astral theme parks do not follow completely different logics!! They're not functionally different, so they're not essentially different, either. And since we're living in a post-ontological world, philosophically speaking, we don't have to worry about the question whether there are any heavens, because they wouldn't be much different from this world, anyway.
I hope I made myself clear enough, so I may finish in Rorty style, claiming that there has never been a problem whatsoever. :-)) | <urn:uuid:5b58c8bb-2be5-4bb0-af41-bdc86f836c5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alexanderbard.blogspot.com/2008/12/two-worlds-in-gathas-and-pre-eminence.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959961 | 389 | 2.59375 | 3 |
It’s this development work that acts as the bridge between hardware and experience, the magical tools that provide the platform to implement innovation.
At Sharp Labs, Canadian Dr Phil Edmonds is a Research Manager in the Information Technology and Systems group. He spends his working hours investigating with his team ways to code creations, such as an English language mobile learning application for smartphones that helps Japanese students learn English. The app is programmed to react to your rate of learning, working alongside each individual student.
If you have ever wondered what the life of a computer scientist is really like, look no further than Dr Edmonds. He began programming at the age of 12 and he is hoping to get his 9-year-old son started very soon. We’ve got love for you if you were coding in the 80s…
When I was in high school in Canada I got a computer. It was a Radio Shack colour computer. I just thought they were really cool. I was probably about 12-years-old and I had asked for it that Christmas. My Dad was in the computer industry at the time and so I asked him, ‘What can a computer actually do?’ He replied, ‘You can type in two numbers, assign them to letters A and B, and get it to add A+B for you.’ Well … I just thought that was wild – I had to have one of those. So I got it, was instantly excited, and learnt to program on it in about four months using a book.
We made little robots that could drive around and when they bumped into walls they would turn and keep going
I had a friend with similar interests so we started programming together – you know, just mucking about. We started doing two things both around the area of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). We made little robots that could drive around and when they bumped into walls they would turn and keep going. The other fun one we made was a dating service. Basically it would ask the user questions about what sort of person they would like to go on a date with, but in the end it would always just show the same highly pixelated graphic of an ugly person on the screen. I think we were 15 or 16 by this time – it would have been the mid-eighties. Safe to say we had a lot of fun with it.
So it was at this time your interest in A.I really took off?
I became really interested in it and wanted to experiment to see what we could achieve. My friend and I entered a science fair with a program we wrote based on some software that we had read about. The idea was you could type in commands in normal English and the robot would move around blocks for you. For example you could tell it to lift the red block and put it on the green one. We developed all the graphics and the logic behind it and we ended up winning the programming division of the science fair. As a result, we were invited to the Canada-Wide Science Fair, and so we connected it up to a real robot arm. Great fun. That is what started me off – I wanted to code, program and ideally work with artificial intelligence.
So your fascination has always been with A.I., rather than hard science?
Well, I classify it as computer science. Still hard science, but A.I. is a unique discipline within that. To be honest in the modern world nowadays you need to be as multi- disciplined as possible – everything is converging. I liked learning new things and with software programming you can learn something different every day. I think software guys have a natural love of writing software – you have to have that in you to sit for hours and dedicate the time to it. You then ask yourself, what I am writing the software to do? It has to achieve something, and that is where the innovation comes in. You would like to create something new that solves a problem no one else has solved before. You seek value, the bigger the better, and then the resources grow from the company to make it into a product that could reach millions, globally.
What is your dream program to develop in the next 10 or 20 years?
I think what you are seeing now in terms of data is really interesting. Data is being collected on the web in a massive way. Most people would be surprised at how much is already stored and the rate is increasing exponentially. Google has been doing for it years but it is becoming much more accessible to anyone to work with. There are collections of really big data sets freely available. What I am interested in is that if you can collect enough information about people’s habits, activities and behaviour – what can you infer about that? Can you work out what they are trying to accomplish that day or even what they want from life? This is known as context-awareness in technical circles. So, for example if you are walking down the street and you start doing stuff on your phone, maybe internet browsing – is that because you are about to go shopping? Or, are you looking for someone? Trying to remember something? Are you looking for a nice place to relax, sit down and have lunch?
There is an A.I. side where you can start predicting what people are going to do to a certain degree
So, there is an A.I. side where you can start predicting what people are going to do to a certain degree. If people are ok with us using it we can start to give back something of value, to make lives easier in our information-rich world.
I would like to be working on it. We have a project here in my group at Sharp Labs where we are working on some of these ideas around data and context-awareness. It’s a very big area – very competitive. However the other area I love working in is the education sector – such as the Elmo mobile learning application that we developed. Education is also exciting in terms of data. If you can start collecting data about how people are interacting and developing in terms of learning, there are great opportunities to improve education. How people read books? How people interact in the classroom? How people interact while they are learning together and say to yourself, what could we do with that? Could we provide better assessment of their progress or maybe even help teachers? They could see where problem points are immediately in a classroom environment. What do individual pupils need help with?
Do you think computers could get to the stage of predicting our own habits before we even know it?
There is a line you don’t want to cross. Every good technology gets to a point where it becomes scary. That is almost a mark of groundbreaking modern innovation. Computers predicting our habits sounds scary to me. I think the point is not the prediction itself but we would have to find a scenario where it is truly useful. If I am going shopping, I know I am going shopping. I don’t need the computer to tell me that. But if it reminded me to pick up something, or to combine my trip with another errand, would that be useful? What if it alerted the store that I’m on the way? Would the experience become more efficient for me and the store? For solving a human need or helping develop our human skills – data could really help. And it could help in ways we can’t imagine yet.
Yes I do. I love writing code at home. I write apps. The most recent was a dice rolling helper for a board game called Risk. You might have heard of it. I was just playing about – my eldest kid is interested in learning to programme so I am really excited about teaching him and maybe even creating a few ideas together. I get to work on projects I love and I get an element of freedom. It’s a good place to be. | <urn:uuid:4fe47ba3-6cd4-4f97-9ba1-7797d5e9b176> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.humansinvent.com/7812/phil-edmonds-i%E2%80%99ve-been-coding-since-i-was-12/?_escaped_fragment_=/tags/business | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984905 | 1,615 | 3 | 3 |
Rise in Cell Phone Theft Spurs Hearing
As cellphone thefts continue to surge citywide, Supervisor Scott Wiener convened a hearing and heard from city officials who said they are aware of the "alarming" rise in robberies but presented limited options to deter the frequency of what is sometimes called Apple picking because the company’s iPhones are such a popular target.
"It seems like everywhere I go, every community meeting I go to, people are talking about this," Wiener said. "They know someone or know someone who knows someone who’s been robbed and feel a high level of concern."
The February 7 hearing included members of the Board of Supervisors’ City Operations and Neighborhood Services and Public Safety committees and officials from the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, the San Francisco Police Department, and the district attorney’s office. Law enforcement officials pointed to existing strategies to combat the rise of smartphone theft but did not present any new strategies to identify or to prosecute the thieves who officials say are professional and working largely unorganized.
"We need to employ a prevention strategy," Wiener said, adding that he is interested in a public awareness program that highlights the vulnerability of using smartphones in public.
Public outcry regarding a rise of cellphone theft in particular has resonated citywide. According to a police department CompStat report, robberies have increased 11 percent overall since 2011, and police say 40 to 50 percent of these crimes involve cellphone theft.
On the city’s Muni lines, last year’s holiday season between October and November witnessed a jump of 70 percent in theft compared to the year prior, the report noted, 276 cases were reported in 2012, compared to 163 cases in 2011.
The trend is nationwide. The Federal Communications Commission reported last year that 38 percent of thefts in Washington, D.C. and 40 percent in New York City were cellphone-related.
Officials say thieves look to snatch devices from unsuspecting and distracted victims then turn around and sell them for several hundred dollars. Some of the phones are sold in hand-to-hand transactions or sometimes overseas.
Particular worry of crime in the Castro and Bernal Heights districts culminated in community meetings where upset members of the public sought more police intervention.
Tracking stolen phones
The major cellphone carriers, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, introduced a database last year initiated by the FCC, allowing customers to report the theft of their phone, which is then added to a database to prevent it from being re-appropriated.
This database works only on devices with Mobile Equipment Identity numbers, unlike the coveted iPhone, which uses a replaceable SIM card, making it desirable to thieves.
San Francisco Police Commander Mikail Ali said a range of efforts by officers help curb cellphone theft but admitted that the number of distracted cellphone users has outweighed plainclothes officers, who attempt to lure perpetrators by haphazardly using smartphones.
An inquiry by Supervisor Eric Mar highlighted a dearth of ethnic or age demographics of cellphone thefts. He noted "suspicion" by his Chinese constituents who feel that they are being targeted after an armed robbery of employees of a Clement Street pharmacy.
And Wiener, whose district includes Noe Valley and the Castro, said that even concealed smartphones in bags are susceptible to theft, like the January stabbing of a man walking a block from his home at 14th and Noe streets. His backpack was subsequently stolen, which contained a tablet and an iPhone.
In Ingleside last month, an armed robbery of an iPhone with a "Find My Phone" application led a Bayview officer to the Tenderloin, where the suspect was apprehended. This uncovered an organized group of thieves that Captain Timothy Falvey suspects are connected to six or seven other robberies.
In a Sunset robbery last month, a woman’s stolen iPhone was used to help police find three men who were later arrested and booked for armed robbery.
Ali suggested at the meeting that Apple product users enable iCloud, which can track a stolen phone via GPS.
An advertising campaign by SFMTA last fall showed a train platform where a man wearing a suit and oversized headphones used a tablet PC while shadowy figures loomed from behind.
"The public needs to be educated that when you’re holding up a tablet it’s an opportunity for someone to take it and go," Commander Lea Militello of SFMTA Special Operations said.
Militello said that when bus operators suspect a thief onboard, they’re encouraged to announce phone safety tips without identifying the perpetrator, as it would be "inappropriate."
Sharon Woo, the chief assistant to District Attorney George Gasc-n, said that there are 220 open robbery property cases that include cellphones. She added that juvenile thefts are on the rise but couldn’t provide age or ethnic demographics.
"My husband tells me every morning, ’don’t talk on your phone when you’re walking. Don’t text when you’re walking,’" Woo said. | <urn:uuid:2d81f70a-cb2f-4133-9643-e296d274f392> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgesanfrancisco.com/news/crime/news/141771/rise_in_cell_phone_theft_spurs_hearing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953966 | 1,039 | 1.640625 | 2 |
BY SANDEE MAGLIOZZI, ASSOCIATE CLINICAL PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EXTERNSHIPS
A LEADER IN
The current changes taking place in law practice are transforming the way we must bridge the gap between law school and practice. A simple question of transition has become an imperative to add value. We have all seen the articles and heard the call for “practiceready” law graduates. Today’s law graduate needs to “think like a lawyer” and have a foundation of substantive law that allows him or her to place new knowledge in context. But they also need the non-legal understanding to see an issue from a client’s perspective and a set of core competencies they can use to help solve a client’s problem.
Savvy law schools understand that their students need a broad array of lawyer competencies—knowledge, skills, and values—when they enter practice to serve their clients and the public interest. Santa Clara Law has long recognized that classes and casebooks alone do not transform students into lawyers. We offer a wide range of hands-on experiential learning opportunities to enable our students to develop crucial lawyering skills and integrate practical experience with substantive law knowledge. Experiential learning allows students to deepen their understanding of how the law and legal institutions operate, explore possible career options, and gain many of the lawyering skills and benchmark experiences they will need to meet the challenges of practice.
OUR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Santa Clara experiential learning opportunities include clinics, externships, pro bono opportunities, moot court competitions and a rich diversity of practical skill simulation courses. Simulation courses include topics such as interviewing and counseling, negotiations, technology licensing, trial techniques and many more. These courses provide students with an opportunity to learn valuable professional skills and values in hypothetical situations developed by their faculty. Simulation courses offer a safe environment where students can experiment and practice before launching into a clinic with real clients or the real-life practice setting of externships.
Santa Clara Law understands the need for real world experience and to continue expanding the opportunities for meaningful connections between legal education and law practice. The law school recently added two new clinics—the International Human Rights Clinic and the Low-Income Taxpayers Clinic—to its already existing clinics—the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center and the Northern California Innocence Project. Our clinics give students the opportunity to learn through the direct experience of lawyering. Students typically form relationships directly with clients and work under the supervision of a practicing attorney and/or faculty member. Students develop professionally while serving individuals in need with competence, conscience, and compassion.
SANTA CLARA LAW CLINICS
“Santa Clara Law offered me great classes with amazing professors, and it also prepared me for the real world with practical experience through clinics and externships. SCU’s location enables hands-on experience in local high tech companies, and opportunities to work with state and federal judges. The Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center offered me the opportunity to help others and learn through working in clinics such as consumer protection and employee rights. Santa Clara is unique in that it creates practice-ready attorneys.”
LUCI BUDA ’12
OUR EXTERNSHIP PROGRAM
Our Externship program has also grown over the past few years. We provide 225 to 250 domestic field-placements a year, and an additional 100 international field-placements through our Center for Global Law and Policy. Externships allow students to engage in actual legal work in the Bay Area and beyond. Students work with a judge or court, a nonprofit organization, a government agency, a law firm, or an in-house legal department. Externships provide a diversity of practical experiences and a wide range of work assignments that give students exposure to practice areas that interest them.
At Santa Clara Law, the vision for our externship programs is to help students gain the benchmark experiences and skills they need to bridge the gap to law practice. Each student works outside the law school and is paired with an experienced practicing attorney, often a fellow Santa Clara Law graduate, who provides supervision, one-on-one instruction, feedback, and evaluation. The student also participates in a faculty-taught concurrent course component. Externs integrate and assimilate the skills learned in the classroom with those acquired in a specialized law placement. Externships allow students to contextualize their knowledge and skills with real world experience, ensuring a high-quality learning experience.
OUR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
The professional development framework first requires students to understand the skills they will need to succeed as lawyers. There are many ways to organize these skills, and few law school or law firm lists look the same. But there is tremendous overlap, and most would agree on the recurring themes. In the current professional development framework, we have divided the skills into three broad categories: substantive legal skills, including law knowledge, law application, and law expression; practice skills, such as problem solving, practical judgment, and influence and advocacy; and professional skills (sometimes called critical “soft skills”), including professionalism, ethics, leadership, client service, business acumen, and professional development.
Next in the professional development framework, we work with students to assess the skills they have, and identify the skills they need and how to develop those specific skills. We provide students with tools for skills assessment, identifying experience benchmarks, self-evaluation, and reflective lawyering. We then help them create a professional development plan. The plan focuses on a S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound) objective model for helping students ensure they move forward. They are asked to set concrete, specific learning objectives that can be achieved within the context and time of their externship, as well as to set goals for the future.
The final step of the framework for students is to become more self-directed with a goal toward lifelong learning. We help students understand all the methods available for developing these skills now and throughout their careers: courses and workshops, work experience and assignments, evaluation and feedback, coaching and mentoring, and self-study. To the extent possible, we identify for students the many opportunities within the law school that are available. But we also recognize the reallife experience necessary to acquire and hone the skills they will need for practice. That experience would not be possible without the alumni and community support our students receive, and for that we are eternally grateful.
GIVING LAWYERS PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
“Global companies such as eBay look for lawyers with practical experience and a firm understanding of international legal principles. Santa Clara’s overseas legal internships offer students an unparalleled experience, gaining both practical experience at a firm or in-house in a global setting. Personally, my experience with SCU’s Japan program focused me on intellectual property law, and my internship at Honda’s head office in Tokyo helped pave my road to eBay Inc.”
SCOTT SHIPMAN ’99, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL, | <urn:uuid:74c90cf9-b260-4ea6-bb6e-54783427a261> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://law.scu.edu/sclaw/fall-2012-practice-ready-graduates.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944182 | 1,500 | 1.84375 | 2 |
News & Updates
Search Research Content
Resource Finder at Kennedy Krieger Institute
A free resource that provides access to information and support for individuals and families living with developmental disabilities.
Leg-length discrepancy and scoliosis in Marfan syndrome.
|Title||Leg-length discrepancy and scoliosis in Marfan syndrome.|
|Publication Type||Journal Article|
|Year of Publication||2002|
|Authors||Jones KB, Sponseller PD, Hobbs W, Pyeritz RE|
|Journal||Journal of pediatric orthopedics|
|Date Published||2002 Nov-Dec|
Leg-length discrepancy (LLD) greater than 2 cm is rare in the general population and is associated with a lumbar postural scoliosis; it has not been studied in the setting of Marfan syndrome. Thirteen LLDs of 2 cm or more were recorded from a group of 250 Marfan patients visiting a medical genetics clinic for complete care. Diagnosis was confirmed by standing anteroposterior pelvic radiograph and/or scanogram. Records and anteroposterior radiographs of the spine were reviewed to obtain Cobb angles for spinal curvatures. A mean discrepancy of 3.2 +/- 1.0 cm and a Cobb angle of 37.0 degrees +/- 28.4 degrees were found. Twelve of 13 curves were convex toward the shorter leg, caudally. Twelve patients had scoliosis greater than 10 degrees. Five curves were severe and progressive, suggesting the need for spinal fusion and prior equalization of leg lengths. LLD correlated weakly with Cobb angle. LLD is more common in individuals with Marfan syndrome than in the general population and is associated with increased structural scoliosis.
|Alternate Journal||J Pediatr Orthop| | <urn:uuid:a8c5f174-6f6c-4dc1-ba4f-5f31001c97b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kennedykrieger.org/research-training/biblio/leg-length-discrepancy-and-scoliosis-marfan-syndrome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910392 | 371 | 2.5 | 2 |
The University of Cologne (German Universität zu Köln) is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities. Furthermore, it is the German representative and founding member in the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS).
The University of Cologne was established in 1388 as the fourth university in the Holy Roman Empire after Charles University of Prague (1348), the University of Vienna (1365) and the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (1386). The charter was signed by Pope Urban VI. The university began teaching on January 6, 1389. In 1798, the university was closed by the French, who invaded in 1794, because the professorate refused to swear an oath on the French republic and wanted to keep the independence of the university. However, the last rector (Ferdinand Franz Wallraf) could hide and preserve the University seal.
At that point, the university was composed of the School of Management, Economics and Social Sciences (successor to the College of Trade and College of Community and Social Administration) and the School of Medicine (successor to the Academy of Medicine). In 1920, the School of Law and the School of Philosophy were added, from which the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences split in 1955. In 1980, both Cologne departments of the Rhineland School of Education were joined to the university as the College of Pedagogy and College of Special Education.
It is a leader in the area of economics and regularly placed in the top three for law and management.
In 2005, the University enrolled 47,203 students, including 3,718 graduate students. In 2003, the number of post-doctoral students was 670.
The number of international students was 6,157 in the Summer Semester of 2005. This amounts to approximately 13% of the total students. Those from developing countries made up about 60%, representing a total of 123 nations. The largest contingents came from Bulgaria (10.5%), Russia (8.8%), Poland (7.4%), China (6.2%) and Ukraine (5.7%).
There are 508 professors at the university, including 70 women. In addition, the university employs 1,549 research assistants, with an additional 765 at the clinic, and 1,462 other assistants (3,736 at the clinic). | <urn:uuid:7b038e38-5bad-4678-80a8-f8596c97637e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/browse/professorate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958597 | 516 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Dyer writes two books at once, his own life and a challenging life of D.H. Lawrence, in this unique performance. This wrestling match with Lawrence reveals the author and his subject as finely matched opponents who ultimately shake hands on the nature of life and art. Dyer's record of his time spent exhaustively studying Lawrence is both tormented and comic. He ``rages'' at his very goals and against the compulsion to write, while also tracing, intermittently, Lawrence's own life's itinerary. In a sense, the project is a doomed undertaking. For could there be any less auspicious literary pursuit than formalizing the process of going ``from making notes on Lawrence to making notes for my novel, by which I mean not working on my book about Lawrence to not working on the novel because all of the to-ing and fro-ing and note-taking actually meant that I never did any work on either . . .''? Chagrined by his ambivalence, seduced by his indecisiveness, Dyer aspires to the ``floaty indifference of contentment'' and comes to prefer Lawrence's manuscripts to the final texts. He longs for freedom, yet his gateway into Lawrence comes in a moment of raging indolence. Convinced that Lawrence's ``writing urges us back to the source,'' Dyer traces the other writer's footsteps. Taos and Oaxaca, Sardinia and Eastwood are important backdrops along the way. Such scenery lures Dyer into a dialogue with Lawrence's mentors and tormentors and into the heat and chill of the arguments they waged. Larkin, Brodsky, and Julian Barnes are poetic referees in the ring. The push-me-pull-me here of the text and the sub-text, of biography and autobiography, turns up the volume on this fascinating symbiosis, which casts a new light on creativity and the importance of destiny. | <urn:uuid:f0754497-4f8d-42ba-b28d-40159172accf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/geoff-dyer/out-of-sheer-rage/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962217 | 392 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Governor Snyder says the holidays are looking brighter for employers and businesses across Michigan. That's because he signed dozens of bills into law that reform regulations and taxes on businesses.
The bills eliminate the Michigan Business Tax, something Governor Snyder promised to do when he ran for office. The governor says this will stimulate economic development and bring "more and better jobs to Michigan."
"I'm glad to say Michigan no longer holds the title for having the dumbest tax in the country. We got ride of it and we replaced it," said Governor Snyder.
The more than dozen bills he signed focus around three topics: personal property tax, the severance tax, and regulatory reform. The governor's office says the new workplace safety regulations being implemented eliminate 13 rules for every new one, making Michigan laws more streamlined and up-to-date.
"We have removed net over 800 and some rules off the books and this legislation just really helps take it to the next level in terms of saying we are doing smart things," said Snyder.
Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley says he could not be more pleased. Althought right-to-work opponents would object.
"Across the board, Michigan is getting to be a better and better place to operate in every single day. Right-to-work is a component of that, but it's not all of it. Personal property tax reform that we just signed is probably as big or bigger an issue for a major manufacturer than are labor laws," said Lieutenant Governor Calley. | <urn:uuid:295504d0-9c63-4787-9cda-5582cede3df8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wilx.com/home/headlines/184362131.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979796 | 306 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Saint Xavier University presents seventh annual Honors Program Guest Lecture
Cass Sunstein set to speak on selective media use in society
CHICAGO (Oct. 18, 2005) –Saint Xavier University will present its seventh annual Honors Program Guest Lecture on Nov. 10 at 6:30 p.m. in the Butler Reception Room of the Warde Academic Center, 3700 W. 103rd St.
The lecture, titled “Mobs and Blogs: Red States, Blue States and Democracy’s Echo Chambers,” will be delivered by guest speaker Cass Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School and Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. A question-and-answer session and reception will immediately follow Sunstein’s lecture.
The speech will be based on his book, Republic.com, a work that addresses the potential hazards of selective media use in a democratic society. His concern is based on the belief that in order for a democracy to be successful, its citizens must both frequently engage in unplanned encounters to expose themselves to differing viewpoints and share common experiences with one another.
Sunstein, who graduated with a law degree from Harvard Law School, has taught at the University of Chicago for more than 20 years. Prior to teaching, he was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is an expert on constitutional law and the structures of government. Sunstein has written scores of books and articles on human rights and the responsibilities of citizens and of government in a democracy. His most recent books include Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right Wing Courts are Wrong for America and The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Constitutional Vision and Why We Need it More Than Ever.
Sunstein is frequently consulted as a legal expert by the media for his views on constitutional issues. Recently, he has been widely interviewed about Supreme Court nominees John G. Roberts Jr. and Harriet Miers on several national news programs, including ABC’s Nightline and National Public Radio’s Fresh Air from WHYY-FM. Commentators sought his opinions on how these two nominations could affect future court decisions.
The event is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by the Saint Xavier University’s Honors Program, a program designed to provide an enriched academic experience for gifted and highly motivated undergraduate students, and co-sponsored by the Department of History and Political Science and the Center for Religion and Public Discourse. For more information about the lecture, please contact Dr. Judith Hiltner, director of the Honors Program, at (773) 298-3230 or email@example.com.
Saint Xavier University Media Relations: 773-298-3325
3700 West 103rd Street, Chicago Ill. 60655 * 18230 Orland Parkway, Orland Park, Ill. 60467 | <urn:uuid:8083af9e-b682-4dc0-933a-cc2df184e6e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sxu.edu/news/archive/news_story.asp?id=311 | 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 | 0.945334 | 610 | 1.671875 | 2 |
This month Philadelphia will begin the month by hosting a concert of epic proportions and will end it with an eclectic art festival. Philadelphia was just named the number 1 American city for culture by Travel and Leisure Magazine. Let's take a moment to remember some of the legendary talents that came from Philly and helped to secure it's reputation as a creative and highly cultured place. Philadelphia has produced famous artists from everyone genre of music, most notably Jazz, Philadelphia Soul, Hip Hop and R&B. In the 1950's the American pop music show American Bandstand hosted by Dick Clark was produced here. "Philadelphia Soul" is a sub-genre of music that originated in the 1960's drawing from the girl group sound. In the 1980's & 90's so many successful R&B and hip hop artists came out Philadelphia. At the same time Philadelphia had a distinct punk rock and hardcore scene as well. Here in alphabetical order are some of famous musical artists who were either born and raised in Philly or began their career here. It's a very impressive list. | <urn:uuid:fec292ff-b345-45af-81aa-b5c90f0e8a9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://philadelphia.about.com/b/2012/08/31/philadelphia-musicians-past-and-present.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97939 | 211 | 1.640625 | 2 |
hawkArticle Free Pass
hawk, any of various small to medium-sized falconiform birds, particularly those in the genus Accipiter, known as the true hawks, and including the goshawks and sparrowhawks. The term hawk is often applied to other birds in the family Accipitridae (such as the kites, buzzards, and harriers) and sometimes is extended to include certain members of the family Falconidae (falcons and caracaras).
The great majority of hawks are more useful to humans than they are harmful, but there is still widespread prejudice against them. Occasionally they destroy poultry and smaller birds, but usually they eat small mammals, reptiles, and insects. Hawks have many foraging techniques, but the most typical in their pursuit of prey is raking, or swiftly following the animal’s efforts to escape. Once the hawk has secured the prey with its powerful talons, the bird dismembers it with its sharply pointed, strong beak.
Hawks occur on the six major continents. Most species nest in trees, but some, such as the marsh hawk, nest on the ground in grassy places, and others nest on cliffs. They lay from three to six brown-spotted eggs.
The so-called true hawks—members of the genus Accipiter (sometimes also called accipiters)—are exemplified by the sharp-shinned hawk (A. striatus), a bird with a 30-cm (12-inch) body length, gray above with fine rusty barring below, found through much of the New World, and by Cooper’s hawk (A. cooperii), a North American species similar in appearance but larger—to 50 cm (20 inches) long. A long tail and short, rounded wings give these fast, low-flying birds great maneuverability. They feed on birds and small mammals; of all the New World raptors, Cooper’s hawk is most suspect when poultry yards are raided. The goshawk and the sparrowhawk are also members of this group.
The buteos, also called buzzard hawks, are broad-winged, wide-tailed, soaring raptors found in the New World, Eurasia, and Africa. The red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), the most common North American species, is about 60 cm (24 inches) long, varying in colour but generally brownish above and somewhat lighter below with a rust-coloured tail. This beneficial hunter preys mainly on rodents, but it also catches other small mammals as well as various birds, reptiles (including rattlesnakes and copperheads), amphibians, and even insects. The red-shouldered hawk (B. lineatus), common in eastern and Pacific North America, is a reddish brown bird about 50 cm (20 inches) long, with closely barred underparts.
The black hawks are two species of short-tailed and exceptionally wide-winged black buteos. The great black hawk, or Brazilian eagle (Buteogallus urubitinga), about 60 cm (24 inches) long, ranges from Mexico to Argentina; the smaller common, or Mexican, black hawk (B. anthracinus) has some white markings and ranges from northern South America into the southwestern United States. Both species feed on frogs, fish, and other aquatic creatures.
Some other buteos are the following: Harris’s, or the bay-winged, hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus), a large black bird with inconspicuous brown shoulders and flashing white rump, is found in South America and northward into the southwestern United States. The broad-winged hawk (B. platypterus), a crow-sized hawk, gray-brown with a black-and-white-banded tail, is found in eastern North America, where it migrates in large flocks. Swainson’s hawk (B. swainsoni) is a bird of western North America that migrates to Argentina. Two notable rough-legged hawks are the ferruginous hawk (B. regalis)—the largest North American buzzard (up to 63 cm [25 inches] long)—and the rough-legged hawk (B. lagopus) of both the Old and New Worlds.
The African harrier hawk (Polyboroides typus) and the crane hawk (Geranospiza nigra) of tropical America are medium-sized gray birds resembling the harriers but having short, broad wings.
The relationship of the Accipitridae and the Falconidae creates some confusion regarding the classification and naming of species, and some names seem—to the layperson, at least—to be used interchangeably. For example, in the United States Circus cyaneus is known as the marsh hawk or northern harrier; the same bird is known in Britain as the hen harrier. Many falcons are known locally as hawks but have other, more widespread common names—e.g., the sparrowhawk, or kestrel; the duck hawk, or peregrine falcon; and the pigeon hawk, or merlin. Another related species, the fish hawk, is better known by the name osprey.
What made you want to look up "hawk"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:3a536576-2e7c-4d8e-9f59-31eaebd2c1ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/257454/hawk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941593 | 1,110 | 3.75 | 4 |
The Builders Association and motiroti
ALLADEEN is a large-scale cross-media performance created by The Builders Association and the London-based company motiroti. ALLADEEN draws on the lives of citizens living in the hybrid, global cities of New York, London, and Bangalore—each a city where many cultures collide. Aladdin’s story is a perfect vehicle for this “collision,” since it has travelled from Asia to India to England to Disney, and each has stolen and reinterpreted it from the last.
ALLADEEN highlights the philosophical issues of media and technology as they impact global culture, and bridge the first world with the third world. Specifically, the piece looks at the contemporary phenomenon of international call centers where Indian operators are trained to flawlessly “pass” as Americans. During intensive research in Bangalore, India, the artists interviewed operators, trainers, and owners of the call centers—material which became an integral element in ALLADEEN. The performance explores how we function as “global souls” caught up in circuits of technology, and how our voices and images travel from one culture to another.
Since 1996, The Builders Association and motiroti have been engaged in an ongoing exchange concerning their creative work, particularly their very different but confluent relationships to spectacle. Both companies share an attraction to the idioms of popular culture that figure strongly in ALLADEEN.
The ALLADEEN project also takes other manifestations in addition to the performance: a music video, directed by Keith Khan and featuring music by Shri, and a Web project www.ALLADEEN.com—directed by Ali Zaidi. These strands, developed conceptually by Keith Khan, Ali Zaidi and Marianne Weems, are separate but interdependent, and material from each is interwoven into the others.
ALLADEEN received an Obie award for “Outstanding Production” in 2003-2004. | <urn:uuid:93e482bc-dfeb-42f7-8701-bd056490557f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/prod_alladeen_info.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938981 | 403 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Despite intense anti-union pressure from their employer, 1,200 poultry processing workers in Russellville, Alabama voted overwhelmingly to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The workers, employed by Pilgrim’s Pride, voted 706-292 in favor of the union. Control over their work lives was the main issue that motivated workers to unionize.
“We had no respect from management and absolutely no voice in anything that affected us,” said Cheryl Kowalski, who works in the plant’s sanitation department. “They told us what to do and when to do it, and there were no questions allowed. And if there any problems, you couldn’t go to management because they did not want to deal with resolving them, and workers here were left bitter and angry. The bottom line was ‘do what you are told or you don’t have a job’.”
“The key issues at Pilgrim’s Pride was the right to redress grievances at work and the ability to have some input into how the place is run, said John Whitaker, RWDSU Mid-South Council president. ”(The workers) knew the difference it would make to have a union their side.”
Working in poultry processing plant where workers wield knives and scissors to split open poultry that can move past them on conveyor belts at speeds approaching 90 birds per minute is hard, dangerous work made even more so when your boss controls everything. These conditions have been well documented in a series of articles that ran in the Charlotte Observer.
Pilgrim’s Russellville plant is no exception. In 2010, it was fined $135,000 for health and safety violations by the US Occupational Health and Safety Administration. An OSHA official said that the violations were part of a historic pattern.
“This company has been cited numerous times in the last five years and should be aware of the safety and health measures that need to be addressed to protect its workers,” said Roberto Sanchez, OSHA area director in Birmingham in a statement about the 2010 fine.
RWDSU began getting calls from workers at the Russellville plant frustrated by the dangerous working conditions, excessively high speeds of the production line, and the unwillingness of plant management to listen to their concerns or address their grievances.
“I finally got a call from a couple of guys who wanted to meet with me,” said Randy Hadley, RWDSU organizer to TimesDaily.com. “You could tell things had gotten way out of control.”
When the organizing drive got started in earnest, the company pushed back. As the union election approached, workers were forced to attend captive-audience meetings at which company representatives, according to RWDSU, threatened layoffs and implied that the plant could close if the workers voted for the union.
The company put other obstacles in the way of the organizing drive. The company contacted local establishments where workers gathered to discuss the union campaign and asked them to bar union activists.
It also threatened hotels with a boycott if they rented rooms to union organizers and as the election drew near booked hotel meeting rooms, so that the union could not use them to hold meetings.
Despite the company’s efforts, the workers, most of whom are African-American and Latino, voted by 71 percent for the union.
The National Labor Relations Board has yet to certify the results of the election that took place on June 7 and 8, but it is expected to do so soon. When it does, Pilgrim’s management has said that it will recognize the union.
Pilgrim’s Pride is the second largest chicken producer in the world and is owned by JBS SA, a multi-national corporation headquartered in Brazil. | <urn:uuid:07c9fbb3-4218-42cf-8752-8afb357fd78c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leftlaborreporter.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/alabama-poultry-workers-vote-to-unionize/ | 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 | 0.976129 | 785 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Courtesy of Nancy Williams Dawod
Rudwan Dawod stands in front of a school he helped build in Turalei, South Sudan. The Oregon resident is now detained in Sudan, accused of terrorism after he participated in protests there.
Rudwan Dawod stands in front of a school he helped build in Turalei, South Sudan. The Oregon resident is now detained in Sudan, accused of terrorism after he participated in protests there. Courtesy of Nancy Williams Dawod
American Nancy Williams and Sudanese Rudwan Dawod met in South Sudan, where they were both working. The two fell in love and married, and they're expecting their first child in September. But while Nancy Williams Dawod is home in Oregon, her husband, who has U.S. residency, is in detention in Sudan, facing terrorism charges and possibly a death sentence.
He is due to appear in court next week.
Dawod is a Muslim from restive Darfur and was visiting his family in the capital, Khartoum, en route to starting work on another volunteer project for the nongovernmental organization Sudan Sunrise in recently independent South Sudan. In the past, he has helped build schools in the South and had plans to rebuild a church destroyed during the long civil war.
But on July 3, Dawod was arrested after his group Girifna, which means "We're Fed Up" in Arabic, organized a peaceful demonstration.
In June, university students started a wave of protests against the government of President Omar al-Bashir and against austerity and the high cost of living in Sudan. Rights groups say up to 2,000 people have been detained.
Speaking to France-24 television network before his arrest, Dawod said: "I'm not fighting against al-Bashir in person. He's not the only problem. I'm fighting against the discrimination. I'm fighting against the marginalization, the lack of freedom, the lack of democracy."
Dawod concluded: "We really need to do a lot in Sudan. I really love Sudan. I belong to the U.S., too, but this is my native country, so I will live here forever, and I will die in Sudan, too."
Allegations Of Spying
His wife insists her husband is innocent. "Of course, he wanted to help Girifna in sending their message of peace and justice through nonviolent demonstrations," she says.
Williams Dawod, who lives in Oregon and works at a bank, says a friend called her to tell her about her husband's detention.
"I later learned that they took Rudwan to a police station nearby," she says. "They then beat him so bad he was unconscious."
She says armed men took Dawod by car to his home, where they arrested his elderly father and his brother, both of whom she maintains are in poor health.
"They ransacked the home. They stole their rent money and valuables — even the earrings out of his sister's ears," says Williams Dawod. "And all this time, Rudwan was in the car unconscious."
Courtesy of Nancy Williams Dawod
Nancy and Rudwan met in South Sudan, where they were both working. The two married and are expecting their first child. But while Nancy is now home in Oregon, Rudwan is detained in Sudan, facing terrorism charges.
Nancy and Rudwan met in South Sudan, where they were both working. The two married and are expecting their first child. But while Nancy is now home in Oregon, Rudwan is detained in Sudan, facing terrorism charges. Courtesy of Nancy Williams Dawod
She says the authorities accuse Dawod of being a spy, and that such disinformation was widely reported in the Khartoum newspapers.
"They wanted a statement out of him that he was with the FBI or the CIA. And, of course, he refused. They even threatened him that they would rape him," she says.
Williams Dawod was reportedly mentioned in articles as having taught her husband martial arts and how to handle explosives, claims she dismissed as "just ridiculous, unbelievable stories."
She told NPR her husband warned his tormentors: "Do what you want, but remember that I will tell the world, and it won't be my end but it will be your end."
The 'Sudanese Summer'
Dawod and others are facing several charges, including terrorism, which could be punishable by death.
The Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to comment specifically on his case, but issued a statement saying some opportunists have "capitalized on the protests to inspire chaos or smear Sudan's image."
The statement notes:
"Concerning the sporadic protests witnessed in the country, it is important to note first that Sudan affirms and protects the right of the citizens to demonstrate as they wish, provided that the rules and regulations in place are observed, as they are principally meant to ensure public order and safety. ...
"Fair observers will note how easily things can get out of hand in such settings if the laws that regulate such an affair are not adhered to, be it Sudan or the United States. ...
"Moreover ... these protests, though by no means comparable to the ones elsewhere in the world, might very well reflect genuine grievances relating to economy and job opportunities. And indeed the government recognizes this and has been aggressively moving to tackle these same economic adversities. ... But in this process, order must prevail, not chaos."
The State Department has condemned the crackdown and the detention of the demonstrators by the Sudanese security forces.
Amnesty International and New York-based Human Rights Watch have also weighed in. HRW researcher Jehanne Henry says the Sudanese authorities are trying to discredit the opposition — including Dawod's group, Girifna.
"There are now fears that security forces have gone so far as to hack into the youth activists' Facebook and Skype and phones and, in one incident, to actually call somebody to meet them somewhere and that person was arrested," Henry says.
Tom Prichard, who founded Sudan Sunrise, the NGO Dawod has been working with, says he is being singled out.
Dawod's Girifna colleague, U.S. spokesman Ibrahim Babiker, warns that the Sudanese government simply will brook no dissent and risks making a martyr of Dawod.
Prichard and Babiker both say that intimidating and locking up demonstrators and charging them with terrorism will not dampen the "Sudanese Summer," as it has been dubbed, on the streets of Khartoum or stop a blossoming uprising against the government.
In Oregon, Williams Dawod says she understands her husband's dedication and commitment to Sudan, but right now she has just one wish: "This has been hard for us, and we take it one day at a time. We just keep praying that he'll be home soon, especially before our little baby girl, Sudan Nyala — I call her Nylie; he calls her Sudan — and I just want Rudwan here when she's born." | <urn:uuid:9e584060-1970-4f65-bfc9-02cb4592ec72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/157021987/u-s-resident-caught-up-in-sudans-protest-movement?ft=1&f=1004 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979529 | 1,463 | 1.703125 | 2 |
By: Francis Allan L. Angelo
AN INDEPENDENT power producer based in Iloilo City is drawing up plans to expand its coal-fired power plant in LaPaz district.
Gil Altamira, assistant vice president for business operations of Global Business Power Corp. (GBPC), confirmed the earlier statement of GBPC president Arthur N. Aguilar that the firm is planning to expand Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC)’s capacity by 82 megawatts.
GBPC, a subsidiary of the Metrobank Group, owns PEDC which operates the 164MW coal-fired power plant at Brgy. Ingore, LaPaz.
PEDC supplies 65MW to Iloilo City via Panay Electric Co. while its remaining capacity is dispatched to electric cooperatives in Panay Island.
Aguilar said the PEDC expansion project will cost P8 billion.
Altamira said the additional unit is already in the pipeline following successful talks with their customers via a mini power summit recently.
Altamira said consulted distribution utilities and electric cooperatives in Panay and Negros regarding their projected demand for electricity until 2016 so they can have concrete basis for the expansion of the coal-fired power plant.
“The projected demand of the cooperatives and utilities serves as the baseline for the expansion project. We have to carefully study this expansion so we can serve their needs without burdening the consumers,” Altamira said.
Aside from the PEDC expansion, GBPC is also planning to retire its 30-year-old plant in Toledo, Cebu and replace it with a new 82MW coal plant which also cost around P8 billion.
The PEDC and Toledo expansions also mean GBPC is close to hitting its 30 percent limit in the Visayas under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) which means its expansion options are limited until demand surges again.
The limit set by EPIRA is meant to protect the electricity market from monopoly and promote fair competition among power producers.
Altamira said the 30 percent limit is dependent on the total demand for power in Visayas. | <urn:uuid:0c6f1bf8-4ac1-43b5-bb4e-f6a1f40f7717> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thedailyguardian.net/index.php/local-news/15019-gbpc-to-expand-pedc-capacity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943686 | 447 | 1.515625 | 2 |
That night we hung out by the fire with a couple pickers from Weed, California. Som, Laotian by birth, first started picking matsutake in the Crescent Lake area as a teenager with his mother. He'd been in camp since the highly regulated season opened after Labor Day. His dog Whiskey guarded the shelter by day.
Som's friend Forrest, pictured below with his day's pay, was picking for the first time since his usual construction work has dwindled. He told us the learning curve was steep—something we would learn firsthand the next day when we went picking with Joy and his kids.
Sometime after dark a refrigerated truck stopped at the buy station to collect 260 pounds of matsutake and drive it to Portland where it would be processed (cleaned and packed) and air-freighted to Japan so that the matsutake-crazed customers of that small island nation could shop for inividually-wrapped buttons at the market. Last year the nightly poundage at Joy's station might have been five times more.
I've picked plenty of matsutake in the past closer to home, which I usually cook in a traditional Japanese-style sukiyaki. But here on the edge of the desert the picking is entirely different. Whereas I look for mature fir trees in the North Cascades, most of the picking at Crescent Lake is in pine: lodgepole and ponderosa, with a smattering of Douglas-fir and true firs. In some cases the tree composition is all pine and the conditions surprisingly dry.
Matsutake, however, thrive in sandy soils, and the pumice-laden soil in this volcanically active area provides ideal habitat. Mount Mazama's eruption nearly 7,700 years ago created Crater Lake and dumped three to five feet of pumice on the surrounding hills. Though the ground appears dry and dusty, the pine needle duff holds enough moisture to promote great fruitings. Joy said that Japanese customers appreciate the chewy texture of high desert Oregon matsutake.
Picking matsutake in the pine forests around Lake Crescent on a year such as this, when the pick is small, is not for beginners like Forrest (though he was fortunate to have an expert mentor in Som). In a normal year a matsutake patch will announce itself with "flags" or "flowers"—fully emerged mushrooms that indicate the presence of smaller buttons hiding under the duff. This year even the #6 flowers were commanding a decent price, meaning everything was getting picked. And experienced pickers who knew how to find the concealed buttons were being careful to "control" their patches, as a buyer named Leo explained to me, by picking everything to eliminate any evidence of fruiting mushrooms and then visiting regularly to catch the buttons before they emerged.
Finding a matsutake button beneath the duff on a forest floor otherwise devoid of any sign of fungi, indeed a floor without a single mushroom anywhere in sight, is an art form. Joy showed us how it was done. He carefully scanned the ground of a known patch before pausing over what to me was an imperceptible rise in the duff. Using a metal staff that resembled a tire iron, he scraped away a small amount of forest debris to reveal the white cap of a matsutake button. He picked it stem and all without trimming anything (Japanese customers want the dirt attached at the end, as this signifies life force). Later, when I tried to find matsutake on my own in a stretch of woods filled with pickers, I got completely blanked.
Unlike Joy, Som, and Forrest, who prefer camping in the woods, most of the pickers and buyers are now based out of the town of Chemult, 20 miles down the road from Crescent Junction, where several business owners in town rent space for mushroom camps. Pickers and buyers have moved here in recent years to avoid onerous fees levied first by the Forest Service and now Hoodoo, a private concessionairre. Hoodoo has since cut its prices, but it may be too late to lure the pickers away from the comforts of town, which include electricity and nearby groceries.
Margins are thin in the wild mushroom trade and costs can be shaved in other interesting ways. One buyer in Chemult operated out of a shipping container.
Much has been said about the Wild West nature of the Crescent Lake and Chemult matsutake scene. Indeed, I heard many stories around the fire, stories for another time. Suffice it to say that I was impressed by the skill of the pickers and the sense of community that attends this unusual stop on the mushroom trail. | <urn:uuid:ae47063b-a039-447f-97fc-2b5cae376fd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/2011/10/matsutake-camp.html?showComment=1321604583420 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969289 | 962 | 1.75 | 2 |
What do they do on the Web? What do they think of the Internet, copyright,multilingualism, the future of paper, the e-book, the information society, etc.?A collection of interviews with writers, journalists,publishers, booksellers, librarians, professors, researchers, linguists, etc.
centuries), everyday language (written and spoken), scientific and technical language (terminologies), and regional languages. This data, which is an very important study resource, is made available to people interested in the French language (teachers and researchers, business people, the service sector and the general public) through publications and databases.
Frantext is one of the best French textual databases on the Internet. It is a collection of about 3,000 digitized French texts from the 16th to the 20th centuries, with a search facility (Stella) for literary, linguistic, lexicographical, and stylistic research. The database, which was revamped in 1998, now has a more user-friendly interface, more efficient online help and better computing tools. A second version is an experimental section of 400 grammaticaly-encoded novels of 19th and 20th centuries.
*Interview of June 11, 1998 (original interview in French)
= How did using the Internet change your professional life? | <urn:uuid:ad7cb887-77a9-4816-be60-7df5d65e66f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://manybooks.net/titles/lebertm2703227032-8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924258 | 272 | 2.390625 | 2 |
- v. Simple past tense and past participle of downsize.
“Gordon calculated, about 10 million workers would have been freed -- none dare call it "downsized" -- to do something more valuable in the economy (which almost anything other than implementing a wasteful strategy would be), realizing a possible "corporate bureaucratic dividend" of some half a trillion dollars.”
“For more than 40,000 lives lost in downsized automobiles because of CAFE standards,”
“What happens for many people when they're downsized is they drop out for awhile," Rosenberg says.”
“From what I understand, the key chain downsized the images to save space, any image you have will be small anyway.”
“The amounts are a little strange because it was downsized from a 25 cuke original recipe.”
“Avenue Q "downsized" - moving from its Broadway home of six years (the Golden), to Off-Broadway's New World Stages - it lost 306 seats, some of its ticket price, and … that's about it.”
“And more and more people who used to be in big structural bureaucracies are finding themselves downsized, which is a cruel way of saying you're middle-aged and out of work.”
“Apart from the crisp sampling (which recalls a downsized CHEMICAL BROTHERS at best) and the frantic, but polished "new rock" assault (like ARCTIC MONKEYS) that occupies the second half, the James Righton's song wouldn't be a highlight for many people.”
“that's the best time to send the thank you note i sent one printed on vellum years ago when i was "downsized" - they doubled my severance afterward.”
“The main protagonists are again historian Daniel Kind who, with his media-darling girlfriend Miranda, have "downsized" to a life in the Lakes; and Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett, whose increasingly unsympathetic partner Marc owns a local bookshop-cafe.”
Looking for tweets for downsized. | <urn:uuid:af2a54ca-7ce8-4b35-ac73-9b4823f454e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/downsized | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941947 | 450 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Dyslexic Students: Information for Teachers
Last updated 12 February 2013, created 26 October 2007, viewed 3,326
Information and guidance for teachers of dyslexic students from the Being Dyslexic website.
Includes teaching tips for pre-school, primary, secondary and higher education.
Also includes sections on the common signs of dyslexia and dyslexia learning styles. | <urn:uuid:518eafe1-e421-4c14-8d89-55d69578b474> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Information-for-teachers-of-dyslexic-students-3008933/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940085 | 79 | 2.984375 | 3 |
By Shabnam Sigman
July 14, 2004 | At BIO 2004*, commercial real estate services firm Colliers International and its partner Spaulding & Slye Colliers announced the release of Alchemy, a global life science real estate report that includes in-depth information about nine major life science “clusters,” as well as emerging markets.
According to Nancy Kelley, senior vice president and managing director of life sciences for Spaulding & Slye and Colliers, the newness of the life science real estate industry means that little information has been available until now. The Alchemy report “is the first review and analysis of real estate trends,” she said.
The 80-page report discusses the drivers and challenges in the life science real estate industry, and explains the “geographic clustering” effect. It also details the features of life science real estate, including design criteria and building services, and how to redesign facilities for pharmaceutical manufacturing in order to reduce the cost of drug discovery and development.
The Brookings Institution in 2002 identified nine economically strong and growing life science biotech centers in the United States. Alchemy features overall characteristics, supply and demand dynamics, and key trends for each of these major clusters (Boston; New York/New Jersey/Connecticut; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C./Baltimore, Md.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Seattle; San Francisco; Los Angeles; and San Diego). Each section lists major institutions and companies, the amount of available lab space, and rental prices for that particular geographic area. The report was researched and written by dual real estate and life science industry experts.
Among the hubs, the Boston area topped the list for most money received from the NIH, and it tied for number one with San Francisco for number of biotechnology companies in the area. San Francisco also ranked first in amount of venture capital funding received by biotech companies in the area.
Emerging U.S. markets cited in the report include Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Memphis, St. Louis, and Wisconsin. International markets in Canada, Europe, and Asia are also featured.
“The societal challenge [is] to speed drug development from the bench to the bedside, reduce the cost of healthcare delivery, and make it accessible to all,” Kelley said. “This challenge will require radical changes not only in science and in medicine, but also in the environments and buildings where these activities take place … Real estate can be mobilized as a strategic resource that will allow life science institutions to maintain economic viability and to advance scientific and medical goals at a lower cost.”
And, despite difficulties, Kelley said, “the life sciences industry and life sciences real estate are healthy and growing.”
*BIO 2004, San Francisco, June 6-9 | <urn:uuid:1639d500-3b4b-495d-9032-bd2adb0c8bae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bio-itworld.com/archive/071404/bay-area/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924328 | 575 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Alarming Number of Workers Fail to Wear Required Protective Equipment
ROSWELL, Ga., Oct. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — The need for safety equipment when performing hazardous tasks is undisputed. Yet U.S. workers continue to take risks by failing to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) when it is needed.
In a Kimberly-Clark Professional survey released today, 82 percent of safety professionals said they had observed workers in their organizations failing to wear required PPE during the past year. Respondents also cited compliance as the top workplace safety issue in their facilities–further underscoring the significance of these findings.
“High levels of noncompliance have been an issue since we began conducting these surveys in 2007,” said David Matela, Director, Safety Product Management, Kimberly-Clark Professional. “Even though it is mandated by OSHA, the vast majority of workers who have experienced on-the-job injuries were not wearing PPE. Increased compliance is crucial to creating Exceptional Workplaces that are healthy, safe and productive.”
Given the importance of safety equipment in protecting employees, why does workplace compliance continue to be an issue? More than half of the safety professionals surveyed attributed noncompliance to workers thinking that safety equipment was not needed.
“With increased regulations and heightened awareness, it’s disturbing and hard to believe that workers are unaware of the need to protect themselves,” Matela said.
The other reasons for noncompliance cited by respondents were:
- Too hot
- Blamed for decreased productivity or an inability to perform tasks
- Unavailable near the work task
- Unattractive looking
What can be done to improve compliance with PPE protocols? Sixty-one percent of respondents said they planned to improve existing education and training programs in the next six to 12 months, an effort that appears to be making a difference for respondents–both in terms of reducing injuries and boosting productivity.
Not only did 85 percent of respondents have company-sponsored safety programs already in place, 69 percent said the programs had helped reduce reportable incidence rates. Of these respondents, 58 percent said incidents had decreased “by half” or “more than half” since the implementation of a safety program. In addition, 80 percent of all respondents said they believed that instituting or increasing safety practices would increase their organization’s overall productivity.
Health & Safety Risks and Environmental Concerns
Safety professionals were also asked about hidden hazards that are not necessarily addressed by PPE, such as the potential health and safety risks posed by laundered shop towels. Ninety-three percent of respondents said they knew that metals retained on clean, laundered shop towels could get onto hands, then be inadvertently transferred to the mouth and swallowed. The same percentage said they would be concerned about potential health and safety issues for their workers if heavy metal residues or other toxic elements were found in their laundered shop towels in levels that exceeded regulatory health-based exposure limits.
In addition, 64 percent said they understood that even if they did not use heavy metals, such as lead or cadmium, in their manufacturing processes, that these metals could make their way into their operations via laundered shop towels that had been washed with those from other companies.
The survey also asked respondents which had a greater impact on the environment: laundered shop towels that contain toxic heavy metals even after laundering or disposable towels that are sent to a landfill. More than half said laundered shop towels had a greater environmental impact.
“Clearly, safety professionals are not only aware of the environmental issues posed by laundered shop towels, but also concerned about the potential health risks to workers,” said Garrett Jaenicke, Marketing Manager, Manufacturing, Kimberly-Clark Professional. “Workers should refrain from using laundered shop towels to wipe sweat from their faces or as napkins at lunch. To eliminate the risk, workers and safety professionals should simply switch to clean, disposable wipers.”
The online survey of 110 safety professionals was conducted in August 2012. All survey respondents said they were responsible for purchasing or influencing the purchase or selection of personal protective equipment or industrial wiping systems and more than half belonged to one or more professional safety associations. Thirty-eight percent worked for organizations with more than 500 employees and the remainder worked for companies with 250 employees or less. The participants’ occupational roles included safety directors or managers (60 percent), purchasing (13 percent), environmental managers (12 percent), facilities or general managers (10 percent), industrial hygienists (seven percent), engineering managers (four percent), while the remaining 23 percent held other positions. Respondents were employed in the following fields: construction and utilities, metal manufacturing, food and beverage processing, transportation equipment manufacturing, chemical and plastics manufacturing, computer, electronics and electrical products manufacturing, automotive, oil and gas, aerospace and aviation, printing, and other industries.
About Kimberly-Clark Professional
Kimberly-Clark Professional partners with businesses to create Exceptional Workplaces for their employees and patrons. KCP helps transform workplaces making them healthier, safer and more productive. Key brands in this segment include: Kleenex, Scott, WypAll, Kimtech, and Jackson Safety. Kimberly-Clark Professional, located in Roswell, Ga., is one of Kimberly-Clark Corporation’s four business segments and can be visited on the web at www.kcprofessional.com.
Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) and its well-known global brands are an indispensable part of life for people in more than 175 countries. Every day, nearly a quarter of the world’s population trust K-C’s brands and the solutions they provide to enhance their health, hygiene and well-being. With brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds the No. 1 or No. 2 share position in more than 80 countries. To keep up with the latest K-C news and to learn more about the company’s 140-year history of innovation, visit www.kimberly-clark.com.
Laura Kempke or Rachel Gross
Schwartz MSL Boston
SOURCE Kimberly-Clark Professional | <urn:uuid:ade71db9-0db1-41b7-8c9e-fa669bae1405> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112709306/alarming-number-of-workers-fail-to-wear-required-protective-equipment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960415 | 1,286 | 1.960938 | 2 |
By Ollantay Itzamná - Znet
President Otto Perez Molina...decreed, this past May 1, the second state of siege of his term in office. This time, it was to repress indigenous people, the Xinca, in the municipalities of Jalapa and Mataquescuintal...and in Casillas and San Rafael Las Flores...and to protect the “investments” of the Canadian mining company Tahoe Resources (the San Rafael mine).
By Mark Weisbrot - May 05, 2013
Recent events indicate that the Obama administration has stepped up its strategy of “regime change” against the left-of-center governments in Latin America, promoting conflict in ways not seen since the military coup that Washington supported in Venezuela in 2002. The most high-profile example is in Venezuela itself, during the past week. As this goes to press, Washington has grown increasingly isolated in its efforts to destabilize the newly elected government of Nicolas Maduro.
The Latin American Exception: How a Washington Global Torture Gulag Was Turned Into the Only Gulag-Free Zone on Earth
By Greg Grandin - February 19, 2013
It seems that, between 9/11 and the day George W. Bush left the White House, CIA-brokered torture never saw a sunset...All told, of the 190-odd countries on this planet, a staggering 54 participated in various ways in this American torture system...No region escapes the stain. Not North America...Not Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. Not even social-democratic Scandinavia...No region, that is, except Latin America.
By MARK WEISBROT - December 19, 2012
Venezuela is a middle-income country where the rule of law is relatively weak, as is the state generally...But compared with other countries of its income level, it does not stand out for anything in the realm of human rights abuses. Certainly there is nothing in Venezuela comparable to the abuses by Washington allies such as Mexico or Honduras – where candidates for political office, opposition activists, and journalists are regularly murdered...By contrast, we in the United States are not doing so well by comparison to our own history and income level. We have suffered a serious loss of civil liberties under the administrations of George W. Bush and President Obama.
By Yves Engler - Dissident Voice
Six weeks ago the left-leaning president of Paraguay Fernando Lugo was ousted in what some called an “institutional coup”...The vast majority of countries in the hemisphere refused to recognize the new government...But Canada was one of only a handful of countries in the world that immediately recognized the new government.
Obama orchestrates coups in Central and South America.
By Noam Chomsky - Znet
Though sidelined by the Secret Service scandal, last month’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, was an event of considerable significance. There are three major reasons: Cuba, the drug war and the isolation of the United States...The meetings ended with no agreement because of U.S. opposition on those items...Continued U.S. obstructionism may well lead to the displacement of the Organization of American States by the newly-formed Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, from which the United States and Canada are excluded.
April 20, 2012 - Media Co-op
At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Harper spoke to CEOs from across the Americas and unveiled Canada’s plans to expand into Latin America with vigor...Canadian mining companies already have a significant presence in the region, with two-thirds of all mining projects in the Americas...What he neglected to mention was that many communities in the region don’t share his vision of development and that Latin America is rife with resistance against Canada’s extractive industry.
America's imperial arrogance makes more enemies than friends. It also weakens influence. Ravaging the world one country at a time doesn't help. Neither does bullying nations to go along or else.
By Bill Van Auken - 17 April 2012
For Obama, the two-day summit was an unmitigated fiasco, with the positions of his government opposed by every other participating nation outside of Canada, and news reports of the gathering in the United States overshadowed by a prostitution scandal at a Cartagena hotel involving 11 members of the US president’s Secret Service detail and five American military personnel.
By Nikolas Kozloff - 13 April 2012
Unhappy with the Obama administration's failed war on drugs, which has led to widespread violence and endemic corruption, some Latin American leaders are bluntly calling for the decriminalization of narcotics...Facing dwindling support for the drug war, Obama recently dispatched Joe Biden to Mexico and Central America. There, the vice-president restated tired US opposition to drug decriminalization and promised that the Obama administration would ask Congress for additional funding toward a Central American Regional Security Initiative.
CELAC comprises 33 regional countries. America and Canada are excluded. In July 2010, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Chile's Sebastian Pinera were chosen co-chairs to help draft organizational statutes.
By Hector Mondragon - Znet
...[T]he reduction of the state that the Right trumpets and the neo-fascists try to impose by way of intimidation seems to only affect social programs. It is related, however, to the unbelievable growth of military budgets and of wars, that grow the public debt and fiscal deficit. A greater insanity than that of one lunatic terrorist.
Toban Black on the Media Co-op
This audio recording captures some of what members of an arts and storytelling group called the Beehive Design Collective had to say about their work, during one of their events in London, Ontario. Reactions and thoughts from a few locals who attended that Beehive workshop also are part of the recording.
This book deals with the dances between today’s nominally left-leaning South American governments and the dynamic movements that helped pave their way to power in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, and Paraguay. | <urn:uuid:4d6d5b5d-bc41-4cf5-8f2d-cfa4de10d3cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mostlywater.org/locations/international/south_america | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949537 | 1,263 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The Government Domain: Back to School for Constitution Day 2007By Peggy Garvin, Published on August 27, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007 is Constitution Day in the United States. Educational institutions and federal executive employees observe the day with some sort of edifying lesson, program, or distributed materials about our Constitution. The Constitution Day observance was established in a section of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2005, Public Law 108-447. The PDF version of this lengthy public law is available through GPO Access. The Constitution Day language is near the end of the law, in Division J - Other Matters.
An excerpt is reprinted here for your convenience:
SEC. 111. (a) The head of each Federal agency or department shall-
(1) provide each new employee of the agency or department with educational and training materials concerning the United States Constitution as part of the orientation materials provided to the new employee; and
(2) provide educational and training materials concerning the United States Constitution to each employee of the agency or department on September 17 of each year.
(b) Each educational institution that receives Federal funds for a fiscal year shall hold an educational program on the United States Constitution on September 17 of such year for the students served by the educational institution.
Following the law's passage, the Education Department issued a "Notice of Implementation of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day on September 17 of Each Year," 70 Fed. Reg. 29727 (May 24, 2005). The notice applies to educational institutions receiving federal funding from the Department of Education.
President Bush issued his proclamation for Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, Constitution Week, 2007 on August 22.
For Constitution Day planners, this column links to a variety of web resources for online versions of the United States Constitution and related teaching materials.
Constitution Online Versions and Related Historical Documents
There are many free, online sources for the Constitution and related historical documents. Among them:
American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: iCon, The Constitution for the iPod
GPO Access: Constitution Main Page
The Government Printing Office produces the Constitution in several formats, and links to them all here. This page showcases the Congressional Research Service (CRS) publication The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in its 2002 edition with the 2004 supplement. (The site also has the 1992 edition with supplements for 1996, 1998, and 2000.) It can be searched or browsed, and each section has a unique URL for building direct links to the section in HTML or PDF format. GPO also has printed the Constitution in the form of Senate or House documents, and these are available on the same page, in plain text and PDF. PDF versions include The U.S. Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution as Amended, with Unratified Amendments & Analytical Index, and The Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, Pocket Edition.
Library of Congress: Primary Documents in American History: United States Constitution
The Library of Congress pulls together links to its various online resources, including the Broadsides collection described below, for this one-stop collection guide. One highlight is the set of digitized volumes from Max Farrand's The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Farrand's Records includes the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention, and the notes and letters of James Madison and other participants. (Note that the American Memory Collections provide a "Document ID" at the bottom of each item record; the URL can be used for linking purposes.) This site includes the digitized papers of James Madison from the Library's Manuscript Division, links to other historic collections, and a selective bibliography for adult and younger readers.
Library of Congress: Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention Broadsides Collection
Part of the Library's American Memory offerings, this digitized collection holds hundreds of documents relating to the work of the Continental Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. It features an early printing of the Constitution. The Broadsides Collection page also links to supplemental teaching material. The web presentation "To Form a More Perfect Union" includes a section on Creating a Constitution, which links to the documents-including the 1787 committee draft of the Constitution-within the context of the historical narrative. The Broadsides page also links to related curriculum material called Collection Connections.
Library of Congress: Federalist Papers on Thomas
The series of essays known as the Federalist Papers was written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison to explain-and to encourage New Yorkers to ratify-the proposed United States Constitution. The essays are often used for guidance in understanding the intentions of those who drafted the Constitution. This HTML version of the Federalist Papers is set up so that each essay can be linked to individually.
National Archives: Charters of Freedom: Constitution of the United States
The Archives presents high resolution images of the fading parchment Constitution and Bills of Rights. (The image files are quite large. For technical tips on using them, see the high resolution downloads page.) This site also features a brief history of the creation of the Constitution, roughly one hundred questions and answers concerning the document and its impact, and biographies of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention.
National Public Radio and New York Times: Justice Learning
The Justice Learning web site includes an interactive Constitution Guide. The site is supported by the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands in partnership with the New York Times Learning Network and NPR's Justice Talking show.
United States Senate: Reference: The Constitution
This version places each section of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and subsequent amendments alongside brief and simple explanations.
Yale Avalon Project: The American Constitution: A Documentary Record
The Avalon Project presents HTML versions of early American historical documents arranged under the following headings: Roots of the Constitution; Revolution and Independence; Credentials of the Members of the Federal Convention; The Constitutional Convention; and Ratification and Formation of the Government. In addition to the Constitution, documents include the English Bill of Rights from 1689; original American state constitutions from 1776; variant texts of plans proposed at the Constitutional Convention; and the ratification documents from individual states.
Constitution Day Teaching Resources
The following web sites offer teaching or program support appropriate for Constitution Day.
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts: Constitution Day - Federal Courts Educational Outreach
Educational content includes Constitution Day discussion topics, "fast facts" on the courts and the Constitution, interactive games, and Bills of Rights case studies and simulations.
Constitutional Rights Foundation: Constitution Day
Lesson plans are available for kindergarten through high school. The Constitutional Rights Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization "dedicated to educating America's young people about the importance of civic participation in a democratic society," as stated on the website.
Library of Congress: Constitution Day Resources
The Library of Congress links to its own resources, including lesson plans and Constitution-related "Stories for Kids from America's Library."
National Archives: Teaching with Documents: Observing Constitution Day
The Archives provides suggestions for teaching activities. "Lessons by Era" links to historical incidents from 1754 to present, many of which can be tied to Constitutional principles and amendments.
National Archives: Celebrate Constitution Day
This page links to specific events and activities that the Archives has planned for Constitution Day 2007.
National Constitution Center: Centuries of Citizenship: A Constitutional Timeline
The National Constitution Center is an independent, non-partisan organization. Their web site offers a timeline marking key events in our constitutional history from 1765 to the present. The site has an interactive, Flash-based version for broadband connections and an HTML version for low-bandwidth connections. The Constitution Center site also presents an engaging Interactive Constitution based on The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution by Linda R. Monk (New York: Hyperion, 2003).
National Endowment for the Humanities: EDSITEment Constitution Day Lessons
This page features lesson plans and special features appropriate for Constitution Day. EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. The website links to online lesson plans and educational resources on a variety of subjects.
Office of Personnel Management: Constitution Initiative
OPM set up this web page "to provide Federal Executive Branch agencies and departments resources to support training of their employees on the U.S. Constitution." One section describes the Constitution's Link to the Oath of Office taken by federal employees. | <urn:uuid:83747ab4-615c-4c8d-adb4-486475387e3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.llrx.com/columns/govdomain29.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906228 | 1,760 | 2.96875 | 3 |
London (CNN) -- Germany has been at the very heart of the European Union since it began 60 years ago as a way of pooling coal and steel resources -- and of preventing future wars on a continent already devastated by brutal conflicts.
But as the region's strongest economy, it has borne the brunt of the cost of recent rescue deals, and the country's troubled history has meant its insistence on unity is viewed with suspicion by some of its neighbors.
So why is Germany still so willing to do all it can to protect the European Union? And will anything shake its faith in the euro?
Why does Germany play such a key role in Europe?
Germany was one of the founding nations of the European Union, which was designed to ensure that the continent would never again be torn apart by war.
Following World War II, Germany's neighbors wanted to hobble any future attempts by the nation to remilitarize; the French decided that the best way to do this was economically, rather than ideologically.
"France wanted to 'tame' Germany, and so the new Europe was built around that Franco-German relationship, starting from a clean slate," said Professor John Loughlin, of Cambridge University's department of politics and international studies
"Germany was completely devastated after the war, and that meant it could begin again from scratch, build a new Germany, a new democratic nation, using economic growth as the basis for that democracy.
"European integration became a part of that, part of the rehabilitation of Germany as a nation among nations."
How has Germany's economy performed over the years?
In the post-war years, West Germany enjoyed a massive boom, as the nation made the most of the support it was offered and the opportunities that came its way to recover from the devastation of WWII.
"The Marshall Plan money coming in helped, but Germany's industriousness also played a big part," said Loughlin. "There is a very strong work ethic, and the country has a large population -- it all combined to allow Germany to re-emerge as a major power."
West Germany flourished in the 1950s, 60s and 70s -- the period of the so-called "Wirtschaftswunder" [economic miracle] -- while other European nations, including France and Britain, struggled.
But reunification with East Germany in 1990 following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union dented the country's fortunes.
"The reunification of Germany impoverished the country to a certain extent," said Loughlin. "The new Laender [regions] came in and resources had to be transferred from rich regions to poorer ones."
"People forget that 10 to 15 years ago, Germany was going through a crisis like those affecting Italy and Spain now," said Dr Alex Clarkson, of King's College London's department of German.
"Back then, it was Germany that was seen as 'the sick man of Europe.' The government had overspent, and had to make fundamental economic reforms -- the system was close to paralysis.
"Of course in that case -- as in the case of Canada, South Korea and others -- they were able to reform at the right time, when the going was good. Spain and Greece have to make similar changes now, but of course there is no growth to carry their economies forward."
And how strong is it now?
Germany has long been the economic powerhouse of Europe, but the nation is not immune from the global financial crisis.
It is the continent's largest economy, but it also has a high rate of government debt, at 83.2% of GDP, and higher unemployment -- at 7.1% -- than many of its neighbors, according to 2010 figures.
Much of Germany's might comes from its strong manufacturing sector, which has meant that, unlike many of its neighbors, the country has not had to rely on the financial services industry or the property market, both of which have been badly hit by the global economic crisis.
But experts warn that Germany, which relies heavily on trade with China, may be highly exposed to any future trouble in the Asian markets.
And Dr Christoph Meyer, senior lecturer in European and international studies at King's College London, said despite its success so far, the German economy was not bulletproof.
"There is a lot of uncertainty out there, because the world is facing a wider recession, and in that case, who will buy German products?"
Is Germany propping up the euro?
"The short answer to that is yes," says Meyer. "If Germany was not there as the anchor, offering stability, and with its economic weight -- as one of the world's most successful economies -- behind it, we would not still be talking about resolving the crisis -- it would be over already.
"But that doesn't mean Germany can do it alone."
Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted even those outside the eurozone must do their bit to resolve the crisis.
What do ordinary Germans think of the crisis?
Experts say it is inevitable that there is a degree of resentment on the part of German citizens, when faced with the responsibility of clearing up another neighbor's mess.
"Most ordinary Germans are quite unhappy with having to bail out the southern European countries, they aren't happy at having to give them their money," said Meyer.
"But then most West Germans weren't happy about giving money to East Germans after reunification either."
He added that while the crisis had initially hit Merkel's popularity among voters, her approval ratings had risen in recent months.
How do other nations view Germany's actions?
The eurozone crisis has provided plenty of fodder for eurosceptic media and politicians across the continent, with many press reports feeding off old tensions and rivalries.
Loughlin said claims in anti-German sections of the media in Britain and elsewhere that the country is "trying to take over Europe" were used by politicians to boost their standing at home, but could do real damage to international relations.
"It is a delicate situation, because there is a real risk of inflaming old passions and resentments," he said. "Those knee-jerk reactions can have major impacts -- we need statespeople, not mere politicians, who can rise above it.
"The idea that German history is repeating, that there is some plot to take over Europe, is ludicrous.
"It comes down to how different countries view the European project -- whether they see it as a market, like the British, the Swedes, the Danes; or whether they see it as a grand political project to create a new political system, like the Germans.
"Everyone is suspicious of each other, and that undermines any plan for greater integration."
Clarkson said Germany was in a Catch-22 situation.
"The Americans, and others, demand that Germany takes action, but when they do, they are accused of trying to take over -- it is the curse of power."
Is there a danger the eurozone crisis could derail Germany's economy?
"Germany has had a 'good recession' until now," said Meyer. "It has benefited from the crisis so far, but now even Germany is having difficulty selling bonds.
"The question is, at what point does the pain start for Germany? It is not hitting people's pay packets at the moment.
"But it is inevitable that the German economy will be hit. There will be costs, be they the massive costs of a disorderly breakup of the eurozone and a move to some other currency, or the -- still large -- costs of the bailout.
"There will be substantial costs, both short term and long term, to allow the peripheral countries of the eurozone to catch up, and when those come through there will be a growth of euroscepticism in Germany."
Why are Germany's leaders so committed to the euro, and how far will they go to protect it?
Experts say Germany is committed to the euro, and prepared to go to great lengths to protect it.
"Germany found it very difficult to give up the Deutschmark -- it was a symbol of the country's recovery, and giving that up to join the euro was a big sacrifice," said Loughlin.
But there are limits to the country's patience.
"It depends on the behavior of the other European partners," said Meyer. "Germany is doing as much as it can, but the other nations have to be reasonable, Germany can't help 'at any price.'
"The other countries need to be ready and willing to address their problems, to make changes -- Merkel can't keep writing blank checks if the conditions aren't being met.
"No-one wants to pour water into a leaking bucket forever." | <urn:uuid:5f5acf14-8df0-482a-ba45-c4e1bbbd5b70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/09/world/europe/germany-euro-importance/index.html?iid=article_sidebar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976824 | 1,797 | 3.125 | 3 |
|| ||email@example.com (Raymond Hettinger)|
|| ||Summary of PEP 308 Vote for a Ternary Operator|
|| ||10 Mar 2003 15:29:13 -0800|
The PEP 308 vote is summarized at:
Here are some of the highlights:
* 518 votes were received. Of these, 82 used a RejectAll
ballot and 436 used the original ballot.
* 363 had a preferred syntax they found acceptable while
155 found no acceptable syntax.
* For the second ranked syntax, the ratio dropped to
286:231 in favor of a change. This means that 77
people found only one syntax to be acceptable.
* For the third ranked syntax, the ratio dropped to
202:312. This indicates that over half of the voters
would prefer no change if they can't have one of
their first two choices.
* The highest ranked constructs were:
235 for (if C: x else: y)
206 for C ? x : y
* The 235 breaks down to 177 accepting and 58 rejecting.
If the RejectAll votes are attributed entirely to that
syntax, the ratio becomes 177 favoring to 140 opposing.
* The individual votes were highly expressive and are
* The write-in votes had more accepts than rejects but
had no clustering of syntax preferences.
* The downfall of all voting systems is not in the data
collection, rather it is in the way the rankings are
combined. I avoid this issue by not declaring a
winner. Instead, Guido is being given a straight
tally and a copy of all of the individual votes.
This works especially well because his vote outweighs
all of the others.
* Though the results lean towards accepting the PEP as
proposed, it is not decisive. Some of the no-change
votes included strong pleas. This will certainly be
* There were three or four ballots received after this
summary was prepared but before it was posted. I'll
include them for Guido in a separate email. Please
stop sending in new votes.
to post comments) | <urn:uuid:0d4eaca7-1316-4527-90ce-b8ff4c14c3e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lwn.net/Articles/25305/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926599 | 451 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Enabling The Disabled To Play Sweet Music
The interPLAY company band is rehearsing on a recent Monday night in the elegant Music Center at Strathmore on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.
* On a gourd shaker, Kristen Uleck, 38, who came into the world with spina bifida and epilepsy, and sits in a wheelchair.
* On a bell tree, Sharon Adams, 40, who has struggled with learning disabilities all her life, can read "a little" and spent her younger years in one special education school after another.
* On tambourine, Jared Raskin, 23, in a T-shirt and boarder shorts. When asked to speak of his disability, he says, "I just have a very good life."
* And using his voice like a jungle bird, J.P. Illarramendi, 36. "I was born with Down syndrome," Illarramendi says. "I'm just like everybody else with the same disability. Over the years I have been put on the cymbals and drums. Today I get to use my vocal cords as the instrument."
The four musicians -- along with a roomful of other adults, with and without cognitive disabilities -- are practicing an extremely complex Brazilian jazz piece for a 2011 concert. The rehearsal, a combination of hard work and goofiness, lasts 90 minutes. Three times a year the orchestra performs publicly.
Kristen Uleck, who often stands up with the help of braces to play in concerts, says she learned about interPLAY more than a dozen years ago through someone in her group home. "I got interested in wanting to play music. I can't read music," she says, grinning. "I'd never thought of becoming a professional musician."
The Music Gene
Paula Moore, the godmother -- and primary conductor -- of interPLAY, is sitting on the hallway floor before the rehearsal. She is wearing blue jeans, a white collarless sweater-shirt, sneakers and a scarf around her neck. Sunglasses are perched on her head. For a mother who raised three adult sons, she still has a lot of energy.
Brain research tells us, Moore says, that when "we all come on to this earth, we are born with a gene for making music. Some of us make music when we have keys in our hands and we are tapping with the keys. Or we are standing at the stove and we've got a wooden spoon. ... Or we're humming in the shower. That all comes from somewhere."
And, she says, "my job is to find out where that music is in this population and get it out."
The way Moore does it is through interPLAY. The core group of about 45 cognitively disabled adults -- ranging in age from 23 to 62, all living independently and working in the community -- meets once a week to rehearse. With assistance from volunteers, known as bandaides, the musicians play along with recorded music to learn what they will be playing live in concerts. As a public performance approaches, Moore brings in 20 or so professional musicians-- who play the more difficult strings, woodwinds, horns and percussion -- to rehearse with the entire band.
Together the pros and the core performers -- playing tambourines, castanets, drums and other percussion instruments -- stage a concert, with Moore as conductor. For the finale, ushers hand out instruments -- to every member of the audience. At the next public concert, on Jan. 31, a professional jazz quartet will play with the interPLAY regulars.
"We pay the professional musicians who work with us a stipend -- mostly for gas and for a thank you," she says. The pros take home $75 for two rehearsals and the concert. "We are a nonprofit struggling like every other nonprofit on earth right now. And that's how we do it."
The interPLAY band has a board of directors and an illustrious advisory committee that includes jazz pianist and composer Dr. Billy Taylor, Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, Choral Arts Society Director Norman Scribner and former National Symphony Orchestra timpanist Fred Begun. The annual budget is $112,500, Moore says, and each of the disabled musicians pays a nominal fee -- usually less than $1,000 a year -- to belong.
"Remember they come to us with absolutely no musical education whatsoever," Moore says. Members of the orchestra are learning to be musicians. "This is not therapy and must not ever be construed as such."
Music therapy, she points out, "is quite expensive for about 50 minutes of time." The interPLAY musicians, on the other hand, receive about two hours of time each week, plus concerts, opportunities for personal performances and other "instruction disciplines," she says. Scholarships are available. Moore says that she is paid a "paltry" salary.
The InterPLAY Effect
Asked about interPLAY's effect on disabled musicians, Glennie -- who is deaf -- says that a band for people with cognitive disabilities means "inclusion rather than exclusion."
"Society cannot continue to disable themselves through their need to categorize people or make assumptions as to another individual's abilities," Glennie says. "The human body and mind are tremendous forces that are continually amazing scientists and society. Therefore, we have no choice but to keep an open mind as to what the human being can achieve."
Roberta B. Hochberg, an interPLAY board member, says, "You cannot help but be profoundly affected by watching the joy on the faces of the band members when they play and then receive positive feedback from the audience."
She adds, "I have been able to see growth in a number of the players. I have seen members learn to concentrate and follow instructions."
There are similar ventures throughout the country. Special Orchestra, a nonprofit group in New Mexico, helps musicians play three-chord songs. Special Music By Special People in Chicago showcases performances by musicians with Down syndrome. The Coalition for Disabled Musicians brings performers together. And there are organizations for specific types of disabled musicians, such as the Disabled Drummers Association.
Certain symphony orchestras also offer programs for disabled members of the community.
But "what makes us a rarity," Moore says about interPLAY, "is that the band has the opportunity to 'live' in a $160 million concert building."
The Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda is a majestic glass-and-stone building with many rehearsal spaces and an auditorium that holds about 2,000. With tall windows and top-notch acoustics, the hall is impressive and somewhat imposing. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra plays there. So does the National Philharmonic. And a parade of musical giants, including smooth clarinetist Kenny G; unpredictable pianist Ben Folds; shred guitarist Joe Satriani; virtuoso vocalist Patti LaBelle.
And the enthusiastic musicians of interPLAY company.
On this night, the interPLAY orchestra is gathered in a vast rehearsal hall with high ceilings, bright lights and a mirrored wall. The members sit in plastic stackable chairs or wheelchairs facing Paula Moore. Some sit by themselves, some have bandaides reminding them when to play the tambourines, click-clack the castanets or tilt the rainsticks.
There are some rules.
"Because we are working as a team," Moore says, "there are certain basics that have to be accomplished in order for us to be an orchestra."
The art of orchestration "is very complicated," she says. "Very often one person is playing one instrument and the two people on the other side of him or her are playing different instruments. And so there has to be some level of understanding of how this can work."
Performers, she says, "have to be able to watch the conductors, whoever they are. And they also have to be pretty mature socially. Because it is a huge group of people."
Also, Moore says, "and this is an odd one: They have to be OK with loud music. We play very bombastic music sometimes. Whether it be marches, whether it be Mahler, whatever it is. And there are a number of people with disabilities who can't handle this kind of music."
Moore and others pore over confidential medical information when a musician is being considered for the band.
"We look at these things very carefully," she says, "because we want to make sure that everyone that comes in is a good meld for everybody else."
Paula Moore is a piece of music herself -- playful and light, then stern and demanding. She is a serious conductor, and she expects her orchestra to follow her baton.
The interPLAY company, originally called the Mighty Special Music Makers, was founded by Moore 20 years ago. She got the idea from watching her third son, Michael, who was born with Down syndrome. He loved to make music.
"Our house has always been full of music," Moore says. "For my other two boys, I had a vast array of all different kinds of music. Somehow I had Peter and the Wolf. One day I put Peter and the Wolf on, and the next thing I knew, this under-2-year-old little Mikey was singing to it. He wasn't singing the way you and I would. He didn't have words. He was singing the instrumentation. And it blew my mind."
Michael knew all the different parts, Moore says, "and I would play it over and over and over again, and he got better and better and better. It was just very clear that this was one of the gifts he had, in place of what he didn't have."
Today Michael still plays music. He lives in a group home in Pennsylvania. He is taking cello lessons, and he plays two pitched handbells in a 90-piece orchestra. The orchestra has performed in Carnegie Hall and at Lincoln Center in New York.
"It's a very exciting thing to be sitting in Carnegie Hall and watching your Down syndrome son playing Bartok," Moore says.
She describes the experience in the same energetic, enthusiastic manner that she describes every Monday night at interPLAY rehearsals:
"It's just an extraordinary feeling. All the hackles, wherever hackles are on your body, I've never known where they are -- but they are up." Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. | <urn:uuid:173d61df-b73e-48b5-a6e7-39cb55196b28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kunc.org/post/enabling-disabled-play-sweet-music | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968876 | 2,174 | 1.859375 | 2 |
In an effort to be an obliging father, I recently took my daughter shopping for some new clothes. She is hitting her pre-teen years so clothes and music have suddenly escalated in importance. While trying to be a good dad I made the mistake of offering my suggestions on her selection in clothes, only to hear that they weren’t good enough. But as I continued to ask what was wrong with my selections, I kept getting the same answer: “mine are just better, Dad.”
Interestingly, my teen wanna-be couldn’t justify what made her choices superior and had no interest in trying to define this difference. This inability to describe exactly what “better” means is what I frequently hear from clients when discussing their operational processes. They want a better process, but cannot articulate what “better” looks like.
Bank executives who seek to make real improvements in their operating processes need to realize the great power they hold in defining a clear mandate for what the improvement initiative should achieve. Management will only struggle with sub-par results if they proclaim that a process needs to be improved but provide zero guidance in visualizing the endpoint. Whether the objective is to shorten the loan on-boarding process or streamline the steps and time required to on-board a new employee, the best process improvement initiatives come about from management mandating specific performance improvements. Without clear initiatives from executive management, process teams shoot for and miss moving targets and ultimately these initiatives run out of gas.
Think about how clear President Kennedy’s mandate was to put a man on the moon by the end of an opening decade. The best process improvement projects I have been involved with all had a similar clear endpoint from the organization’s leaders – ambitious, almost-crazy goals that put a lump in the throat of fractured business area executives who will be forced to work together collaboratively to have a chance at achieving the goal. In one case, when a CEO mandated that new customer checking accounts should take no more than 15 minutes, it forced the right kind of discussions and process definition from branch, operations, compliance, Information Technology and marketing stakeholders – moving everyone past their customary inertia.
For executives wondering what type of clear mandates they should set at their bank, I would recommend the following key areas:
Customer Expectations. There may be specific processes that are completely unacceptable to customers because they fail the “common sense” test. I frequently see banks that take days to respond to a customer’s loan application or make customers visit a branch to execute a request that can be transacted in a safe and sound manner online. Customer expectations established by competitors who are “raising the bar” can also be an important source of mandates. If a rival is issuing debit cards instantly, approving credit cards with the answers to five simple questions online or allowing mobile banking enrollment to occur without an existing Internet banking account, it’s time get the “clear mandates” defined. So, identify your bank’s most pressing customer expectations and set the bar higher in your organization.
Benchmark Metrics. Using industry data to benchmark the bank’s processes and efficiency can be an excellent source for executive mandates. If a bank processes 15 loans per mortgage processor per month when peers do 30 a month and high performers 45, a target to equal and then exceed peer numbers should be established with an ambitious timeline to achieve this goal. High-performing banks make benchmarking, measurement and improvement a major part of their operating cultures. Metric-driven performance measures or key performance indicators (KPIs) are easy to quantify and any managers worth their salt should have a clear set of these measures to manage their business.
Mandates from top management may be needed to get some managers out of their comfort zone, however. I recently saw a chief operating officer issue this mandate: “Given our customer base, I want us to be at least in the 75th percentile for new business checking accounts opened per branch each month.” Such mandates will often receive pushback from team members. Organizations are very good at explaining why they are “different” from peers, which often is used as a lame excuse to hold themselves to a lower standard than what’s been proven possible by peers. Every measurable goal in your banking organization should fall between the peer and high performing levels and this performance should be verified through external benchmarking data.
Innovation. Bank leaders can set effective process improvement mandates by asking, “What are the strategic differentiators I am trying to build and enhance in my organization?” Building mandates around innovative areas where the bank wants to be different from competitors can be highly motivating. Team members often react energetically to the idea of getting somewhere first and pushing the envelope against competitors. A CEO who gave the mandate to develop certificate of deposit products denominated in different foreign currencies illustrates the power of an innovation mandate. This organization had to push the boundaries in product development, treasury management, compliance, operations and marketing; in the end, the mandate made the organization more competitive. Ask yourself, “What innovation goals have I set as a bank executive and where should I be focusing such mandates?”
The beautiful part of quantifying performance is the ability to align internal resources to focus on and perform activities that directly support strategic initiatives. Studies completed by our team at Cornerstone Advisors reveal a great disparity in the performance of processes between banks operating at peer benchmark levels and high-performing banks. For instance, high performing banks generate nearly $100,000 in small business loans per branch per month while median banks generate only $31,000. A high performing wire transfer department is a remarkably 68% more efficient than peer median. Clearly, high performers show bankers the great upside that lies latent in their organizations today and the valuable learning that can occur from examining the processes of high performers.
As we enter a new era where business processes are driven by automation instead of fax machines and shuffling paper files to the next cubicle, it is more important than ever to clearly mandate concrete and specific performance metrics around each process improvement. Banking leaders owe it to their organizations to set the bar high and get their teams moving in achieving mandates that will help their employees grow professionally and take more pride in the areas they manage. So, mandate your processes – early and often.
Mr. Jones is a senior consultant with Cornerstone Advisors, a Scottsdale, Ariz., based consulting firm specializing in bank management, strategy and technology advisory services. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Stay connected to Expert Perspectives, Research and Intelligence — subscribe to BAI Banking Strategies now! | <urn:uuid:020d9f46-6ae1-4382-9544-a837aa4aaf17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bai.org/bankingstrategies/human-capital/productivity/want-process-improvement-mandate-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952299 | 1,366 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Books & Music
Food & Wine
Health & Fitness
Hobbies & Crafts
Home & Garden
News & Politics
Religion & Spirituality
Travel & Culture
TV & Movies
Planning Your Container Garden
“Before you knew how to ride a bicycle, you didn’t know how to ride a bicycle.” This saying has always helped me to do things I have been meaning to do but for some reason just didn’t. Very often that reason was a fear of failing. If that is what is holding you back, just determine right now to leave those thoughts behind. Everyone has to start somewhere and as Maria sang in The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…”
First things first.
Got a handy notebook? Get a pretty one; spiral bound is a good choice especially if it has a ‘my notebook kind of look’ and a cover in your favourite colour, but whatever type you choose; get a notebook now. Of course you could and will use your computer, a diary; index cards, a good memory and/or even scraps of paper kept in a shoebox, but your own gardening notebook is the best idea by far. When I go to the garden centre, I refer to my notebook all the time.
Second things second.
Often we are easily discouraged or disappointed with our sometimes slow progress, but often too it’s because we jumped in too fast, bought a pretty pot, some soil and a few plants the nurseryman suggested and then we get cross with ourselves when things don’t work out like you see in the magazines, picture books and catalogues. Stop right there; set aside some time and start to think … What is it that you want your container garden to do?
Do this quick self-survey. Make notes, doodle, draw pictures or get a storyboard going. There are no right or wrong answers, just some questions and comments and note-making to get you thinking about who you are; how much time you have on hand and what you want to do. It’s also a good refresher for realigning your gardening goals too besides it may make some suggestions to get you started again if for any reason you’ve stalled.
• Why do you want a container garden? Small space? Low maintenance? No time? Entrance enhancement? Feature patches in a larger garden? For Fruit and Vegetables? Herbs? Specimen plants like Roses and Orchids? Want to plant a tree? Write your thoughts down in your notebook.
• Have you been a gardener for long? Have you done the work yourself or have you had garden assistance? Used a gardening service? Just starting out on your own with limited resources? Had no inclination or need before now? Write down your thoughts. Writing gives your thinking a reality you need, it works for others and it will work for you too.
• What do you know about water features? Hard landscaping? Garden pests? Plant names? Seasonal planting? Vegetables? Herbs? Zoning? Answer the questions or rate yourself out of 10. Doesn’t matter if you don’t pass. You don't have to, this is not a test. What does matter is that you think about your aims and intentions.
• Do you have all the tools you need to do the jobs you want to do in your container garden? Do you have a garden budget? Do you have a potting bench? Do you need a potting bench? Start off small the rest will fall into place as your garden grows along with your vision and success.
• Have you thought about your personal style? Are you a formal neat straight-edged kind of person? A round-and-about sort of person? An anything-goes someone who just likes to see things grow and look pretty? A gardener with experience who knows what you want but could do with some new and modern ideas? A combination gardener of all-or-none of the above? Give free reign, be yourself as they say, everyone else is taken!
• In your notebook, write down your wish list of everything you want to accomplish with your container garden. Your list may include taking stock of what you have done so far; a need for lots of flowers; only got space for a vegetable patch; my patio is big enough for some fruit trees; want to be creative; pretty-up my home; to decorate the pool area; developing a scented garden…write and write and write. Don’t let your wish list end. Be greedy with your thoughts, things will fall into place for you.
When you have done all that please join me on a Container Gardening adventure that will get you right where you want to go; at your own pace; doing what you want to do when you’re ready to do it. As the weeks fly by, you will see remarkable changes and improvements in your space; we will answer your questions, give ideas galore and cover many topics.
So. Imagine your prettiest container, contain your enthusiasm immediately, grab some get-up-and-go and let’s get to it.
| Related Articles | Editor's Picks Articles | Top Ten Articles | Previous Features | Site Map
Content copyright © 2013 by Lestie Mulholland. All rights reserved.
This content was written by Lestie Mulholland. If you wish to use this content in any manner, you need written permission. Contact Lestie Mulholland for details.
Website copyright © 2013 Minerva WebWorks LLC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:7af8ff58-822a-4853-ae1a-a04fa212279f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art170872.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939801 | 1,181 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone gave us a list of what to do so we may succeed in all of our endeavors? While we may not be that lucky, there are ways you can help ensure success with your crops. These three guidelines will highlight ways you can maximize the genetic potential of your crops to produce a higher yield.
1. Improve plant growth
One way to maximize the growth of your plants is by improving absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2
), which increases a plant’s ability to photosynthesize. In addition to providing disease control, strobilurin fungicides
can increase a plant’s ability to absorb and process CO2
, which results in the plant being able to produce energy. This can lead to more efficient use of the sun’s energy and ultimately result in a healthier plant and higher yields.
A second way to improve your plants’ growth is to ensure your fields are utilizing nitrogen in the most efficient possible. Nitrogen
is one of the main chemical elements required for plant growth and reproduction; therefore, improved utilization of nitrogen allows plants to produce proteins that are essential for maximum growth. In both cases, improving CO2
absorption and improving nitrogen use can result in healthier plants and ultimately higher yield.
2. Increase water use efficiency
We all know one of the most important ingredients for plant success is having the right amount of water. In times of drought, intense sun and high-temperatures, plants transpire- think of it in terms of humans perspiring when hot. Also like humans, plants can become dehydrated. In times of low rainfall, dehydration quickly becomes a big issue. This is another area in which strobilurin fungicides can help your crop in multiple ways at once. Strobilurins can help plants retain water by slowing the rate at which water is lost. A strobilurin also conserves moisture in soil and lengthens the time it takes a plant to be impacted by water deficits.
3. Extend grain and pod fill
The longer a plant maintains green leaf area, the more time there is for photosynthesis to take place. By preventing early yellowing and dropping of leaves, plants have more time to grow and reach full yield development. Strobilurin fungicides help extend grain and pod fill by maintaining green leaf longer thus reallocating nutrients from the leaves of the plants to the ears in corn or pods in soybean to improve plant quality and maximize yields at harvest.
What other growing practices do you follow that help increase yield? | <urn:uuid:d4901f5e-6c2d-41e6-b1f3-7826c4871ea6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/mymachinery/blog/Syngenta_Field_Report_240/?Year=2010&Month=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923099 | 525 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Farmers eager for immigration reform
At Chandler Farms, just outside of Selma, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley, about three dozen workers are needed each season to pick acres of delicate peaches, plums, nectarines and citrus.
In recent years, however, owners Carol and Bill Chandler have struggled to find laborers as immigration from Mexico has slowed to a near-standstill.
“When the crops are ripe, we need a reliable labor force,” she said. “That’s what we’re worried about going forward.”
If you have any technical difficulties, either with your username and password or with the payment options, please contact us by e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:1a081c15-d4a0-4a8b-8061-0c69c06e0deb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.saukvalley.com/2013/02/07/farmers-eager-for-immigration-reform/astrk66/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955055 | 156 | 1.710938 | 2 |
General Carter F. Ham, the outgoing head of the U.S. Africa Command, speaks at Howard University's Ralph Bunch International Affairs Center.
Gen. Ham will discuss the command's mission in the light of the growing terrorist threat in North Africa. In a recent talk at George Washington University, the General described the U.S. counterterrorism role in Africa and in particular, efforts to dislodge al Qaeda from Northern Mali.
Last week, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Algeria kidnapped Western petroleum workers, including a number of Americans, in response to French and U.S. military support for the Mali government. A number of the workers were killed in attempts to rescue them.
Gen. Ham will likely discuss the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
In October, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the nomination of General David Rodriquez to replace Ham, who took charge of U.S. Africa Command in March 2011. | <urn:uuid:24d385f5-3cd6-4b1a-9f2c-cd216a066868> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.c-span.org/Events/US-Africa-Command-Head-Addresses-Howard-University-Students/10737437546/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944772 | 207 | 1.554688 | 2 |
SOLUTION? CROSS BORDER SHOPPING!
Read this article and realize that figures don't lie but liars can figure!
..By Julian Beltrame, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - Canada's retailers are blaming suppliers for the large gap between their prices and identical goods for sale south of the border, despite the nearly equal value of the two dollars.
Canadian merchants are being unfairly singled out for having higher prices than their American counterparts, Diane Brisebois of the Retail Council of Canada told a Senate committee Tuesday.
She said because Canada's population is so small in comparison, large multi-national vendors can enforce a special Canadian price for brand name products and it can be anywhere from 10 to 50 per cent higher than in the United States.
"There are price differences between Canada and the U.S., but they are not always determined at the retail level," Brisebois told the committee.
In an interview afterwards, Brisebois said Canadian retailers have no choice but to buy from the Canadian distributors of American manufacturers because they are restricted from going into the U.S. and buying there.
Canada is not the only country affected, she said. Others outside the U.S. also face the same challenge, called "country pricing."
"There are a lot of people who believe that American multi-national manufacturers use their secondary markets to ensure they can remain competitively priced in the U.S.," she said.
Canada's retailers have been hammered in the media and by politicians for "gouging" their customers, but she said that is simply not the case.
In a price comparison by the Bank of Montreal last spring, economist Douglas Porter calculated Canadian shoppers paid on average about 20 per cent more than U.S. consumers for identical goods.
Porter, who is planning a follow-up survey in the next few weeks, said he has no difficulty believing that Canadian retailers may be at a disadvantage.
"That may well be the lion's share of the explanation," he said. "A lot of companies will fight tooth and nail for that important U.S. market. It's extremely high profile and influential around the world, so to gain market share in the U.S. is gold."
To back up her case, Brisebois presented her own list of 15 consumer items contrasting what Canadian retailers must pay their suppliers compared with the amount paid by their counterparts south of the border. Although she did not give the brand names, Brisebois said the comparison was for exactly the same item.
Some typical examples:
— Hair conditioner (1.18 litres) cost the Canadian retailer $10 and the U.S. retailer $6.23, for a 43 per cent markup, she said.
— A 46-inch LED TV was $1,001 in Canada and $888.75 in the U.S., a 13 per cent difference;
— An automobile tire cost $169.69 for the retailer in Canada and $128.21 in the U.S., a 32 per cent difference.
The biggest differential on the list was for an over-the-counter painkiller, which cost Canadian retailers more than double the U.S. price.
"We are not saying this is the case for all suppliers, but there is enough evidence to suggest this is very serious," Brisebois said.
She told the senators that other factors also played a role, including import duties as high as 18 per cent, government regulations, transportation costs and Canada's protectionist supply management system on eggs, poultry and dairy products.
Two subsequent witnesses — Eric Levert of Reebok-CCM Hockey and Lisa Zajko, a tax lawyer with Deloitte & Touche — told the committee that Ottawa should eliminate duties on finished goods unless there is a competing Canadian producer.
That may be the case on more consumer items than the government believes. Ottawa last looked into the issue in the 1990s.
Levert said his company now outsources 90 per cent of the hockey equipment it makes to Asian factories.
The Canadian operations only produce sweaters and hockey sticks for professionals, yet heavy duties remain on imports of hockey equipment, he said.
"What we are showing is that Canada, supposedly known as the hockey country, is paying 18 per cent (duty) on hockey skates, 15.5 on all protective equipment and 8.5 per cent on helmets, while the U.S. is paying zero," he said.
Levert said his firm would have no objection to the removal of all duties, even on products Reebok is manufacturing in Canada.
When he testified last fall, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he would be willing to look at duties, although his officials told the senators such a move would have a minimal impact on the price gap.
But Brisebois disagreed and Levert also suggested government levies for importing finished goods were significant. He said a $15 duty on a product in his business ends up costing consumers up to $35.
The committee has yet to hear from major foreign manufacturers and it is not clear whether it will do so before presenting its findings later this year.
Committee chairman Senator Joseph Day said individual automobile manufacturers have refused an invitation to attend, but the committee will hear from the association that represents them on Wednesday.
....@YahooFinanceCA on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook ..
Don't forget- in November write in Ross Perot. | <urn:uuid:6bd98d93-b8e7-4a22-b7dc-3f35d74f704d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1704601 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969682 | 1,134 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Slideshow: Pakistan floods: after three months, large areas still under water
Three months after floods devastated Pakistan, cases of disease are increasing and in the worst-hit region, the southern province of Sindh, large areas remain underwater. At the same time, funds for the UN flood appeal are drying up and threatening the aid and reconstruction effort. As winter approaches, seven million people are still without adequate shelter.
In Sindh province, more than one million people are displaced, their homes damaged or destroyed, and some communities remain surrounded by flood waters. Many farmers will not be able to plant winter crops. Government officials say some of the worst-affected areas could take up to six months to dry out.
Oxfam and our partners are currently helping more than 1.4 million people in Pakistan, providing water and sanitation, distributing hygiene and shelter kits and cash vouchers so that families can purchase basic food items. Please donate to help our response.
Photos: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam. 20 October 2010 | <urn:uuid:1203e75b-1f22-48f0-9556-af0f6295adf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oxfam.org/fr/node/5150 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948302 | 206 | 2.609375 | 3 |
|— Unincorporated town —|
|Clark County, Nevada|
|• Total||46.51 sq mi (120.5 km2)|
|• Land||46.51 sq mi (120.5 km2)|
|• Water||0.0 sq mi (0 km2)|
|Elevation||2,552 ft (778 m)|
|• Density||2,332.3/sq mi (900.5/km2)|
|Time zone||PST (UTC-8)|
|• Summer (DST)||PDT (UTC-7)|
|GNIS feature ID||1867345|
|Website||Enterprise Town Advisory Board|
Enterprise is an unincorporated town and census-designated place and part of Las Vegas Township in Clark County, Nevada, United States. The population was 108,481 at the 2010 census, up from 14,676 at the 2000 census. As an unincorporated town, it is governed by the Clark County Commission with input from the Enterprise Town Advisory Board. Enterprise was formed in December, 1996.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the census-designated place (CDP) of Enterprise (which may not coincide exactly with the town boundaries) has a total area of 46.51 square miles (120.5 km2). Enterprise is the location of the Mountain's Edge planned community.
As of the census of 2010, there were 108,481 people, 39,848 households, and 25,834 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,332.3 people per square mile (900.5/km²). There were 49,563 housing units. The racial makeup of the CDP was 56.3% White, 8.1% African American, 0.6% Native American, 21.2% Asian, 0.9% Pacific Islander, 6.8% from other races, and 6.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 17.3%. Non-Hispanic Whites were 48.1%.
There were 39,848 households out of which 36.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.4% were married couples living together, 11.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.2% were non-families. 21.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.72 and the average family size was 3.24.
In the CDP, the age distribution was 24.4% under the age of 18 and 6.2% was 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32.5 years.
The Clark County School District serves Enterprise.
- "Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (DP-1): Enterprise CDP, Nevada". U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
- "American FactFinder". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
- Steve Kanigher (July 18, 2003). "Las Vegas: Bright lights, but not a big city". Las Vegas Sun. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
- "CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING (1790-2010)". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 2012-12-24.
- United States Census Bureau. Enterprise CDP, Nevada
- "Contact Us." Allegiant Air. Retrieved on January 2, 2011. "Allegiant Travel Company 8360 S. Durango Drive Las Vegas, NV 89113"
- "Enterprise CDP, Nevada." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on January 2, 2011. | <urn:uuid:048d367f-127d-4c60-a07f-6fe352214d22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise,_Nevada | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926217 | 803 | 1.507813 | 2 |
A “biodiversity crisis”: that’s how some conservationists describe new numbers released this week by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service on so-called white-nose syndrome. According to the agency, 5.7 million to 6.7 million bats have died from the fungal ailment in eastern North America since an epidemic first broke out in upstate New York in 2006.
The new numbers are striking, and far higher than the previous bat mortality estimate of one million released in 2009, yet it is hard to put the number into perspective because researchers lack baseline data for many bat species populations from before the disease started demolishing colonies.
“We knew numbers for endangered species like the Indiana bat,” said Ann Froschauer, who coordinates communications releases on the bat disease for the Fish and Wildlife Service. “But we never made it a priority to count something like little brown bats, because, well, they were everywhere. It didn’t seem possible that they would be in danger of extinction in just a couple years.”
What is known is that when the fungus gets into a cave or mine where bats are hibernating, 70 to 90 percent of the bats die. In some cases, the mortality rate is 100 percent.
Over the past three years, the disease has spread from 88 sites in nine states in 2009 to at least 200 sites in 16 states today. Jeremy Coleman, the lead white-nose syndrome coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said that officials can’t keep up with new site infections and are now working on the assumption that all caves and mines are infected in areas where the ailment has existed for several years.
There are 45 species of bats in North America, 26 of which are hibernating species potentially susceptible to the fungus. While the disease has infected only six species so far, some researchers worry that it could wipe out as many as 20 bat species in the next few years.
Molly Matteson, a conservationist for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, says that’s a big deal — not just for the environment but for people as well. Researchers have estimated that bats save farmers at least $3.7 billion a year by keeping down crop pests.
Ms. Froschauer emphasized that each bat species fulfills a specific ecological purpose. “I think people tend to put bats in a bucket and think of them as one species,” she said. “But they are a hugely diverse group of mammals, and each species has a very special ecological niche that can’t be filled by a different bat species.”
“Different species eat different things, hunt in different locations and fit into the ecological puzzle in a unique way,” she said. “Losing one bat species would be huge — losing 20 would be catastrophic.”
Some conservationists take a bit of hope from recent reports that resistance to the fungus is growing in the bat population in parts of the Northeast.
“I’d love to believe that,” said Dr. Coleman of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “I hate always being the guy with the bad news.”
“But just because some bats are surviving doesn’t mean that we will have viable populations in the future,” he said. “These new numbers make it quite clear that this is still a crisis and a growing one.” | <urn:uuid:17e3e30a-e42a-4ded-9839-f120d2e7f370> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/in-bat-deaths-a-catastrophe-in-the-making/?emc=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962456 | 715 | 3.234375 | 3 |
When a critical piece of machinery operates effectively for more than a decade, the inevitable problem becomes aging controls, maintenance headaches, and fast-approaching obsolescence. At the Eaton production facility that supplies hydraulic lifters and associated components for the automotive market, a collaborative effort resulted in a retrofit program that rejuvenated an aging grinder and boosted production at the same time.
Eaton engineers Rick Gentry and Jim Guess report over 11 percent increases in the overall productivity of a retrofitted Heald grinder at the plant, and additional advantages of improved throughput and enhanced accuracy. Plus, the project required only six weeks to implement an effective solution.
Critical finishing operations
The Heald 1VL, an I.D. grinder utilized for the finish grinding operation on critical engine components, is a key machine tool in Eaton's operation. The grinder was originally equipped with an early generation Siemens 3G CNC used to control the X/Z linear axes, high-speed grinding and dressing spindles (60,000 and 54,000 rpm respectively) and an automatic load/unload device. And the original design of the machine incorporated size gauging and control.
The older CNC was specifically designed for the operational parameters of the grinder and had adequate power and flexibility for its time. But as with all controls, it eventually became more difficult to maintain, and downtime became an issue for Eaton engineers. After careful examination of the available controls, as well as the main frame and other mechanical components onboard, the decision was made to retrofit for improved efficiency and on-pace production.
In With The New: Grinder rejuvenated
with modern controllers uses 75 percent of existing software but gains
benefits from new CNC, digital drive, and absolute encoder
Eaton and Ex-Cell-O (www.ex-cell-o.com) collaborated on the retrofit project and approached the task as a joint venture. Ex-Cell-O managed the controls integration, machine software, interface design, electrical design and implementation of the new system, while Eaton handled the mechanical aspects of the project. Eaton provided new components not associated with the control system including relays, switches, terminals, and other items that would be reused from the original design where possible.
Since Siemens (www.siemens.com) no longer made a dedicated control for the grinder, the Sinumerik 810D CNC was selected from the current standard line of product. In the years since the original machine design, many control changes had taken place that benefited this application. A more compact design with drives and controls in the same package resulted in considerable space savings. Digital drives and absolute encoders minimized hardware and the compact design of the CNC control interface kept the control console in the same package. Siemens cycle programming also eliminated some programming of grinding cycles, and an embedded PLC controller enhanced the HMI protocol.
Out With the Old: Replacing aging
controls in a Heald grinder at Eaton Corp. with a new Sinumerik 810D CNC
increased production and eliminated maintenance
The original Heald grinder controls console required some redesign as the control panels are slightly wider than the original system. However, the redesign was achieved with the capability of mounting to the existing pendant support arm on the machine. The PLC interface was accomplished with Step 7 PLC logic with separate I/O Siemens hardware that provided a more compact design and easily interfaced with existing I/O terminal connectors.
The new CNC features an integrated NC, PLC and is capable of handling up to six axes and two spindles. The existing program format, used to maintain the operator compatibility, and the old program were approximately 75 percent transportable to the new CNC with modifications implemented in areas that required new functionality. This minimized operator impact with new equipment since the operator controls and the program parameters were basically the same as the old equipment.
Special operator interface screens were designed to match the original parameter values, reducing the need for extensive training of the operator interface system. Fault and operator messages were programmed to minimize downtime and give as much information as possible to the operator and maintenance personnel. | <urn:uuid:1020e9f1-dfb7-4a5c-b149-0ec480da225a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=227400 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930586 | 856 | 2 | 2 |
Can economically viable projects generate carbon offsets? A journalist asked me this question the other day, hoping for a simple yes or no answer. The answer is yes, but understanding why is not necessarily so simple.
This might seem counterintuitive. If a project is economically viable, surely it doesn’t need the income from offsets to coax it into existence? There are at least two reasons why economically viable projects might require income from offsets. The first is that some other, non-financial barriers exist that require additional money to surmount. The second is that the project is economically viable, but not as attractive as alternatives.
The first scenario applies mostly to developing countries that lack the necessary technical expertise to undertake large-scale renewable energy projects. These projects must pass a barriers analysis, showing that necessary skills are not available in the area without the technical assistance that carbon credits fund. For example, a CDM project to improve the beer brewing process in Lao Brewery (yum!), uses a technical barriers test rather than a financial test.
The second scenario is more complex. Renewable energy projects by definition have some economic return from the sale of electricity. The question is not whether these projects are able to break even, but whether they are at least as attractive as the available alternatives — typically coal.
As a case study, take a look at the economic model for the Inner Mongolia Huitengxile Jingneng wind farm, a 100-megawatt installation. Note that the rate of return without carbon credits is 6.46%, below the 8% government benchmark, and 8.9% with carbon credit income. Just a little bit of money — in this case about $2.5m per year for seven years — is enough to shift a capital investment of $100m from a dirty technology into a clean one. The project was arguably “viable” even without the credits, but carbon revenue made it actually competitive with alternatives.
Establishing financial additionality for American wind farms is likely to take a course similar to the standard being set internationally. Last week, the second draft of the Center for Resource Solutions Greenhouse Gas standard was was released for stakeholder comment. This version contains a lot more specific language on additionality. We and and lots of other marketplace participants are looking forward to a revised rule that helps the retailers determine additionality for American wind projects in a simple transparent manner.
With some $30 trillion to be invested in energy production over the next 30 years, making the right low-carbon investments is one of the keys to fighting climate change. Carbon offsets help put a price on the climate change consequences of these investment decisions, and if properly structured can help move a portion of that $30 trillion investment into clean energy. While a lot of that investment will be in the developing world, some of it will be domestic. Demand for new power continues to rise in the US. It is our hope that carbon offsets can help new domestic energy be as clean as possible. | <urn:uuid:2f35bde5-e8a4-4372-8509-16d3b2b0cf74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.terrapass.com/uncategorized/can-economicall/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943646 | 607 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Letter From Denise Bryan, BAEF Founder
A year is a long time to spend away from home. When the tourists leave, you will still be there, part of a foreign culture, living exactly as these foreigners do, your residence a semi-closed community, your new friends and mentors talking a subtly different language. To everyone there must come moments when determination has to be stretched to its limits, but it is the triumph of these moments of self-discipline that adds inches to the stature.
It is not easy to keep your temper, to accept a rebuke without sulking, to behave at all times with grace when what you are told to do may seem childish or futile; you have to remember that no argument is going to change the situation and that no one stands to lose but yourself and— more important in the long run— your country and your countrymen.
The two qualities probably most admired in the British school are common sense and a lightness of touch. A sense of humor, in particular an ability to laugh at yourself, will take you a very long way. Otherwise people look for tolerance, honesty, good manners and a willingness to recognize that if everyone in a community insists on doing his own thing, then nobody can. In Britain "aggressive" is a bad word, as somehow it has ceased to be here.
The United States stands to lose or gain more than you have any idea of as a result of your behavior. In the House you will be in contact much of the time with others a good deal younger than yourself— many of whom have never got a close look at an American before. You will find their ideas about the United States quite startling, acquired as they are through TV or the movies, with the omnipresent tourist thrown in. And, as the first genuine American they have ever had an opportunity to study close up, your behavior and your views and your reactions will probably color their opinion of the United States for many years to come. Whether you like it or not, you are going to represent your country 24 hours a day, under close observation by keen critics. If it is important to you that the British think well of Americans, then you had better act up to your own ideal; if not, then you should have stayed home.
You are going to be asked a million questions about the United States— how the wheels go round and why— so that it is not a bad idea to arm yourself with some basic facts about this country and the Constitution before you leave. And, of course, you are going to undergo a certain amount of needling, even occasional hostility, the main object of which will be to make you rise. This is, frankly, very difficult not to do.
If it is of any help at all, bear in mind the word "different." Then, when some arrogant Limey boasts of how much better things are in Britain, and you are naturally tempted to grind his miserable face in the mud while you explain the infinite superiority of the American way of life, if you can, instead, count to ten and make a careful statement that, in the United States, things are certainly "different" but that they don't have to be "better" in either place, then you may have struck a major blow for your country, for peace on earth, and, ultimately, good will among men.
And you will know that you made the right decision in embarking on this adventure. | <urn:uuid:e3e9ca85-5acc-4780-9477-60b358cf5420> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.baef.org/about/foundersletter.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971536 | 700 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Translate Website | Traducir Sitio Web
Translate Website | Traducir Sitio Web
Listed below are publications on criminal statistics available from the Attorney General's Office.
Select General Publications for a list of other department publications.
Crime in California
2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 This publication contains the most comprehensive set of data on California crimes, arrests, and criminal justice actions. Crime in California contains information on crimes, arrests, adult felony arrest dispositions, adult corrections, criminal justice expenditures and personnel, citizens' complaints against peace officers, and domestic violence.
Crime in California - Advance Release
2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 This publication provides information about crimes, arrests, felony arrest dispositions, and juvenile justice actions. The report also compares crime and arrest rates for the periods 2007 and 2008 and from 1989 to 2008.
Homicide in California
2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 This report contains information about the crime of homicide and its victims, demographic data on persons arrested for homicide, and information about the response of the criminal justice system. Information about the death penalty, the number of peace officers killed in the line of duty, and justifiable homicide is also included in this report.
Hate Crime in California 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995 This is an annual report regarding crimes motivated by the victim's race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability as reported by law enforcement agencies.
January through December
2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 This report compares preliminary crime counts for January through June, January through September, and January through December with final counts for the same period in the prior year for California law enforcement jurisdictions serving populations of 100,000 or more. The 82 jurisdictions that met this criterion account for approximately 65 percent of the crimes reported in the state annually.
Juvenile Justice in California
2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 This annual report is organized to provide the reader with factual information about the personal and social characteristics of delinquents. The report contains specific information on juvenile population, race/ethnic groups, gender, numbers of arrests, referrals to probation departments, petitions, juvenile court dispositions, sustained offenses, and race/ethnic group representation.
Anti-Reproductive-Rights Crimes in California
2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 Senate Bill 780, effective January 1, 2002, enacted two new laws: the California Freedom of Access to Clinic and Church Entrances (or California FACE) Act, and the Reproductive Rights Law Enforcement Act. It also mandated this annual report to the Legislature to include information such as the number of crime events, types of offenses, level of offense, weapons, location of the crime, race/ethnicity, gender, and age of victims and suspects.
Concealable Firearms Charges in California
2003 | FY 2003 | FY 2001/2002 | FY 2000/2001 | 2000 Provides data on individuals charged with committing a crime under California Penal Code sections 12025 and 12031. The data, submitted by the county district attorneys, include analyses and tables displaying the following elements: The offender's race/ethnicity, gender, and age, county, firearms offense, level of offense (misdemeanor or felony), and additional offenses charged.
Reproductive Rights Law Enforcement Act - Plan 2003, pdf
This special report to the Legislature was generated in response to Senate Bill 780 which requested the Attorney General develop a plan to prevent, apprehend, prosecute, and report anti-reproductive-rights crimes. This report contains 16 recommended strategies to address anti-reproductive-rights crimes in California.
CJSC Outlook: Death in Custody, California, pdf This report provides a brief overview of the facts regarding deaths in custody in California from 1994 through 2003, with a more detailed analysis for 2003. Areas discussed include: numbers of deaths in custody; a comparison of deaths in custody to those in the general public; differences between racial/ethnic groups; locations where the death occurred; causes of death; and a comparison between people arrested and those who died in custody.
CJSC Outlook: Crime in Urban and Rural California, pdf Examines annual crime rates for urban and rural areas in California for the years 1987 through 1996.
Crimes Committed Against Homeless Persons 2002, pdf This report was generated in response to Senate Resolution 18 which requested the Attorney General to assess the extent of crimes against the homeless, to develop plans to address the problem, and to determine if hate crimes are occurring in the homeless community. Results of the study indicated that crime in general is very prevalent in the homeless community however, there is not sufficient evidence to support the expansion of the definition of hate crime to include the homeless.
Felons and Others Arrested for Firearms Possession, pdf This report was generated in response to Senate Bill 1608 (2000) which requested the Attorney General study and report to the Legislature if Penal Code sections 12021 and 12021.1 are effective deterrents to owning or possessing firearms by convicted felons, narcotics addicts, and those prohibited as an express condition of probation. Results of the study indicated there was a decrease in every category of arrest, court disposition, and conviction from 1998 to 2000, except where there were previous convictions for serious or violent felonies.
Drug Arrests in California, 1990-1999, pdf This report contains information regarding arrrests for the commission of drug offenses as defined by California statute. It is divided into two general categories: felonies and misdemeanors.
Crime in California - Questions 2001, pdf Crime in California is a report that answers several key questions, such as, how much crime is there, what are the short- and long-term trends, who are the victims and perpetrators, how does the criminal justice system work, and what are the costs of crime. This report is written in a "quick reference" style that relies heavily on charts. A flowchart of the "sequence of events" in the criminal justice system is very informative.
Crime in California and the United States, 1988-1998, pdf This report presents crime data for California from 1988 to 1998 and compares these data against crime data for the United States less California, and crime data for the six other states with populations over 10 million (Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas).
Why Did the Crime Rate Decrease Through 1999?, pdf Crime, driven by an epidemic of crack cocaine use and handgun toting by young people, peaked in the early 1990's. This publication reviews the reasons which experts have offered for the subsequent decline in crime through 1999 and suggests circumstances that would cause crime to increase in 2000 and beyond.
Report on Juvenile Felony Arrests in California, 1998, pdf This report contains information about members of the at risk juvenile population (aged 10-17) who have been arrested for felony offenses. The purpose of this report is to provide accurate and complete information by organizing and displaying data about juvenile felony arrests and adult felony arrests. Data by county and by cities with population over 100,000 are also available in the Appendices.
Report on Violent Crimes Committed Against Senior Citizens in California, 1998, pdf This report contains information about reported violent crimes committed against members of the population who are 60 years of age and older. Data by county and by cities with population over 100,000 are also available in the Appendices.
Report on Arrests for Burglary in California, 1998, pdf This report contains information about persons arrested for the crime of burglary. The purpose of this report is to provide policy makers and the public with accurate and complete criminal statistical information by organizing and displaying 1998 arrest data and multi-year arrest data for burglary. Statewide totals of burglary arrests are displayed by gender, race, and age. Data by county and by cities with populations over 100,000 are also available in the Appendices.
Report on Arrests for Domestic Violence in California, 1998, pdf This report contains information about persons arrested for the crime of domestic violence. It's purpose is to provide policy makers and the public with accurate and complete information about domestic violence arrests in California.
Report on Arrests for Driving Under the Influence in California, 1997, pdf This report contains information about persons arrested for the crimes of Driving Under the Influence of alcohol or drugs. The purpose of this report is to provide accurate and complate statistical information on Driving Under the Influence (DUI) to the public and government entities for the development and evaluation of criminal justice programs and legislation. | <urn:uuid:2cb97a3f-43e0-41fe-a535-6e32da47606e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oag.ca.gov/cjsc/pubs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919984 | 1,862 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Bristol Airport language microsites
Please choose your language:
For exclusive offers & latest news
Passengers travelling back to the UK via Bristol Airport are today being urged to use facial recognition gates now installed at the airport.
The state of the art machines, which scan passengers' faces and check them against their passport photo, will add to border security and efficiency at arrivals.
The facial recognition gates allow a smooth, efficient journey through the UK’s border for legitimate passengers while making it more difficult for criminals and illegal migrants to get into the country.
The gates have proved popular at Manchester and Stansted, where the first phase of the trial was launched. Over half a million passengers have used the service so far.
The machine takes seconds to scan each passenger's face against the digital photo recorded in their passport. If there is a match, the automatic gates allow the traveller across the border.
The gates can be used by any UK or European passenger aged over 18 who has a new e-passport with an electronic chip, providing travellers with an automated, secure route through the border.
UK Border Agency Chief Executive Lin Homer said:
“Britain’s border security is among the toughest in the world and by using new technology we are making the border even more secure.
"The facial recognition gates at Bristol will improve our service to the public and help to make the UK safer."
“We have also introduced fingerprint visas which check everyone who wants to come to the UK against immigration and crime databases, ID Cards for foreign nationals and the £1.2bn e-Borders system which targets terrorist suspects, criminals and would-be illegal immigrants before they can reach the UK.”
The gates have been operational since 26 August as part of the Home Secretary’s pledge to roll-out facial recognition gates at ten UK terminals by the end of August. Bristol was the first airport to go live this year, after Manchester and Stansted trialled similar technology in 2008.
The gates are being run in partnership between the UK Border Agency and Bristol International Airport.
Alison Roberts, Terminal General Manager at Bristol International Airport, said:
“In the long term we aim to increase the space available for immigration control, and our development plans include proposals to extend the existing terminal building to reduce bottlenecks in this area.
“However, the use of new technology can help improve today’s passenger experience, providing a positive first impression to visitors arriving in the UK.”
The system measures points on a person's face and compares them with the digital passport photograph.
The gates undertake checks against security watch-lists in the same way as the current manual control.
UK Border Agency officers continue to oversee the gates and intervene if they have any suspicions. Passengers will also be subject to random manual checks.
The gates allow officers extra time to concentrate on high-priority risks and intelligence-led operations.
The facial recognition system is voluntary and can be used by any UK or European passenger aged over 18 carrying a new biometric passport. No registration is required to use the gates.
More than 17 million biometric passports, which contain a facial image, have been issued in the UK since their introduction in 2006.
The facial recognition gates, which have been introduced at ten UK airport terminals, are part of the biggest shake-up in UK border security for 40 years.
Every visa applicant is fingerprinted and checked against a range of immigration, crime and terrorism watch-lists before they set foot in the UK, while the ongoing roll-out of ID cards for foreign nationals locks those here to one identity.
The new £1.2bn e-Borders system is helping the UK Border Agency target terrorist suspects, known criminals and would-be illegal immigrants before they can reach the UK.
e-Borders will enable the Agency to count people in and out of the country with 60 per cent of all passenger and crew movements captured by December 2009, 95 per cent by December 2010 and all passengers by 2014.
© Copyright Bristol Airport 2013 | <urn:uuid:5a155253-19be-4b78-bdeb-394c2585b2c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/media-centre/news-releases/2009/9/facial-recognition-gates.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940181 | 836 | 1.625 | 2 |
July 15, 2008 Researchers at The University of Nottingham have shown an association between certain past diagnostic radiation procedures and an increased risk of young-onset prostate cancer — a rare form of prostate cancer which affects about 10 per cent of all men diagnosed with the disease.
The study, the first of its kind to report the relationship between low dose ionising radiation from diagnostic procedures and the risk of prostate cancer, was funded by the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation (PCRF) and is part of the UK Genetic Prostate Cancer Study (UKGPCS).The study showed that men who had a hip or pelvic X-ray or barium enema 10 years previously were two and a half times more likely to develop prostate cancer than the general population. And the link appeared to be stronger in men who had a family history of the disease.
The research was led by Professor Kenneth Muir, from the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health at The University of Nottingham, in association with Dr Rosalind Eeles at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
Professor Muir said: “Although these results show some increase in the risk of developing prostate cancer in men who had previously had certain radiological medical tests we want to reassure men that the absolute risks are small and there is no proof that the radiological tests actually caused any of the cancers.”
Four hundred and thirty one men, diagnosed with young onset prostate cancer — men diagnosed with the disease before the age of 60 — took part in the study.
The exposure to radiation was part of normal medical procedures which were performed 5, 10 or 20 years before diagnosis. Procedures included hip and leg X-rays, for example taken after an accident, and barium meals and enemas which are used to diagnose problems with the digestive system.
At this stage the evidence linking diagnostic radiation procedures and prostate cancer is still weak. This research suggests that further investigation into this link should be undertaken.
X-ray procedures used for diagnostic purposes deliver very small amounts of radiation per procedure. Their use is minimised in current medical practice. For most people X-rays do not increase the risk of developing cancer.
The results of the study have been published online in the British Journal of Cancer.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:113ce385-6de6-4d3b-80c2-3e42201b65cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080715093737.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959273 | 508 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Residents who have unpaid court fines have until Nov. 15 to either pay them off in full or negotiate some form of payment plan. Those who don’t face potential contempt of court charges and jail time. They may also have their driver’s license revoked.
According to Fulton Police Chief Reggie Johnson, in most cases, the repercussions for failure to pay are much heavier than the fines themselves. Some, he said, are less than $100.
“If you have some old fines, you need to get them paid,” Johnson said, adding that arresting people is very much a last resort. “We don’t want to put you in jail for owing fines … and we’ve been kind of lenient because of economic times. But we’ve come to the point where we have to put our feet down.”
According to Fulton Deputy Clerk Lynette Weatherford, although many of the fines don’t amount to much money, over the course of a decade or so, they have added up to more than $300,000 in uncollected fees. In a nutshell, she said that’s money that could be used to supplement the police department’s budget; instead, taxpayer dollars are pulling the weight of those unpaid fines.
It’s not fair, the police chief said.
“Like everybody else this year, the city’s budget is just as lean as you can get. There’s no fat there,” he said. “It’s very important we collect every dollar we can get.”
Weatherford said those who fail to pay are notified by official letter. Many of those letters are never answered.
Johnson said he doesn’t expect to collect a good portion of that money — some of those people who owe may have passed away or moved on. Others, he said, might not be able to pay off their debts all at once. But every little bit helps, the police chief said.
“We know a lot of people can’t just come in and pay off a fine, but we know they can come in every week or two weeks to pay off a portion of the fine,” he said. “If you don’t have all the money, bring something. If you owe $50, bring $25.
“You know you owe it … let’s get something going,” Johnson added.
Those who have unpaid fines should contact either Fulton Deputy Clerk Lynette Weatherford or Justice Court Judge Harold Holcomb to arrange some sort of payment plan.
The alternative, he said, is a lot worse.
“We’ll be forced to come get you,” Johnson said. “That’s the last thing we want to do.” | <urn:uuid:f8d39e30-8121-42e6-afe0-1e9a20c7a3b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://djournal.com/view/full_story/20596327/privacy_policy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961792 | 592 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Click any word in a definition or example to find the entry for that word
90% of the time, speakers of English use just 7,500 words in speech and writing. These words appear in red, and are graded with stars. One-star words are frequent, two-star words are more frequent, and three-star words are the most frequent.
The thesaurus of synonyms and related words is fully integrated into the dictionary entries. Click on the T button in an entry to review the synonyms and related words for that meaning.more
Engineers will inspect the site later today.
Make sure you inspect the goods carefully as soon as you receive them.
The young plants are regularly inspected for disease and insects.
The ground has already been inspected by the Sports Safety Council.
Customs officers came aboard to inspect our documents.
This is the British English definition of inspect. View American English definition of inspect.
the short high sound that a small bird makes
A must for anyone with an interest in the changing face of language. The Macmillan Dictionary blog explores English as it is spoken around the world today.global English and language change from our blog | <urn:uuid:3ec366d2-9e26-473a-8c6d-b763dbf49b8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/inspect | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933705 | 240 | 3.15625 | 3 |
World & Nation
AP The Wire
Comics & Games
Home & Garden
Advertise with the Times
Miss America Pageant a feminist icon? Please
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 12, 1999
The people who put on the Miss America Pageant must be a few rhinestones shy of a full tiara.
They want you to think the pageant, which will be televised on Saturday, is a boon to modern womanhood, a feminist icon, and an equal opportunity benefactor.
Talk about delusional.
The day a woman is crowned who resembles one of this country's most accomplished never-marrieds, our attorney general, Miss Janet Reno, I'll say they have a point. Until then, the pageant is just another location where fabulous-looking women get rewarded for looking that way. (As if there aren't enough rewards.)
Ever since feminists started questioning the pageant's value, the Miss America pageant has been trying to slough off its "bathing beauty" image and market itself as a benefit to women. Organizers say the pageant provides a forum for American women to "express their opinions, talent and intelligence," and that its purpose is to recognize the "diversity, individuality and overall achievement" of women.
Really, they're not fooling anyone.
No matter how they dress it up, or try to sell it, the Miss America Pageant is about one thing: looks. And the only diversity that really matters is whether the contestants are blond, brunet or redheaded.
Organizers deny this and have taken the "Barbie does brain surgery" marketing route. Taking a page from Mattel, they figure if a stethoscope and a lab coat is put on a woman with a 40-inch bust, feminists will buy in.
Yeah, that works. And maybe they would also have us believe the television show Baywatch is a public-service documentary designed to teach viewers the proper way to resuscitate a drowning victim.
Following the marketing plan, event organizers no longer call it a beauty pageant. In promotional releases, the word "beauty" never appears. Instead, they use phrases such as "empowering women" and "providing professional opportunities." They use euphemisms in the judging criteria. Rather than admitting that looks count most, they say the official elements of the judging are: interview, talent, on-stage personality in evening wear, physical fitness in swimsuit and finalists' interviews based on their "personal platform."
"Physical fitness in swimsuit." Please.
Then-Miss Kentucky, Dawn Hicks, naively noted the misnomer back in 1995: "They refer to this stage as "physical fitness' in swimsuit. So why not subject us to a micro-fit test, a body-fat count or perhaps an hour of aerobic activity?"
The answer, of course, is that by "physical fitness" they mean how well your "physique fits" the 36-24-36 ideal. And as far as body fat, the more of it in the right places, the higher your score.
The addition of the "personal platform," in which the contestants express their concern over an important issue, is the biggest goof. The Miss America Organization introduced the "platform" a decade ago and proclaims in its literature that with this addition the pageant's "focus on achievement comes of age."
Instead of being judged solely on whether they're knockouts, contestants now are judged on whether they're knockouts who can contrive concern about world hunger or illiteracy. (I guess it's to see if they can act, too.)
Lately there have been a couple of disabled winners. Nicole Johnson, who is the reigning Miss America, has diabetes. Heather Whitestone, who was Miss America 1995, is deaf. This is supposed to show that physical perfection is not the pageant's focus and anyone can be Miss America.
No one's buying it. The Miss America Organization can trot out as many "disabled" Miss Americas as they want. Yet American women know that some of the most profound disabilities women face, being old, fat or ugly, will never be represented. The pageant may be willing to embrace a few disabled winners but none with handicaps that affect their gorgeous faces or bodies. After all, diversity has its limits.
When criticized as a sexist enterprise, the Miss America Organization retorts by saying it has contributed more than $100-million toward scholarships for women, the most of any organization in the world.
The organization has obviously been very successful in getting women to trade on their good looks for tuition money. That's a healthy American tradition, after all. Plenty of young women have worked their way through college by stripping.
Actually, I have no beef with beauty contests. Beautiful women have always drawn the public's attention, and an event that brings together the best-looking women in the country to compete for a lot of money and fame is a natural moneymaker. But the Miss America Pageant is pretending to be something other than what it is. No matter what the organization says, there is nothing noble or upstanding about giving a numerical score to a woman based upon how her bod stacks up.
Therefore, I suggest the contest change its tune. Rather than keep up this pretense of wholesomeness and good works, it should provide some truth in advertising and open the talent portion up to lap dancing.
© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:11286322-30b5-44f4-9fb5-118a8e17df18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sptimes.com/News/91299/Perspective/Miss_America_Pageant_.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949123 | 1,127 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Konnichiwa from Australia
Interim status: Citation only.
© Copyright Masako Gavin & Masanori Matsumoto, 1998
Although many Japanese grammar books are available to Australian students, we have found that there are only a few thorough workbooks which provide communicative and written activities to reinforce grammar elements covered in class.
Konnichiwa from Australia has been prepared to supplement this need and this is volume one to four. Although primarily designed for 1st and 2nd year university students leading to Intermediate Japanese, it is also suitable for a wider scope of other learners in the community- secondary schools, Japanese courses in language schools, colleges, technical institutes and other tertiary institutions.
Masako Gavin and Masanori Matsumoto. Konnichiwa from Australia. Gold Coast: M. Gavin & M. Matsumoto, 1998.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/masako_gavin/7
This document is currently not available here. | <urn:uuid:ca21e4b3-8380-4ad0-8834-47d2520002c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://works.bepress.com/masako_gavin/7/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917731 | 208 | 2.28125 | 2 |
What is Music Publishing?
If you plan a career in the songwriting business, you need to know what a publisher do and why you should get involved with a music publisher. In this section will look at that part of the songwriting business
Who owns your songs?
Let’s take a look at what it means to write a song, and what rights you now have to that song. Firstly there is the matter of ownership. If you have written a song with no co-writer, then you own the song, the copyright, and the publishing of that song completely. It is your creative work.
Your work is protected automatically. Conversely, if you have co-written it with another, then you share ownership equally, and all the above applies to the co-ownership. Even if you, as sole writer or co-writer never publish that song you are the complete owner and have all claims to authorship.
Thus, if you never published your song, both you and the song would still be protected from somebody else publishing it without your consent – ideally in the form of a signed contract.
If you choose to publish your song, there are a couple of options available to you for publishing. You can assign your publishing rights to somebody else such as a publishing company.
Which part of the song do you own? Click here
What does a music publisher actually do?
If you want to learn more about this topic click
You can also self publish. You will then be acting as the writer and the publisher, which entitles you to all monies that, arrive for that song. If the song is picked up and recorded, you also have all the leverage. However, it also puts the burden of promotion, distribution, etc. fully on your shoulders.
Click here to learn more about self-publishing.
Money, Music & Success: Getting Started as an Independent Music Publisher
If you plan to start as an independent publisher, there are some key elements you need to know.
Click here to learn more about this topic.
Should you Self Publish?
Are you still unsure if you should self publish your music? This article may help you make the decision.
Click here to go to the article.
Although self-publishing has become more popular in recent years, it is usually better for the songwriter to get a publisher. The skills, talents, and creative expertise of these two fields are uniquely different, but quite symbiotic. The songwriter is creatively brilliant in his field of expertise, and so is the publisher in his field. A melding of these two groups can create much better wealth and wealth potential for both.
Perhaps somewhere in your travels, you have heard this statement:
“There are two halves to every publishing dollar.”
If the songwriter is his own publisher, he will keep both halves. When the songwriter has a publisher there is a different ownership arrangement. The writer will keep one half of every dollar that song generates, typically for life. The publisher will keep the other half.
These halves are normally referred to as the “writer’s share” and the “publisher’s share”. Often, the songwriter will be exchanging his half for some type of cash advance from the publisher that he has entered into a contract with.
Of course, if you have co-writers, they would then split the writer’s share. The publisher would still keep his half. If you have a publisher working for you, then he will be taking action to get your song cut by an artist or used in a film or television program. The publisher may own half of your song, but until he gets that song into production, he’ll get no monies for his ownership.
Very often that is the incentive for him. He has invested in the songwriter, and he has belief that the song was a worthwhile investment. His incentive will work for you as well obviously, because for every dollar that song generates, you get your writer’s share.
Music Publishing: Then & Now
The Music publishing business has changed a lot through the history. In the past it was quite straightforward, but today with the current technology it has become more intricate.
Click here to learn more about music publishing then and now.
More Songwriting Tips?For more tips and juicy articles about songwriting, subscribe to my monthly songwriting-guide.com newsletter.
This unique inbox offering is packed with information and 100% free.
just sign up!
Return from Music Publishing to Songwriting Guide home page | <urn:uuid:ff5474dd-ebda-49d3-a967-72805a73e4f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.songwriting-guide.com/music-publishing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977818 | 948 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Aura-Soma: A Message in a Bottle
Aura-Soma - Born of the Goddess
Aura-Soma, a soul related system of dual colored bottles, began in a garage in England. Born through the blind apothecarist Vicky wall's clairvoyant vision and described as a "Mirror for the Soul," Aura-Soma is a unique facet of color therapy that has the potential to heal on all levels. Containing natural coloring, oil, water from the Chalice well in Glastonbury, herbal and crystal essences, aromatherapy oils and of course love, Aura-Soma is a complete system that allows an individual's intuitive insight to attract the right healing tool.
"Divide the waters, my child," Vicky had been told during a meditation in the early 1980's. She had no recollection of how she created the first Aura-Soma color bottles. It was as if unseen hands guided hers. Nor had she any idea of the bottles use. Standing in front of them they seemed to communicate their name and meaning of "Balance." Their "Aura-Soma" title was yet to be discovered.
Divinely inspired, the Balance bottles first appeared at a conference where their purpose became clear. Some people were attracted to them because they were going through emotional change. Those needing assistance with physical issues also gravitated toward the bottles. Others just loved the calming influence of their gem-like appearance. Although Vicky had little knowledge of color she came to realize that identifiable challenges were reflected by specific color combinations. She quickly recognized their ability to heal on many different levels of being.
The Meaning of Aura-Soma
The name Aura-Soma came to Vicky in another meditation. Aura, derived from the ancient Greek word for "light," is the electromagnetic energy field surrounding all consciousness. The auric field is made up of many different dimensions containing a variety of color. Soma the Greek for "being," also Sanskrit for "Living Energies," represents the body or vehicle of expression on various levels. When a color is worn its energy is absorbed by the auric field of the wearer. Sometimes the energy field vibrates to a different color, so the same color worn on a different day may look out of balance.
Aura-Soma is the first system to harmoniously combine color with the innate healing properties of the natural world. Using the vibrational element of each component as part of a key to unlock the door to consciousness, the un-intrusive beauty of the Aura-Soma system empowers each individual to recognize his or her vibratory make-up within the chosen colors. Vicky's understanding of the energies held within the Aura-Soma Balance bottles came from her inner vision and clairvoyant realizations. For example, she recognized that many Atlantean souls were drawn toward the turquoise and blue range of Aura-Soma bottles, healers were attracted to the violet vibrations, and inter-planetary healers connected with gold and violet.
Connecting to Your Aura-Soma Balance Bottles
The Aura-Soma Balance oils or Equilibrium as they are also known, synchronize the wavelengths of the body's electromagnetic energy system. We are "Hue-man" beings and are essentially composed of light and color. Each individual is attracted to the colors he or she currently vibrates with. A consultation with an Aura-Soma practitioner consists of a choice of four bottles. Once chosen the practitioner will tell your story through the chosen colors, missing colors, the numerological influence of each bottle and its relationship with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The chosen colors mirror a small aspect of the consciousness of the chooser at that moment in time. If the bottles are chosen at different times they may reflect another aspect of the chooser, just like chapters in the story of your life.
Naming the Aura-Soma Bottles
In Vicky's studio were she kept her Aura-Soma Balance bottles, her all green herb oil kept losing its color. She noticed that a peach tree in the garden was ailing and wondered if that had anything to do with the disappearance of the green within the bottle. She was intuitively drawn to place a red/green balance bottle in the ground next to the trees roots.
Some time later the bottle was found by a friend with all the color drained. The peach tree recovered and the following year it was laden with fruit, more than it had ever been before. Not only that the fruit had changed from a creamy color to a beautiful rose pink. This particular Aura-Soma bottle was named, "Go hug a tree!"
The bottles mirror consciousness. Sometimes the colors within the Aura-Soma bottles change reflecting whatever issues the owner is confronting at the time. The color can be completely drained from the bottle if that person needs more of a particular vibration to become whole again.
As a mirror of the soul, Aura-Soma reflects an aspect of the soul's purpose during this lifetime, the lessons an individual has chosen to experience, the gifts gained and the tools to achieve fulfillment of this desired objective. Through the magic of the color-infused oil and water we can see our true reflection, minus the ego and all the shackles of this lifetime. Its purity and innocence vibrate within each Aura-Soma bottle as if we are being seen and accepted for the first time.
Aura-Soma produces a range of support systems to align the subtle bodies with a chosen path. The Pocket Pomander is one of these supportive elements used to strengthen and protect the auric field. The Pomanders contain many different herbs and come in fifteen colors. By accident the Pomanders strength was proven through the Kirlian photography images taken at one of Vicky's Aura-Soma workshops. A way of photographing the electromagnetic emanations from a living organism, the photos showed a brighter corona around the fingertips of the people who had used the Pomanders.
Aura-Soma Pomanders can protect the field from environmental drainage as well as from those with vampire-like energy and are particularly useful against any negative or challenging energy.
White: The Doctor - Brings in light, renews and clears perceptions. Pink: Warmth to love ourselves, promotes a loving atmosphere Deep Red: Re-energizing, grounding and protection from earth energies Red: Re-vitalizing, an everyday protector, grounds purpose Coral: Learning to love and care in a new way, heals unrequited love Orange: For shock situations when the etheric has escaped, brings insight Gold: Release from irrational fears, connects with inner wisdom Yellow: Antidote to nervousness, negativity and irrational fears Olive Green: Cleansing, refreshing space, letting go of resentments Emerald Green: Helps to find ones own space for a new beginning Turquoise: Releases creative communication from the heart Sapphire Blue: Promotes inspiration, higher vibrational love, and trust Royal Blue: Inspires inner peace, inner seeing, insight and intuition Violet: Opens perception and awareness of the higher realms Deep Magenta: Energizes the gifts of compassion and deep caring
Aura Soma - A Message from the Masters - The Quintessence
Another wonderful gift from Aura-Soma is the Master Quintessence. Each Aura-Soma Quintessence is unique and invokes the positive energies of its color. They work on a higher vibrational level than the Pomanders, opening up a pathway to the intuitive and spiritual perceptions within the being. Each Master energy reflects a higher level of consciousness.
Using the Aura-Soma Quintessence linked with a particular Master can encourage the essence of that Master to be embraced by the auric field and chakra system, allowing for greater understanding on our journey through this lifetime. Serapis Bey is a particularly strong auric cleanser and a valuable tool for therapists. Healers, those who have incarnated on the path of service, can be vulnerable to the subtle energies emitted by their clients. Serapis Bey cleanses the energy picked up by the healer and transforms it into light.
El Morya: Aligns you with your purpose and strengthens your will Kuthumi: Aligns you with the Devic and Angelic realms Lady Nada: Aligns you with unconditional love and harmony of the universe Hilarion: Aligns you with the way, the truth and the light Serapis Bey: Clears away cobwebs for a clear vision and new beginning Christ Consciousness: Realization of one's connection with a higher source St Germain: Clears unresolved emotions, a catalyst for transformation Pallas Athena: Awakens to the expression of beauty in all things Orion & Angelica: Supports all kinds of journeys Lady Portia: Releases self judgment and criticism Lao Tsu & Kwan Yin: Supports behavioral change, releases old patterns and habits Sanat Kumara & Lady Venus Kumara: Helps to find clarity and understanding Maha Chohan: Helps to find your true feelings and your inner teacher Djwal Khul: Supports your search for knowledge, truth and a new beginning Holy Grail & Solar Logos: Stimulates receptivity and openness
Aura-Soma is a wonderful way to reconnect your body, soul, and spirit, assisting this collective energy to work in harmony. The vibrant colors and the essential elements contained within each Aura-Soma product lift the spirits to a higher level of well-being. Born of the Goddess this soul-oriented system inspires us to return to the whole Hue-Man beings we incarnated to become. A none-intrusive, self selective therapy, Aura-Soma sets in motion the natural rhythm of healing on all levels of being.
The Evolution of Aura-Soma
There are many copies of the Aura-Soma soul system, but none compare to the beauty nor the spirit of Vicky Wall's original Aura-Soma bottles. It is an evolving system currently comprising 106 balance bottles, 15 pomanders, 15 quintessence's, and various other balance products. Just being in the presence of the Aura-Soma Balance bottles is healing, and this is the most important aspect of our journey through this lifetime - to be healed!
I became interested in color symbolism as a child. Able to perceive auric energies from a very young age my mother, a yogini, encouraged and supported my ability, occasionally interpreting the colors I saw. She gave me a number of books on the subject but these held little information about the colors and combinations of color. At first I wondered if the people who wrote the books had actually what I was seeing as the interpretations differed and many did not ring true. I discovered that each person had their own interpretation and that color would reflect their view, but not in every case.
Twenty years ago I trained as a Color Therapist and through this discovered Aura-Soma. This beautiful system helped me appreciate the symbolic meaning of color combinations within the auric field. It is not just a case of one dominant color within a field. Your whole life, past, present, and potential, is held within this living organism. There are many colors, although there is often times a dominant energy.
In my counseling sessions I use Aura-Soma bottles in conjunction with my ability to see auric energy fields. Sometimes I see more color than my clients choose. I believe I am seeing a greater picture of who they are, maybe going deeper into their soul than they have chosen to look. We are on a path of healing. Any tool that can help us connect to a deeper aspect of ourselves is a valuable asset for self-healing, self-knowledge, and enlightenment.
For more information on Elizabeth's consultations, click here. | <urn:uuid:16615fbb-0f75-4b99-aa70-70edaa5c294a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://love.pmhclients.com/index.php/love/article/cat/auras_color/aura_soma_a_message_in_a_bottle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937434 | 2,427 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Effectiveness of Chinese herbal medicine in treating liver fibrosis
Source: http://7thspace.com/headlines/406858/effectiveness_of_chinese_herbal_medicine_in_treating_liver_fibrosis_a_systematic_review_and_meta_analysis_of_randomized_controlled_trials.htmlThe studies on the effectiveness of Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) in treating liver fibrosis (LF) were not consistent. This study aims to systematically review the effectiveness of CHM on treating LF patients.
Methods: Databases including MEDLINE, AMED, EMBASE, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, TCMOnline, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and Chinese Medical Current Contents were searched up to March 2011.
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving LF patients receiving CHM, Western medicine, combined CHM and Western medicine compared with placebo, Western medicine or no intervention were included. LF markers including serum hyaluronic acid (HA), laminin (LN), procollagen type III (PC-III), type IV collagen (IV-C), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase (TIMP) were measured as primary outcomes.
Liver biochemistry, including alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartarte aminotransferase (AST), and improvement of related clinical symptoms were measured as secondary outcomes. Risk of bias of allocation sequence, allocation concealment, blinding, incomplete outcome data, selective outcome reporting, and other biases were assessed.
Results: Twenty-three RCTs with 2123 participants were analyzed in subgroups of types of comparison and study quality.
Fifteen studies were graded as good quality. CHM alone and combined with Western medicine showed significant improvements in HA, LN, PC-III and IV-C compared with Western medicine alone.
However, there were no significant differences observed between CHM and placebo treatments.
Conclusion: The current inconclusive results in determining the effectiveness of CHM treatment on LF, due to the poor methodological quality and high heterogeneity of the studies, suggests that large RCTs using standardized Chinese medicine syndrome diagnosis and CHM formulae with longer follow-up are required for further evaluation.
Author: Fan CheungYibin FengNing WangMan-Fung YuenYao TongVivian Taam Wong | <urn:uuid:67fddee7-b18d-4594-83b4-91da8e976de3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chinesemedicinetimes.com/article.php/38/effectiveness_of_chinese_herbal_medicine_in_treating_liver_fibrosis/10f63006e3ce4bab8d550d4fbbb294c0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930228 | 521 | 1.617188 | 2 |
"We always go in for check ups as adults to get our teeth looked at, but most people don't realize the importance of children's teeth also," explains Jessica Ayers, from Abilene Dental.
But as Ayers explains, the health of your kids teeth can be vital to their development over their entire lives.
"They have the existing bacteria in their mouth and it's important to take care of those little teeth too before their adult teeth come in."
No surprise, one of the most common problems found in the mouth of young people stems from a love of sugary drinks and a lack of consistent brushing and flossing.
"They come in with decay, that they're not aware is decay, so that is definitely an issue that we see a lot of," says Ayers.
Because the first trip to the dentist can be a little intimidating, Abilene Dental has a few fun ways to ease the tension.
"Some of the things I like to do when children come in, is let them play with my suction machine," says Ayers, "I call him 'Mr. Thirsty.'"
Ayers also allows small children to play with a piece of equipment, known to children as "the water gun."
Connect with Abilene Dental:
Dr. Christie Leedy
5309 Buffalo Gap Rd.
Facebook: Abilene Dental | <urn:uuid:6b755182-7df1-47ed-aa08-2f9e489b22a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigcountryhomepage.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=463732 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971385 | 288 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Pet Food Recall Expands, Link to Human Salmonellaby Karyn Zoldan on May. 08, 2012, under Animal News, Pet Health & Safety
Food Safety: Pet Food Recall Expands, Link to Human Salmonella
Initially, Tucson Tails didn’t write about the pet food recall because it wasn’t extended to include Arizona and as of this writing, Arizona is not mentioned. However, I still think it’s important to note because if you travel to the other states and take your pets or have dog friends out of state, this information is worth noting.
In the past Tucson Tails has voiced its ire about chicken jerky treats made in China but the dog foods being recalled now are made in South Carolina. The scary thing about this recall is one plant makes many popular brands. This reminds me of the great peanut and peanut butter recall of a few years ago where one or two manufacturing locations made peanut butter that was sold from bargain basement stores to Whole Foods and it took forever to find the source of the problem; people died.
Here dogs have died and become so sick with bloody diarrhea and dehydration. But more importantly people who handle the pet food are also becoming ill from salmonella.
Here are the brands and codes affected:
- Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul
- Country Value
- Diamond Naturals
- Premium Edge
- Taste of the Wild
- Kirkland Signature/Kirkland Signature Nature’s Domain
Not on the above list but recently added is Solid Gold
Here’s an excellent article by pet food expert Susan Thixton about how dog food contamination history keeps repeating
There are safety tips in preparing your dog’s foods. After reading the list, I realize I am not that diligent. Washing hands is the most important step to preventing illness. Wash your hands for 20 seconds with warm water and soap right after handling pet food and treats. This is especially critical if you will be immediately preparing, serving or eating food or drinks, or preparing baby bottles.
Here are more pet food safety suggestions. | <urn:uuid:b0a46f41-62de-444e-92f5-85d6b90f2531> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-tails/2012/05/08/pet-food-recall-expands-link-to-human-salmonella/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944497 | 435 | 2.078125 | 2 |
UNITING COMMUNITIES - PREPARING THE NATION
What is Citizen Corps?
Citizen Corps was established following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as part of an initiative to increase public awareness about emergency preparedness and encourage citizens to provide volunteer service to make the community better prepared for emergencies and disasters.
Citizen Corp s actively involve s the public in making Boone County safer, stronger , and better prepared. We all have a role to play in keeping our community safe and secure. Citizen Corps helps you to prepare, train, and get involved.
Two primary goals have been established by the Boone County Citizen Corps Council: 1) to encourage citizens to take an active role in community emergency preparedness through volunteer service; and 2) to educate the public on emergency preparedness and how to protect themselves in the event of a crisis.
Boone County Citizen Corps Council combines the expertise of public safety officials with the enthusiasm and spirit of volunteers, the private sector, elected officials , and other community stakeholders. The Citizen Corps Council works to develop a strategic plan to implement the Citizen Corps programs.
What can I do to help my family and my community?
The people of Boone County are being called upon to provide volunteer service to the community in support of homeland security. You can help your family and your community be safer, stronger, and better prepared to respond to any kind of disaster.
Boone County Citizen Corps relies on the considerable talents of civilian volunteers who are willing to serve the community. Citizens from all walks of life and all areas of Boone County. People just like you.
You can get involved in any or all of the following Citizen Corps programs:
Citizen Corps in Boone County provides a wide range of opportunities for people to make a difference in volunteer service to their community. You may become involved in any or all of the Citizen Corps programs. Please help to make a difference by joining Citizen Corps today! For more information or to volunteer please call the Boone County Citizen Corps Council at 334-2279.
ARE YOU READY? — MAKE A PLAN — GET A KIT— GET INVOLVED | <urn:uuid:aafee697-528f-42e4-acb6-ffcd1b9b0727> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boonecountyky.org/em/CERTGenInfo.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943591 | 432 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Paco Ragageles is not concerned with looking the part of a global entrepreneur who has created the biggest techno-social phenomenon that no one in the U.S. has ever heard of. Forty going on 20, short, in jeans, with three days stubble, his concern is raising $12M in ten months so that 10,000 of the smartest aspiring computer scientists in the U.S. can spend the week of August 12, 2012 camping in a huge tent at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley. Why? To watch the Mars landing, access blazing fast servers, listen to talks by the biggest names in technology, code like crazy and work toward making the world better.
Paco has done it before. Over and over. Just not in this country. And now Al Gore, Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf, his Campus Party USA co-chairs, are betting he can it again, in the U.S. and around the world.
Unfortunately, Campus Party is one of those names that doesn't translate perfectly. It's not a political party, and it's not Spring Break, and it doesn't happen on campus, it's....
Well, ask anyone under 30 who lives in a Spanish-speaking country about Campus Party.
Since 1997, in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia - and soon in Peru - Paco and his team have been serving up their magic brew. With the avid support of Telefónica, the Spanish teleco giant (and its mobile business, branded Movistar), Campus Party rents an enormous space, installs thousands of pup tents and thousands of server connections, sets a low ticket price, lines up the coolest tech speakers on the planet, serves good food and sells sponsorships like crazy. Campus Party Brazil in February, 2012 is already sold out - 7,000 Campuseros.
There are over 150,000 registered Campuseros in the world, meaning 150,000 of the smartest young technologists in the Spanish (and Portuguese)-speaking world. Under the banner of Campus Party, they try to figure out what it means to be young, talented, teched up to the gills and looking for identity in the confusing and often depressing world that awaits them.
But where technology is concerned, the U.S. is still different than the Spanish/Portuguese-speaking countries where Campus Party has had so much success to date. Where conferences and festivals are concerned, the U.S. is different, as well. These differences were on Al Gore's mind, Paco told me recently in a San Francisco bistro.
If you're talking about crossing the culture and language gap and playing on the English-speaking stage, said Al, you've got to be crystal clear about where you sit in the eco-system. What's your niche? How are you different from SxSW, Burning Man, Bar Camps, TED, Poptech, etc? What is your purpose?
And now Paco is telling me his answer to Al: The purpose of Campus Party U.S.A. is to make the world a better place. He intends to challenge the U.S.'s smart young geeks to code tools that address the huge problems identified in the U.N.'s 8 Millennium Development Goals. Nonprofits and agencies working on the ground to solve these problems will participate in challenges, a separate challenge for each Goal. Winners will get cash prizes, loads of attention and, perhaps best of all, access to the considerable skills and talents of the Campuseros, brought to bear on implementing their solutions.
It's simplistic, it's not totally thought through (as in, who will actually implement and sustain the solutions), it's audacious. And I think it will work. I saw the prototype of this meme at Campus Party, Mexico City at the end of July. It's highly compelling because it simultaneously responds to the young geeks' taste for altruism, professional development, social bonding... and identity.
A personal note: In 1987, I was a 60's leftie, tiring of the left, frustrated by the Reagan years, and then incredibly energized to discover the sharing impulse of the emerging techno-class so well chronicled in Steve Levy's The Hackers. I started TechSoup Global (then called CompuMentor) to channel this impulse toward the social sector. But there was no web, connectivity was iffy and case management was costly. Much has changed, but high tech volunteerism has remained a largely untapped resource to this day. Now, with Crisis Camps, Hackathons, Code4America, Random Hacks of Kindness (a particular favorite of mine), and Campus Party, we're seeing a new surge of possibility for welding skills, innovation and social needs.
Campus Party USA officially launches at Cape Canaveral the day after Thanksgiving when the Mars Science Laboratory takes off. It will be a wild ride, for the Science Station and for Campus Party. I'll be covering it here and here.
Follow Daniel Ben-Horin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dbenhorin | <urn:uuid:d5678ac6-0f7f-4439-8387-9adca943095f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-benhorin/the-kids-are-alright-camp_b_1105795.html?ref=technology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956733 | 1,053 | 1.5 | 2 |
In this third week's installment of insight meditation teacher Gina Sharpe's retreat, "Asking for Forgiveness," she requests that we reflect on those thoughts, words, and deeds that we feel we would like to be forgiven for. Stressing that we should be honest with ourselves, and warning us to resist the ease of blaming others, Sharpe guides us to reflect on our past mistakes without shame or guilt. "The beauty of spiritual work," she says, "is that we joyously remember that it is possible to shift our lives, and that that shifting comes through a change of heart and mind."
Through a variety of metta practice and forgiveness meditations, she explains what it means to ask for forgiveness— that it is an internal practice, not something that promises reconciliation or obligates reforming relationships. She asks us to remember this wisdom from the Dhammapada: | <urn:uuid:1709233d-01bf-4e34-bfe2-43f2a14e7e6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tricycle.com/blog/cblog/lblog/open-heart-open-mind-tsoknyi-rinpoche-sharon-salzberg-tibet-house-april-4?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953206 | 178 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Ambient informatics through the rearview mirror
In 1998 I was nearing completion of the grad program at Georgia Tech in Information Design and Technology (now called Digital Media), cutting my teeth in the theory and practice that I use to this day. But some of it, like the project below for a course in Human-Computer Interaction taught by Greg Abowd (basically this class), only seems really meaningful nearly 12 years on.
Sonopticon was a team project to build a prototype of an automobile-based ambient sensing and heads-up display. We didn’t have to build a car that knew its surroundings — this was HCI, after all — but we did have to explore the issues of what it would be like from a driver’s perspective.
My wife and I took the car out one day (this is how you do anything in Atlanta) and filmed scenarios for later editing in After Effects. The RealVideo files (!) are gone, but some screenshots still exist, which I have strung together below. It’s laughable, really, the quality and overlays, but it conveys some interesting concepts that only now are becoming technically feasible. If the city of data really is coming into being, this is part of it.
And just because I’m channeling 1998 I’m gonna lay this out in one big honkin’ table. Take that CSS absolute positioning! (Best viewed in Netscape 3.0.)
What’s funny to me all these years on is how my focus has shifted so decidedly away from augmenting the automobile to enabling an infomatics of the human-scale city, pretty much the opposite of what the car has done to our metro regions. Though I suppose making cars more aware of their surroundings is the one step towards this vision.
The full project write-up is here, if you are so inclined. I think we got an A.
(By the way, the car used in this demo is the one-and-only MySweetRide.) | <urn:uuid:2cf7f15e-bc4e-47f7-ac39-db5eb336a998> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ascentstage.com/archives/2010/01/ambient_informa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96356 | 421 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The Rough Guide to Psychology looks at the question psychologists have been asking for hundreds of years – why are we the way we are? It starts with you, your mind and brain, broadening out to look at your friends and other relationships, then finally on to crowds, mobs and religion. It explores the latest research relevant to crime, schooling, sport, politics, shopping and health, and what happens when the mind goes wrong, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and more unusual conditions. The Rough Guide to Psychology includes fascinating information on real-life psychology, testing your memory, intelligence, personality and much more, with advice on everything from chat-up lines to developing your creativity.
The Rough Guide to Psychology is your ultimate guide to this fascinating subject. | <urn:uuid:f53e0ee8-8314-4bf8-bf62-83679751d53a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roughguides.com/shop/rough-guide-psychology/ebook/?wpfpaction=add&postid=70793 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92383 | 152 | 2.5625 | 3 |
At Dijon, celebrated Cluniac reformer, b. on the Island of Giuglio on Lake Orta near Novara in Piedmont in 962; d. at Fecamp, one of his reformed monasteries in Normandy, January 1, 1031
William, ABBOT OF Saint-BENIGNE at Dijon, celebrated Cluniac reformer, b. on the Island of Giuglio on Lake Orta near Novara in Piedmont in 962; d. at Fecamp, one of his reformed monasteries in Normandy, January 1, 1031. At the age of seven he was brought as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery of Locedia near Vercelli, and went to Cluny in 987. A year later he was sent by Abbot Majolus to reform the priory of Saint-Saturnin near Avignon and, upon his return to Cluny in 990, was appointed Abbot of Saint-Benigne at Dijon. He was ordained priest, June 7, 990. As Abbot of Saint-Benign he inaugurated an extensive reform of the Benedictine monasteries in Normandy, Burgundy, and Lorraine. The Bishop of Langres put him at the head of all the monasteries in his diocese and finally he ruled over more than 40 monasteries and about 1200 monks. In all these monasteries he introduced the severe discipline of Cluny and in many of them established schools for the monks and monastic candidates as well as for the laity. At Saint-Benigne he erected (1001-1018) a church in the Romanesque style then considered the most beautiful in France. William's literary works, consisting of seven sermons, one mystic treatise on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, vii, 15 sq., eight letters to Pope John XIX, St. Odilo, etc., and his testament, are printed in Chevalier (loc. cit. below, 213-86). Though William has not been formally canonized, he is honored as a saint in various places. His feast is on January 1. | <urn:uuid:5172c369-4fcf-4eec-b831-f67ff30c007b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=William%2C_Abbot_of_Saint-Benigne | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969279 | 457 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Solar power installations are well worth the investment, even in snowy climates, according to new research from Michigan Technological University. The albedo effect caused by white snow cover actually helps to increase solar panel efficiency (counter to what many of us might have thought).
While a layer of snowfall temporarily covers the panel and stops production, the panels don’t remain covered for long, even in the most snow-heavy regions.
“Sometimes snow actually helps solar cells,” says Michigan Tech’s Joshua Pearce. Referring to the albedo effect, which is caused by white colors reflecting sunlight. “It can make a panel generate more electricity in the same way that it gives skiers sunburn on sunny winter days.”
For the new research, scientists from St. Lawrence College and Queen’s University, along with a group of 20 industry partners, investigated the effects of snow on the Open Solar Outdoors Test Field.
“They created a computer model to predict how much power generation would decline in various amounts of snow cover and on different types of solar modules mounted at different angles, from flat to steeply pitched. Then they validated their model with data from many of Ontario’s huge commercial solar farms.”
“In most cases power losses are minimal, even in snowy Canada,” Pearce said. As part of the research, though, they also created a model that is designed to help the most efficient photovoltaic systems, even in extremely snowy areas.
Pearce and R. W. Andrews have authored a paper based on the preliminary study, “Prediction of Energy Effects on Photovoltaic Systems Due to Snowfall Events,” published in proceedings of the 2012 38th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference.
Source and Image: Michigan Technological University
For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. - Ecclesiastes 3:19 | <urn:uuid:0442f6b9-d085-4ffe-b73e-1e8764d2e642> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cleantechnica.com/2012/10/26/solar-panels-well-worth-the-investment-even-in-snowy-regions-research-shows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947453 | 434 | 3.21875 | 3 |
This item is available under a Creative Commons License for non-commercial use only
5.4 SOCIOLOGY, 5.8 MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS
Abstract This article is based in a broader study of the production of Fair City, Ireland’s most popular television soap opera. The study argues that such shows are potentially important in civil society. They can promote discussion and debate on hidden or taboo social issues. They may thus inform public opinion. Until recently the potential role of soap opera in civil society has largely been overlooked. The research examined the social issues that Fair City could introduce to public discussion by examining its production process. It found the main limits on what the show could and could not say to be determined by practical pressures. The study interprets cultural production through a Bourdieuian conceptual model. Thus in understanding the production of Fair City it takes stock of how the programme is shaped by long term processes at organisational, national and international levels. This article looks inside the production of Fair City. It argues that the show’s limitations must be understood within the context of a new broadcasting environment. Fair City’s success depends on a level of rationalisation that is unprecedented in Irish television drama. This has consequences for the diversity of issues that the show may cover. It also affects the working lives of the show’s creators. The pressures of the new broadcasting environment have reduced the professional autonomy and creativity of those who work on Fair City’s cultural production line. This article offers the hypothesis that this is one example, among many, of how market influence may bring about a ‘proletarianisation’ of formerly autonomous and prestigious cultural work.
Brennan, E.: Fair City: A Case Study in the Proletarianisation of Cultural Production. Irish Journal of Sociology 13(2): 66–83. 2004. | <urn:uuid:757f7ef0-dc71-4123-b172-ec6ade1ab4ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arrow.dit.ie/dmcart/37/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926182 | 378 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Umberto D. is perhaps the most astringent film ever made about a poor old man and his dog. Critics today tend to like the astringent parts: the long, deliberately undramatic sequences full of mundane activity (such as a housemaid’s morning routine), performed with little or no dialogue and shot as if in real time. People who admire the work of such contemporary filmmakers as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chantal Akerman, and Abbas Kiarostami can see something up-to-date in this aspect of Umberto D., and even recognize in it a principal source of today’s cinema of the steady gaze.
These same critics generally dislike the pooch. They feel that screenwriter Cesare Zavattini and director Vittorio De Sica did enough to immiserate their title character by depriving him of youth, family, friends, health, money, and home. Surely an audience needs no further prompting to feel the isolation of Umberto Domenico Ferrari. That the filmmakers also make him go everywhere with little Flike—clutching him to his breast, fretting over his well-being, ultimately begging the dog to come play with him—seems to these viewers an almost invasive ploy, as if Zavattini and De Sica were trying to force into their hands an already soggy handkerchief.
But as someone who begins weeping at the first notes of the title music—someone who thinks this film’s long, undramatic sequences can be seen best when watched through tears—I wouldn’t want Zavattini and De Sica to have backed off. I believe their greatest work, which surely includes Umberto D., kept touch faithfully with popular sentiment, even while helping to create the decidedly unpopular tradition of the art-house film. Perhaps today’s division between auteurist productions and mass-market movies might be eased, and contemporary cinema enlivened, if our filmmakers would more often put themselves at risk as Zavattini and De Sica did with Umberto D.
Of course, this prescription is open to question, considering that Umberto D. was released to utter disaster.
It was the fourth film that Zavattini and De Sica made together after World War II, and the first to fail. Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948) had brought into focus, for domestic and international viewers alike, the intuitions, concerns, and methods of Italy’s best postwar filmmakers, and so had established neorealism as a movement. The impact on critics was enormous. “No more actors,” André Bazin wrote of Bicycle Thieves, “no more story, no more sets—which is to say that, in the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality, there is no more cinema”—or, rather, that the film is “one of the first examples of pure cinema.” The impact on audiences was equally strong, with both Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves winning the Academy Award for best foreign-language film.
But what Zavattini and De Sica had established with these earlier films they brought to a close with Umberto D. Although the picture won the support of viewers abroad—the New York Film Critics Circle voted it best foreign film of the year, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Zavattini’s script for best screenplay—Umberto D. was a miserable flop at the Italian box office. Worse, upon its release in early 1952, the film came under attack from Giulio Andreotti in Libertà, the weekly organ of the Christian Democratic Party. Since the Christian Democrats had full, seemingly permanent control of the government, and since Andreotti (later to serve seven times as prime minister) controlled the state’s movie production loans, and exercised the right of precensorship over scripts, the brand of film criticism he practiced was unusually powerful.
According to Andreotti, De Sica was guilty of “slandering Italy abroad” by “washing dirty linen in public.” Writing in the voice of his party, his government, or the Italian nation—it wasn’t clear which—Andreotti said: “We ask De Sica not to forget the minimal commitment toward a healthy and constructive optimism that can help humanity to move forward and to gain some hope. It seems to us that the world fame that our directors have rightly acquired gives us the right to demand that he accept his duty and fulfill this task.”
This official condemnation, however damaging, would not have been enough in itself to doom Umberto D. with the public. You might imagine, for example, that the Christian Democrats’ political rivals would have rallied to the film. But the main opposition was the Communist Party, which had conducted its own attack against Zavattini and De Sica for what it too saw as pessimism. And so, in Italy’s highly politicized film culture, Umberto D. opened without organized support, to compete against the recently revived Cinecittà’s superproductions and such government-subsidized fare as Don Camillo (1952), a nougat-centered clerical farce.
With the dismal release of Umberto D., Italy’s neorealist period came to an end. But was the film itself dismal? Or was the pessimism that offended viewers in 1952 no more objectionable, intrinsically, than the sentimentality that bothers some critics today?
For the beginnings of an answer, one need look no further than the first images of Umberto D., which dramatize an impromptu street demonstration by old-age pensioners. The event has the circumstantial brusqueness of a news item—one of those fatti di cronaca that Zavattini liked to use as seeds for his stories. The street, shown in deep focus, appears to have more than enough space to accommodate the crowd. There’s even room for a city bus, which noses forward in the opposite direction of the march, as if to assert the rights of normal routine. Although Alessandro Cicognini’s music comes on with the throb of verismo opera, the initial view prompts curiosity more than tears. Some viewers may even let out an ironic laugh when the police drive in to break up the protest and the camera, shooting through the windshield of one of the cops’ jeeps, records the pursuit of the demonstrators: a gang of old men, who huff away in hats and flapping overcoats.
The camera glimpses Umberto two or three times during this ruckus, but it does not single him out until the protesters have dispersed, to pronounce curses against their own organizers and recover their breath. So Umberto D. introduces its protagonist as one figure among many. His situation, at first glance, seems faintly ridiculous. His person—embodied by the nonprofessional actor Carlo Battisti, a Florentine professor of linguistic science—is distinguished by an alert, somewhat rabbity face and fussy manner, which hint at a lifetime of intelligence expended to no real effect on the world.
The burden of decorum, the futility of culture: the film touches on these themes lightly, almost comically, in its opening sequence, but soon begins to insist upon them by positioning Umberto between two characters of contrasting status—apparently the last two people in the world with whom he is still in contact. As an educated, middle-class man, he might be expected to feel closer to the woman from whom he rents a room, but she is a tall, blonde monster of bourgeois pretension. Played by Lina Gennari with all the mannerisms that a veteran actor can muster and Battisti cannot, she comes across rather like an unfunny Margaret Dumont. By the end of the film, she will literally decorate Umberto out of her house, there being no space for him in her version of the high life. And so, despite being a gentleman, Umberto finds himself in concert with the housemaid (another nonprofessional, Maria Pia Casilio, discovered by De Sica when she was an apprentice seamstress), whose dark, ingenuous, button-eyed face is unmarked by book learning.
If I make this character scheme sound more diagrammatic than it actually plays, it’s only to make a crucial point about what Umberto D. is not. Unlike other neorealist films, such as Shoeshine or Bicycle Thieves, it is not a story about the working class. Nor does Umberto D. concern itself with the neorealist theme of economic hardship as such, despite Zavattini’s quickness in telling us, right in the first scene, how many lire Umberto gets for his monthly pension, how much he pays out in rent, and how much he owes. Beggars abound in the film, soup kitchens and charity wards extend their provisional shelter; but Zavattini also makes it plain that Umberto needs these resources partly because he ran up debts, while other pensioners are in the clear. When I say that Umberto D. pushes neorealism to new extremes, then, it’s not only because of the film’s extraordinary concentration on the mundane but also because of its subject matter, which goes to the limit of social criticism. Yes, poverty and old age bear down on Umberto, in ways that are specific to Rome in the early fifties—but the key problem is indecency. Umberto is slowly being stripped of his dignity, and even of the desire for dignity.
Which brings us back to Flike. He is the only major character other than the landlady to be played by a trained performer, the canine actor Napoleone. Perhaps this fact accounts for the movieness of Umberto’s interactions with him—a movieness that offends people who want a “perfect aesthetic illusion of reality,” giving the impression of “no more cinema.” But De Sica was not necessarily one of these people. He had spent his life in show business; in his youth, he had been Italy’s most popular star. He knew that sentiment is as legitimate a mode of storytelling as irony or satire, so long as the sentiment is honest—which I believe it is in Umberto D. If the main character feels that his humanity itself is slipping away, his sense of being a proper man, then why shouldn’t
he have a sentimental relationship with a dog?
The great critic I. A. Richards once remarked that you could characterize an era of history according to a certain choice between anxieties: were people more worried about being thought sentimental or stupid? In Umberto D., two very smart filmmakers had the courage to jerk tears, and created a masterpiece. Couldn’t we use a few more?
Stuart Klawans has been the film critic for The Nation since 1988. He is also the author of Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order. This piece originally appeared in the Criterion Collection’s 2003 edition of Umberto D. | <urn:uuid:0acfb566-b5b3-4c36-a784-1b39bea44158> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/292-seeing-clearly-through-tears-on-the-smart-sentiment-of-umberto-d | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967231 | 2,356 | 1.648438 | 2 |