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“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” chat, Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. (PDT)
There’s a key difference between the simian stars in every prior version of “Planet of the Apes” and the ones who will appear in this summer’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” — the power of speech.
“Caesar has got to carry the scenes with no dialogue,” said Joe Letteri, who is supervising the digital creation of the apes in the film for Weta Digital, Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based company that was behind the visual effects in “Avatar,” “King Kong” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “We had to figure out how to portray a lot of the emotion just through the eyes, which is something we learned on Kong and with ['Lord of the Rings' villain] Gollum.”
In the future-set 1968 Charlton Heston film that launched the “Planet of the Apes” brand, monkeys rule — talking and functioning like humans — and humans are speechless slaves who are viewed as livestock. This summer’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” takes place in present day and traces how those species evolved to play such different roles in society. James Franco is a scientist testing an Alzheimer’s cure on apes, and Andy Serkis —the Olivier of motion capture after his portrayals of Gollum and King Kong — is Caesar, a test subject who begins mutating.
“It’s the origins story, so that gave us a lot of freedom,” said Letteri, who will be speaking to fans in a live Facebook chat Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. in which he’ll show how the Weta artists created the photorealistic apes of the film.
In both the Heston franchise and the Tim Burton “reimagination” in 2001, the apes were played by recognizable actors in suits and makeup. In the new version, the apes are portrayed by actors such as Serkis in motion-capture suits and then digitally rendered by Weta artists. “Our chimps have to look like real chimps,” Letteri said. “In the original franchise, you could tell they were actors in suits. Here we’re seeing how the evolution happened. We have to go to reality.”
As in the original Heston films, the apes that appear are varied, with gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees. The filmmakers used the same facial head rig that was deployed to capture the Na’vi of “Avatar,” but unlike those characters, the faces won’t reflect the features of the actors playing them. “They’ll be recognizably distinctive due to differences in size, how dense the fur is, how big the ears are, different colorations to the face and the muzzle,” Letteri said.
Because Serkis is close in size to Caesar (unlike when he played Kong), the actor was present in his mo-cap suit even for live-action scenes such as those shot at a park and an office in Vancouver. “It was great for getting the emotional beats, the eye contact with other performers,” Letteri said.
The film, which is directed by a little-known British director named Rupert Wyatt, has been monkeyed with quite a bit — there have been multiple release-date changes and a late-in-the-game title switch away from the simpler “Rise of the Apes.” None of that matters much to the team in New Zealand. “I’m not in on those decisions,” said Letteri, who noted that there were still about 400 Weta artists working to finish the film in time for its Aug. 5 release. “All I know is, we have the same amount of work to do.”
– Rebecca Keegan
RECENT AND RELATED | <urn:uuid:0864e632-304c-41c5-a1c2-e739975e44c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-weta-wizards-speak-but-the-monkeys-wont/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967362 | 867 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Date of this Version
The tale of President Kennedy's death was, of course, more than a story about journalism. This meant that journalists needed to do more than perpetuate narratives that emphasized their own authority for the story: they needed to account for other authorities too.
Nearly three decades after the assassination, journalists' competition with the independent critics had taken on familiar forms. Some critics had either voluntarily abandoned the story or been marginalized by mainstream journalism. Those who continued to investigate it coexisted with reporters tensely, in recognized, circumscribed channels.
Historians, on the other hand, who had not yet played an active part in recording the assassination, had no such familiar patterns of interaction with journalists. Yet history remained the main discipline with a clear claim to the tale. Journalists were attentive to the fact that historians had not yet fully addressed the story, and they began to consider the role of history in its retelling. History gave journalists a way to tailor their assassination memories into a consideration of the structure of their own profession. These tales privileged considerations of the profession of journalism over those of the individual, organization, or institution.
Date Posted: 04 March 2008 | <urn:uuid:86392fa9-0da5-4e8e-ba73-124c7aa4736c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/73/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966026 | 234 | 3 | 3 |
After 1,500 Years, an Index to the Talmud’s Labyrinths
The Talmud is a formidable body of work: 63 volumes of rabbinical discourse and disputation that form Judaism’s central scripture after the Torah. It has been around for 1,500 years and is studied every day by tens of thousands of Jews. But trying to navigate through its coiling labyrinth can be enormously difficult because the one thing this monumental work lacks is a widely accepted and accessible index.
But now that breach has been filled, or so claims the publisher of HaMafteach, or the Key, a guide to the Talmud, available in English and Hebrew. | <urn:uuid:d0472ed6-4f7c-4f25-bf6b-5eb57ca2efdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lisnews.org/after_1500_years_index_talmud%E2%80%99s_labyrinths | 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 | 0.943062 | 138 | 2.78125 | 3 |
It’s shockingly easy to discourage others. It takes no skill to knock people down. It’s the joy of fools to drag down.
Leaders encourage – losers discourage.
Discouragement comes quickly, easily, and without thought. Encouragement – positive momentum – is a fragile flame that requires fuel, protection, and repetition.
Encouragement fuels success;
discouragement destroys it.
Nine ways to discourage others:
- Pile on work until they’re buried and then punish their mistakes or short-falls.
- Always know more.
- Criticize from the sidelines.
- Focusing on the negative past or dark future.
- Neglect forward focus.
- Withholding recognition and reward.
- Minimizing hard work by saying, “You’ve done well but you still have far to go.”
- Take credit for their work.
- Improve on their work while not working yourself.
Power of encouragement:
Discouraged people overestimate problems and underestimate opportunities. Don’t argue with their assessments. The issue is discouragement. Focus on encouraging, perceptions will change. Encouraged people courageously see opportunities and take next steps.
Bonus tip: Intervene before discouragement sets in. It’s easier to fuel a fire than light one.
Weak leaders go with the flow. Effective leaders create positive flow while standing against discouragement.
Identify those who discourage others and minimize their roles. Coach and train them. If they don’t change, manage them out. Discouragers are destroyers.
What have you seen leaders do that discourage others?
Has someone encouraged you? What did they do? | <urn:uuid:105e3afa-6db9-4a80-9926-59608812bfd9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/those-who-discourage-destroy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905394 | 360 | 2.796875 | 3 |
What to expect …
All modules – AND – the final quiz must be completed within the two week time period you are enrolled in this online course.
This online course is divided into 6 modules or sections. Each module consists of a lecture, a discussion board and a self-check quiz. While you are taking the course, a Satori Group instructor will be monitoring your progress and be available to assist as needed.
1. Listen to the lecture.
Familiarity with the information will depend on your level of experience with asbestos abatement work. Feel free to listen to the lectures as often as you need to.
2. Participate in the discussion board.
The discussion board allows students to enter responses to questions posted by the instructor and to interact with other students about the lecture topic. Participation in the written discussions is required for completing this online course.
3. Take the self-check quiz.
Most of the self-check quizzes are in activity format. Games and interesting activities are used to reinforce key information from the lecture. The self-check quizzes are not graded. You may re-take these quizzes as often as needed for you to become familiar with the course material. The quizzes will prepare you for the final exam.
4. Complete all modules.
All course modules must be completed before you can take the final exam.
5. Make an appointment with your approved proctor.
a) Arrive at the proctor’s location before the appointed time ready to take the final exam.
b) Bring proper ID and your State of Alaska asbestos card to show the proctor.
c) Allow 15 to 30 minutes to take the final exam.
The final exam is online, your proctor will be provided with a password for you to get access.
6. Take the final exam.
The final exam consists of 30 questions. You must answer at least 70% correct in order to pass the course. All questions are covered in the online course material.
REMEMBER: You must pass the proctored final exam within the two week time frame in order to receive your training certificate!
Receive your training certificate after course completion … | <urn:uuid:d3e81785-fe9c-46d3-bb49-83c776dd9dd7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uas.alaska.edu/sitka/coed/aar/what_to_expect.html | 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 | 0.935086 | 450 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's first-ever Five-Year Report reviews our major education reform activities, products and expenditures, both in the national reform arena and in Dayton, from 1997 through 2001 and sums up the work of the Foundation from its rebirth in the mid-1990s until today. In the report, we endeavor to show what we think we've accomplished, where our efforts have fallen short, and what we've learned.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation asked experts to share their knowledge and ideas on topics related to effective education philanthropy. Here are seven papers that answer some of philanthropists' most important questions in the education reform arena.
Charitable giving in the U.S. is at an all-time high, as is the public's concern with the state of our K-12 education system. This guide provides practical advice for the philanthropist who is fed up with the status quo and eager to support effective education reforms. Making it Count reviews the state of U.S. public education, examines different ways that philanthropists are trying to improve it, explains why some strategies work better than others, profiles a number of education philanthropists, and recounts the experiences of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Recommending sweeping changes in federal special ed policy, this new volume of 14 papers scrutinizes the education now being received by 6 million U.S. children with disabilities. Jointly published with the Progressive Policy Institute, the report will help shape discussion of the next reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It identifies the problems that now beset this important program, analyzes their causes, and suggests solutions. All who care about the education of children with special needs will want to read it for themselves. | <urn:uuid:4948ca99-3043-4dd9-9e5d-26c651885b8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/index.jsp?issuestopics=additional-topics&page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951178 | 357 | 2.140625 | 2 |
ca. 600 MB of graphic material
The Shingwauk Project began producing Residential School Photo Albums in 2005 as part of the "Remember the Children Project". The Remember the Children project focused on the Spanish Residential Schools. This project aimed to increase the accessibility of photographs to residential school survivors and their families. The Remember the Children initiative allowed for the identification of individuals in photographs. Since 2005, The Shingwauk Project has created Residential School Photo Albums for all of the residential schools which existed in Ontario. These photo albums are constantly being updated as more individuals are identified in the photographs.
Series comprises photo albums of the residential schools which operated in Ontario. The albums include background historical information and photographs of former students and staff of the residential schools.
Residential Schools Centre | <urn:uuid:be8312e8-66ba-4e18-afce-db4d8e23ed62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.algomau.ca/drupal6/node/21413 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939907 | 158 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Types of Breast Cancer
Types of Breast Cancer
An overview of the main types of breast cancer: ductal, lobular, invasive, inflammatory, and Paget's disease. Each type is described and treatment and prognosis are discussed.
Invasive (Infiltrating) Breast Cancer
Invasive, or infiltrating, breast cancer has the potential to spread out of the original tumor site and invade other parts of your breast and body. There are several types and subtypes of invasive breast cancer.
Invasive Lobular Carcinoma – ILC Breast Cancer
Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC) is a type of breast cancer that starts in the lobules of your breast, where milk is produced. Invasive Lobular Carcinoma does not always feel like a breast lump, because it may grow in a web-like mass. Learn about the symptoms, diagnosis and treatment for Invasive Lobular Carcinoma.
Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma of the Breast
Adenoid cystic carcinoma of the breast is rare. Usually not aggressive, this type of breast cancer has a good chance of recovery after treatment. Learn about diagnosis and treatment for adenoid cystic breast carcinoma.
Angiosarcoma of the Breast
Angiosarcoma of the breast is a rarely diagnosed type of breast cancer. It can grow and spread quickly, and may affect many organs in your body. Learn the symptoms, tests to diagnose, and treatments for angiosarcoma of the breast.
Medullary Carcinoma – Invasive Breast Cancer
Medullary carcinoma of the breast is a less common form of invasive breast cancer. It starts in your milk ducts, with large cancer cells that look very different from healthy cells. Survival rates for this type of breast cancer are very good. Learn more about medullary carcinoma of the breast.
Metaplastic Breast Cancer
Metaplastic breast cancer is a rare form of breast cancer that is often treated aggressively and has uncertain prognosis. Learn more about diagnosis and treatment for metaplastic breast cancer.
Mucinous (Colloid) Carcinoma of the Breast
Mucinous carcinoma is a rare invasive breast cancer formed of mucous. Mucinous carcinomas of the breast are estrogen-receptor positive and HER2/neu negative. Read more about symptoms and diagnosis of mucinous carcinoma of the breast.
Paget’s Disease of the Nipple
Paget’s Disease of the nipple or breast is a rare type of breast cancer, which can occur in women and men. It shows up in and around the nipple, and usually signals the presence of breast cancer beneath the skin.
Invasive Ductal Carcinoma - IDC Breast Cancer
Invasive Ductal Carcinoma is a very common type of breast cancer. Here are the signs, symptoms, and treatments for invasive ductal carcinoma.
Papillary Carcinoma of the Breast
Papillary Carcinoma is a type of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). This type of breast cancer is rarely invasive, and usually stays within the milk ducts of your breast. It has a good chance of recovery after treatment.
Phyllodes Tumor - Cystosarcoma Phyllodes – Breast Cancer Tumor
Phyllodes tumor is a very rare type of breast tumor, which can be benign (harmless) or malignant (cancerous). This type of tumor is called a "sarcoma," because it occurs in the connective tissue (stroma) of your breast. Learn more about Phyllodes tumor, its symptoms, diagnosis and treatment.
Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Risk Factors
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) tests negative for estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors. Although TNBC responds to chemotherapy treatments, there have not been effective targeted treatments for …
Basics of Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Triple negative breast cancer cells have no receptors for estrogen, progesterone, or HER2 protein. This type of breast cancer tends to be aggressive and survival rates are lower than average. Learn who is more at risk, and how triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is treated.
Tubular Carcinoma of the Breast
Tubular carcinoma is a rare type of invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. Tubular carcinomas tend to be small, estrogen-receptor positive, HER2/neu negative. Your chance of recovery and survival after treatment for a tubular carcinoma is very good. | <urn:uuid:246f4a20-62a1-4e6a-840e-6f1f7509a7d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://breastcancer.about.com/od/types/Types_of_Breast_Cancer.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919525 | 957 | 3.34375 | 3 |
In French cuisine, a quiche (IPA: [ki:ʃ]) is a baked dish that is made primarily of eggs and milk or cream in a pastry crust. French cuisine is a style of cooking derived from the nation of France. An egg is a round or oval body laid by the female of many animals consisting of an Ovum surrounded by layers of Membranes and an outer casing which acts to nourish Milk is an opaque white liquid produced by the Mammary glands of female Mammals (including Monotremes. For the 1993 hip-hop single by the Wu-Tang Clan see CREAM CREAM is an acronym for Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis Method a This article describes Pastry in food For the Distributed Hash Table system see Pastry_(DHT. Other ingredients such as cooked chopped meat, vegetables, or cheese are often added to the egg mixture before the quiche is baked. In modern English usage meat most often refers to Animal tissue used as food mostly Skeletal muscle and associated Fat, but it may also refer The term " vegetable " generally means the edible parts of Plants The definition of the word is traditional rather than Scientific, however Cheese is a Food made from Milk, usually the milk of cows, Buffalo, Goats or sheep, by coagulation.
Quiche Lorraine is perhaps the most common variety. In addition to the eggs and cream, it includes bacon or lardons. Bacon is a cut of Meat taken from the sides belly or back of a Pig that has been cured, smoked, or both Lardons are strips of fat bacon or salt pork used in meat larding. Cheese is not an ingredient of the original Lorraine recipe, as Julia Child informed Americans: "The classic quiche Lorraine contains heavy cream, eggs and bacon, no cheese. Julia Child (born Julia Carolyn McWilliams August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was a famous American cook, Author " though most contemporary quiche recipes include Gruyère cheese, making a quiche au gruyère or a quiche vosgienne. Gruyère (Groo-Yair is a hard yellow Cheese made from cow's Milk, named after the town of Gruyères in Switzerland, and made The addition of onion to quiche Lorraine makes quiche alsacienne. Organicsalsajpg||thumb|right|Onions used in salsa.]]Cooked onions in frying pan
The word quiche is derived from the Lorraine Franconian dialect of the German language historically spoken in much of the region, where German Kuchen, "cake", was altered first to "küche". Lorraine Franconian (francique mosellan platt lorrain platt mosellan is a designation in practice ambiguous for Dialects of German spoken in the north-eastern The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Typical Allemanic changes unrounded the ü and shifted the palatal "ch" to the spirant "sh", resulting in "kische", which in standard French orthography became spelled quiche.
In the United Kingdom, until the 1980s, quiches were almost invariably referred to as "flans". The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located However, this term has now become almost completely obsolete when referring to savoury dishes. | <urn:uuid:0fbbfb25-6baa-42ef-a8c8-c6747f4da642> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://citizendia.org/Quiche | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961456 | 721 | 2.25 | 2 |
Guangan Travel Guide
Guang’an of Sichuan Province is the hometown of Mr.Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of China's reform, opening and modernization drive. Thanks to the great achievements made by Chinese Reform and Opening Up, Guang’an becomes famous at home and abroad.
Guang’an blessed with beautiful natural scenery is a Holy Land of tourism resource development. Huaying Mountain with a reputation of “The world magnificent mountain” is a provincial level tourist attraction. Among the mountains, Baoding Mountain is one of the eight Buddhism Holy Lands of China. There is a saying from ancient times “Worship Omei Mountain in the west and Worship Baoding Mountain in the east.” The mountains alternate with gullies and there are millennium ancient plank roads built along the cliffs. The main attractions in Guang’an is Tianchi Lake, one of the three large mountainous lakes; omniform geological marvelous stone forests and grotesque and gaudy natural limestone caves. Within the boundary, the Jialing River and Qu River are winding interspersing with brooks and lakes. The beautiful Green Jade Lake of Yuechi County, vast Taiji Lake of Wusheng, the small gorges of Yulin, Dahong Lake of Qiandao and other natural landscape are all within Guang’an jurisdiction.
Zip Code: 0826.
Postal Code: 638000.
Administration: Guang’an District, Yuechi County, Wusheng County, Lingshui County, Huaying City.
Top Things To Do in Guangan
The former residence of Deng Xiaoping is located in Deng Family ancient yard of Paifang Village in Xiexing Town. It is an ordinary tria-dwelling house, covering an area of over 800 square kilometers... [ View Details ]
Green Jade Lake renowned as “West Lake in Eastern Sichuan Province” is surrounded by green mountains and clear waters. Green Jade Lake is famous for green, but one word “green” can’t imply all. Ever... [ View Details ] | <urn:uuid:face28de-bf7f-4cfd-844e-d880262d92a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chinatravel.com/guangan-travel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921519 | 440 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Jogging over a Distance
Jogging over a Distance supports pace awareness through spatialized audio: if you are faster, your friend's voice appears from behind through the headphones, indicating you are 'ahead', if you are slower, you have to increase your effort to catch up!
We have found through the use of an online survey and Internet forums that joggers often run with others. The main reasons for 'social jogging' were socializing, motivation to run faster, to have more fun, and to be encouraged to run in the first place. However, due to our modern nomadic lifestyle, jogging friends often move apart, and hence we designed "Jogging over a Distance" to allow social joggers, who now live in separate places, to utilize the benefits of running together although being apart.
Jogging over a Distance experienced several iterations, and we now present the latest, Jogging over a Distance 4.0. The video documents a previous version, and a complete history can be found in the publications below.
Jogging over a Distance
With Jogging over a Distance, each jogging partner puts on a pair of headphones and wears the remaining equipment in a small pouch around the waist. While each partner jogs, heart rate data is collected and used to position the audio of the conversation in a 2D sound plane, oriented horizontally around the jogger’s head. As one jogger speaks, their partner hears the localized audio and is able to detect whether the audio is coming from the front, the side, or from behind, and thus the other person is putting more effort in, the same, or less. Similar to a collocated setting, the audio cues runners when to speed up or slow down in order to “stay” with their partner. The joggers can discuss running routes, motivate each other to keep pace, or simply listen to the environment noises of the other location.
Marathon Runner with Jogging Novice
Using augmented heart rate data allows joggers with differing athletic abilities to run together: a marathon runner can jog with a complete novice! Thus, the system allows joggers to do something that is not possible when running side by side - challenge their individual effort level while running with friends who run at different intensity.
This approach uses technology not just as a tool to overcome the limitations of distance, but rather as an opportunity to create experiences not possible without the distance: We call it "beyond jogging together".
Jogging over a Distance consists of two identical systems, each with a miniature computer, a heart rate monitor (the graphic shows the initial GPS version), a mobile phone connected via Bluetooth for voice and data, and a headset. Heart rate data is collected wireless and sent to the mini computer. The computer then transmits this data via the 3G connection of the mobile phone to a server, which calculates the relative effort people invest into the run. As a result of this, an algorithm calculates a sound position value for each jogger. As each jogger talks, their voice is picked up by a microphone and the audio is transmitted via a mobile phone. (We initially used VoIP technology, but found the lag and reliability insufficient for our purposes.) Before routing the incoming audio from the remote jogger’s mobile phone to the headphones, the mini computer applies a spatialization algorithm to the sound source. The mini computer uses the sound position value received from the server to transform the audio data into spatial 2D audio by placing the sound source onto an imaginary plane around the joggers head. The result is that the jogger hears their partner’s voice coming from a certain direction.
Background We were initially interested in the experience joggers would have if they would communicate with a remote partner through an audio channel only, and therefore asked 18 volunteers to go running at the same time, but in opposite directions, equipped with a mobile phone and a Bluetooth headset. We were intrigued by how much of a sense of presence the audio conveyed to the participants: they not only mentioned hearing the other person’s voice, but also the wind, the noise of the footsteps depending on the ground surface, and the breathing of the remote jogger, which they amounted to a social and enjoyable experience. Two of the participants took up our idea and decided to jog regularly together through a mobile phone connection beyond the duration of the study, confirming that remote jogging with an audio interface can result in a desirable experience.
This work was based on a survey on social jogging, which was initially supported by CeNTIE (Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy), which is supported by the Australian Government through the Advanced Networks Program (ANP) of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and the CSIRO ICT Centre. A newer version of the system was supported by Distance Lab, UK. We would like to thank Stefan Agamanolis, Matt Karau, Andrea Taylor, Elena Corchero, Chris Wolf and all our participants. Thanks also to Lana Dauberman for shooting the video.
Mueller, F. (2009) Digital Sport: Merging Gaming with Sports to Enhance Physical Activities Such as Jogging. In Digital Sport for Performance Enhancement and Competitive Evolution: Intelligent Gaming Technologies. http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=33413&v=tableOfContents
O'Brien, S. & Mueller, F. (2007) Jogging the distance. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems. San Jose, California, USA, ACM. Note CHI ’07 (acceptance rate 25%, tier 1+)
Mueller, F., O'Brien, S. & Thorogood, A. (2007) Jogging over a Distance: Supporting a "Jogging Together" Experience Although Being Apart. CHI '07: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. San Jose, CA, USA. ACM, 2579 - 2584.
TechNewsDaily: Interactive game keeps jogging buddies in touch
The University of Melbourne Voice: http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_4246.html
Bright magazine (Netherlands): http://www.bright.nl/solo-sociaal-hardlopen-zet-aan-tot-grotere-prestaties
Information Aesthetics: http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/05/jogging_over_a_distance.html
What's new: http://www.whatsnew.tv/Article.aspx?id=143 | <urn:uuid:ba8e4721-778c-4326-aa9c-c90361132a50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://exertioninterfaces.com/cms/jogging-over-a-distance.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908576 | 1,359 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Tabletalk Magazine, September 1998: The Rare Jewel of Contentment
Ligonier Ministries 1998
For more than thirty years, Tabletalk has existed as a magazine to provide a substantive study tool for believers. Generally speaking, laymen receive either very little instruction in the weightier matters of the faith, or the instruction is too academic, thereby making the material largely inaccessible to average person. This is the reason Tabletalk exists—to bridge the gap between these two poles, to explain to the people of God the important, biblical doctrines and events while admonishing them toward holy living.
Contributors include: R. C. Sproul along with Sinclair Ferguson, Jerry Bridges, Don Kistler, Eric Alexander, Robert Barnes, Edmund Clowney, Nevin Mawhinney, and Ligon Duncan. Tabletalk features articles on topics central to the Christian faith and contains daily, in-depth Bible studies.
Over the years, Tabletalk has been recognized for its excellence through several awards. Today, people all over the world read Tabletalk on a daily basis. Now with the Logos Bible Software edition of Tabletalk all Scripture passages are linked to your favorite Bible translation in your library. With the advanced search features of Logos Bible Software, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference—finding, for example, every mention of "contentment" or "possession."
- Daily Studies From The Teaching Fellowship Of R. C. Sproul
- "Coram Deo" note from an editor
- "Three Schools" by R. C. Sproul
- "Five Easy Steps" by Sinclair Ferguson
- "Measuring Up" by Jerry Bridges
- "The Winter of Our Discontent" by Don Kistler
- "The Discord of Discontent" by Eric Alexander
- "Israel and the Golden Calves" by Robert Barnes
- "Jealous Husband" by Edmund Clowney
- "The Mirror" by Nevin Mawhinney
- "The Lord’s Own Possession" by Ligon Duncan
- "The Cultural Mind: Fully Accredited"
- "Puritan Treasures: A Sufficiency of Satisfaction"
- "Hits and Missives"
- "Tolle Lege: A Study of Contentment"
Praise for the Print Edition
Tabletalk has been a key ingredient in the diet of Christians conscious of their spiritual vitality.
—Michael S. Horton
Month by month, Tabletalk represents an oasis in a desert of false spirituality, mindless Christianity, and vapid conviction. Tabletalk represents theological rigor, biblical Christianity, and authentic Christian devotion. It is an antidote to the world of superficial Christianity. Read it and grow.
—R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Tabletalk has been a wonderful resource in my own daily walk with the Lord.
- Title: Tabletalk Magazine, September 1998: The Rare Jewel of Contentment
- Editor in Chief: R. C. Sproul Jr.
- Associate Editor: Robert Barnes
- Series: Tabletalk
- Publisher: Ligonier Ministries
- Publication Date: 1998
- Pages: 62
About R. C. Sproul
R. C. Sproul is Founder and President of Ligonier Ministries and President of Ligonier Academy. He also servers as Senior Pastor of Saint Andrew’s in Sanford, Fla., and he has written more than seventy books including Defending Your Faith, Abortion: A Rational Look at an Emotional Issue, The Truth of the Cross, Truths We Confess, and commentaries on Romans and John in the Saint Andrew’s Expositional Commentary series. | <urn:uuid:d73db136-270f-4076-86bf-72ebd4bed0bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.logos.com/product/20333/tabletalk-magazine-september-1998-the-rare-jewel-of-contentment | 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 | 0.90834 | 763 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Dreich: a combination of dull, overcast, drizzly, cold, misty and miserable weather. According to the Urban Dictionary, at least four of these adjectives must apply for weather to be truly dreich.
I read the word in Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. I knew what it meant from the context, but thought I'd look it up to see if the description would fit yesterday's weather. Yes, it would. It was a truly dreich day. But there was beauty in it as well.
I stopped along the road today, protected my camera with my scarf and took a few photos. The snow geese are what drew me. Those white blobs are up-ended geese on the pond/lake. I had to use the full zoom on my camera to get them, hence the indistinct quality.
When I got home and looked at the photo, the colours jumped out at me - the lingering red on the trees, the white barn, golden grasses and bright evergreens.
I spent the afternoon baking - a good way to chase away the day's "dreich-ness."
Linking with Mosaic Monday, hosted by Mary of the Little Red House. | <urn:uuid:4b779970-e20a-4153-9dc8-e6cfc133bb1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fabricpaperthread.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-good-day-for-ark.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961748 | 258 | 1.703125 | 2 |
December 9, 2008
TT: A doll's house
Paul Moravec and I went to the New York office of the Santa Fe Opera last week to get our first look at the set designs for The Letter. They were created by Hildegard Bechtler, who is currently represented on Broadway by The Seagull. Hildegard lives in Germany and does most of her work for European theaters, so Paul and I met her for the first time at the design presentation (as such occasions are called). Also on hand was Jonathan Kent, the director of The Letter, who lives in England and whom the two of us hadn't seen for a year and a half. Jonathan and Hildegard, as is customary in theatrical projects, jointly worked out a visual interpretation of the opera, after which Hildegard created the finished design. They used my libretto as a point of departure, but from then on they were on their own.
Once the introductions were out of the way, Paul and I rushed across the room to see what our far-flung collaborators had wrought. Sitting atop a grand piano was a scale model of the stage of the 2,100-seat Crosby Theatre inside which Hildegard had constructed a miniature version of the set for The Letter. It looked like a giant-sized doll's house, right down to the tiny figures that represented the various characters. We gaped at the model, temporarily stunned into silence. I know how it feels to see the design for the dust jacket of a book that I've written, but that's different: the cover is not the book. An opera, on the other hand, truly exists only in performance, and must be created anew each time it is produced: the score is not the show. As I saw how Hildegard had transformed my libretto into a three-dimensional object, a Biblical phrase popped into my mind: Thus the word was made as flesh.
The process of putting theatrical flesh on the musico-literary bones of The Letter is complicated further by the fact that the Crosby Theater is nothing like the old-fashioned Broadway theaters in which I spend so much of my working life as a critic. Not only does it have no proscenium arch or curtain, but the shape of the stage is decidedly out of the ordinary. Here's how Paul Horpedahl, Santa Fe's production director, describes it:
Our stage has side walls that are curved out, much like the shape of a speaker horn. Each of these walls is made up of six pairs of double doors for stage access. Additionally, there are sliding door panels at the back of the stage that allow for opening up to the landscape. The width of the stage at the apron is fifty-seven feet and narrows upstage at the back sliding doors to thirty-six feet. The depth to those doors is forty-one feet and the total depth to the scenery elevator is fifty feet. The ceiling above the stage is twenty-two feet at the doors and twenty-four feet at the apron. There is no fly tower and all lighting is hung up inside the ceiling so as not to be seen by the audience.
To put these numbers in perspective, the unusually large but otherwise traditional proscenium arch of the stage of the 3,800-seat Metropolitan Opera House is fifty-four feet square, while the American Airlines Theatre, the 740-seat Broadway house where the Roundabout Theatre Company is currently performing A Man for All Seasons, has a stage opening that is forty feet wide and twenty-five feet high.
Because the Crosby Theater has no curtain, all scene changes take place in full view of the audience, and the absence of a fly tower means that backdrops and large set pieces cannot be shifted by "flying" them to and from the stage. This makes it a tricky space in which to present The Letter, which plays without interruption and takes place in five different locations:
• The living room of the jungle bungalow of Leslie and Robert Crosbie
• The Singapore law office of Howard Joyce, Leslie's lawyer and Robert's best friend
• Leslie's jail cell
• The men's bar of the Singapore Club
• The courtroom in which Leslie is on trial for murdering Geoff Hammond, her lover
But first-rate directors and designers like nothing better than to be asked to do the impossible, and Hildegard and Jonathan rose without apparent effort to the formidable challenge of creating a visual environment in which The Letter can be performed in such a way as to make dramatic sense to the viewer.
"Our goal was to create a cinematic design, one in which the action can move in a continuous flow," Jonathan said at the start of the presentation. To this end, all five locations in the opera are portrayed on a single unit set consisting of two diagonally converging walls separated by an upstage opening. One wall, which is curved, consists of a series of louvered wooden doors. Except for a pair of non-identical doorways, the other wall is meant to look flat and solid--even though it isn't. Both walls lend themselves to the shadowy film noir-style lighting that Paul and I have always envisioned as part of the "look" of The Letter.
Needless to say, there's a lot more to the set than that, but I don't want to give away any of Hildegard's scenic surprises. Suffice it to say that in the nightmare world of The Letter, nothing is quite as it seems.
After Paul and I stopped babbling excited superlatives and pulled ourselves together, Jonathan and Hildegard walked us through the opera, demonstrating how the set will shift from scene to scene. As they moved the set pieces and cardboard singers by hand, I felt as if the four of us were children playing with a freshly opened toy theater on Christmas morning. Of course we were engaged in a deadly serious job of work--we were, among other things, deciding how vast amounts of the Santa Fe Opera's time and money would be spent on creating a theatrical illusion--but it didn't feel anything like work.
Jonathan asked us if we had any questions. Paul and I burst out laughing and high-fived each other. "I never imagined that it would look this beautiful," I said. Then we rolled up our sleeves and immersed ourselves in the complicated business of settling on exact timings for the between-scene interludes. Since The Letter plays continuously from start to finish, Paul must compose orchestral interludes that will not only carry the audience from one scene to the next but also give the cast and crew sufficient time to change costumes and shift the set. Paul Horpedahl assured us that none of the scene changes would take longer than forty-five seconds to complete, but Jonathan estimated that we'd need a full minute to get from Leslie's cell to the Singapore Club, so we decided to play it safe.
We would have been more than glad to spend the rest of the afternoon playing with our new friends and our new toy, but everyone had places to go, ourselves included, so at last we said our reluctant farewells. I bumped into Brad Woolbright, the Santa Fe Opera's artistic administrator, as I was putting on my coat.
"I guess you guys might actually decide to go ahead and do our opera now, huh?" I said, trying in vain to keep a straight face.
"We're giving it serious thought," Brad replied without cracking a smile.
UPDATE: If you came here via Andrew Sullivan, you'll want to read this.
Posted December 9, 2008 12:00 AM | <urn:uuid:d37ff2d4-ee18-4f6f-8861-92b287b5da5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2008/12/tt_a_dolls_house.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972046 | 1,572 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The best source of Omega 3's is through Mila which is a whole raw food from God's earth. a proprietary blend of omega 3's, fiber, phytonutrients,protein, and antioxidants. NO restrictions, FDA certified. www.healthquest.lifemax.net Omega 3's are called essential fatty acids for a reason, they are essential to maintain optimal health and we must feed them to out bodies, we cannot produce them. Our food is not the answer with the way the land is polluted. Mila is from the salvia Hispanica plant - from the mint family and a natural pesticide. I truly recommend Mila, the results are amazing.
Omega 3 is amazing! For one thing it’s derived completely from natural sources—fatty fish—and so it is completely safe. Doctors say it is helpful for the brain, for joint health, for skin and heart health. It’s great to eat fatty fish at least 2 or 3 times a week, but supplementing your diet with omega 3 supplements is a great idea, too. Fish oil may contain contaminants—heavy metals, like mercury. It’s good to choose a fish oil supplement that contains fish oil of pharmaceutical grade. This is the purest form of fish oil containing the least contaminants and has the highest potency of DHA and EPA. Triple Strength Omega 3 has the additional advantage of an enteric coating—digestion takes place in the intestines so you do not experience fishy after burps, so common with inferior-grade
fish oil supplement. | <urn:uuid:97ed39ac-d309-4c7b-ae81-9927ab96bd9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wellsphere.com/brain-health-article/best-brain-food-fish-oils/825390 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94288 | 320 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Tea and Your Health
2 cups of tea = 7 glasses of orange juice = 5 onions = 4 apples
Why drink tea?
"Better to go 3 days without food than 1 without tea..."
Perhaps the ancient Chinese scribe who penned the above knew what he was talking about.
Tea is not a dietary supplement and should never be used as a replacement for fruits and vegetables.
This page deals with the health benefits of “true tea” from the Camelia Sinensis plant. (Black tea, green tea, white tea and oolong) This information is not intended to replace the advice of professional medical practitioners.
Research Proves What We’ve Always Known
During the last 20 years, numerous researchers and government health agencies from around the world have turned their focus on tea. Their discoveries have shown numerous ways in which tea can play an essential role in a healthy lifestyle.
Health Canada: The Natural Health Products Directorate is currently working toward substantiating claims that all teas, black, green, white and oolong are a bona fide source of antioxidants, a healthy way to stay alert and a positive contributor to cardiovascular health. Health Canada is also studying tea for use as an adjunct treatment in weight management programs when combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Harvard University: Recent studies found that tea contains theanine, a unique amino acid that primes the immune system for fighting infection, bacteria, viruses and fungi.
UK Institute of Child Health: Studies published in the journal of the Federation of Experimental Biology indicate that a major component of green tea known as epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) can reduce cell death after a heart attack or stroke.
Below are some of the most commonly asked about issues regarding tea and health. This information is intended for overview purposes only.
Green Tea & Black Tea
Green teas and black teas both come from the same plant, Camelia sinensis, the difference being that green tea is unfermented. Studies indicate that tea in this unfermented state retains many of its naturally occurring compounds intact. One of the most important of these is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a major chemical component of green tea not found in fermented black tea. The process of steaming or pan-firing green teas stops ECGC from oxidizing. That said, black tea, like green tea retains a multitude of nutritional qualities.
More on EGCG
EGCG is a powerful antioxidant that can inhibit the growth of, and kill, cancer cells without harming the surrounding healthy tissue. It has also been found to lower levels of some types of cholesterol and inhibit the formation of blood clots, the leading cause of heart attack and stroke. (Research by the UK Institute of Child Health.)
Tea & Vitamins
All teas, black, green, white and oolong contain measurable amounts of the following:
Tea with milk includes:
A cup of tea contains 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of caffeine found in a cup of coffee depending on leaf grade, color, blend, etc. Pound for pound loose tea leaves and ground coffee actually contain similar levels of caffeine. The difference is that 1 pound of tea yields roughly 200 cups of coffee while a pound of coffee yields roughly 60 cups. The result is 1/3 less caffeine on average per cup of tea.
Caffeine is a natural component of tea and is considered safe when consumed in moderation. According to Health Canada, a balanced diet can include a moderate intake of between 400 to 450 mg per day or 10-12 cups of tea. Actual caffeine levels vary depending on the blend infused, amount of loose leaf used and length of steeping time. In general, most cups of tea have between 25 to 34 mg of caffeine.
Flavonoids & Antioxidants
- Present in all Black, Green, White and Oolong teas.
- Researchers at Tufts University have found that the flavonoids in tea protect cells from damage caused by free radicals and other carcinogens in the body. The Flavonoids act as antioxidants that help the body flush carcinogens and maintain normal cell growth rates. This increases the natural turnover of precancerous cells and may help control the progression of some cancers.
Tea and the Immune System
Clinical trials at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that the immune cells of people who drank 5 cups of black tea daily for 2 to 4 weeks produced substantially higher levels of interferon, a protein that helps strengthen immune response. This can help the immune system fight off viral and bacterial infections.
Tea and Weight-Loss
Recent studies by researchers in Japan appear to indicate that certain varieties of Oolong may have properties conducive to weight loss. It is believed the tea can help drinkers lose weight when used to replace traditional carbonated sodas. The tea’s nutrient values and anti-oxidants invigorate the body, engendering a feeling of fullness that helps to alleviate the hunger pangs that lead to over-eating and snacking.
Tea & Cardiovascular Disease
A report by Japanese researchers, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that people who drank at least five cups of green tea per day had a 26 percent lower risk of fatal cardiovascular disease than those who had fewer that one cup per day.
Tea & Teeth and Bones
Tea is a naturally occurring source of fluoride. A 2003 study by researchers at the New York University Dental Center found that drinking black tea with meals may help reduce cavities.
Recent studies by the Dept. of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, found that because it is a rich source of EGCG, consumption of green may have beneficial effects on bone mineral density and overall bone health.
Tea & Kidney Stones
A recently published study followed 81,093 older women for eight years and found that for each eight-ounce cup of tea consumed daily, participants decreased their risk of developing kidney stones by 8%.
A similar study followed 45,289 men and found that for each 8 ounce serving of tea consumed daily there was a 14% decrease in kidney stone development.
Tea & Brain Health
The 2007 International Scientific Symposium on Tea & Human Health in Washington DC revealed some research that suggests tea may lower individual risk of developing dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Studies at the Eve Topf Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Israel, found that tea consumption helps maintain the health of brain neurons and improved their ability to combat stressors that can lead to brain degeneration.
Studies at the City College of the City University of New York found that theanine in tea actively supports the attention networks of the brain. Researchers found that the theanine, an amino acid, crossed the blood-brain barrier and increased alpha brain –wave activity, leading to a calmer, more alert state of mind.
Tea is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. | <urn:uuid:2910cb71-63e5-451e-bac8-b8ce0ea3a343> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stonehouseteas.com/health-benefits-of-tea-campbell-river-tea-shop | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923093 | 1,449 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Last weekend, while Hurricane Irene pounded the East Coast of the United States, inventive housebound Piictu users shared their storm experiences in real-time through a Piictu “Hurricane Irene” stream.
The conversation began with images of preparations. Businesses prepared their properties for the elements. Liquor vendors pitched wine as emergency supplies. Supermarket shelves were cleared out. Owners warned that they would not be open over the weekend.
Then the first drops fell. If you were following the stream in real-time, you could use Piictu alone to track the progress of the storm. As users sent well-wishes to all those under the clouds, photos came in of intense lightning strikes, beach erosion, and downed trees.
Some of the Hurricane damage was beyond belief.
In just over 2 days, 100 Piictu users shared 139 images of the way Irene affected their lives. It was awesome to follow. People were pretty adventurous, stepping out into the carnage to share wild images. But of course, it was just one stream among many. The Silly Dogs stream, for instance, offered a welcome escape from grim flooding and blown-out power lines. | <urn:uuid:9ababc4f-9ce1-4208-a675-8f7b0501197d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.piictu.com/tagged/news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957714 | 244 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Central Government Act
Section 75 in The Presidency Small Cause Courts Act, 1882
75. Power to vary fees. The State Government may from time to time, by notification in the Official Gazette, vary the amount of the fees payable under sections 71 and 72: Provided that the amount of such fees shall in no case exceed the amount prescribed by the said sections. | <urn:uuid:e571c141-2f01-47c6-90bb-372e699af4f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indiankanoon.org/doc/724768/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909297 | 73 | 1.53125 | 2 |
ABSTRACT: Epidemiological studies have shown a correlation between flavonoid-rich diets and improved cardiovascular prognosis. Cocoa contains large amounts of flavonoids, in particular flavanols (mostly catechins and epicatechins). Flavonoids possess pleiotropic properties that may confer protective effects to tissues during injury. We examined the ability of epicatechin to reduce short-and long-term ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) myocardial injury. Epicatechin (1 mg.kg(-1).day(-1)) pretreatment (Tx) was administered daily via oral gavage to male rats for 2 or 10 days. Controls received water. Ischemia was induced via a 45-min coronary occlusion. Reperfusion was allowed until 48 h or 3 wk while Tx continued. We measured infarct (MI) size (%), hemodynamics, myeloperoxidase activity, tissue oxidative stress, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) activity in 48-h groups. Cardiac morphometry was also evaluated in 3-wk groups. With 2 days of Tx, no reductions in MI size occurred. After 10 days, a significant approximately 50% reduction in MI size occurred. Epicatechin rats demonstrated no significant changes in hemodynamics. Tissue oxidative stress was reduced significantly in the epicatechin group vs. controls. MMP-9 activity demonstrated limited increases in the infarct region with epicatechin. By 3 wk, a significant 32% reduction in infarct size was observed with Tx, accompanied with sustained hemodynamics and preserved chamber morphometry. In conclusion, epicatechin Tx confers cardioprotection in the setting of I/R injury. The effects are independent of changes in hemodynamics, are sustained over time, and are accompanied by reduced levels of indicators of tissue injury. Results warrant the evaluation of cocoa flavanols as possible therapeutic agents to limit ischemic injury.
AJP Heart and Circulatory Physiology 07/2008; 295(2):H761-7. · 3.71 Impact Factor | <urn:uuid:88485036-4066-4e59-8d84-b71f9e823fe7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/14650765_Michelle_Cruz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921303 | 445 | 1.640625 | 2 |
What are the Benefits of a Catholic Education?
Why Catholic Schools?
For over a century, Catholic schools have educated children in the most vulnerable and impoverished communities in United States. Catholic education empowers families with a pathway out of poverty by providing a faith based academically rigorous curriculum that focuses on the full development of the human person and community values of hard work, faith, respect, and self-worth.
- There is no system of schools-- public, private, parochial or charter - that has comparable outcomes in educating demographically disadvantaged children.
- 98% of low-income Catholic school students graduate on time from high school, and 98% of that group goes on to college.
- Of FACE recipients in the Class of 2011, 100% graduated and 100% will continue their education, 81% at a four year institution.
- Students in Catholic and other private schools demonstrate higher academic achievement than students from similar backgrounds in public schools. A recent study by Loyola Marymount University, conducted with 200 low-income, inner-city students during their Catholic elementary school and high school experience in Los Angeles, confirms this result.
- Historically Catholic schools produce graduates who are more civically engaged, more tolerant of diverse views, and more committed to service as adults. | <urn:uuid:53e4b59c-2698-4b49-969c-32c5b1b2af79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oakdiocese.org/giving/face/why-catholic-schools | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961548 | 260 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The Arizona Office of the Auditor General recently released a provocative, but flawed, performance audit of the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC). This audit can be described simply as a mixed bag: while it does provide compelling qualitative recommendations it also relies on faulty quantitative analysis.
The quantitative weakness of the audit stems from a report issued earlier this year by the ADC. The audit relies heavily on the ADC report, especially by including calculations of comparative per capita prisoner costs. However, the auditors admittedly "did not assess the (ADC's) method for adjusting the per capita rates for comparing state-operated and private prison costs." The initial ADC report's per capita prisoner costs inaccurately suggest that Arizona's private sector correctional facilities are more expensive than public sector correctional facilities.
Public-private cost comparisons are inherently tricky. To start with, government cost accounting systems and methods are generally so opaque and convoluted that public managers cannot accurately identify the "all-in" costs of providing a service. Some costs are paid directly out of an agency's budget, while many others-such as debt service, risk management, legal, payroll, IT and other administrative functions-are paid out of some other agency's budget. If those "extra" costs aren't captured along with the direct agency spending, any cost allocation at the service level will be understated. Even within an agency budget, many costs may be borne by a central office that should actually be allocated to specific service units, facilities, etc. in a proper accounting scheme. Throw in the tendency of government analysts to look for creative ways to make their public sector colleagues look more competitive than they really are, and there's ample reason to at least question public-private cost comparison studies undertaken by government.
The state maintains the highest-security prisoners and a different population mix than the private sector, so it is difficult to make direct cost comparisons. After attempting to account for some of these differences, the ADC report concluded that it costs $3 to $8 more per day to house a medium-security inmate in a private prison, a datapoint repeated widely in the media.
Having read through the whole ADC report several times, there are few methodological issues that the ADC failed to address:
- The two summary tables (pages 3 and 5 of the report) themselves reveal the biggest flaw-the ADC report ignores correctional healthcare costs, which is a major component (and driver) of corrections spending. The report starts with an approximation of the full direct and indirect costs for both minimum and medium custody beds in public and private prisons. It then proceeds to add/subtract a series of "adjustments"-most notably, subtracting out healthcare costs-that effectively serve to wash a range of very real costs off the table as if they didn't really exist. If we're trying to make accurate judgments regarding the true costs of public and private prisons, you cannot just wish away costs that are inconvenient or tricky to normalize. This is not new-a Reason colleague pointed out a similar problem with the 2007 version of this ADC report and made a comment that holds equally today: "This type of selective accounting can only be described as 'Enron-like'-where the accounting rules are determined by the desired outcomes."
- The summary table on page 3 (minimum custody cost scenarios) shows the dramatic effect of the "adjustments." At the unadjusted level (the top line), daily per inmate costs at minimum-custody public prisons are $58.77 per inmate, compared to $52.64 in private minimum-custody facilities. Then, a murky "administrative adjustment" that's left unexplained adds $0.04 to public prison costs (now $58.80) and $2.13 to private prison costs (now $54.78)-this alone should have set off some red flags. Then comes the healthcare whammy, which drops the public sector costs by a precipitous $11.93 (now $46.87) and dropping private sector costs by $7.64 (now $47.14). Add a few more adjustments and you end up with average daily per-inmate costs of $46.81 in public sector minimum custody prisons and $47.14 in private facilities. The adjustments effectively flip the results in favor of the public sector by way of creative accounting.
- The second summary table on page 5 (medium custody cost scenarios) suffers from the same creative accounting discussed above, but it has an even deeper problem-it attempts to compare ALL of the state-run medium custody beds to ONE private prison contract. Nowhere in the table does it actually tell the reader that the 1,181 medium custody private prison beds it cites are located at just one facility (the Central Arizona Correctional Facility), nor does it explain that this particular facility houses a population of sex offenders with higher treatment requirements. Further, buried in the tables on pages 23 and 24 are data broken down by prison unit, and it becomes obvious that the state-run medium custody units have a wide range of costs. How is it fair to make a general blanket statement about cost efficiency-this table is the source of the "$3-8 more expensive per day" statement in the Republic, after all-based on a comparison of all state-run medium custody prisons (with highly variable individual costs) to ONE private prison? The short answer is that it's not a fair or meaningful comparison.
- The medium custody cost comparison is especially dubious when you consider that ADC had two other contracts for out-of-state, medium custody private prison beds in 2009-covering nearly 4,000 additional inmates-that were not included in the cost calculations! The ADC report justifies this selective omission of over three-quarters of its medium-custody, privately-held inmate population from its calculations by noting that they could "not identify the medical component of the per diem rate" for the out-of-state contracts. This is puzzling because ADC also did not attempt to calculate the medical component of their in-state public and private facilities at a facility level either, yet they nonetheless made massive adjustments to their cost data based on an average, across-the-board healthcare cost estimate-one for public facilities ($11.93 per inmate per day) and one for private facilities ($7.64 per day). This is despite the fact that different categories of inmates-even inmates in the same facility-incur vastly different levels of healthcare spending, which the ADC report smoothed out beyond recognition or meaning by using a system wide average. Even if you assume for a moment that ADC's methodology for healthcare cost adjustments is valid, then you'd still be left wondering why that same methodology should not apply equally to the out-of-state, medium custody contracts. Then there would have at least been more than one private prison facility to evaluate as a category benchmark.
- It's not clear that ADC captured other important costs to the state. Do ADC's in-house estimates cover the costs of employee pension obligations? Do they capture legal, self-insurance and other risk management costs? Do they cover debt service on state facilities financed with public debt? Since these costs are usually borne by other state agencies-and thus paid for out of someone else's budget-a true public-private cost comparison must include them if you're really trying to quantify the "all-in" costs of running a state prison. Private prisons, by contrast, capture the full range of their operational and administrative costs in their overall per diem rate, including labor, benefits, retirement, debt service, legal, risk and many other costs. Fundamentally, there's no basis for an apples-to-apples comparison in the first place if one side gets to selectively ignore some important costs.
Further, when one makes it past the summary tables in the report, they'll find some interesting data that contradict the "public sector is cheaper" storyline. Even if one takes the report's data at face value, the detailed table on page 21 reveals that private prisons had lower per diem costs than public sector prisons in the aggregate, both on an adjusted and unadjusted basis (see Table 1 below).
Table 1. Arizona Prison Cost Comparisons, 2009
Source: Arizona Dept. of Corrections, FY 2009 Operating Per Capita Cost Report, Cost Identification and Comparison of State and Private Contract Beds, February 2010, pp. 21-28.
However, since aggregate figures fail to account for differences in costs by custody level, let's assume for a moment that all state-run prisons operated at an unadjusted per diem cost of $58.80-this is the unadjusted per diem for state-run, minimum custody facilities, which is the lowest rate among the four custody categories the state lists in the report (see Table 1). Even with such a generous assumption, ADC's in-house costs would still be higher than the unadjusted per diem cost for ALL of ADC's contracted prison beds in 2009 ($58.78), which includes both minimum- and (higher cost) medium-custody inmates.
Put differently, even the lowest-cost category of public prisons is still more expensive than the average private prison, according to the state's own reported numbers. It's only when one applies creative accounting and ignores healthcare costs, out-of-state contracts and other relevancies that the lens gets distorted.
The qualitative recommendations included in the end of the report speak volumes. Mostly notably, the audit did not come out in favor of public or private prisons. If the auditors found the ADC's per capita costs to be accurate, then they would likely have recommended the ADC expand use of public facilities. Instead, the audit recommends that the ADC conduct additional analyses that accurately compare costs. This makes sense, and in such situations some form of value-for-money analysis is useful to directly show what the private sector can provide relative to the public sector. Reason has written about this extensively here, here, here, here and here.
Looking beyond the subject of privatization, the State Auditor's report also included a policy recommendation to reform criminal sentencing. They astutely noted that despite declining crime rates since the mid-1990s the incarceration rate has continued to increase. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Arizona had 1 crime for every 12 residents in 1995, and that figure dropped to 1 for every 22 residents in 2008. Literature that the auditors reviewed indicates that:
"The effect of incarceration on crime is limited compared to the combined effect of other factors (such as increased law enforcement, employment, and education) and diminishes as prison populations grow... although Arizona's crime rate has dropped, the State has one of the highest reported crime rates in the national despite also having one of the highest incarceration rates."
Earlier this year the Reason Foundation, in conjunction with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, called for sentencing reform to alleviate the corrections crisis in California. Read the policy summary of the study here and the full study here.
Public-private cost comparisons are admittedly complex. However, given the relevance of the subject of correctional privatization in Arizona these days, a more thorough and robust cost comparison should be prepared so the policy dialogue on corrections can move forward through factual research.
Harris Kenny is a research assistant at Reason Foundation. | <urn:uuid:b46102df-b56f-42de-a9e7-33ccd631aeea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/news/printer/arizona-private-prison-costcomparis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95107 | 2,297 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Excerpt from David Gray by David Pagel
In 1963, David Gray and his wife Joanna moved to Los Angeles from Madison, Wisconsin. No jobs awaited them and no family members lived in Southern California. The young couple simply up and left the Midwest because a friend in show business, John Simes, encouraged them to go West. Gray had earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was beginning to make a name for himself as an artist, exhibiting welded metal sculptures at annuals in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Denver, as well as in solo shows in Madison, Chicago, and New York. These assemblages were pieced together from rusty tools and cast-off appliances Gray scavenged from junkyards and scrap heaps. His large, freestanding pieces combined the formal restraint of David Smith’s early works and the narrative potential of Edward Kienholz’s assemblages. His smaller pieces, often set on pedestals and tabletops, played off of the sensibility and structure of H. C. Westermann’s solidly built sculptures. The main difference was that Gray worked in metal and Westermann wood. Gray’s Unpredictable (To H.C.W.) (1962) explicitly acknowledges the wood-worker’s influence; its toggle switches, mirrored portholes, and boxy form recall the offbeat utilitarianism of Westermann’s art.
In Los Angeles, the Grays rented a house in Echo Park, and he worked as a substitute teacher in various grade schools and high schools throughout the district. Gray immediately set up a studio in the garage and backyard. Almost as quickly, his art underwent a radical transformation. Although Gray did not stop using castoff metal objects to make his oddly elegant compositions, he did begin to use more neutral, less memory-laden materials, welding together abstract shapes and geometric forms from sheets of steel he purchased new and then cut with a torch. This allowed him to move away from the organic patina of rusted steel and weathered metal that had dominated his Midwestern works. He used automobile enamels to spray-paint his new sculptures, giving them a highly polished finish, often in bright colors and hardedge patterns. Chrome made its way into his newly sleek works, along with the occasional mirrored surface. Preparatory drawings, sketches, and studies, which Gray hadn’t used before, became an important part of his increasingly designed and Minimalist-oriented pieces, which often resembled abstract totems or stylized icons from the future. These streamlined compositions combined cubes and tubes, sometimes set on low pedestals. Gray often left two or three sides of his cube-shaped sculptures open, revealing their interiors. He sometimes packed the interiors with welded clusters of scrap-picked castoffs and at other times left them empty, their flocked walls swallowing light in deep, velvety darkness.
Within a year, Gray was picked up by Feigen/Palmer Gallery, where his Los Angeles solo debut took place in 1965. That same year, he had a New York solo show at Richard Feigen Gallery and was included in a group exhibition at Ferus Gallery, in Los Angeles. A solo show at Ferus followed in 1966, along with his inclusion in the prestigious “Primary Structures” exhibition at The Jewish Museum in New York. John Coplans featured three of Gray’s chrome and enameled-steel works, L.A./1, L.A./4, and L.A./5, alongside similarly cool sculptures by Larry Bell, Tony DeLap, John McCracken, and Ken Price, in “Five Los Angeles Sculptors” at the Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine. Later that year, Coplans added Billy Al Bengston, Joe Goode, Craig Kauffman, Charles Mattox, and Ed Ruscha to the original five sculptors for the roster of “Ten From Los Angeles” at the Seattle Art Museum, where Gray’s L.A./7 was shown. Gray then moved to Costa Mesa and taught with Coplans and DeLap at the University of California, Irvine, for a year. In 1967, his painted-aluminum and chrome-plated steel pieces, Irvine 4 and Unit Q, were included in “American Sculpture of the 1960s,” organized by Maurice Tuchman for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The next year, when John Mason left Pomona College’s art department, Gray moved to Claremont and took the full-time position. As a teacher, Gray was popular and demanding, exacting from his students a level of seriousness and rigor that many found to be extremely challenging while they were in school, but later credited as being absolutely essential to their artistic development. | <urn:uuid:59ec3e65-1b59-4f3b-9e1f-42667c9c0e86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pomona.edu/museum/artists/david-gray.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972502 | 1,004 | 1.976563 | 2 |
More than 40,000 individuals and organizations have submitted comments on an environmental review of the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, according to federal officials.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said Rodney Cluck, Cape Wind project manager for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the lead federal agency to review Cape Wind Associates' plan to build 130 wind turbines in the sound.
The U.S. Minerals Management Service will continue to count and organize comments on the Cape Wind proposal.
No other project reviewed by the agency during Cluck's 11 years with MMS has received as much attention, he said. The final number of public comments submitted on the agency's Cape Wind draft environmental report has yet to be tallied. A 2005 report on the project issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received one-tenth the number of comments the MMS document has so far.
Despite the difference in magnitude, there were similar criticisms leveled against the MMS and Army Corps of Engineers documents.
The MMS report took hits for conclusions drawn from studies of other projects, analysis of the impact of construction noise and alternatives considered in the document. The report, which was released in January, found little environmental impact across 117 areas under consideration.
Some federal agencies requested more information on the project and called parts of the report inadequate.
"At the very least, the (report) should explain why recommended studies and analyses were not conducted and the ramifications of not having that information," Michael Bartlett, supervisor for the New England Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wrote about bird and fisheries research in a letter sent to MMS on Monday.
While Bartlett praised MMS officials for attempts to analyze alternatives to Cape Wind's proposal and an economic comparison of different sites and sizes for the project, he questioned conclusions in the report about its environmental impact.
The report's information on migratory birds and fishery habitats linked to the 25-square miles of Horseshoe Shoal where the project would be located is inadequate, Bartlett wrote. "Once again, we feel that it would be more appropriate for the (report) to conclude that there is insufficient information to make an informed impact analysis."
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator Robert Varney called for additional research and consideration of alternatives to Cape Wind such as a floating wind farm proposed further offshore by a Dutch company.
"We strongly encourage MMS to work more closely with EPA and other agencies during the development of the (final report)," Varney wrote in a letter to MMS officials.
The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the project's most vocal opponent, enlisted 40 experts to review the report and produced a 3,000-page critique, the organization's president, Glenn Wattley, said yesterday.
"Part of the dilemma here is after three years the MMS hasn't produced a higher quality document," Wattley said, comparing the Army Corps review and the MMS report.
MMS took over the review of Cape Wind from the Army Corps as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
Studies of how birds will be affected were also inadequate, Wattley said.
Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers countered the project's potential impact on the avian world is well documented.
"It's important to point out that Cape Wind has undergone, already, more avian studies than any wind farm on the planet prior to construction," Rodgers said. "For some, there's never enough data."
Despite the criticisms of the MMS report, the vast majority of comments submitted will be in favor of the project, Rodgers predicted.
In their comments, national and local environmental groups such as the Conservation Law Foundation and Clean Power Now praised Cape Wind and the MMS draft report.
"To meet the challenge of reducing fossil fuel emissions and the associated threats to public health, our oceans, other natural resources and the global climate, we must embrace clean renewable energy generation," a group of ten environmental organizations wrote in a letter on the project. "Cape Wind is one of the nation's most promising clean energy projects."
Cape Wind supporters are confident the wind farm will get the permits needed for construction to begin, executive director for Clean Power Now, Barbara Hill, said yesterday.
Patrick Cassidy can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:65e779cb-ce20-42d0-a7ec-c9d9884eb101> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080423/NEWS/804230333 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956693 | 896 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Trickle Down Spirituality? Dilemmas of the Elizabethan Jesuit Mission
In the face of many difficulties, especially mounting opposition from the Elizabethan government, Jesuits on the mission in England and Wales had to make some hard decisions about how to allocate their limited human and financial resources. In particular, with regard to the social landscape, the missioners came to realize that the gentry were, as a whole, more open to Catholic evangelization than many other groups. Moreover, they had the prestige and material resources to lend the missioners a sizable measure of protection and outreach. Due to the hierarchical nature of early modern society, winning over the gentry usually opened many doors. This increased the possibility of confirming in their faith or converting not only the Catholic gentry's families and friends, but also their servants, tenants, and others. Overall, although this focus on the world of the gentry inevitably limited the potential scope of the mission, it probably also helped to insure its survival and at least some measure of success. | <urn:uuid:467344f8-474a-498a-9d33-40d88238ea2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/10.1163/187607505x00173 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964425 | 207 | 3.515625 | 4 |
The Roadbook On-Board is a system that allows the easy creation of roadbooks,
through graphical description of routes, using reference points.
The system is also able to present those routes automatically, as a navigation
aid for the pilot. The presentation is made using video and audio aids. This system is
composed by two applications, one for creating and editing, roadbooks and another to
Program that allows the creation/editing of the roadbooks. It's very easy to use. For each stage just add:
The print option is currently not working (one of the things that may be improved).
You need to install Java Runtime Environment >= 1.4 and Swing. You also need to add the installation directory to the CLASSPATH environment variable.
This is the program that presents the previously created roadbooks. You will need a sensor to
read the movement from the vehicle, this may be a dedicated proximity sensor connected to the RS232 port or a mouse.
If you want to tweak around, here is some technical data, from the report, (in Portuguese) that you may find helpful:
|Paulo Ferreira, for his help with the personalized icons/images/poster;|
|André Romão, for his help with the inverter.| | <urn:uuid:2533ff58-df56-405a-96f1-1274d12a5964> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://w3.ualg.pt/~aanjos/projects.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933118 | 268 | 1.90625 | 2 |
This is the world smallest fish. It was on January 2006, the world smallest fish was discovered Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is a family member of the carp family, it’s scientific name is Paedocypris progenetica. More shocking is it has a backbone, when it’s only 7.9mm which is 0.3 of an inch. How small is that!
I think this shows Causation because something must have happened to this fish or to its parents to make it such a small size. | <urn:uuid:fb2f512e-4ce7-4852-a097-6724806c2a3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sites.cdnis.edu.hk/students/100299/2012/05/16/photo-a-day-worlds-smallest-fish/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971972 | 112 | 2.390625 | 2 |
It was, in parts, a lovely speech. It was far better than I expected, and I am not one to underestimate Barack Obama’s skill at constructing cathedrals with his words.
Rhetorically, his address in Philadelphia represented a historic achievement. The Democratic front-runner, the first viable black presidential candidate, showed that a liberal can, in fact, abandon the calcified talking points and buzzwords of racial discourse that have slowed progress. Democratic politicians have carried the baggage of black victimology and white guilt for generations. Whenever Republican candidates have tried to advance our politics without such baggage, Democrats have yelled, “Here, catch,” and crushed them with it.
This, for me, was the thrilling part of Obama’s speech: For a moment, he put down the albatross.
He sang the praises of the Founding Fathers and the implicit promise they made to all Americans, not just to white men. He denounced his former pastor’s denigration of the “greatness and the goodness of our nation.” He partially acknowledged the moral legitimacy of what he too narrowly calls the American “immigrant experience,” which rejects the idea that a man today is responsible for the sins of others long dead. He recognized that the black community is too quick to blame outside forces for its own problems. He blamed the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s biliousness on an antiquated worldview enmeshed in a “static” view of this wonderfully fluid nation.
Yes, he refused to fully denounce Wright, but he managed to seem like he was grounding his refusal in love and personal loyalty while still making it clear that Wright’s words were unacceptable. In effect, he says he loves the sinner but hates the sin. In this age where politicians throw their inconvenient passengers under the bus after the first pothole, this was refreshing even if it was intellectually wanting.
In short, there was wonderful stuff to be found in Obama’s address. You can be sure the mainstream press and the Democratic faithful will leap at the opportunity to coronate Obama for his statesmanship and brilliance the way a man dying of thirst plunges into the cool water of an oasis. The Wright story is over for everybody but the so-called forces of divisiveness
But oases can reveal themselves to be mirages.
Obama proved he’s capable of dropping the baggage of yesteryear. But he also proved he’s even more adept at picking it back up.
“I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork,” Obama said, seeming to want credit for his political bravery. “We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue. ... But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.”
But then, he insisted that we do, in fact, dismiss Wright as a distraction. Indeed, Obama says that pretty much any inconvenient discussion of race is a distraction from what America really needs: a huge expansion of the welfare state. Obama says our racial problems can be healed with more money. By “investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.” The path for blacks, Obama insists, requires “binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.”
Meanwhile, the “real culprits” for our problems are: “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.”
Sigh. Here we go again.
For all the wonderful rhetoric and tantalizing promise of Obama and his speech, there’s not much that is actually new here. This was largely a restatement of Jeremiah Wright’s indictment of America, delivered in University of Chicago parlance instead of South Side Chicago diatribe.
The old baggage has been replaced with shinier suitcases, but the contents are the same as ever. Black America’s problems can be solved by spending more money on the same old Great Society programs. Any talk about black America’s problems that takes the eyes off that prize is a “distraction.” And, yet again, white Americans can prove their commitment to racial justice by going along with more big government. My hope for something better proved too audacious in the end.
Fox News' Roger Ailes: Administration's Excuses Won't Work, Americans Died For Press Freedom | Katie Pavlich | <urn:uuid:6f6e57da-2ebe-40ad-875c-2c9aec5fa856> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2008/03/19/a_great_speech_but_for_deja_vu/page/full/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961124 | 1,024 | 1.59375 | 2 |
March 18, 2011 — President Obama’s speech about the coming no-fly zone over Libya raised more new questions than it answered. Obama was adamant that the United States would not act alone in targeting forces loyal to Libyan strongman Muammer el-Qaddafi, and he flatly ruled out the use of American ground troops. But the president did not reiterate his earlier demand that Qaddafi step down, and he indicated that U.S. military forces would be used exclusively to protect Libyan civilians, and not to force Qaddafi – who has vowed to fight to the death – out of power.
Thousands of miles away from Washington, events are taking on their own momentum. Britain rushed warplanes and other military assets to bases near Libya, and French officials signaled that initial bombing sorties and missile strikes could begin this weekend. The Obama administration will soon be forced to address issues it has long avoided. Below are four important questions hanging over the coming Western-led military operations in the skies above Libya.
1-Is the United States Still the Indispensable Nation? In both Iraq and Yugoslavia, the U.S. military took the lead in enforcing no-fly zones and taking other actions to protect civilians on the ground. This time around, Obama went out of his way to say that the Pentagon will merely be “enabling” European and Arab nations to enforce a no-fly zone, likely by deploying drones and AWACs surveillance aircraft to the region. Other countries are already going significantly further: Earlier on Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the U.K. had begun to deploy fighters, surveillance aircraft, and refueling planes to bases near Libya; France moved additional Mirage fighter jets to its military facilities on the Mediterranean coast and said that initial strikes could begin within hours. The tiny oil-rich state of Qatar said it would provide unspecified assistance to the growing international effort to isolate Qaddafi and protect the rebel-held territory in eastern Libya. American officials, meanwhile, confirmed that Egypt had begun providing rifles, ammunition, and other armaments to the insurgents fighting to hold off Qaddafi loyalists. Still, it is almost certain that U.S. warplanes will eventually need to strike Libyan targets, particularly if the Qaddafi regime abandons the cease-fire that it hastily announced after the U.N. vote.
2-Will It Be a No-Fly Zone or Something More? The initial draft resolutions of the United Nations Security Council seemed to be laying the groundwork solely for a no-fly zone akin to what U.S. fighters had imposed over Iraq and Kosovo. But the final resolution goes much further. It says that foreign militaries can “take all necessary measures” to protect civilians and major population centers. Robert Chesney, an expert on the law of war at the University of Texas, noted in a blog posting that the U.N. measure also allows the use of “air power against ground forces advancing on Benghazi” or other rebel-held territory. The U.S. and its allies, then, might not simply try to force Qaddafi’s attack helicopters and jet fighters out of the skies; they might also target his tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry. That, in turn, suggests that a Libyan no-fly zone could quickly turn into something far larger, and far more dangerous, for both sides.
3-When Will the Shooting Start? The Iraq war famously began with a “shock and awe” campaign over Baghdad in March 2003. The coming operations over Libya are likely to begin far more modestly. A senior U.S. Defense official said on Friday that the Pentagon expected French and, possibly, British warplanes to begin overflying Libyan territory on Saturday in a show of force intended to persuade Qaddafi that the West is serious about containing him. The official said that those flights could be followed by a limited number of cruise-missile strikes or bombing runs to destroy some Libyan radars and air-defense systems without causing many Libyan casualties. The United States is unlikely to take part in either initial phase of the campaign, but the official acknowledged that Pentagon planners are actively compiling target lists in case Obama orders the military to begin striking Qaddafi’s forces, aircraft, or military facilities.
4-What If Qaddafi Holds On? This would be the absolute worst-case scenario for the White House, which has continually lagged behind the French and British in calling for Qaddafi’s ouster and taking steps to engineer it. Both Paris and London have made clear that their ultimate goal is Qaddafi’s departure from Libya and that they are prepared to use force to push him out. Obama, by contrast, went out of his way on Friday to stress that the UN resolution was meant solely to protect Libyan civilians from further suffering. The president was conspicuously silent about whether his administration would accept Qaddafi's remaining in power over the western half of Libya as part of a fragile cease-fire with the rebel-held east. That outcome is unlikely to prove acceptable to either the rebels or the European and Arab nations that have taken unprecedented – by their standards – steps to oust Qaddafi. So, Obama may soon face a question similar to the one that confronted the President George H.W. Bush after the Persian Gulf War: Press the coming military campaign until an unpopular leader has been forced aside, or step back and allow a weakened but angry dictator to remain in power? Either path carries risks.
Andrew Exum, a former Ranger officer who is a counterinsurgency specialist at the Center for a New American Security, noted in a blog posting that the ultimate U.S. strategic goals remain unclear. “What happens if Qaddafi pulls back? Do we continue to try and press the advantage of the rebels until his government falls? Do we have the authorization to do that? Do we expect a civil war in Libya to drag out, and if so, how will we take sides? If Qaddafi falls, what comes next? What will the new Libyan government look like? Will they be friendly to U.S. interests? Someone please tell me how this ends,” he wrote. “It really does seem like we are going to go to war with another country in the Arabic-speaking world. Incredible. I should be thankful for the broad international coalition we have put together, and for the fact that a large ground invasion is unlikely, but I mainly just have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.” | <urn:uuid:f960bcd3-72be-4552-9b5e-e7774eb2b9cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnas.org/node/6004 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960552 | 1,331 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
The term minor is used to refer to a person who is under the age in which one legally assumes adulthood and is legally granted rights afforded to adults in society. Depending on the jurisdiction and application, this age may vary, but is usually marked at either 12, 16, 18, 20, or 21. Specifically, the status of minor is defined by the age of majority.[verification needed]
In New Zealand law, a minor is a person under 20 years of age, but most of the rights of adulthood are assumed at lower ages: for example, voting, entering into contracts, and having a will are all legally possible at 18.
In many countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Philippines, United Kingdom, Brazil and Croatia, a minor is presently defined as a person under the age of 18. In the United States, where the age of majority is set by the individual states, minor usually refers to someone under the age of 18, but can be used in certain areas (such as gambling and the consuming of alcohol) to define someone under the age of 21.
In the criminal justice system in some places, minor is not entirely synonymous, as a minor may be tried for a crime (and punished) as a juvenile or an adult (usually only for extremely serious crimes such as murder).
In Australia, there are several gradations of responsibility before full legal adulthood. Those under age ten are free of all criminal responsibility under the doli incapax doctrine of UK legal tradition. Those under the age of fourteen are presumed incapable of responsibility, but this can be disputed in court. The age of full legal responsibility is 18 except Queensland where it is 17. The age of majority in all states and territories is 18.
The age of majority is 18 for most purposes including sitting on a jury, voting, standing as a candidate, marriage, hiring R-rated films or seeing them in a theater, buying/viewing pornography and purchasing alcohol and tobacco products. The age of consent is 16 in all states and in Queensland consent for anal sex is 18. A person under 18 is defined as a minor or a child.
For all provincial laws (such as alcohol and tobacco regulation), the provincial and territorial governments have the power to set the age of majority in their respective province or territory, so as such, the age varies across Canada. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, and Prince Edward Island have the age set at 18, while in British Columbia, Ontario, Yukon Territories, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick the age of majority is 19.
For Federal Law (Criminal Code, Voting, etc.), the age of majority is 18.
- Main article: Youth Criminal Justice Act
In England and Wales and in Northern Ireland a minor is a person under the age of 18; in Scotland, under the age of 16. The age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland is 10; and 12 in Scotland, formerly 8 which was the lowest age in Europe.
The age of majority is 18 for most purposes including sitting on a jury, voting, standing as a candidate, buying or renting films with an 18 certificate or R18 certificate or seeing them in a cinema, modelling for pornography, suing without a litigant friend, being civilly liable, accessing adoption records and purchasing alcohol, tobacco products, knives and fireworks. The rules on minimum age for sale of these products are frequently broken so in practice drinking and smoking takes place before the age of majority; however many UK shops are tightening restrictions on them by asking for identifying documentation from potentially underage customers.
Driving certain large vehicles, acting as personal license holder for licensed premises and adopting a child are only permitted after the age of 21.
In the United States as of 1995, minor is legally defined as a person under the age of 18, although, in the context of alcohol, people under the age of 21 may be referred to as "minors." However, not all minors are considered "juveniles" in terms of criminal responsibility. As is frequently the case in the United States, the laws vary widely by state.
In eleven states, including Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas, a "juvenile" is legally defined as a person under seventeen. In three states, Connecticut, New York, and North Carolina, "juvenile" refers to a person under sixteen. In other states a juvenile is legally defined as a person under eighteen.
Under this distinction, those considered juveniles are usually tried in juvenile court, and they may be afforded other special protections. For example, in some states a parent or guardian must be present during police questioning, or their names may be kept confidential when they are accused of a crime. For many crimes (especially more violent crimes), the age at which a minor may be tried as an adult is variable below the age of 18 or (less often) below 16 [Gaines, Larry K and Roger Leroy Miller. "Criminal Justice in Action" 4th ed., Thompson Wadsworth Publishing, 2007. Pg 495]. For example, in Kentucky, the lowest age a juvenile may be tried as an adult, no matter how heinous the crime, is 14.
In most states, juveniles cannot be housed with adult inmates, even if the child is charged as an adult. This is also discouraged by the federal government, which prefers funding only if children and adults are housed in separate facilities. This leads to a lot of subsidiary questions such as whether a juvenile now past their eighteenth birthday can be sentenced to adult jail for a conviction based on behavior that happened before that birthday. As with the adult system, the juvenile justice system has become more and more punitive over time, despite a juvenile's lack of right to a jury in juvenile court, often lower brain development (because of their youth), and evidence that incarceration and even probation lead to a higher incidence of reoffending for juveniles than non-punitive consequences.
The death penalty in the U.S. for those that committed a crime while under the age of 18 was discontinued by the U.S. Supreme Court Case Roper v. Simmons in 2005. The court's 5-4 decision was written by Justice Kennedy and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer, and Souter, and cited international law, as well as child developmental science and many other factors in reaching its conclusion.
The age of consent for sexual activity is often lower than the age of majority, frequently using a graduated scale based on the difference in age between the participants. There is an absolute minimum age, however, varying from state to state, below which a minor may not consent. The lowest age for a legal marriage also varies by state. In the US the ages range from sixteen to seventeen.
The twenty-sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1971, granted all citizens 18 years of age or older the right to vote in every state, in every election.
- Main article: Minors detained in the global war on terror
The US Department of Defense took the position that they would not consider the "enemy combatants" they held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps to be minors unless they were less than sixteen years old.[verification needed] In the event they only separated three of the more than a dozen detainees who were under 16 from the adult prison population. All the several dozen detainees who were between sixteen and eighteen years of age were detained with the adult prison population. Now those under 18 are kept separate in line with the age of majority and world expectations.
Some states, including Florida, have passed laws allowing one who commits an extremely heinous crime, such as murder, to be tried as an adult, regardless of age. These laws, however, have faced the challenges of the ACLU.
|This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).| | <urn:uuid:d835e589-2836-4bfc-ba25-4361edbf118f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Minor_(law)?direction=prev&oldid=122389 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956745 | 1,640 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Paul B. Stares, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow for Conflict Prevention and Director of the Center for Preventive Action
The Obama administration can justifiably pat itself on the back following today's conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. Aside from the logistical challenge of convening leaders from forty-seven countries in the capital for one of the largest diplomatic events on U.S. soil since the founding of the United Nations, important progress was made on a critical issue: increasing the security of nuclear material stored around the world from theft by terrorist groups and criminal gangs.
Some observers will doubtless pronounce the summit's outcome as modest and, in any case, pre-cooked. True, much of what was agreed had been hammered out by so-called "sherpas" in advance, but those negotiations should be considered part and parcel of the summit. In short, summits raise expectations for demonstrable outcomes and whether progress is made before or at the actual meeting is largely irrelevant.
So what was accomplished?
First, the participation of so many countries, especially from the developing world, helps dispel the argument that this is primarily a U.S. or Western concern. The United States may be the number one target for al-Qaeda, but al-Qaeda is hardly the only non-state actor potentially interested in nuclear terrorism. Many countries are at risk. Moreover, no country in possession of nuclear materials wants to be held responsible should the worst happen.
Second, the summit injects important momentum toward the goal of securing all nuclear weapons-usable material within four years, which President Barack Obama announced a year ago in Prague. Besides their declarative statements, each state has signed on to specific national implementation plans to make their holdings of highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium less vulnerable to theft and trafficking. Ukraine, Chile, Mexico, and Canada also announced that they would eliminate their stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. [The role of the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as two important multilateral agreements--the International Convention for the Protection of Nuclear Materials and the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism--will also be strengthened.] When the group of nations reconvenes in Seoul in two years--itself a good sign--participants will be under pressure to show that they have followed through on their commitments.
Third, though the Obama administration went to some length to make sure the focus of the summit did not stray from nuclear security to the larger nuclear nonproliferation agenda, the reality is that progress toweatrd preventing nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands helps that broader objective. Along with the recently signed follow-on START treaty reducing U.S. and Russian strategic weapons and the findings of the Nuclear Posture Review, the Obama administration has put itself in a much stronger position to argue for increased international pressure against North Korea and Iran--not to mention other potential proliferators--to relinquish their nuclear ambitions.
There are still important gaps to be filled; the threat from makeshift radiological weapons is one. Doubtless those seeking more comprehensive and binding commitments will be disappointed by the summit. But multilateral diplomacy is hard, and the Obama administration should be applauded for not making the perfect the enemy of the good by seeking to construct an ambitious new global architecture for nuclear security. Patient, incremental steps may not be very exciting, but they can still achieve a lot. | <urn:uuid:7560e56f-ebbd-455d-b971-fe4d1a3726e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cfr.org/proliferation/important-steps-nuclear-security/p21894 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94321 | 688 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Jimmy Westlake / Courtesy
Starry Night planetarium software predicts Comet PanSTARRS and the crescent moon could look like this low in the western sky at 8 p.m. March 13. We’ll just have to wait and see whether that actually happens.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Jimmy Westlake's Celestial News column appears Tuesdays in the Steamboat Today.
Find more columns by Westlake here.
Comet PanSTARRS (officially C/2011 L4) is bearing down on the Earth and the sun right now, coming at us from the distant Oort comet cloud on the edge of our solar system. Named for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System atop Haleakala volcano on the island of Maui, Comet PanSTARRS is the first of a potential trifecta of bright comets coming in 2013. It has the potential to become a naked-eye spectacle in March, something that we’ve not seen in the Northern Hemisphere in many years.
Because comets are made mostly of ice, the closer a comet comes to the sun, the more its ice vaporizes and the brighter the comet can get as it puffs up and grows a long tail. This comet will pass very close to the sun.
Comet PanSTARRS will pass about 100 million miles from Earth on Tuesday and then some 28 million miles from the sun’s surface March 10. That’s closer than the scalding-hot planet Mercury gets to the sun. Then it rounds the sun and moves north into our early evening sky as it heads back out to the Oort cloud.
On the evenings of March 12 and 13, Comet PanSTARRS will appear close to the thin crescent moon after sunset. If the comet survives its scrape with the sun, it might present an unforgettable view on those nights. Start scanning the western horizon early because by 8:30 p.m., the comet will have set. The prime time will be from 7:45 to 8:15 p.m. If the comet grows a long tail, it might extend up and behind the moon on March 13 and remain visible even after the head of the comet sets at 8:30 p.m.
Comet PanSTARRS spent January in the Southern Hemisphere lagging behind even the most pessimistic brightness projections. Then in mid-February, it brightened considerably and now is at the threshold of naked-eye visibility.
No one can predict accurately the behavior of a comet weeks before it arrives. Comet PanSTARRS could crumble and fizzle out as it rounds the sun, or it could hold together and briefly become one of the brightest objects in our sky. It is the unpredictable nature that makes comets so fun to watch. Enjoy it because Comet PanSTARRS won’t be back for 110,000 years.
Learn more about Comet PanSTARRS and other bright comets heading our way this year at a free astronomy night program sponsored by the Colorado Mountain College SKY Club at 7 p.m. March 6 in the CMC auditorium. If the weather is favorable, telescopes will be set up for observing after the indoor program.
Professor Jimmy Westlake teaches astronomy and physics at Colorado Mountain College’s Alpine Campus. Check out Westlake’s astrophotography website at www.jwestlake.com. | <urn:uuid:4ca87651-6168-46cd-9277-396c379474e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.steamboattoday.com/news/2013/feb/26/jimmy-westlake-get-ready-comet-panstarrs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915833 | 690 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Mysterious Planet-Size Object Spotted Near Mercury
Screenshot of object from Youtube.
CREDIT: siniXster | YouTube
On Dec. 1, a camera onboard NASA's STEREO spacecraft recorded a wave of electrically charged material shooting out from the sun and blasting Mercury. Footage of this "coronal mass ejection" (CME), as such events are called, has caught the attention of alien-hunters, who say it has unveiled a giant, "cloaked" spaceship parked near the solar system's innermost planet.
In the footage, one sees a huge spurt of plasma and other solar ejecta washing over Mercury; peculiarly, the material seems to flare up as it hits another nearby object, too. "It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked," YouTube-user siniXster said in his video commentary on the footage, which has quickly spread across the Web.
The commentator says there's "absolutely no explanation" for the nearly Mercury-size mystery object other than that it's a spaceship. "What object in space cloaks itself and doesn't appear until it gets hit by energy from the sun?" siniXster asked.
The question was meant rhetorically, but nonetheless, the video is curious, so we've put it to scientists in the solar physics branch at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) — the group that analyzes data from the Heliospheric Imager-1 (HI-1), the telescopic camera that shot the new footage.
As you might suspect, there is a non-UFO explanation of the apparent flare-up near Mercury. According to Russ Howard, head scientist of the NRL group, and Nathan Rich, lead ground systems engineer, it is simply an artifact left over from the way raw HI-1 telescope data gets processed. Rather than a UFO mothership parked near Mercury, the bright spot is "where the planet was on the previous day," Rich told Life's Little Mysteries. [A History of Recent UFO 'Sightings']
To make the relatively faint glow of a coronal mass ejection stand out against the bright glare of space — caused by interplanetary dust and the stellar/galactic background — the NRL scientists must remove as much background light as possible. They explained that they determine what light is background light, and thus can be subtracted out, by calculating the average amount of light that entered each camera pixel on the day of the CME event and on the previous day. Light appearing in the pixels on both days is considered to be background light and is removed from the footage of the CME. The remaining light is then enhanced.
This works great for objects far off in the distance, such as stars, which don't move much relative to the sun. But it gets a little trickier when trying to account for nearer objects, particularly moving ones, like planets.
"When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark (negative) artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image," Rich wrote in an email.
He noted that the bright spot disappears when the CME footage is reprocessed using pixel values from a different day — the day after the CME, for example — to remove background light, instead of pixel values from the previous day.
Those in favor of the bright spot being a cloaked UFO mothership rather than a data-processing artifact will surely point out that the spot in question is not round like the ghost of a planet, but rather sharp-edged like the Starship Enterprise.
And they have a point: A high-resolution image of the spot shows that it is composed of two roughly parallel lines. "The pixels which form the two parallel lines are where the circle from the planet and the bleeding pixels (cross-like features) overlap as it progresses across the field," Rich wrote. In other words, because Mercury moves over the course of each day, and because saturated pixels bleed light into adjacent pixels, an averaged image of Mercury from the previous day looks like two streaks, rather than an orb.
This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.
MORE FROM LiveScience.com | <urn:uuid:a5faa375-acff-4ed6-98f0-a47a076ba9f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.livescience.com/17339-cloaked-mothership-mercury-ufo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950575 | 943 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Our primary objective is to meet the growing demand for cost effective shoreline erosion repair. Because of past
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American Shoreline Restoration ASR is the leader in affordable shoreline restoration. ASR is family owned & operated and focuses mainly on Geotec Tube erosion control system installations. The Geotec Tube is installed from the water with no impact on existing landscape or property use. Geotec Tube erosion control applications include hundreds of golf courses, city, county and state governmental agencies, as well as homeowners associations, private residence and Orlando theme parks. | <urn:uuid:ba09b31c-cb0c-4c77-a30f-df84405d3e99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.erosionrepair.us/Shoreline_Erosion_Control/Shoreline_Erosion_Control.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930484 | 702 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Fulkerson Family Papers
Civil War Letters of Abram and Samuel Fulkerson
Civil War Manuscripts top level
Col. Samuel V. Fulkerson. Civil War letters and reports. All letters dated 1862
Col. Abram Fulkerson. Civil War letters
About the Collection
The papers consist of correspondence and other material relating to three members of the Fulkerson family: Samuel Vance Fulkerson (1822-1862); his brother, Abram Fulkerson, Jr. (1834-1902); and Abram's son, Samuel Vance Fulkerson (1863-1926).
Significant items are Civil War letters (March-May 1862) written by Samuel V. Fulkerson; Samuel's reports of the Battle of McDowell and the Battle of Winchester, May and June 1862; 3 wartime letters (1863; 1865) written by Samuel's brother Abram Fulkerson, two of which were written while he was a prisoner of war; and a letter of appreciation, September 1862, written by Gen. Stonewall Jackson following Samuel's death in battle. In addition to the battles mentioned above, topics include the Battles of Port Republic and Kernstown; death of Turner Ashby; refugee and civilian life; camp life; many references to Stonewall Jackson, including Samuel's assessment of his character and Abram's reflections following the General's death. Also included are biographical and genealogical material; business and financial papers of Samuel V. Fulkerson (VMI Class of 1884), Abram's son; and miscellaneous family correspondence.
Samuel V. Fulkerson, a son of Col. Abram Fulkerson, Sr. and Margaret Vance, was born in Washington County, Virginia on October 21, 1822. As a young man he undertook the study of law, and in late 1846 he obtained his license and opened a practice in southwestern Virginia. Samuel served in the United States Army during the Mexican War (1847-1848), and subsequently returned to the practice of law in Estillville and Abingdon, Virginia. In 1857 he was elected judge of the thirteenth judicial district and held this position until the beginning of the Civil War. He was a member of the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors from 1852-1854 and from 1857-1858. During the war, he served as Colonel of the 37th Virginia Infantry Regiment. Samuel was killed in the Battle of Gaines's Mill on June 26, 1862; survivors included siblings (he did not marry).
Abram Fulkerson, Jr., younger brother of Samuel V. Fulkerson, was born May 13, 1834 in Washington County, Virginia. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1857, and after a brief career as a teacher went on to study law. During the Civil War he served as Colonel of the 63rd Tennessee Infantry Regiment and was a prisoner of war (one of the "Immortal 600"). After the war he continued the practice of law and was active in politics, serving in the Virginia legislature and in the United States Congress. He married Selina Johnson, of Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1862; they had nine children, including Samuel Vance Fulkerson, VMI Class of 1884. Abram Fulkerson died at Bristol, Virginia on December 17, 1902.
Samuel V. Fulkerson, the son of Abram Fulkerson, Jr. and Selina Johnson, was born at Abingdon, Virginia on October 22, 1863. He graduated from VMI in 1884 and subsequently studied law at the University of Virginia. He was a lawyer (partner in the firm of Fulkerson and Davis in Bristol, VA) and served two terms as City Attorney. During the Spanish-American War (1898- 1899) he was a member of the Fourth Tennessee Regiment, U.S. Volunteers. Samuel married Lura Bradley of Sherman, Texas in 1904; they had twin sons, born April 1906. He died July 2, 1926 at Virginia Beach, VA; he is buried at East Hill Cemetery, Bristol, VA. | <urn:uuid:54fd8864-6e92-44b0-afd5-fc9a1abd3617> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vmi.edu/Archives/Manuscripts/00363Fulkerson/Fulkerson_Papers_Home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977964 | 841 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Seminar on the Legal Review of New Weapons, Means and Methods of Warfare
Joigny-sur-Vevey, 14-16 June 2006. Elements mentioned in the introductory statement of Yves Sandoz
1. Opening of the seminar and welcome
2. Some words on the historical background and the “raison d’être” of this Conference.
3. Historical background
3.1 - At the origin, IHL was generally considered as divided into 2 branches:
3.1.1 - What was later called “the Geneva Law”, covering the protection of people at the mercy or in the power of their enemy;
3.1.2 - What was later called “the Hague Law” concerning the humanitarian rules applicable at the conduct of hostilities
3.2 - But there are interference between these 2 categories of rules and after the massive violation of these rules during the 2nd world war, there was a trend to put them all, through a global revision, in one set of Conventions.
3.3 - The problem of the nuclear weapons was nevertheless an obstacle to the reaffirmation or development of “the Hague Law”, the USA, only possessor of such weapons, refusing to discuss of their possible interdiction and many other States refusing to discuss about those rules without including the interdiction of the nuclear weapons. The “Geneva Law” was nevertheless revised and developed in the four Geneva Conventions adopted in 1949 (in particular through the fourth Conventions concerning the civilians and through the article 3, common to the four Conventions, applicable to the non international armed conflicts).
3.4 - Nuclear weapons remained an obstacle to the revision of the “Hague Law” the followin g years, all nuclear powers refusing to discuss the matter, considering nuclear weapons as an essential element of their defence policy, based on deterrence.
3.5 - The pressure to revise and reaffirm the “Hague law” was nevertheless increasing due to war as the Vietnam one, where massive aerial bombing provoked important civilian casualties, injuries and damages. A compromise was finally found for nuclear weapons. The idea was more or less admitted that all mass destructive weapons (biological, chemical and nuclear) be dealt with in the disarmament framework and not in a humanitarian law conference, the argument being that one could not discuss only of the use of such weapons due to their strategic importance, but also of their fabrication, possession and transfer.
3.6 - This compromise allowed the elaboration and adoption of the Protocols of 1977, additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, in which was reaffirmed and developed the “Hague Law”.
3.7 - As for the weapons, there were discussions on the basic principles and rules, as well as, through experts Conferences in Lucerne and Lugano and through an ad hoc Commission of the Diplomatic Conference, on specific conventional weapons. But the Conference finally decided to limit itself to adopt the basic principles and rules, and to send the material collected on specific weapons to another Conference, under the UN auspices.
3.8 - The Diplomatic Conference discussed in addition the eventual introduction of an international mechanism to review new weapons but no agreement could be found on such a mechanism. In the other hand, an article could be introduced on the obligation on the national level to examining the legality of new means or methods or warfare (art. 36 of additional Protocol I).
3.9 - A UN conference on the interdiction and limitation of conventional weapons was then convened and could adopt the 1980 Convention on prohibi tions or restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons and three Protocols. This Convention has the advantage to have a supple review mechanism and to permit to easily add new Protocols to limit or restrict the use of new weapons. It does function, the Convention and one Protocol having been revised and 2 new Protocols having been introduced through review Conferences in 1995, 1995, 2001 and 2003.
3.10 - In addition, many states, disappointed by the results obtained through the revision in 1995 of the Protocol II (mines, booby traps and other devices) of the 1980 Convention, decided to convey an ad hoc Conference “on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personal Mines and on their Destruction”, with the perspective to abolish this cruel means of warfare. This Conference, largely supported by the civil society (NGO’s, media, public opinion) was successful. A Convention on this subject was adopted then signed in Oslo in 1997 and is today ratified by more than 150 States.
4. “Raison d’être” of the Conference
4.1 - The permanent review of the means of warfare is essential: as we know, a great part of the research budget is devoted to military research; and there are anyway very often possible military applications of any scientific discovery.
4.2 - It is therefore important that States take seriously their duty to determine the legality of the means of warfare at their disposal; which they develop themselves; or which they envisage to acquire.
4.3 - In this perspective, a dialog between States on the implementation of art.36, the mechanism and procedures which exist (or which do not exist) in the different States is deemed very useful in order to exchange experiences and to increase the consciousness of the importance of such procedures and mechanisms and to further develop them.
4.4 - Such dialog bet ween States may also be a starting point on the development on new norms at the international level: it is important for a State which deems a means of warfare to be illegal to share its concern with other States in order to avoid its proliferation and to envisage its international ban.
5. Role of the ICRC
5.1 - The ICRC, active in warfare situations, has been very early preoccupied by the development of very cruel or indiscriminate means of warfare. It sent in particular an appeal to abolish chemical and biological weapons after the Second World War and another one to express its deep concern after the use of nuclear weapons, at the end of the Second World War. The international Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has also adopted numerous resolutions on the matter and shared its concern with Governments in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Conferences.
5.2 - The ICRC has in addition a specific mandate, given to it by the Statute of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, to “work for the understanding and dissemination of knowledge or international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflicts and to prepare any development thereof”.
5.3 - It is in this framework that it tries to give impulsions and to promote dialog and discussions between scientific and governmental experts on delicate humanitarian law issues.
5.4 - More precisely on the subject matter of this seminar – the legal review of new weapons, means and methods of warfare – it is worth mentioning that, among other initiatives, that the ICRC has supported and encouraged since 1996 the the SIrUS (Superfluous Injury or Unnecessary Suffering) project aiming at finding objective criteria, among the medical profession, to define this notion; has already organized a seminar in 2001 on the subject matter of the present seminar; and has established on the beginning of this year the Guide to the legal review of new weapons, means and methods of warfare which you have received and is going to be introduced to you.
5.5 - The ICRC regrets, at this stage, not to have received information from the great majority of States on their review mechanism on means and methods of warfare. Conscious of the importance for States to make a serious effort in this field, the ICRC will continue in the coming years to encourage dialog between States and to help them to fulfil their obligation to establish a review mechanism. It has already planed Conferences in Latin America and in Asia.
5.6 - The present seminar is part of this global effort.
6. Thanks for coming, for your precious contributions and for your interest in this seminar. Hope for fruitful discussions and dynamic dialog. | <urn:uuid:8f6005b9-9e1d-45e9-8e00-a7eefac8ffda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/statement/new-weapon-statement-160606.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953667 | 1,672 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Jordanes, Or Jornandes
gothic history goths rebus cassiodorius life geticis century italy probably
JORDANES, or JORNANDES, the historian of the Gothic nation, flourished about the middle of the 6th century- of 'the Christian era.' All that we certainly know about his life is contained in three sentences of his history of the Goths (cap. 50), from which, among other particulars as to the history of his family, we learn that his grandfather Peria was notary to Candac, the chief of a confederation of Alans and other tribes settled during the latter half of the 5th century on the south of the Danube in the provinces which are now Bulgaria and the Dobrudscha. Jordanes himself was a notary until he renounced his worldly calling and took the vows of a monk. This, according to the manner of speaking of that day, is 'the meaning of his words "ante conversionem mean)," though it is quite possible that he may at the same time have renounced the Arian creed of his forefathers, which it is clear that he no longer held when he wrote his Gothic history.
It is probable that the latter part at any rate of the life of Jordanes was spent in Italy. In some early editions of his works lie is called " episcopus Ravennas," but the ample details which we possess as to the bishops of Ravenna make it certain that he never occupied that see. He may have been a bishop, but the best authority for that assertion (according to the statement in Muratori's Berton lialicarmn Scriptores, i. 189) is only Sigebert of Gembloux, who lived five centuries later. Traces have been discovered of a certain Jordanes, bishop of Crotona, in 551, and a "Jordanes defensor ecclesire nostrre " is mentioned in a letter of Pope Pelagius iu 556.
We pass from the extremely shadowy personality of Jordanes to the more interesting question of his works.
The De Regnorum et Temporotnt Successione, or, as he himself called it, Breviatio Chronicorum, was probably composed in 550 or 551. It is a short and dry sketch of the history of the world from the creation, founded on the chronicles of Ensebins and Jerome. The book has no value, literary or historical, till the historian comes near to his own times ; and here, from about 450 to 550, the De P.egnorum Successions is sometimes a really important authority, owing to the extreme scarcity of other information as to this epoch."
The other work of Jordanes, De Rebus Geticis, as it is commonly called, was styled by himself De Origins Actuque Geticx Geniis, and was probably written in the year 552. He informs us that while he was engaged upon the Breviatio a friend named Castalius invited him to compress into one small treatise the twelve books - now lost - of the senator Cassiodorius, or Cassiodorus, on The Origin and Actions of the Goths. Jordanes professes to have had the work of Cassiodorius in his hands for but three days, and to reproduce the sense, not the words ; but his book, short as it is, evidently contains long verbatim extracts from the earlier author, and it may be suspected that the story of the " triduana lectio " and the apology " quamvis verba non recolo," possibly even the friendly invitation of Castalius, are mere blinds to cover his own entire want of originality. This suspicion is .strengthened by the fact (discovered by Von Sybel) that even the very preface to his book is taken almost word for word from Rufinus's translation of Origen's commentary ou the epistle to the Romans. There is no doubt, even on Jordanes's own statements, that Ids work is based upon that of Cassiodorius, and that any historical worth which it possesses is due to that fact. Cassiodorius was one of the very few men who, Roman by birth and sympathies, could yet appreciate the greatness of the barbarians by whom the empire was overthrown. The chief adviser of Theodoric, the East Gothic king in Italy, he accepted with ardour that monarch's great scheme, if indeed be did not himself originally suggest it to his master, of welding Roman and Goth together into one harmonious state, which should preserve the social refinement and the intellectual culture of the Latin-speaking races, without losing the hardy virtues of their Teutonic conquerors. To this aim everything in the political life of Cassiodorius was subservient, and this aim he evidently kept before him in his Gothic history. He translated into his somewhat stilted prose the sagas which were still sung by the Gothic warriors round their camp-fires,1 telling of the past migrations and dangers of their people. He reduced into form the pedigree which traced the descent of the Amals, Theodoric's kingly house, from gods and heroes. In all this he worked on such lines as a modern historical inquirer would have him work on. Unfortunately, he also accepted the current theory of his age which identified the Goths with the Scythians, whose country Darius Hystaspis invaded, and with the Getm of Dacia whom Trajan conquered. Tins double identification enabled him to bring the favoured race in line with the people of classical antiquity, to interweave with their history stories about Hercules and the Amazons, to make them invade Egypt, to claim for them a share in the wisdom of the semi-mythical Scythian philosopher Zamolxis. He was thus able with some show of plausibility to represent the Goths as " wiser than all the other barbarians and almost like the Greeks" (Jord., De Reb. Get., cap. v.), and to send a son of the Gothic king Telephus to fight at the siege of Troy, on the eight side, in rank with the ancestors of the Romans. All this we can now perceive to have no relation to history, but .at the R time it may have made the subjugation of the Roman less bitter to feel that he was not after all bowing down before a race of barbarian upstarts, but that his Amal sovereign was as firmly rooted in classical antiquity as any Julius or Claudius who ever wore the purple. A grateful king of the Goths, the young Athalaric, truly said of Cassiodorius, " Originem Gothicam historian fecit esse Romanam, colligens quasi in unam coronam germen floriclum, quod per librorum campos passim fuerat ante dispersant"(Cassiod., Var. ix. 25).
Cassiodorins completed his history of the Goths probably about the year 531. In the eighteen years which elapsed between that date and the composition of the De Rebus Geticis of Jordanes, great events, and most disastrous fur the Romano-Gothic monarchy of Theodoric, had transpired. It was no longer possible to write as if the whole civilization of the Western world would sit down contentedly under the shadow of East Gothic dominion and Amal sovereignty. And moreover, the instincts of Jordanes, as churchman and Catholic, predisposed him to flatter the sacred majesty of Justinian, by whose victorious arms the overthrow of the barbarian kingdom in Italy had been effected. Hence we perceive two currents of tendency in the De Rebus Geticis. On the one hand, as a Goth himself and as a transcriber of the philoGoth Cassiodorius, he magnifies the race of Alaric and Theodoric, and claims for them their full share, perhaps more than their full share, of glory in the past. On the other hand, he speaks of the great anti-Teuton emperor Justinian, and of his reversal of the German conquests of the 5th century, in language which would certainly have grated on the ears of Totila and his heroes. Gelimer the Vandal is " overtaken by the revenge of Justinian," and Africa " long subject to the Vandal yoke is recalled into the liberty of the Roman kingdom." When Ravenna is taken, and Vitigis carried into captivity, Jordanes almost exults in the fact that " the nobility of the Amals and the illustrious offspring of so many mighty men have surrendered to a yet more illustrious prince and a yet mightier general, whose fame shall not grow dim through all the centuries."
This laudation, both of the Goths and of their Byzantine conquerors may perhaps help us to understand the political motive with which the De Rebus Geticis was written. In the year 551 Germanus, nephew of Justinian, accompanied by his bride, Matasuntha, granddaughter of Theodoric, set forth to reconquer Italy for the empire. His early death (in 552) prevented any schemes for a revived Romano-Gothic kingdom which may have been based on his personality. His widow, however, bore a posthumous child, also named Germanus, of whom Jordanes speaks (cap. 60) as " blending the blood of the Anicii and the Amals, and furnishing a hope under the divine blessing of one clay uniting their glories." This younger Germanus did nothing in after life to realize these anticipations ; but the somewhat pointed way.in which his name and his mother's name are mentioned by Jordanes lends some probability to the idea that the De Rebus Geticis was put forth in the interests of a third party, Italian rather than Gothic or Byzantine, and possibly headed by Pope Vigilius, who may have wished to advocate the claims of this infant to an independent sovereignty in Italy.
The De Rebus Getieis falls naturally into four parts. The first (chaps. i. - xiii.) commences with a geographical description of the three quarters of the world, and in more detail of Britain and "Seanzia" (Sweden), from which the Goths under their king Berig migrated to the southern coast of the Baltic. Their migration across what has since been called Lithuania, to the shores of the Euxine, and their differentiation into Visigoths and Ostrogoths, follow. Chaps. v. - xiii. contain an account of the intrusive GctoScythian element before alluded to.
The second section (chaps. xiv.- xxiv.) returns to the true history of ' the Gothic nation, sets forth the genealogy of the Atrial kings, and describes the inroads of the Goths into the Homan empire in the 3d century, with the foundation and the overthrow of the great but somewhat shadowy kingdom of Hermanric. The author here probably rests to sonic extent on °rosins, Ammianus, and other Latin historians, but draws partially at least from native sources.
The third section (chaps. xxv. - xlvii.) traces the history of the West Goths from the Hunnish invasion to the downfall of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul under Alarie II. (376 to 507 A.D.). The best part of this section, and indeed of the whole book, is the seven chapters devoted to Attila's invasion of Gaul and the battle of the Mauriac plains. Here we have in all probability a verbatim extract from Cassiodorius, who has interwoven with his narrative large portions of the Gothic sagas. The celebrated expression " certaminis gaudia " assuredly carne at first neither from the suave minister Cassiodorius nor from the small-souled notary Jordanes, but is the translation of some thought which first found utterance through the lips of a Gothic minstrel.
The fourth section (chaps. xlviii. - lx.) traces the history of the East Goths from the same Hunnish invasion to the first overthrow of the Gothic monarchy in Italy (376-539). In this fourth section are inserted, somewhat out of their proper place, some valuable details as to the Gothi Minores, " an immense people dwelling in the region of Nicopolis, with their high priest and primate Vulfilas, who • is said also to have taught them letters." The book closes with the allusion to Germanus and the panegyric on Justinian as the conqueror of the Goths referred to above.
As to the style and literary character of Jordanes, every author who has used him speaks in terms of severe censure. When he is left to himself and not merely transcribing, he is sometimes scarcely grammatical. There are awkward gaps in his narrative and statements inconsistent with each other. He quotes, as if he were familiarly acquainted with their writings, about twenty Greek and Roman writers, of whom it is almost certain that he had not read more than three or four. At the same time he does not quote the chronicler 31arcellinus, from whom he has copied verbatim the history of the deposition of Augustulus. All these faults make him a peculiarly unsatisfactory authority to depend upon where we cannot check his statements by those of other authors. It may, however, be pleaded in extenuation that he is professedly a transcriber, and, if his story be correct, a transcriber under peculiarly unfavourable circumstances. He has also himself suffered much from the inaccuracy of copyists. But nothing has really been more unfortunate for the reputation of Jordanes as a writer than the extreme preciousness of the information which he has preserved to us. The Teutonic tribes whose dim original lie records have in the course of centuries attained to world-wide dominion. The battle in the Alauriae plains, of which he is really the sole historian, is now seen to have had at least as important hearings on the destinies of the world as Marathon or -Waterloo. And thus the hasty pamphlet of a half-educated Gothic monk has been forced into prominence, almost into rivalry with the finished productions of the great writers of classical antiquity. No wonder that it stands the comparison badly ; but with all its faults the De Rebus Geticis of Jordanes will probably ever retain its place side by side with the De Moribus Gennanoruin of Tacitus, as a chief source of information respecting the history, institutions, and modes of thought of our Teutonic forefathers.
mamrser2;ats. - The chief MSS. of the De Rebus Geticis are one at Heidelberg of the 8th century and one at the Vatican of the ilOth, one at Milan, two of the 11th and 12th centuries at Vienna, and one of the 12th century at Munich. Unfortunately the Heidelberg and Vienna MSS. perished in the fire at Prof. Mommsen's house, but not before he had accurately collated them.
Editions. - The editio princeps of the De Rebus Geticis was published by Pen-linger, at Augsburg, 1515. Two of the best known editions are those in Mu•atori's Reruns Italicarum Scriptores, vat. i. (which gives Garet's text collated by J. A. Saxe with the Ambresian MS., and which also contains the De liegnorunt Successione), and in Grotins's Historic Gotthortint, Votndalorunn, et Langobardornm, Amsterdam, 1635. A new edition is expected fromProfessor Momm,en. Literature. - The foregoing article is chiefly founded on Von Sybel's essay, De fontibus Jordanis (1888), Sehlrren's De ratione earn inter Jordanent of Cassiedurum interceded Connnentatio, Dorpat, 1858; Kopko's Die Anfiinge des Konigthorns tel den Gothen, Berlin, 1859; Dahn's Die .10nige der Gerntance, vol. ii., Munich, 1081; Ebert's Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatar, Leipsie, 1874; and Wattenbach's Deutschland's Geschichtsguellen int Mittetatter, Berlin, 1877. (T. H.) JORTIN„TOHN (1698-1770), a writer on theological subjects, was the son of a Protestant refugee from Brittany, and was born in London 23d October 1698. In his tenth year he entered Charterhouse school, and in 1715 he became a pensioner of Jesus College, Cambridge, where his reputation as a Greek scholar led the classical tutor of his college to select him to translate certain passages from Eustathius for the use of Pope in his translation of Homer. He graduated B.A. in 1719 and M.A. in 1722. In the latter year he published a small volume of Latin verse entitled Lucite Poetici. Having received priest's orders in 1724, he was in 1726 presented by his college to the vicarage of Swavesey in Cambridgeshire, an appointment which he resigned in 1730 to become preacher of a chapel in New Street, London. In 1731, along with some friends, he began a publication entitled Miscellaneous Observations on Authors Ancient and Modern, which appeared at intervals durina.° two years. In 1737 he was presented to the vicarage ofEastwell in Kent, and in 1751 he became rector of St Dunstan's-in-the-East. Shortly after becoming chaplain to the bishop of London in 1762, he was appointed to a prebendal stall of St Paul's, and to the vicarage of Kensington, and in 1764 he was made archdeacon of London. He died at Kensington, September 5, 1770.
The principal works of Jortin are Discussions Concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion, 1746 ; Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, 1751 ; Life of Erasmus, 2 vols., 1750, 1760, founded on the life by Le Clerc, but containing a large amount of new matter ; and Tracts Philological, Critical, and Miscellaneous, 1790. All his works display great learning and some acuteness both of research and criticism, but though written in a livelystyle they do not bear that stamp of originality which confers permanent interest. See Disney's Life of Joplin, 1792; and the "Account of his Life and Writings " prefixed to an edition of the Remarks on Ecclesiastical History published in 1816. | <urn:uuid:b8e5fbee-89d3-4e14-abde-ddd78ac61f2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.libraryindex.com/encyclopedia/pages/cpxlgeh3ad/jordanes-jornandes-gothic-history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967612 | 3,941 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Maya Deren (1917–1961) is regarded as one of the first important American experimental filmmakers. To coincide with a series of film screenings at Tate Modern, Marina Warner explores her oeuvre, including her study of voodoo in Haiti, and examines how Deren managed ‘the profound affinity between the material properties of film and inner states of mind’.
Towards the end of her book Divine Horsemen (1953), her passionate study of voodoo, the filmmaker Maya Deren describes how the goddess Erzulie descended on her and took possession of her in the course of a ritual ceremony in Haiti. When Deren decided to go to the island, her initial idea had been to stage a series of dances inspired by its rhythms and the religion of the islanders, but this plan was eclipsed almost immediately and a deeper involvement began. She stopped behaving like a distant, controlling auteur and impresario and became a participant. For this she has been criticised: yet her merging with the rituals completed the aesthetic fusion between film, art, dance and sacred ceremony that began with her experimental – “choreocinematic” - shorts made in the 1940s in New York and Los Angeles.
All in all, over the course of three visits, Deren spent eighteen months in Haiti between 1947 and 1952 and eventually accumulated 18,000 feet (5,486 metres) of film taken with her hand-held Bolex. The projected film was never made; after her death in 1961, her last husband, the composer Teijo Ito, and later his widow, Cherel, edited the footage in 1977 into the documentary Divine Horsemen: Living Gods of Haiti. The Itos’ film has been criticised for abandoning Deren’s highly innovatory, poetic cinematic aesthetic and making instead a kind of National Geographic documentary, unfolding to a didactic voiceover about the gods of voodoo (these taken from passages in Deren’s book). But this posthumous montage still reveals the hypnotic windings of her slow motion cinematography as she and her camera mingled with the entranced worshippers. Her images flare from over-exposure to the luminescence of the ritual’s symbolic white - the heat shimmer from the sea, the participants’ dresses, the death throe flutterings of the sacrificial birds, the offerings of flowers and flags and food radiate and blaze in the tropical light.
During a ceremony described at the end of her book, Erzulie began to “ride” Maya Deren. According to the erotic metaphor of voodoo possession, a deity “mounts” the entranced dancer as a rider seizes hold of a reluctant horse and overcomes the spirit of the animal (Zora Neale Hurston’s account of Haiti in 1937 is called Tell My Horse). “This is it!” writes Deren, as she evokes the dramatic scene when she became possessed. “Resting upon that leg I feel a strange numbness enter it from the earth itself and mount, within the very marrow of the bone, as slowly and richly as sap might mount the trunk of a tree. I say numbness, but that is inaccurate. To be precise,I must say what, even to me, is pure recollection, but not otherwise conceivable: I must call it a white darkness, its whiteness a glory, and its darkness, terror.”
A mystical oxymoron, this “white darkness” envelops Deren until she loses all consciousness of self: “The white darkness moves up the veins of my leg like a swift tide rising, rising; it is a great force which I cannot sustain or contain, which, surely, will burst my skin. It is too much, too bright, too white for me; this is its darkness.’Mercy!’ I scream within me. I hear it echoed by the voices, shrill and unearthly: ‘Erzulie!’ The bright darkness floods up through my body, reaches my head, engulfs me. I am sucked down and exploded upward at once. That is all.”
The pantheon of Haiti is “living” not because the gods and goddesses are immortals like classical deities, but because they are living archetypes, reincarnated during the rituals through the men and women they ride. Her own alter ego, Erzulie, is “above all, the Goddess of Love”, she explains, a voodoo Virgin Mary whose cult requires lavish offerings of perfume and flowers and even champagne from some of the poorest communities on earth; she is beautiful, sometimes tender, sometimes capricious, a diva, a femme fatale, “a Lady of Luxury”, a star. Those she possesses are made in her image, and move with her grace: “Her every gesture, movement of eyes and smile is a masterpiece of beguiling coquetry,” Deren explains.
Maya Deren’s narcissism remains throughout beguilingly unaware: she writes that Erzulie also manifests herself as “a cosmic tantrum” (and the filmmaker was well-known for her wilful, tough independence, which famously made her erupt). Such projection can’t help but make the reader smile. Deren was a legendary photogenic beauty, with a cloud of red hair, pale complexion and firm, rounded body, and the many celebrated photographs of her taken by Alexander Hammid, her second husband, show how carefully and well he had looked at the lighting and composition of André Kertész and Man Ray (like himself émigrés from central Europe). Deren was his Kiki de Montparnasse, and her self-fashioned charisma powerfully enhances her screen presence. Her “glamour” – to be taken in the strong sense of magic power – still inspires: in a recent issue of Strange Attractor, the writer and film historian Kevin Jackson ingeniously shuffles the letters of her name to come up with ten mystical anagrams (An Ayre Dame to Me Day Near).
During the first half of the twentieth century, the quest for understanding of the interior structure of the psyche inspired the travels of anthropologists far and wide, and the various European concepts of the unconscious were profoundly shaped by contact with cultures in the non-West, which were perceived to be authentic, unadulterated, inspired and fertile. Artists and philosophers travelled with the ethnographers, sometimes in their armchairs, but sometimes not. Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris founded an institution – the Collège de Sociologie – in 1937 in Paris to study the sacred in different societies. Among these Haiti was pre-eminent, one of the most compelling sites of sacred arts. Furthermore, as a colony of France and more recently a protectorate of the United States, the island was less forbiddingly inaccessible geographically and socially than Borneo, Papua New Guinea, or other loci of Surrealist and primitivist curiosity. (Undercover Surrealism at the Hayward Gallery, London, last year, unfolded thoughtfully the fascination of Bataille and his friends in the journal Documents with the music, dances, masks and other aesthetic expression of non-European cultures).
Besides Hurston, several other go-betweens in the late 1930s and early 1940s reported from Haiti, exciting widespread curiosity in the United States and Europe: the maverick William B. Seabrook (The Magic Island, 1929) told of his experiences with priests and priestesses, the different trance states the rituals induced and the spells that could command the will and behaviour of others. Seabrook became friends with Man Ray and others in Surrealist circles, and his book inspired the early films about Caribbean cults and magic, such as White Zombie (1932). However, even more significantly for Deren’s career as a film-maker, the pioneering choreographer and dancer Katherine Dunham was creating a series of dramatic and highly popular shows focusing on the migration from Africa of the gods of voodoo, the vigour in the region’s rituals, their high octane potency and the richness of the accompanying arts. L’Ag’Ya (1938) staged a fight in a shanty town; Shango (1945) explored the old connection between the Caribbean and the faith of west Africa. During the most active period of Deren’s experimental film-making, she was working as Dunham’s publicist and PA, or general Girl Friday, and it was with the choreographer’s encouragement and contacts, and with backing from the Rockefeller Foundation (the first time such an award was given to creative work in the cinema), that she followed her to find inspiration in Haiti. Celluloid would capture permanently the exuberance and ecstasy Dunham’s dancers reproduced in theatrical performance and which, when they played in London in 1948, intoxicated the post-war audiences with their “speed and animal primitiveness”, as one critic wrote.
When Deren was working for Dunham, she was still in her twenties, and had already lived through different identities in various worlds: her family were refugees from the Ukraine, leaving Kiev when she was five; her father was a psychiatrist, and she went to school in Switzerland before settling in America. There she changed her name from Eleonora Derenkovsky, and took the name Maya, the Indian goddess of illusion. While on tour in California with the Dunham company in 1943, she began making Meshes of the Afternoon, an enigmatic and menacing dream of sexual knowledge in which she appears with her own double and her own double’s double. Apparitions of a flower, a knife, a key and a mirror (later broken) intensify the Surrealist dream symbolism of the piece. In several ways its theme echoes another cinema experiment of those years, Hans Richter’s botched but fascinating full-colour movie Dreams That Money Can Buy, which he began filming in New York in 1944. Dreams features Marcel Duchamp, as does a short called Witch’s Cradle, which Deren began making the same year (her first venture), filming the French artist in exile as he moved through Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery, The Art of This Century, in New York. This film initiated Deren’s weaving together of art, dance and magic significance; she called Guggenheim’s artworks “cabalistic symbols”.
Meshes is prized in the story of cinema, and its highly wrought aesthetic explores the full poetic and interior expressiveness of the medium through the signature elements of Deren’s film style: extreme angles of view, exquisite composition in high contrast of light and shadow, sensitivity to the texture and sheen of things, unabashed artifice in the editing to enhance the camera’s dance-like movements, enigmatic symbols in brooding close-up. Music is layered in to accompany the camera and heighten the sensual mood of foreboding, rather than identify effects of the action as a narrative. Above all, the action works back and forth over itself, accompanying the vagaries of obsession, feeling and memory, rather than unfolding in linear progress a plotted story. “Caught in Deren’s ‘mesh’,”writes Catherine Fowler, “time is frozen, replayed, remembered, reordered and foreshadowed.”Deren calls this “vertical” rather than “horizontal” time, and wrote a manifesto setting out her principles in An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film.
In the miniature (four minutes only) A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), featuring Talley Beatty, a wiry male dancer from the Dunham troupe, Derenmanages some very adroit matching cuts to create visionary effects of soaring and weightlessness in a style that would eventually return full-blown in the colossal spectaculars of our time (Crouching Tiger,Hidden Dragon). For a shot set in a museum, Beatty spins so fast his head multiplies, echoing the triple-headed statue of Buddha behind him. A more complex film that followed, Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), features another Dunham dancer, Rita Christiani, who had played in Meshes. Ritual fuses dance with cinema as a metaphor for the secret self in enigmatic relation to society: Deren stages a party as a kind of avant-garde reel of alienation, or an existentialist Strip the Willow, as Christiani weaves her way through a milling throng of party-goers and the camera moves with her.
Maya Deren was 44 when she died, possibly of a mixture of drugs and malnutrition (some claimed magic had something to do with it). Katherine Dunham survived her until last year – while Eartha Kitt, who is now in her eighties and was dancing in Dunham’s troupe in the 1940s, is throwing high kicks on the London stage as I write. In interviews, Dunham was sad that Deren herself and her posthumous cult have taken such small account of their productive alliance in the 1940s, and that instead Deren has been cast as a unique femme fatale, high priestess, muse and La Pasionaria of independent, experimental film. This image has generally succeeded in effacing the important artistic contexts which enfolded and fostered her - among which should feature the Afro-Caribbean dance movement led by Dunham.
Yet Deren’s self-fashioning does, however, have a genuine basis in one significant aspect: she realised the profound affinity between the material properties of film and inner states of the mind, including trance. She borrowed from the early “trick” films and magical entertainments of pioneers such as Georges Méliès, but she put the devices to use as mirrors of dream states, reverie and altered minds. Wipes and fades, matching cuts and negative stock, slow motion and blurred contours to the frame - all communicate very effectively the way thoughts and images come and go in “the movie-in-the-mind”, as António Damásio has called consciousness. In voodoo, Deren found an organised, collective stimulus to extreme mental states that already fascinated her. Unlike Hurston’s wary description of Haitian beliefs or the unleashed exuberance of Dunham and her performers, Deren’s camera spreads a “white darkness” on her subjects: by enhancing film’s qualities of spirit-like transparency, she etherealises the voodoo rites, turning the celebrants into angelically transparent luminous beings and the island into a paradise of light and air. There is no blood of sacrifice or squawking of the fowl as they are strangled: only the white feathers whirling, like cherubim.
The last film she completed, The Very Eye of Night (1952–8), picks up the metaphor of light in darkness, and gives it literal form. Working with the Metropolitan Ballet School and the choreographer Anthony Tudor, she blacked up the dancers, sheathed them in black costumes, and then shot them on negative stock against a white field, punctured with stars. The dancers are cast in an undeveloped Blakean cosmic plot; their movements are compelling as the ground disappears and they fly, white on black like silhouettes in reverse, unmoored by flesh or weight – Gnostic angels.
The making of The Very Eye of Night was beset with problems, and the film was not a success at the time. But its ambitions look very good now. It was included in the fascinating exhibition ‘The Expanded Eye’, held in the Kunsthaus, Zurich, last summer, as one of several kinetic and graphic experiments with film itself. Deren’s truth to materials and to medium as an artist using film has given her a crucial part to play at a time when the deceptions of realism have become an ethical issue as well as a stale aesthetic. “In film I can make the world dance,” she wrote; and she did. | <urn:uuid:8e0ab79e-87c2-44ae-adce-d229a9fcf94d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/dancing-white-darkness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957781 | 3,401 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Lew-Port faculty member returns from Chinaby jmaloni
by Janet Schultz
At Tuesday's Lewiston-Porter Board of Education session Lew-Port music instructor Kevin Duncan presented the board with an overview of his 10-week teaching exchange to China.
Duncan taught music and some English at Lewiston-Porter's sister school, Tianjin No. 2. He explained that this particular school is highly competitive, as are most schools in China.
A typical school day in China is longer than those in the U.S. Classes are 45 minutes long with eight class periods. Once those periods are over, there are study periods the students participate in. They get an hour and half for lunch and there are about 15 minute breaks between classes.
"Most students are in school until 11 or 12 at night," said Duncan. "It's more lengthy than we are used to."
Each classroom has 45 to 60 students and classes are taught lecture style. The students take notes, memorize the material and then regurgitate it back. Another difference between U.S. schools and Chinese is that the students stay in one room and the teachers change.
They have no sports, music or clubs, so their socialization is found mainly in the classroom.
Going to school is an obligation and privilege that is taken very seriously by the students, Duncan explained.
"Chinese youth are expected to take care of their parents in retirement, and in order to do so they must do well in school," he continued. "This is a pressure that is put on them."
Students are told that if they don't do well, there are hundreds of others who will.
Duncan taught American folk music to seventh, eighth and 10th grade students. He also found his Chinese students were very tuned in to American popular music. However, they didn't understand the songs or what they meant or how they were produced, but that they "knew that song," he observed.
Duncan's experience living in China came as no surprise. He had visited the country last year and was aware of where he would be living, what his day would be like and what the food was. He was surprised at the number of Westerners living and teaching in China.
He also had the opportunity to travel and visited several cities, including Xian and Beijing. He saw the Terracotta Soldiers, Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square and the Fragrant Hills, where the Chinese go to see the leaves in the fall.
"I felt very safe just jumping on a train and traveling," said Duncan. "I had my translation book with me and headed head first into it."
Duncan explained that the experience was both life- and career-changing as it put the educational system in both countries into perspective for him.
It has also given him the opportunity to have open discussions with his Lew-Port students on China.
Later this semester, a group of students from China will visit Lew-Port for a week. Host families are needed for this exchange, said Lew-Port High School Principal Paul Casseri. Anyone interested should contact Casseri at the high school at 286-7263 or 286-7264. | <urn:uuid:c98fa80f-326b-4bee-9457-6815a9c68ed1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wnypapers.com/news/article/current/2011/01/22/101497/lew-port-faculty-member-returns-from-china | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987724 | 655 | 1.734375 | 2 |
May 23 –June 29, 2012
Kukje Gallery is very pleased to present a unique historical exhibition of Louise Bourgeois sculptures. Titled Personages, this will be Bourgeois’ fifth solo exhibition at the Gallery since her first show in 2002. The current exhibition also marks the first show in Korea after her passing in 2010 at the age of 99. Bourgeois is widely celebrated as one of the twentieth century’s most important artists and her studio practice was characterized by an unwavering commitment to experimentation and multimedia work. She mastered genres as diverse as sculpture, drawing, installation and textiles—an eclecticism that both defines her genius and makes her significant formal and historical contributions defy easy categorization. The exhibition features early work created by Bourgeois from the 1940s through the early 1950s, with a focus on the eponymously named totemic works known as Personages.
The Personages were first shown as an environmental installation at the Peridot Gallery in New York City, in 1949 and in subsequent exhibitions there in 1950 and 1953. Free standing and life sized, these uncanny anthropomorphic works are a haunting symbolic representation of the artist’s family and friends whom she left behind in Paris when she moved to New York in 1938. The anxieties and emotional void she felt as a new wife, mother, and as a young artist in a strange city, are all embodied by these surrogate works. Described by Bourgeois as her first mature artistic effort, the Personages firmly established her as an important sculptor in post-war America.
Louise Bourgeois’ Personages sculptures are largely separated into two distinct groups. The early sculptures are characterized by simple and concise shapes that were sculpted from a single wood block, while the later works, made in the 1950s, developed into more structurally complex forms with repetitive shapes that resemble a modular armature and create a sense of dynamic movement. Bourgeois deliberately displayed her sculptures directly on the ground rejecting the more conservative traditional solution of using a pedestal. By presenting the works without a base, Bourgeois wanted to make vertically assertive objects in space with which the viewer could engage directly. Walking around these tall, upright, anthropomorphic sculptures, viewers both experience the physical materiality of the objects and, more importantly, relate to the sculptures within the space.
This exhibition aims to broaden the knowledge of Bourgeois’ artistic evolution by showing some of her early iconic works in addition to a single installation from her later, better known series, Cells. The Cells series explores reoccurring themes often found in Bourgeois’ works such as the meaning of “family” and “home”. Using a combination of body parts and found objects, the artist represents the complexity of domestic relationships by creating theatrical installations that alternate between benevolent feelings of protection and more ominous fears of oppression. The work’s title Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles À Vendre (2006) refers to the traditional song of the street peddlers Bourgeois remembered from her childhood growing up in France. Despite this fond memory, the work’s constituent elements are unsettling: flesh-colored forms hang within a wire mesh cage evoking flayed skins or prolapsed morphologically indeterminate body parts.
About the Artist
Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois was one of the most important modern artists and her work bridges both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her first retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1982. Since then, she exhibited in major museums around the world and was awarded the Lion d’Or at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. Bourgeois’ work can be found in major international museums and collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London and Centre Pompidou, Paris. A comprehensive, full-career retrospective of her work was organized by the Tate Modern, London and travelled to various institutions in Europe and the US from 2007 to 2009. | <urn:uuid:91cedae2-489e-4eca-89b3-3d563e9c0ba7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artnet.com/galleries/exhibitions.asp?gid=633&cid=266659 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960866 | 838 | 1.78125 | 2 |
It appears to be official - the definition of autism will change soon
. The article itself doesn't have any specifics, but this article
says the proposed definition at the time was "...the person would have to exhibit 3 deficits in social interaction and communication and at least 2 repetitive behaviors, a much narrower menu." For a fuller breakdown of what repetitive behaviors qualify, you can go here.
Before I get to the rest of this blog post, I recommend if you have any concerns over whether or not you or someone you know would have problems in the new definition, you call your physician/pediatrician/neurologist or whoever gave the diagnosis of autism and talk to them. I also recommend you stay calm - I would bet they're getting swamped right now. Good luck.
I don't know how we'll be affected yet. Taking my own advice, I've got some calls in to various people and will get more information and see how we need to go from there. I don't know how my wife's support group will be affected either. As with much in this life - my particular one and in general - it's a wait a see situation.
It's worrying, of course. If Xan is decided to not be autistic, I kinda don't think the banishing of the diagnosis will remove his problems in turn, POOF! - like changing a book's contents by switching the dust jacket. He'll still be very nonverbal, still be sensitive to sounds, still have his issues both obvious and obscure. He just may not be able to access materials to help him with that and be in a class that can allow for his situation.
In short, changing what they say he is won't change anything about who he is.
It's sad to realize and know that in that classic self-test of "describe yourself", for him, 'autistic' will probably be high on the list if not the first word that comes to mind if he could answer. Sad, but necessary, because to a great extent it does define him, his troubles, his frustrations, his special needs that we have to be aware of and adjust for and be ready to help with. Perhaps some families choose to ignore, or maybe lie, about that first word in their child's definition, using excuses like 'they'll grow out of it' or 'just a phase' or 'everyone's got some quirks'. I would hope not, but maybe some people use the definition of autism as an excuse or a chance to game the system. In some cases perhaps this new DSM definition will winnow out people like the hopefully fictional character on Glee
, of whom I was not particularly impressed nor offended, which would not be the case for anyone trying to game the system by spreading the meaning of autism so thin you could read through it.
While I worry about what the change may have in store for us, one thing I don't want to do is make his MAIN definition be 'autistic' for anyone else who chooses to describe him. I prefer it to be brilliant, for being able to do so much and be so smart with everything he has to go through. Or strong, for being able to function, if imperfectly at times and badly at others, even with the daily odd feelings he has to go through. Or clever (not to leave out the close cousin 'sneaky') for being able to work around his communication problems and still get across a lot of what he needs to be known.
As I said before in another post, he IS autistic - at least according to current diagnosis - but that does not have to be all of who he is. I will never allow him to be dismissed by his definition, as if that one word is the fullest possible description of who he is.
So, while I will argue that he is autistic and does need the services and help he gets now, I will not use that as a limiting border for him. He can, does and will transcend and overcome his problems.
While the word autistic defines his condition, it does not define him.
In other news: The 2nd Annual Calhoun County Autism Walk is a go. It is again being done by my wife's local support group, web site www.calhouncountyautisminfo.com
. It will be April 28th, at Oxford High Stadium. If you want to join, volunteer, donate or what have you, e-mail me at BHRobin@aol.com and I will get you any information you need. For more information on the walk or any other autism questions, check out her site.
Hope to see you all there. | <urn:uuid:84ec9fe4-7d28-4b72-9d61-f6cc5e08ab40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.annistonstar.com/bookmark/17273155/blog+entry-Definition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982058 | 958 | 2.15625 | 2 |
By: Doug McNair, President and Business Strategist
I appreciate our firm’s association with the Hill Business School at the University of Regina. I spoke recently about starting a small business to a group of students who will be graduating this spring.
My first comment was that it’s ok to dream big, you can start a small business, but why not think about starting a large business. Also, an entrepreneur is probably not going to start a business, but over time will likely start many. That’s because not every business will be a success, or as successful as you would like it to be. But each time you will learn more about what it takes to be successful.
In my experiences it starts with a (1) Business Idea, and that it’s really important that you test that idea, to see if it’s a good one. You can test it by talking to people about it and seeing what they think. Test it with bankers, family, and friends, others in business, professors, and potential customers.
Next write a (2) Business Plan. This is common advice but my point here is not the document, but the process of going through this exercise and thinking through all of the aspects required to set up your business and run it. Then, test the plan the same way you tested the idea. An idea is no good without a plan.
Next, you need to have the (3) Ability to Execute. You need to ensure you have the resources (financial, people, training, advisors etc.) to be able to execute, look for gaps that need to be filled even before you get started. Also, consider what happens if things don’t go according to plan (they never do), do you have the means to deal with issues that come up? A plan is no good without an ability to execute.
Next blog I will make some comments on Risk and Reward. Comments welcome. | <urn:uuid:43b81db3-c69c-4882-9315-81bd0f1dde0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mcnair.ca/2012/02/from-business-idea-to-operating.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963522 | 402 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Bad data can be caused by any of a number of issues, ranging from problems with the source data to problems with how Excel has handled your data to problems within the data itself. Here are a few tips to help make sure your data is imported correctly:
Excel has a habit of automatically changing values in fields based on format. This can happen if you have a numerical field that will contain data that starts with zeroes. (This includes zip codes and identification numbers.) This can also happen if your dates are formatted as numbers instead of as dates.
When importing dates, make sure the years are formatted as 4 digits instead of 2 digits. It will save correction time later on.
If your imported data has large blocks of text in it such as contact notes, make sure that the notes and the addresses don’t have multiple paragraphs of text in them. If any of the records do have multiple paragraphs, merge the text into a single paragraph before you import it.
A suggestion: When text like this is imported into NationBuilder, it can give import errors as any of a number of different types. The most common error indicates that a record is missing a quote mark (Malformed CSV - Illegal quoting in line 1)
When you import data and get errors that you just can’t figure out, try this hint:
- Open your CSV file in a text editor
- Select the whole file and copy it
- Open a new text file
- Paste the CSV data into the new file
- Save the new file
- Import your new CSV file
This quick process will clear out any hidden characters embedded in the text as well as any characters that the importer just doesn’t understand. | <urn:uuid:d2104abc-bd0f-433d-ade2-5aed0c6145a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nationbuilder.com/my_imports_are_pulling_in_bad_data_what_s_wrong | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92062 | 351 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Google, software engineer propose new Scrabble values as language changes
- From: News Limited Network
- January 16, 2013
- After 75 years of Scrabble, some argue tile values are out-of-date
- Is Z, worth 10 points, really worth only six?
- Would you accept X as five points when it is now eight?
GOOGLE wants to shake-up Scrabble. Too many characters, the internet behemoth insists, are over-valued or under appreciated.
The points assigned to Scrabble's letters as we now know them were taken by the game's inventor Alfred Butts from how often they appeared on the front page of the 1930s New York Times.
Much has changed since then. Language has evolved and usage mutated. New realms of science, media and entertainment have created many new words.
So Google unleashed a researcher on its extraordinary database of all the world's English web pages to find out just how frequently different words and characters are used.
The study proves what many players already know: Your U is useless unless you need to offload a Q. Z is way overpowered and J seriously undervalued.
Google isn't the only source of Scrabble shake-up talk.
"Among the notable additions are all of these short words which make it easier to play Z, Q and X, so even though Q and Z are the highest value letters in Scrabble, they are now much easier to play."
Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, has his own set of new values.
He searched some 100,000 words with more than 743 billion mentions through Google's databases.
E, T, A, O, I, N and S remain the seven most frequently used letters.
But he says H and R need to swap values, as do L and D. The character C is also more common than U.
Such proposals to produce an updated version of Scrabble are not uncommon, co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association John Chew said. He said he hears arguments from several people a year stating that the tile values are incorrect.
Any change in tile values would cause "catastrophic outrage", Mr Chew said.
Mattel has denied any plans to change the scoring system. | <urn:uuid:2670b0ea-af87-425d-b71a-5f512c489b39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/google-software-engineer-propose-new-scrabble-values-as-language-changes/story-fnet0he2-1226554806447 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959954 | 478 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Parts of the Sentence - Adverbs
Adverbs are words that modify (1) verbs, (2) adjectives, and (3) other adverbs. They tell how (manner), when (time), where (place), how much (degree), and why (cause). Why is a common one-word adverb that tells why. Adverbs that tell us how, when, where, and why always modify the verb. These adverbs can shift location in the sentence without changing meaning or what they modify. Adverbs that tell us how much modify adjectives or other adverbs. Adverbs that tell how much will come just before the adjectives or adverbs that they modify. These adverbs are also called qualifiers because they strengthen or weaken the words they modify. Examples: He kicked the ball solidly (how). He kicked the ball immediately (when). He kicked the ball forward (where). He kicked the ball too hard (how much).
Not and its contraction n't are adverbs. They really modify the entire sentence, but we will have them modify the verb as it is the most important word in the sentence. This is a common practice in grammar books.
Instruction: Find the adverbs modifying other adverbs in the following sentences and tell what word they modify.
1. The announcer should speak less loudly.
2. You should do much better.
3. People shouldn't change their jobs too often.
4. Very slowly the car started down the hill.
5. The contestant answered the question rather uncertainly.
--For answers scroll down.
1. less modifies loudly
2. much modifies better
3. too modifies often
4. very modifies slowly
5. rather modifies uncertainly
DAILY GRAMMAR - - - - by Mr. Johanson
Copyright 2012 Word Place, Inc - - All Rights Reserved.
For your convenience, all of our lessons are available on our website in our
lesson archive at http://www.dailygrammar.com/archive.html. Our lessons are
Daily Grammar Lessons Search | <urn:uuid:75157d7d-5606-41b3-89ab-303066908206> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailygrammar.com/Lesson-163-Adverbs.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943555 | 434 | 3.4375 | 3 |
BOOK THE FOURTH
16. Chapter XVI
THE SORROW OF BOON COMPANIONS FOR OUR AFFLICTIONS. THE DUNGEON AND ITS
IT was now late on the third and last day of the trial of Glaucus and
Olinthus. A few hours after the court had broken up and judgment been
given, a small party of the fashionable youth at Pompeii were assembled
round the fastidious board of Lepidus.
'So Glaucus denies his crime to the last?' said Clodius.
'Yes; but the testimony of Arbaces was convincing; he saw the blow given,'
'What could have been the cause?'
'Why, the priest was a gloomy and sullen fellow. He probably rated Glaucus
soundly about his gay life and gaming habits, and ultimately swore he would
not consent to his marriage with Ione. High words arose; Glaucus seems to
have been full of the passionate god, and struck in sudden exasperation.
The excitement of wine, the desperation of abrupt remorse, brought on the
delirium under which he suffered for some days; and I can readily imagine,
poor fellow! that, yet confused by that delirium, he is even now unconscious
of the crime he committed! Such, at least, is the shrewd conjecture of
Arbaces, who seems to have been most kind and forbearing in his testimony.'
'Yes; he has made himself generally popular by it. But, in consideration of
these extenuating circumstances, the senate should have relaxed the
'And they would have done so, but for the people; but they were outrageous.
The priest had spared no pains to excite them; and they imagined--the
ferocious brutes!--because Glaucus was a rich man and a gentleman, that he
was likely to escape; and therefore they were inveterate against him, and
doubly resolved upon his sentence. It seems, by some accident or other,
that he was never formally enrolled as a Roman citizen; and thus the senate
is deprived of the power to resist the people, though, after all, there was
but a majority of three against him. Ho! the Chian!'
'He looks sadly altered; but how composed and fearless!' | <urn:uuid:083a8366-1613-4173-b0d4-cd53bb5928f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.literaturepage.com/read.php?titleid=last-days-of-pompeii&abspage=350&changesize=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984219 | 486 | 1.570313 | 2 |
October 20, 2002
Jen Costanza, Shipboard Education Coordinator
Our journey began bright and early yesterday (10.19.02) at 0300 (3 a.m.). We anticipated the exciting part of the expedition to be on the ship; however the two flights we took to get from Baltimore, Maryland, to San Diego, California, were quite eventful! The first flight from Baltimore to Houston, Texas, had a very turbulent descent through some thunderstorms. We had a few bad minutes getting tossed around. As for me (someone who is not a comfortable flyer to be with), the scariest part was when the flight attendant fell down in the aisle next to me. The drama came to a pretty quick end, and we landed safely in Houston but missed our connecting flight. We all agreed that we’d rather be in turbulent seas rather than air. So, Hepsi Zsoldos and I and the rest of the group we were traveling with became well acquainted with the Houston Airport for the next three hours.
Some of us slept, some read, some listened to music on our CD players, and some took advantage of the time to get some work done on our computers. Upon boarding the plane to leave Houston, we were all thrilled to finally be under way once again. As the plane was backing out of the gate, we crashed into something, which we were later informed was one of the luggage loaders that they had failed to move out of the way. For a moment I thought we had hit another plane. The loader was moved and we were on our way.
Certain that the trip could not be filled with any other surprises, we safely landed in San Diego where Peggy O’Day, one of the scientists on the cruise, picked us up. One of the first things she told us was that the A-frame on the ship had broken and the crew was working around the clock to get it fixed, but we would definitely not be able to depart San Diego until at least Monday at 1000. Time is of the essence on research cruises, with nearly every minute scheduled. We hope to be able to leave on Monday morning but even a delay of a couple of more hours will cause us to have to cancel one of the dives. While discouraging, it is not the end of the world. At this point in our careers, we are all well aware of the fact that this is the way science often goes. The unexpected always happens.
So I’m sure you are all wondering what an A-frame is and why it is broken. The A-frame is a giant structure at the stern of the ship that loads and unloads the submersible Alvin. Now, there is also a crane on the deck next to the A-frame. Why do you think we couldn’t just use the crane to deploy and retrieve the submersible? There’s a question for you to ponder, and I’ll give you the answer in tomorrow’s log. Head to the "Neat Stuff" section of "Daily Discoveries" to see the A-frame, Alvin, and the crane.
Once we actually arrived on board Atlantis, we had huge amounts of luggage and equipment to load onto the ship. Most of the scientists had already arrived and were in the main lab sorting through boxes and crates to determine where everything should go. It was complete chaos. Prior to boarding the ship yesterday, I had never been on Atlantis, or any research vessel of this size before. I knew only the people I had traveled out with and did not know where anything was. For a few moments I just stood there watching everyone zip around tending to the equipment and wondering what I should do. Should I unpack my stuff in my bunk? It seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t know where my bunk was and didn’t want to disturb any of these busy people. I spotted another girl across the lab who looked like she didn’t know what to do either so I decided to head over and introduce myself. Her name was Lisa, and she was here from New Zealand. Quickly, a few other first-timers wandered over and joined the conversation. Within a half an hour, I felt like I had met tons of people, but really, almost 24 hours later, I still haven’t met most of the crew.
After some introductions and conversation, Hepsi and I headed down to our cabin, which we are sharing with another scientist from the University of Delaware, Bekki. We have three cramped, but comfortable bunks, a sink, some lockers, a desk, and chair. The bathroom is small and we share it with the adjacent cabin. Check out the "Neat Stuff" section to see pictures of our accommodations.
Copyright University of Delaware, Oct. 2002. | <urn:uuid:18fc2b2d-d664-4622-8acc-1d76b2c87dc9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/extreme2002/dailydiscoveries/Journals/oct20.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981042 | 995 | 1.828125 | 2 |
In a strange and distant world you will have to lead a bionic vegetative growth enterprise.
You are in INKUB: the Company that maintains and preserves species thanks to genetic engineering and high-level technology. Mixing genes from existing species, extinct and human, Inkub seeks the artificial creation of carbon based organisms to avoid their disappearance.
INKUB has a spacecraft navigating through different systems to offer their help to other civilizations with problems. It is in this spacecraft´s process plant where the embryos start their creation inside accelerated growth plasma incubators. However, bacteria, parasites, and other species that have evolved for years and live in the plasmatic liquid constantly threaten the growth of these embryos. Our objective is to ensure the growth of said specimens, eliminating the threats. INKUB has perfected defense systems within the incubation plants that must be used to end all threats and preserve the developing species.
The objective of the game is to defend an incubator containing a growing specimen. To do this, you will be provided with different weapons and powers that will help you destroy, pause, or block these enemies. These threats will try to enter the incubator through the Plasma tubes that connect it with the life-giving energy that makes them grow.
Each of the enemies will have special features (speed, resistance, range) and, likewise, the weapons and blockers will have other features (damage, range, speed...). A total of 8 different weapons will be available, all of them upgradeable, which you will obtain as you advance through the 40 rounds that make up the game.
The whole system is sustained by energy. Therefore, using that energy, you will be able to acquire and upgrade all of the available weapons. You can obtain energy by constantly improving the energy cells that appear on each round.
These are the main INKUB features
3 Difficulty Levels: 3 different difficulty levels have been prepared so that you can adjust the game to you ability.
Adventure Mode: 5 different Worlds, each of them containing 8 rounds. A total of 40 rounds full of action, enemies and danger where you must prove your defense skills.
Survival Mode: Beat the record in each one of the game worlds in this non-stop mode, where each wave is stronger than the previous one.
Scenario Rotation: With an innovative play system, use the Wii Remote™ to rotate the level perspectives and access the rear tubes.
Sniper: Discover special rounds where you must point and shoot the enemies.
Enemies: Up to 21 enemy feature variations available.
Weapons: Up to 24 variations in all of the weapons at your disposal.
Files: Review enemies and weapons in the game files. Learn more about each of the available weapons and the enemy features.
Unlocking system: Unlock weapons, enemies and play modes as you pass each one of the Adventure Mode rounds.
Complete soundtrack with 7 songs performed by El Topo Negro. | <urn:uuid:f597fb51-d738-4b39-92a3-842749dc0e8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nintendolife.com/games/wiiware/inkub | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936177 | 599 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Reconnecting America today released an updated version of its Jumpstarting the Transit Space Race interactive map, which documents the national interest in fixed-guideway transit. The fresh data show demand for transit development is even greater than when the first Space Race report was released in October 2008.
Reconnecting America and its partners in Mile High Connects recently released the Denver Regional Equity Atlas, which maps how current and future transit service can connect people to opportunities throughout the region.
Calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the region,” an unprecedented local partnership of private, philanthropic and nonprofit leaders was joined by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock to outline how a smart expansion of Denver’s transit system can greatly increase access to opportunity and strengthen quality of life for all local residents, including low-income communities.
Reconnecting America today released four training modules created for and funded by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) that illustrate various principles of creating and maintaining sustainable communities. The modules created by Reconnecting America’s LINK (Leadership¸ Innovation, Networks, Knowledge) Team were presented at three APTA conferences with the goal of educating practitioners, public transit agencies, elected officials and other decision-makers.
The demand for transit across the US is growing, and more and more transit corridors are being built every year. In 2010, 106 regions had proposed over 600 transit projects, with estimated costs for two-thirds of those projects totaling $233 billion. This growing demand for transit has increased the need to understand how planning a transit corridor can result in not only successful transportation outcomes but also successful land use and equity outcomes.
Reconnecting America and the Center for Transit-Oriented Development held their second in a series of webinars July 19, with attendees listening in to a discussion of “Planning Equitable Corridors and Transit-Oriented Development.” The webinar was sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).
Please join us Tuesday July 19 at 2pm EST for the Center For Transit-Oriented Development webinar “Planning Equitable Corridors and Transit-Oriented Development.” This webinar session is sponsored by The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and is open to planners, practitioners, housing advocates, MPOs, local, state and federal DOT’s, transit agencies, sustainable communities grantees, advocates, as well as elected officials and other decision makers.
Abby Thorne-Lyman, Project Director at Reconnecting America and CTOD
Catherine Cox Blair, Program Director at Reconnecting America and CTOD, Denver Region
Jonathan Sage-Martinson, Director, Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, Twin Cities
Danyell Diggs, Red Line Coordinator, City of Baltimore
Description: This webinar focuses on… | <urn:uuid:1aa38770-89ab-4594-9a46-5efddde67eac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/news-center/reconnecting-america-news/Tag/88/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938168 | 591 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Bamyan Province is still a pocket of relative tranquility in Afghanistan. But things get dangerous for locals when they have to travel. All roads into and out of the province must run a Taliban gauntlet.
Bamyan’s reputation as one of the safest places in Afghanistan has been dented over the past year by several bursts of Taliban-inspired violence, including the August deaths of three New Zealander soldiers in a roadside bombing. Even so, many provincial residents insist that Bamyan center, along with the nearby districts of Yakawlang, Panjao, and Waras, as well as the neighboring province, Daikundi, remain almost completely insurgency free. Residents also state that the recent acts of violence in northern districts, including Kahmard, Sayghan and Shibar, are restricted to certain valleys and villages that have always been troublesome.
In the northern districts, the villages and valleys where incidents have occurred are populated by ethnic Pashtuns and Tajiks. In the relatively peaceful areas, the predominant ethnic group is Hazara, people who are mainly Shi’a and who suffered persecution under the Taliban in the late 1990s. Today, Hazaras remain antagonistic to Taliban attempts to regain influence in the province.
While many feel relatively secure at home, all residents are afraid to travel because the regions surrounding Bamyan are becoming increasingly unstable. Bamyan does not have commercial air service, meaning that only those who are working for a development or aid organization can secure a place on one of the humanitarian flights into the province. All others must take their chances on roads.
When traveling to Kabul, there are two options. The northern route goes through the restless Ghorband District of Parwan Province, while the southern route goes through the volatile Jalrez District of Maidan Wardak Province. During my past three years traveling to Bamyan, local opinions have shifted back and forth concerning which route was more dangerous.
Initially, insurgents seemed to target only those who were government figures or who were working for international organizations. On July 3, 2011, for example, Jawad Zahak, the head of the Bamyan Provincial Council, was kidnapped by Hizb-e-Islami militants and beheaded in Ghorband. This was a strong blow against Hazaras, and it significantly heightened public fears about traveling on the road.
Taliban informants occasionally watch the shared taxis from Bamyan to Kabul, or vice-versa, that leave each day, local acquaintances tell me. One one occasion, when I needed to travel to Kabul by road, I was advised that I should wear a burqa, and have a trusted friend arrange my trip, claiming that I was a sister needing to travel alone. Luckily, in this culture, as a woman I was not expected to engage in conversation with fellow passengers.
Several people related experiences that confirmed such precautions were wise. One, Ali, working for an international organization in Bamyan, was in a mini-van stopped by the Taliban at a roadblock. They went directly to his seat and asked him to get out of the vehicle. They then asked him where his glasses were, as the person they were seeking was reported to wear glasses. Deciding cooperation was the best tactic, he showed them the glasses in his front pocket. He was held for ransom for several months before being released.
“They knew exactly where I was sitting, what I was wearing – clearly someone informed on me,” he stated. Another, Jawad, who also works for an international NGO, was making the same trip when he had a feeling something was not right. He got out of the van and hitched a ride with a truck carrying sheep. Later, the driver told him that Taliban stopped the vehicle, and searched for him, showing his picture to the other passengers.
Perhaps most alarming is a newer trend that seems to be developing, in which Hazaras are targeted for simply being Hazara. This summer, eleven civilians were tortured and beheaded in two separate incidents, about a week apart, in Jalrez District. And more recently, in Ghazni province on October 27, five Hazaras were pulled from a van and executed by Taliban militants. Although Ghazni has long been considered a dangerous province, this incident is part of a larger trend in which Hazaras are killed because of their ethnicity, and not because of any affiliation with international organizations or the Afghan government.
Hazara leaders in Kabul have recently become more vocal on this issue. Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq,a current MP and leader of the Hazara-majority Hizb-e-Wahdat party, made a speech early in October demanding that road security be increased. Not long after, Karim Khalili, second vice-president and another Hizb-e-Wahdat leader, made similar security demands, and called for a promised highway from Kabul to Herat, via Bamyan, to be completed.
For many in Bamyan, these seem empty gestures. Civil Society activists staged a demonstration in response to these speeches, demanding follow-up, but received little attention from politicians in Kabul. Meanwhile, the perils of road travel remind Hazaras that when international troops withdraw in 2014, they could very well once more be at the mercy of the Taliban. | <urn:uuid:b7c3909a-5fe4-46f9-b857-f2d5db85a6a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66147 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981375 | 1,089 | 2.140625 | 2 |
|Birth: ||Aug. 6, 1925|
Springdale (Hamilton County)
|Death: ||Mar. 1, 2005|
Of all the uncles I had, I had eight, John Singleton was the one I saw the most of and knew the best. From my perspective he was a kind, friendly, good hearted man.
At age 17 John enlisted in the US Marine Corps. He took part in the battle for Saipan in the Mariannas. At Iwo Jima his division was held offshore in reserve & never went ashore. He did participate in the terrible battle for Okinawa. He had told me he was in the vicinity when the overall army commander Major Gen. Buckner was killed by a Japanese shell.
A lifelong Democrat, he credited President Truman with saving his life, as he was among the troops preparing to assault Japan. He was part of the occupation forces in post war Japan. Because of his wartime experiences John absolutely never considered owning a Japanese made automobile.
After the war John attended Murray State University in western Ky. He became captain of the team. To my knowledge he rarely missed alumni events at the university. He was employed as a teacher and football coach.
I was always happy to see Uncle John and miss him a lot.
Edward Singleton (1889 - 1957)
Sarah Belle Drew Singleton (1892 - 1954)
Cremated, Ashes scattered.
Created by: JFJN
Record added: Jun 10, 2011
Find A Grave Memorial# 71149316
|Photos may be scaled.|
Click on image for full size. | <urn:uuid:784a5de8-9855-4fa7-973e-6b0ba391d22b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=sh&GRid=71149316 | 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 | 0.978686 | 333 | 1.65625 | 2 |
When addition polymers are formed, no by-products result. Formation of a condensation polymerA polymer formed by condensation reactions between monomers and the growing polymer chain; in a condensation polymerization a small molecule each time a monomer becomes bonded to the polymer chain., on the other hand, produces H2O, HCl, or some other simple moleculeA set of atoms joined by covalent bonds and having no net charge. which escapes as a gasA state of matter in which a substance occupies the full volume of its container and changes shape to match the shape of the container. In a gas the distance between particles is much greater than the diameters of the particles themselves; hence the distances between particles can change as necessary so that the matter uniformly occupies its container.. A familiar example of a condensationThe process in which a liquid forms from gas or vapor of the same substance. A chemical reaction in which two molecules combine to form a very small molecule and a larger molecule than either of the two reactants. polymer is nylonAny of several human-made polyamide fibers; polyamides are formed by condensation of an amine group with a carboxylic acid group., which is obtained from the reaction of two monomers
These two molecules can link up with each other because each contains a reactive functional group, either an amineAn organic compound formally derived from ammonia by the replacement of one or more hydrogen atoms by alkyl groups. Examples are primary amine: RNH2; secondary amine: R2NH; tertiary amine: R3N. or a carboxylic acidAn organic compound containing the functional group -C(=O)OH. which react to form an amide linkageA chemical bond linkage formed when a carboxylic acid reacts with an amine, often found in polymers such as nylon and proteins; in proteins also called a peptide bond.. They combine as follows:
Below is a video of the reaction to form nylon. This reaction is slightly modified from the one described above, as adipoyl chloride, not adipic acid, is used as a reactantA substance consumed by a chemical reaction.. Thus HCl, not H2O is produced. This also means that the chain terminates in an acid chloride, rather than the carboxylic acid shown above. Note that an amideAn organic compound formally derived from a carboxylic acid by the replacement of the hydroxyl group by -NH2, -NHR, or -NR2. linkage is still formed.
A solutionA mixture of one or more substances dissolved in a solvent to give a homogeneous mixture. of adipoyl chloride in cyclohexane is poured on top of an aqueousDescribing a solution in which the solvent is water. solution of 1,6-diaminohexane in a beaker. Nylon (6,6) polyamide is formed at the interface of the two immiscibleDescribes two liquids that cannot be dissolved in one another in all proportions. liquids and is carefully drawn from the solution and placed on a glassA solid material that does not have the long-range order of a crystal lattice; an amorphous solid. A glass melts over a range of temperatures instead of having the definite melting temperature characteristic of crystalline solids. rod. The rod is then spun, and the Nylon (6,6) polyamide is spun onto the rod.
Well-known condensation polymers other than nylon are Dacron, Bakelite, melamine, and Mylar.
Nylon makes extremely strong threads and fibers because its long-chain molecules have stronger intermolecular forces than the London forces of polyethylene. Each N—H group in a nylon chain can hydrogen bondAn attractive force, either intramolecular or intermolecular, between an electronegative atom and a hydrogen atom attached to another electronegative atom. to the O of a C=O group in a neighboring chain, as shown below. Therefore the chains cannot slide past one another easily.
If you pull on both ends of a nylon thread, for example, it will only stretch slightly. After that it will strongly resist breaking because a large number of hydrogen bonds are holding overlapping chains together. The same is not true of a polyethylene thread in which only London forces attract overlapping chains together, and this is one reason that polyethylene is not used to make thread. | <urn:uuid:ebc2e197-2a11-4bf9-b8f3-665577699953> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chempaths.chemeddl.org/services/chempaths/?q=book/General%20Chemistry%20Textbook/Properties%20of%20Organic%20Compounds%20and%20Other%20Covalent%20Substances/1377/c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933274 | 920 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Welcome to our Acoustic Guitar Amps Online Advisor. |
Concert photos of acoustic guitarists in the Sixties and Seventies usually show them behind one or more microphones - even more if theyre also singing. These days, while mics still dominate studio work, almost all acoustic players use electro-acoustic guitars for live performance. As neither electric guitar amps nor PA systems are ideal for amplifying acoustic guitars, specialised acoustic guitar amps have emerged in recent years.
Our Online Advisor extends over several pages you can jump from section to section using the index below or the navigation at the bottom of each page. | <urn:uuid:502d15f4-5e78-41ba-8a40-23e7f7bddd0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thomann.de/ie/onlineexpert_121.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91805 | 125 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Published February 26, 2013
As of Jan. 1, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, became available for the 2013-14 school year. The FAFSA qualifies students for federal grants, student loans and work-study jobs, and serves as the basis for determining aid eligibility for many private awards. In light of other financial aid changes that will make it tougher for some students to pay for college, maximizing your federal aid eligibility is more crucial than ever. Here's how to get an A in FAFSA 101.
Understand the basics
The sole purpose of the FAFSA is to determine your expected family contribution, or EFC -- the amount the government believes your family can chip in for college that year. Based primarily on your family's income and assets, the EFC qualifies students for federal grants, loans and work-study programs. It's also one of the main factors used by colleges to determine how much your family can pay relative to the cost of that school and how much the college will contribute to your total aid package.
"Everyone should fill out the FAFSA," says Beth V. Walker, founder of College Funding Coaches, a college finance planning firm headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo. "There are a lot of parents who think they make too much money and that they're not going to qualify for anything, but I think it's a surprise to many people to know that the merit-based aid is handed out many times through the need-based door."
All dependent undergrads, regardless of their family's income, can qualify for at least $27,000 in unsubsidized Stafford loans over four years, reports the Department of Education, while families with adjusted gross incomes of $60,000 or less can also usually expect some federal grant aid, says Walker. Unlike student loans, grants need not be repaid, though certain conditions may apply. Before filing, families can get an estimate of their EFC by using the FAFSA4Caster tool at Fafsa.ed.gov.
Families can take action. While most families can't change their income, they can maximize their federal aid eligibility by filing the FAFSA as close to Jan. 1 as possible and by shifting or spending assets held in the student's name.
"Student assets are assessed at 20%," says Jay Murray, president of Solutions for Tuition, a college planning firm in Lone Tree, Colo., meaning for every dollar in an account in a student's name, the government will subtract 20 cents from the student's aid package. This starts with need-based grants. "Parental assets are assessed at (up to) 5.6%." The exception, Murray says, is 529 plans. These are assessed at the parental rate regardless of whether they're held in a parent's or student's name.
Gary Carpenter, executive director of the National College Advocacy Group, a nonprofit organization in Syracuse, N.Y., says families can also increase their aid eligibility by knowing which investment vehicles the government doesn't take into consideration.
"The FAFSA form does not assess the family home. It does not assess retirement accounts. It does not assess life insurance policies or annuities," says Carpenter. "Also, they do not assess personal assets like automobiles, clothing, furniture -- none of that is assessed."
Families looking to shift assets from assessable accounts to sheltered ones can do so by maxing out their retirement accounts, paying down the mortgage on their primary home and purchasing personal items the student will need before filing the FAFSA. These personal items can include a computer or dorm supplies. Families who need those assets to be available for college costs can simply move funds from an account in the student's name to a 529 plan or one held in the parent's name.
Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education, adds that students should also alert their school's financial aid office about expenses that aren't considered on the FAFSA.
"For example, if you fill out (the FAFSA) and your parents made a reasonable income last year and then they lose their jobs, you want to be sure you go to the financial aid office," she says. "Tell them this because they can adjust your aid award to account for those unfortunate new circumstances. That's terrifically important."
By letting your aid office know about factors that aren't included on the FAFSA, such as medical expenses, death in the family, divorce or parental job loss, and by providing documentation, families can keep aid officers abreast of their current financial situation and increase their chances of landing college aid. | <urn:uuid:ccbe22f8-9fad-4ca2-9197-8d67cf0c5ecf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/02/25/make-most-your-fafsa-application/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964711 | 960 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Draft Bye-Laws for the Storage, Presentation and Collection of Household and Commercial Waste 2012
If a drain or sewer near you is causing problems, let us know. We can then arrange to go and fix it.
NOTE: Responsibility for clearing blockages or repairing defects in a private shared drain is a matter to be resolved by the residents that are served by it, please click here for further information.
We have several projects that are designed to reduce the risks to life and property caused by coastal flooding. They will propose solutions as well as an enhanced early warning system for the region.
Following the Dublin City Council Meeting on 7th November 2011 the following two presentations are now available to download:
Water is a precious resource and should be used sparingly. Information about saving water can be found online at www.taptips.ie
Dollymount Promenade and Flood Protection Project EIS Publication
Well-managed biodiversity can help to reduce pollution, control floods, prevent erosion and generally improve the quality of life for you and your family. Over the long run this can save us millions of Euro in infrastructure and health costs. | <urn:uuid:53eb5341-322c-451d-b88f-5c27f21e2fc9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dublincity.ie/WaterWasteEnvironment/Pages/WaterWasteandEnvironment.aspx | 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 | 0.94481 | 232 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Birth to age five is a critical period in a child’s life. It is a time of rapid growth and development, socially and emotionally as well as physically. Establishing good health and safety practices early can help prevent injury and give children a good foundation for a healthy life.
Mandatory newborn screening programs: For some conditions, early diagnosis is so important that New Jersey requires testing in the hospital at birth. Currently this includes genetic and biochemical screening (testing) for 54 specific metabolism disorders plus hearing loss screening.
Young children also need:
The healthy benefits of breastfeeding and a safe sleep environment
Immunizations against disease
Nutritious food and good eating habits
Protection from household and neighborhood hazards
Early screening for lead poisoning
Safe child care while away from their parents
Children with Special Health Needs: For children with complex, long-term medical and developmental disabilities, prompt attention to their condition early in life helps assure they will lead healthier lives when they are older.
Department of Health P. O. Box 360,
Trenton, NJ 08625-0360 Our Locations | <urn:uuid:09d33de8-fba7-49af-868e-a9b9d533a9c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nj.gov/health/fhs/newborn/index.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945863 | 225 | 2.671875 | 3 |
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... hort?rss=1
Most climate change predictions omit species interactions and interspecific variation in dispersal. Here, we develop a model of multiple competing species along a warming climatic gradient that includes temperature-dependent competition, differences in niche breadth and interspecific differences in dispersal ability. Competition and dispersal differences decreased diversity and produced so-called ‘no-analogue’ communities, defined as a novel combination of species that does not currently co-occur. Climate change altered community richness the most when species had narrow niches, when mean community-wide dispersal rates were low and when species differed in dispersal abilities. With high interspecific dispersal variance, the best dispersers tracked climate change, out-competed slower dispersers and caused their extinction. Overall, competition slowed the advance of colonists into newly suitable habitats, creating lags in climate tracking. We predict that climate change will most threaten communities of species that have narrow niches (e.g. tropics), vary in dispersal (most communities) and compete strongly. Current forecasts probably underestimate climate change impacts on biodiversity by neglecting competition and dispersal differences. | <urn:uuid:ed3e6098-0f10-4cf3-a742-436bd8f89f3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.envirolink.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15624&p=176806 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925251 | 248 | 3.109375 | 3 |
To #1. By slower do you mean 3 seconds slower or .03 seconds slower (numbers as examples)?
By gearing, what you are doing is changing the torque/rpm ratio. For example, if you have a gearing ratio of 300:1, then your ratio changes to:
(torque*300) / (rpm / 300)
So in effect, your torque multiplies by the ratio, and your speed divides by it.
Adding gearing also reduces efficiency. For example, if you used a worm gear, multiply your output torque and speed by .8. This is from internal losses such as friction and force angles.
I actually did a tutorial on robot gearing awhile back, if your interested:http://www.societyofrobots.com/mechanics_gears.shtml
Hobby servos probably wont work for you at that weight. You will need to add some type of feedback control to each motor. Perhaps use rotary potentiometers at the joints?
I just did some rough math, sounds like your gonna spend $1.5k+, right?
I have plans for a biped in the works too, but that pricetag isnt far from the one I calculated for mine . . . bipeds arent just inherently hard, but inherently expensive too . . . | <urn:uuid:a14ce112-16fc-4728-86a9-0e502c65a0a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=500.msg2906 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932321 | 274 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Anthonie van Dyck, Prins Willem II van Oranje
New remarkable long-term loans
The rich collection of The Rubens House will be complemented this autumn with a few remarkable, long-term loans from private collections.
The acquisitions fit perfectly into the Rubens House collection policy, which concentrates on Rubens’s work, and on work done by his studio and by his contemporaries. Recent acquisitions contain several discoveries, including two paintings by Sir Anthony van Dyck that were thought to be lost, and an unknown Frans Snyders.
The way Rubens brought his models to life was only equalled in Flemish painting by Anthony van Dyck. This portrait of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jan van Malderen (1563–1633), which dates from Van Dyck’s ‘second Antwerp period’ (1627–32), is an outstanding example.
Scenes like this were known as simmenfeesten or singeries. Apes are placed in various human roles as a playful way of encouraging the viewer to reflect on all the folly in the world. This painting on copper dating from the early 1620s is one of the earliest known examples.
A still life is a composition comprising motionless objects painted from life. The skill was to emulate reality as precisely as possible. Snyders’s brilliance in the genre was unmatched.
Van Dyck was in The Hague in early 1632, where he painted a number of works including this portrait of Prince William II (1626–1650). He made a second version that same year for King Charles I of England, whose eldest daughter Mary married William in 1641. The first portrait is now in Dessau, Germany, while the one painted for Charles I, long believed lost, recently re-emerged.
The painting shows the moment when Saul falls from his horse as Jesus appears to him. Chaos reigns all around. Rubens deftly captures the drama with his powerful brushstrokes and strong contrasts of light and shadow.
Although Adriaenssen painted a whole range of still lifes, he really made his name as a painter of fish. He also produced a number of paintings in which he combined fish with other motifs. This composition is a fine example.
Do you have any questions, comments or suggestions? | <urn:uuid:bdeb6712-cb3a-4034-8901-af9f38f32f7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rubenshuis.be/Rubenshuis-EN/Musea-Rubenshuis/Rubenshuis-EN/Startpagina-Rubenshuis-EN/The-Rubens-House/The-Rubens-House-News/The-Rubens-House-News-Gemigreerd-nieuws-2012/New-remarkable-long-term-loans.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977166 | 490 | 1.960938 | 2 |
"Trading in speculative derivatives amounted to more than ten times the yearly value of all goods and services on Earth!"
The crisis in sub-prime housing lending is bad enough - it threatens to utterly derail the hopes and dreams of a huge chunk of what passes for the Black "middle class" in the United States. More than half of all Blacks that refinanced their homes last year were given high-cost loans, and African Americans are three times as likely as whites to have been sucked into the sub- prime, predatory loan zone. The racial aspect of the current crisis is quite clear - just as it has long been evident to any objective observer that much of today's - or should we call it, yesterday's - vaunted Black upward mobility is built on shifting sands of unsecured borrowing. But of course, to say so made one a party-pooper, a gloom-and-doom monger - and few people wanted to spoil the party even if they knew it would soon be unhappily over.
As the huge scope of the housing debacle began to emerge, it was not long before familiar Black voices were heard, blaming something or other in African American "culture" for bringing the catastrophe down upon our own heads. Blacks don't pay enough attention to their finances; Blacks are too caught up in the cosmetic aspects of wealth; Blacks just can't seem to hold on to money and real property, etc., etc., etc. As if such dubious assumptions somehow explained why African Americans were disproportionate victims of the bursting sub-prime bubble.
But wait! Soon we learned that the financial giant, Citigroup - the country's biggest bank - was on the rocks, and ultimately had to be bailed out by the Persian Gulf nation of Abu Dhabi. Investment markets all over the planet were roiling, all supposedly because of the U.S. sub-prime lending crisis. But how could that be? Sub-prime lending is a significant chunk of U.S. housing transactions, but on a world scale U.S. sub-prime troubles should only register as a large blip - not a global crisis. Clearly, something much larger was afoot - a threat to global capitalism as a whole. Something HUGE.
"Something much larger was afoot - a threat to global capitalism as a whole."
An article on the Bloomberg website shows where the real speculative action - and global danger - resides. The headline read, "Global Derivatives Market Expands to $516 Trillion." Derivatives are weird and mysterious financial instruments, for buying and bundling debt, speculation on the value of debt, and betting on the future of debt. Understand that the gross domestic product of the United States is only about $13 trillion, and the annual gross economic product of the entire planet is less than $50 trillion. Yet trading in speculative derivatives amounted to more than ten times that much - ten times the yearly value of all goods and services on Earth! This is like playing monopoly with endless stacks of play money - there is little connection between global speculation and what the world actually produces.
The U.S. sub-prime lending crisis got some big banks in trouble. They then had to look elsewhere for someone to pump actual cash into their portfolios, but in the process were compelled to at least attempt to explain how much their financial institutions, the paper they were holding, were really worth. They can't, because it is largely speculative capital, which is not real money. The same holds for who knows how much of the world banking "system," especially its Wild West derivatives sector.
So let's stop talking about the financial irresponsibility of African American sub-prime borrowers. There is a much bigger bubble out there, and it is unsustainable.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com | <urn:uuid:3cd3db53-d33d-4de1-8a08-9abe225d0a2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/dont-blame-blacks-for-the-crisis-of-capital-by-glen-ford | 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 | 0.966417 | 794 | 1.609375 | 2 |
British Steam trawler
|Completed||1916 - Cochrane & Sons Ltd, Selby|
|Owner||J. Marr & Son Ltd, Fleetwood|
|Date of attack||18 Sep 1939||Nationality: British|
|Fate||Sunk by U-35 (Werner Lott)|
|Position||57.51N, 09.28W - Grid AM 2823|
|Complement||11 (0 dead and 11 survivors).|
|Route||Fleetwood - Fishing grounds|
|History||Registration code: FD 188 |
|Notes on loss|
At 13.19 hours on 18 Sep, 1939, U-35 came across the British steam trawler St. Alvis west of the Hebrides. Lott noticed that the 13 men of the crew could never reach land in the overloaded lifeboat, so he allowed the trawler to proceed after they thrown the radio equipment overboard. In return, the U-boat was warned about the presence of HMS Ark Royal (91) in the area and Lott was asked by the master of the trawler to tell him the name of the commander to report his behaviour to the government, but he refused.
Later that day, the U-boat stopped a group of three trawlers west-northwest of St.Kilda. First the Arlita was sunk by gunfire at 18.48 hours, followed by the Lord Minto at 19.00 hours. The third trawler, Nancy Hague, was allowed to proceed after taking over the crews of the other vessels.
If you can help us with any additional information on this vessel then please contact us. | <urn:uuid:d6c0cecc-1eea-4009-a3fc-7494a6a56c1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/34.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906295 | 350 | 1.9375 | 2 |
TELEGRAM, LI KENONG TO MAO ZEDONG, CONCERNING THE CONTENT OF A MEETING BETWEEN THE SOVIET, CHINESE, AND VIETNAMESE DELEGATIONSCITATION SHARE DOWNLOAD
get citationThe Chinese, Vietnamese, and Soviet delegations meet to discuss the division of zones in Indochina."Telegram, Li Kenong to Mao Zedong, Concerning the Content of a Meeting between the Soviet, Chinese, and Vietnamese Delegations" June 26, 1954, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, CFMA. Obtained by CWIHP and translated for CWIHP by Chen Zhihong http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110145
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Chairman, Comrade, and the Central Committee, and convey to Zhou, Zhang, and Wang:
At 5:30 this afternoon, the Soviet, Vietnamese and Chinese delegations met to study the plan prepared by the Vietnamese side concerning division and adjustment of zones in Vietnam and Laos. Concerning Vietnam, the plan introduced by Comrade Pham Van Dong is that the enemy will withdraw from the northern plain and [PingZhaoTian], and that our troops in Quang Nam area will withdraw from the southern and central region. Our maximum [goal] is the line from Tuy Hoa, [JiaoYao], and Pleiku, along Route 19, to the Vietnamese-Cambodian border (between the 13th and 14th parallels); the medium goal is the 15th parallel, and the minimum is the 16th parallel. At today's meeting with the chief military negotiators from the two sides the French side already introduced the principles that its government would follow concerning the dividing line in Vietnam (that is, withdrawing completely from the north, dividing the line along the 18th parallel, and (using Haiphong only for the purpose of withdrawal); France's military negotiator [Henry] Deltiel will go back to Paris to get instructions today; and the two sides have agreed to discuss the situation in Vietnam next Monday (the 28th). Considering these three developments, the Vietnamese side should not delay putting forward the maximum plan. But in order for negotiations to be carried out smoothly, it is necessary to combine introducing the political, military, and economic situation in the three countries of Indochina with the settlement plans, and present them simultaneously, as this will be more advantageous. Concerning Laos, the division of zones plan presented by Comrade Pham Van Dong focuses on pursuing Sam Neua, Phong Sali, and such new liberation zone as [MengKe] and [MengWei] in upper Laos, and strive to expand the [NanHuHe] area (toward the west expand to Muong Souei, and toward the south to Nam Bac), and in the Sam Neua area expand to [PanPan] and [TaTong] and to be linked with the liberation zone of Central Laos. In central Laos, strive to maintain the liberation zone on Route 12 neighboring Vietnam, and toward the south expand to Route 9. In lower Laos, at the beginning raise the question of maintaining the liberation zone here, but only in this area concessions can be made. In order to maintain the integrity of the liberation zone in upper Laos, at the last stage concessions can also be made regarding the liberation zone in central Laos. In the meantime, Pham [Van Dong] contends that in Laos the question of a division of zones should be solved in connection with the political questions there. If a coalition can be established, then it is not necessary for adjustment or withdrawal to be conducted in various zones, and for special system to be maintained in the administration of our zones. Then Comrade [K.V.] Novikov of the Soviet Union [Foreign Ministry Southeast Asian Department] pointed out that Pham says that he has no mature ideas; in the meantime, he has no clear ideas on the plan for division of zones. (It seems) as if he agrees to Premier Zhou's opinion, that is, the bottom line is to adhere to maintaining a part of upper Laos, neighboring on Vietnam and China (the whole of Sam Neua, Phong Sali, and a small part of Luang Prabang); however, Pham also wants to expand the liberation zone in upper Laos in exchange for withdrawing from middle Laos. Therefore, it is difficult to discuss to make decisions, so he asks Pham to have further studies and then come up with concrete ideas, and three sides will have another discussion at 11:00 am of next Monday. Before the military affairs conference gets down to discussing the zone division issues in Laos, the two sides should first examine and correct the maps reflecting the current status, and will then enter the discussions about a settlement. This way, (1) we will know more about the situation and thus put forward adjusted plans, and (2) we will get more time to wait for the decisions of the meetings in Nanning.
26 June 1954
(dispatched on the 27th)
1. Editor's Note: Many of the Chinese names for locations used in this document are unknown. They have been placed in brackets and rendered phonetically from the original Chinese. | <urn:uuid:b5988d31-27b6-46cf-8d01-806b07c027d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110145 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92831 | 1,086 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Forgotten war hero had Kootenay connections
He’s one of Canada’s most decorated soldiers, with multiple medals for bravery from two world wars. His death-defying adventures sound like something out of a spy novel.
Yet for all that, as well as family ties to West Kootenay and a local mountain named in his honour, you’re probably unfamiliar with Capt. Frederic T. (Fritz) Peters. It’s not surprising given that his story was obscured when it wasn’t actively suppressed.
Now Trail author Sam McBride has finally sorted out the extraordinary life of his great uncle in a new book, The Bravest Canadian. Two years ago he came across a cache of letters from and about Peters that shed new light on his mysterious relative.
“It really filled in a lot of gaps,” McBride says. “He said he didn’t like writing, but wrote with wit and style. It showed a lot of his personality. I thought it gave insight into what made somebody, and the motivation for courage.”
McBride transcribed the letters, passed down through his family for generations, and realized they could be the basis of a book answering questions that vexed other would-be biographers.
His grandmother attached a note that said: “These can be burned, but they should be read first.” Fortunately, no one listened to the first part of her instructions.
‘Moving in the shadows’
Fritz Peters was born into a prominent Prince Edward Island family with strong political and military connections: his father and uncle took turns as premier and his grandfather was a career officer in the British Army and a father of confederation.
Determined to follow in his family’s footsteps, Fritz joined the Royal Navy and served as a destroyer officer during World War I. He received the Distinguished Service Order, British Distinguished Service Cross, and was mentioned in dispatches.
Afterward, his life became even more intriguing, with exploits in Africa and work with the British secret intelligence. Peters developed miniature submarine technology and pioneered the use of plastic explosives and time-delay fuses. At the beginning of the Second World War, he taught industrial sabotage to expatriates from occupied countries, who returned home to fight the Nazis from within.
His staff included Soviet spy Kim Philby, whose memoir was one of McBride’s more unlikely sources. McBride also notes it’s possible Peters knew James Bond creator Ian Fleming, involved in espionage at the same time: “Bond might have been partly based on Fritz Peters, a lifelong bachelor moving in the shadows who survived hundreds of close calls.”
Peters’ finest hour came in 1942, during an attack on the harbour of Oran, Algeria, the first large combined operation between British and American forces. Peters somehow escaped heavy fire from Vichy French warships that nearly wiped out his unit. At 53, he was recognized with the Victoria Cross and US Distinguished Service Cross, the country’s highest medal for non-Americans — ironic given that Peters was a staunch Anglophile.
But he wasn’t around to receive the honours: he died five days after the Oran offensive in a plane crash on his way back to England. His mother Bertha, by then living in Nelson with her daughter and son-in-law, accepted the cross on his behalf. A US delegation and brass band came to her home at 820 Stanley Street to formally present it.
By contrast, the Victoria Cross arrived in the mail without even a cover letter. The reason for this nonchalance only emerged decades later: France had rejoined the Allies and Britain didn’t want to antagonize them over the battle of Oran harbour. Political sensitivities dictated that Peters’ honour be kept quiet.
Further clouding his story, Peters’ intelligence files were destroyed or declared secret. While he received six medals in all and had a peak between Nelson and Taghum named after him, he remained a cipher to most.
McBride’s book should change that. He’ll sign copies at Touchstones Nelson on Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. | <urn:uuid:f2443236-4a07-4a16-8c21-abaa056cf965> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nelsonstar.com/news/183103291.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978534 | 878 | 2.203125 | 2 |
May 20, 2013 | 08:13 AM (BD Time)
20 May, 2013 Monday
9-10/SSC Examination: English First Paper
Part A : Reading Test (40 Marks)
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions following It.
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Women's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February 1909.
In 1910, the Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which Included the first three women elected to the Finnish Parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first 'The International Women's Day' on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.
Since those early years, The International Women's Day has become important all over the world for women in developed and developing countries alike.
The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nation's women's conferences, has asked for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, The International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the rights
1. Choose the best answer from the alternatives. 1x5= 5
The country which included first three female legislators in her assembly was________.
(i)France (ii) America
(iii) Fiji (iv) Finland
The Russian women went on a strike in February 1913 for ___________.
(1) bread (ii) peace
(iii) bread and peace (iv) voting right and peace
To establish women rights an extra-ordinary role was played by______________.
(i) rich women (ii) educated women
(ill) common women (iv) aristocratic women
Russian women observed their first The International Women's Day in___________.
(i) January 1913 (ii) February 1913
(iii) January 1911 (iv) February 1912
To protest against war rallies in the month of March were held In____________.
(i) America (11) Europe
(iii) Asia (iv) Australia
2. Write whether the statements are true or false. If false, give the correct answer. 1x5=5
The rights of vote for women were prevailing in 1909.
The International Women's Day bears immeasurable significance.
The women's movement started in Asia.
Women raised their voice because they wanted equal rights as men.
The ordinary women struggled for women's right.
3. fill in each gap in the following passage with a suitable word from the box. There are more words than necessary. 5x10=5
attended observe fined absented notice celebration
assistance given took unanimously showing establishment
The First National Women's Day (a)__________was held across the United States on 28 February, 1909 according to a declaration (b) __________ by the Socialist Party of America. The (c) ___________ of a women's day international in character by Socialist International in 1910 was for the purpose of (d) ____________ honour, to the movement for women's rights and to give (e) ________ in achieving vote rights for women. 100 women from 17 countries (f) ________ part in the conference and (g) __________ greeted the proposal. Of the women (h) __________ the conference, three were elected to the Finish parliament. No date was (i) __________ to (j) ___________ the day.
4. Read the passage in A again. Write a paragraph using the clues in the box below. The passage should not exceed 70 words.
5. Read the passage in A again. Now, answer the following questions in your own words. 1x5=5
What did the meeting aim at?
What were the two voices of women's rallies?
What does The International Women's Day signify?
Why was the Copenhagen meeting held?
Who first decided to celebrate the Women's Day?
6. Fill in each gap with a suitable word of your own, based on the information from the text in A. .5x10=5
The Socialist Party of America (a)__________the National Women's Day and accordingly they (b)________the day across the United States in 1909. Women's Day international in character was (c)_________in Copenhagen in 1910 as a mark of (d)__________for the movement for
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New Nation Supplement
Editor: Mostafa Kamal Majumder, Adviser Editor: A.M. Mufazzal, Printed and Published by Mainul Hosein from the New Nation Printing Press, 1.R.K Mission Road, Dhaka-1203 Phones: New Nation PABX: 7122654, 7114514, 7122655, Fax: 880-2-7122650, 9512775 email: email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.org for advertisement, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:e17c4267-ceb8-4025-9766-461e7c8d55a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thenewnationbd.com/newsdetails.aspx?newsid=26440 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934817 | 1,171 | 3.234375 | 3 |
It is evident that over the last decade that intranets have dramatically changed and adapted, according to business requirements. The biggest development of intranet evolution is that it’s easier for anyone to upload content, which is great, but has resulted in the modern day intranet flooded with content.
Ten years ago, IT managers had sole responsibility for adding content to the intranet, limiting the frequency of content being added; if you had a busy IT team you can bet your intranet was not updated that often. Communication was top down — “management knows best.”
The Rise of the Intranet Champion
Over the past few years, the adding of content has become increasingly decentralized as "Intranet Champions" have been introduced in various departments in the workplace, such as marketing, finance and HR. Adding content became less of a technical nightmare.
As the "social" intranet continues to evolve, it is not uncommon to have hundreds, if not thousands, of people contributing to intranet content on a daily basis. Staff actively write blogs, comment on documents, "Like," "Share" and post status updates — which is fantastic, but has resulted in a huge volume of content on our intranets that is not always relevant to everybody.
In a world where time is critical and even one extra click can deter users from continuing with a process, the demand for accurate and relevant content is crucial. It’s imperative that users find the information they are looking for on the intranet quickly and that what they do find is helping them to "get work done."
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know!
We are intelligent beings — we can filter out noise that takes place in the workplace and focus on content that is relevant. As you sit at your desk you hear conversations subconsciously and then focus in on the things you hear that are relevant to you. How many times have you heard someone mention something in your office that is relevant to a project you’re working on and has a direct effect on your work? That “I wish I’d have known that yesterday!” moment.
For example, there maybe three conversations taking place close to you. One, a general conversation about football results last night, another is a general discussion in the marketing department about new brand guidelines and another discussing how a product launch date is being changed. You have a meeting with a customer tomorrow to discuss the product launch, you now need to inform the customer of this change in date.
However, how do you do this when these conversations are happening in many different office locations around the world? Wouldn’t it be great if you had the ability to hone in on the conversations that matter to you, no matter where you are?
Think Beyond Personalization
“Personalization” of your intranet could help with this. For example, setting up your intranet homepage so that it is relevant for specific user groups depending on their job role, interests, etc. is a step in the right direction and might reduce the level of content noise but ultimately this personalization is likely to fail because to personalize, you have to constantly make manual changes to keep things relevant. It’s another ongoing project that people have to keep up to date.
The reality is, in a large organization there are just too many people who have different needs:
- Different job roles
- Different skills
- Different ways of accessing the intranet
- Different interests
- Different knowledge gaps
- Different languages
These needs can’t be controlled with personalization! Who has the time to constantly update their preferences? How many people can honestly say they personalize their Google homepage? And if you do — how often do you update it to reflect your current interests and circumstances?
Wouldn’t it be better if an intranet understood what you were interested in and automatically delivered this content to you? Just like Google intelligently gives you content it knows is most relevant to you, rather than relying on you to update your preferences — which let’s face it, will never happen!
For a modern day intranet to become essential to an organization’s success and to help staff get work done, it must be able to look at your connections, interactions, intranet behaviour and profile data and from this information, construct a Profile DNA that is unique to each intranet user. | <urn:uuid:ea017a65-7624-4503-9640-975d451c0c6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/the-social-intranet-bringing-the-content-to-people-017776.php?inf_contact_key=f618167013443faee2475e5f754350be856bf39a0e8ac29644625da7fbb5331e | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958393 | 921 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Sands cuts a corner with the Tracker. Sands promised the Tracker can now be ridden even harder now that he had added a front brake to the Tracker.
During the first three decades of the 20th century, when motorcycles were in their developmental infancy, daredevil riders contested races on wooden board tracks behind the controls of what was then cutting-edge machinery. Equipped with bikes whose names would go on to great fame, like Harley-Davidson, as well as various other brands who have long since disappeared, those board-track racers could never have comprehended racing a bike which cranked out a mind-boggling 200 horsepower. Enter custom builder Rolands Sands and roadracing legend Kenny Roberts, who teamed up to create the MotoGP-powered KRV5 Tracker.
Board-track racers were the MotoGP stars of their day, risking life and limb as they railed around their wooden arenas in some cases just cresting triple-digit speeds. Sands seeks to pay tribute to that era with his KRV5 Tracker, but does so with a very contemporary spin by utilizing the V-5 motor which powered Roberts' MotoGP bike from 2002-2005. Considering the mighty MotoGP mill generates 10 times the power of the 20-horsepower Model T car (contemporary to the original board-track racers), it's not quite fair to call the KRV5 Tracker a true throwback to the board trackers of yesteryear, but Sands' intent was to capture the spirit of the nostalgic era with his signature racing twist.
"I've been wanting to build a board-tracker for years," said Sands. "I wanted my tracker to be built in the real essence of board-track racers of the past. The MotoGP engine let me do that."
The story of how a MotoGP powerplant fell into Sands' lap traces back to the 2005 USGP at Laguna Seca. Kenny Roberts, a three-time world champion, racing legend, and owner of MotoGP's Team Roberts, and his team manager, Chuck Askland, discussed the possibility of utilizing the Team Roberts KRV5 engine in a non-MotoGP context. Sands' media exposure and racing background pegged him as the leading candidate, and a handshake between Roberts and Sands sealed the deal, with Sands charged to come up with a radical KRV5-design by the time the USGP rolled back into town.
"They were looking to do something cool with their MotoGP engine," said the 32-year-old designer, "they saw me on TV and Kenny had known me from racing, so it made sense."
Of course, Sands himself is no stranger to the race track, with a racing career which stretched from 1994 to 2002. Sands hung up the professional leathers once the physical toll had become too great, but didn't leave racing without 9 career victories in the AMA 250GP series to his credit. He also claimed the 1998 250GP championship in which his leading rival was none other than Roberts' own son, Kurtis Roberts (one of KR's racing offspring, the other being Kenny Roberts Junior, also a former world champion and the current Team Roberts rider).
Built as his homage to the board-track racer era, Sands' Tracker design utilizes the might of the five-cylinder KRV5 MotoGP powerplant.
t was insane building a bike for Kenny. I was very excited," said the former AMA champ on his getting tapped out by a legend like Roberts, which was a validation of sorts of his off-the-track success as a designer. "It said a lot about the audience I was effecting with my building style to have him take notice."
The engineering gem at the heart of Sands' Tracker, the KRV5's history is itself an interesting side story. Looking for a MotoGP engine design as he made the leap from two-stroke to four, Roberts borrowed the V-5 concept in 2002 from Honda's dominating five-cylinder RC211V. Dubbed the KRV5, Team Roberts campaigned it for three years but in 2005 changed direction by utilizing a KTM-built V-4. In a bitter split, KTM bailed out mid-season as Team Roberts' engine supplier, but Roberts persevered by returning to his original design and the KRV5 finished out the '05 season.
The 990cc KRV5 has yet to be dynoed by Sands, but he promises it produces at least 200 horsepower. The use of lightweight carbon fiber, titanium, and aluminum is abundant, and the KRV5 comes with modern racing goodies like a slipper clutch. As a MotoGP-spec engine, the five-piston design represents a pinnacle of motorcycle racing technology. When housed in the Tracker it makes the powerplants of its board-track predecessors look downright Paleolithic.
As might be imagined, dropping in a five-cylinder MotoGP engine presented some challenges not found on a typical build. Sands cited the biggest issue with the engine was "getting the gas tank to look right and getting all the lines to blend in together." Another issue was the wiring, as Sands and his crew had to eliminate the motor's complex telemetry. MotoGP-spec parts like Deutsch connectors still make up some of the electrical components on the KRV5, and the engine's high-tech nature is best summed up by Sands on his spec sheet when he describes the ignition with one word - "complicated."
Also complicated looking, but very trick, are the engine's five hand-built titanium exhaust pipes. Sands' original intent was to create an in-house titanium exhaust, but instead he opted to cut up an experimental set of KR pipes and then piece them back together until they looked right. Another piece of Team Roberts material to find a place on the Tracker is the radiator, which Sands salvaged off of the progenitor to the KRV5, Roberts' 500cc two-stroke MotoGP machine.
The chassis retains lines similar to its stylistic board-track progenitors and keeps the rigid rear of its forebears. The customary boardtrack girder front end, however, was swapped out for black anodized forks sourced from a GSX-R1000. Sporting a 24-degree rake angle, the forks are locked into place with triple trees fabricated by Sands' own company, Roland Sands Design
(RSD). One component which dials in the classic spirit of the board-track style are the turned down handlebars (also RSD designed and built) as well as the vintage looking Bill Wall Leather
The bike's foot controls are sourced from Sands' RSD company and his parents' Performance Machine
shop (the two companies sharing a complementary relationship, with Sands designing the PM line and PM manufacturing most of the RSD products). Also coming out of the RSD garage are the Tracker's Contrast Cut Judge wheels, with a 23-inch front with 3.5-inch rim matching a 21-inch rear with a fat 9-inch rim. As for brakes, well, at the USGP unveiling up front there were none, with the rear wheel sporting a PM Contour bracket and radial-mount brake.
The ultra-compact KRV5 motor, which generates at least 200 hp, was developed by Kenny Roberts when Team Roberts made the jump from a 500cc two-stroke to 990cc four-stroke.
If the lone single binder out back sounds a bit crazy, consider the original board trackers had no brakes at all. Still, the solitary rear stopper combined with 200 horsepower motor would make for some interesting street riding to say the least.
"It was built as a concept for a track that doesn't exist," said the California native, "that being the case it sucks having no front brakes."
The lack of a front binder was problematic, as Sands rides all his creations and expects them to live up to his high-performance racing rep. To remedy things, Sands just recently mounted a front brake. Overall, Sands is pleased with the Tracker's performance, as is Mr. Roberts.
"I just put a front brake on it, now I can ride it hard," said the two-time Biker Build-Off participant. "The ride is really incredible. It turns good and has a very solid feel. You can lean it over till it runs off the edge of the rear tire, which isn't quite as far as I'd like to lean it, but super fun. Kenny dug it... he wants to ride it on the track. It's fast as sh*@t... the front wheel will not stay on the ground out of a corner."
Tying everything together on the Tracker is a fantastic paint job by Sands' standby painter, Chris Wood from Airtrix. The color scheme features Army Metallic Green which encloses flat tan flake bodywork panels with an RSD pattern inlay. The paint job also includes a classy looking Team Roberts logo on the sides of the aluminum fuel tank. As is the cliche with many great paint jobs, photos just don't do it justice.
"Kenny told me to do whatever I wanted as long as the KR logo was on the tank," said Sands of the Tracker's paint scheme. "I came up with all the graphics, logos and patterns, and the master Chris Wood turned it into a reality. Chris is by far the best painter I've ever seen."
From frame fabrication to starting the bike took Sands and his crew about two months of hard work. Rodney Aquilar, Jason Tiedeken, and Christian Cogninni all pitched in on a hectic build to help Sands finish before the 2006 USGP deadline, where the Tracker made its pit-lane debut.
Roberts was one of the many people present for the Tracker's 2006 USGP unveiling. (For 2006 Roberts cozied up with Honda to get his hands on the RC211V V-5 motor and then placed it in the Team Roberts-built chassis to create the new KR211V machine. The revitalized team logged its best results ever with Honda power and Roberts' son KRJR at the controls.) It was plain to see that King Kenny approved of Sands' labors.
Debuting at the 2006 USGP at Laguna Seca, Sands generated a lot of attention with his board-track design. From frame fabrication to starting the bike took Sands and his crew about two months of hard work.
"He was really pumped on the outcome," said Sands on Roberts' reaction to the finished Tracker. "He said he couldn't believe we finished it. He was even more impressed when we started it for him - he never thought we'd get it running."
Also on hand for the Laguna Seca debut was Sands' buddy and sometimes Biker Build-Off competitor, Jesse Rooke, who was spending quite a bit of time crouched down and getting a closer look at his colleague's handiwork.
"We for sure motivate each other," said Sands on Rooke's influence. "We are always competing at stuff weather it be girls, bikes or going fast on a track. It's all good. I think we influence each other quite a bit; I see some of my style rubbing off on him and vice versa."
When asked whether his racing sensibilities rub off on his projects, Sands summed up his designing style as thus: "I think it's just natural. When I look at a bike I always try to figure out how to make it work and look better at the same time. So I think my style is just that, form following function. That's my look with a little eclectic '70s drag-race flavor and a touch of vintage class."
There's a novelty and sense of history in a concept that intertwines the old and new to create something altogether different and unique. In that regard, the KRV5 Tracker stands apart from its custom peers and is another testament to Sands' maverick style, leaving us to wonder what new creations will creep out of the RSD garage next.
"I've got some stuff cooking with a few manufacturers that want concept bikes," promised Sands. "We'll have some sick stuff coming up for sure. I'm going to continue to grow a killer product line and really grow the bike kit side of things. It's an area I see as wide open and I've got a ton of ideas about how to make stock bikes look bitchin."
Well, we can't wait to see how they turn out.
Share your thoughts on this article in the Forum | <urn:uuid:4abbea29-fbc3-418d-8ce1-3feb134e77a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/19/1268/Motorcycle-Article/Roland-Sands-KRV5-Tracker.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974209 | 2,582 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Valley Transportation Authority on Thursday approved a $185 million spending plan to keep the project alive at least for two years by continuing with pre-construction studies and track issues for the 16.3-mile link from Fremont to Santa Clara.
The decision was pivotal, because a no vote would have delayed work, which the VTA says could have added $165 million a year in costs, an increase that could make construction costs insurmountable.
"The BART program is an opportunity for greatness in Silicon Valley," said Steve Glickman, head of the agency's policy advisory committee. "It's clear to me that a condition for greatness is to have a great transportation system. And here that means BART."
The decision was made at a three-hour board meeting that was much more civil than cantankerous sessions earlier this year. The board approved the extra spending by a 9-2 vote, with Supervisor Liz Kniss and Mountain View Councilman Greg Perry voting no. San Jose Councilwoman Nora Campos left the meeting early and did not vote.
Santa Clara County voters approved a 30-year half-cent sales tax six years ago that at the time was touted as enough money to build BART, improve Caltrain and expand light-rail and bus service.
But the dot-com bust sent projected revenue plunging and to do
The sales tax, which kicked in earlier this year, would cover about half the cost of building BART. The VTA is banking on getting state and federal aid to make up the difference.
But building BART is just part of the financial battle. The VTA doesn't have the cash to operate additional transit service approved in the tax plan; roughly $75 million a year is needed. And the agency won't get federal aid until it does.
That's why Thursday's action was so key. The Federal Transit Administration wants better estimates on costs and ridership before it will consider the project for funding. The extra funding will pay for studies that look closer at environmental effects, station designs, tunnel work and support services. And the two years required for this work will give county leaders time to mull over possible new sources of revenue to fill in the funding gaps.
"The FTA needs to see better cost estimates," said VTA General Manager Michael Burns.
When the new studies are completed in two years, the VTA will go back to Washington to see whether the project can be re-inserted into the FTA's New Starts program. The VTA withdrew BART from consideration a year ago after it received a "not recommended" rating and it became clear the lack of cash to operate BART trains could doom the project in the eyes of Washington.
VTA officials also hope that the project will be in the running for about $200 million in state bonds approved by voters last month. Burns said he was optimistic but added the VTA "could get all of that amount or none."
Critics and supporters both believe an additional sales tax of at least one-quarter cent will be needed to cover the $75 million it will cost a year to run BART trains. And they expect a measure will be on the ballot in 2008, a few months before the VTA would like to go back to the FTA to seek federal aid.
Last June, county voters turned down a half-cent tax increase, one that would have divided $150 million a year between general county needs and transportation.
The thought of a new tax riled some.
"This is a dollar-and-cents issue," Doug McNea of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association said at the meeting. "Clearly, there aren't enough dollars to bring BART to San Jose, so it makes no sense to waste more dollars. In June, voters clearly said no new taxes."
Then, turning to the VTA general manager, McNea said:
"Mr. Burns, I'd like to say to you: Read my lips. No new taxes."
Although not thrilled by the possibility of a new tax, disabled transit user Aaron Morrow said supporting BART is inevitable, pointing out the 71 percent support for the 2000 tax measure.
"Voters clearly spoke that they want BART," Morrow said. "And you have to go back to voters at some point for another tax. So you can't go back on BART. That would be a defeat to the voters of this county."
Contact Gary Richards at email@example.com or (408) 920-5335. | <urn:uuid:32f15c5f-ceae-425e-adab-1fd771b73328> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mercurynews.com/bart/ci_4846546 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969994 | 918 | 1.523438 | 2 |
What is Zithromax and What Does Zithromax Do? Zithromax (azithromycin) is a drug that belongs to a group of drugs called macrolide antibiotics. Zithromax fights bacteria in the body and is often used to treat many different types of infections caused by bacteria, such as respiratory infections, skin infections, ear infections, and sexually transmitted diseases.
How is Zithromax Administered? Patients who are taking Zithromax should follow the prescription that was given to them by their doctor. Zithromax is available in a few different forms; firstly it is available as a tablet/pill for oral use. It is can also be administered via an intravenous or as eye drops for optical use. The form of the Zithromax will depending on the type of bacterial infection(s) that the patient may or may not have.
Side Effects Associated With Zithromax Zithromax is a very reactive drug and if not taken properly then certain side effects may occur, to limit this always follow the prescription given by your doctor and contact them if anything changes.
Drugs That Effect The Taking of Zithromax Many drugs can interact with Zithromax. Below is just a partial list. Tell your doctor if you are using: - Arsenic trioxide - Theophylline - Warfarin - An antidepressant such as amitriptylline - Ergot medicine such as methysergide - Heart or blood pressure medication such as digoxin - Heart rhythm medicine such as amiodarone - HIV medicines - Medicines to treat psychiatric disorders, such as chlorpromazine - Migraine headache medicine such as Sumatriptan - Narcotic medication such as methadone - A sedative or tranquilizer, such as alprazolam - Seizure medicine such as carbamazepine Doctors may not allow patients to be prescribed with Zithromax, if they are prescribed with certain drugs. Patients are required to tell their doctor about ANY medication they are taking. If a patient informs a doctor of other prescriptions, the doctor can order for a lower dosage of Zithromax if it is necessary.
If you notice that your symptoms are worsening or the condition of your moods have been changing you want to consult your Dr. Right away. They might have to adjust your medication or at least figure out another way to help treat the chemical imbalance in your brain to make it right again. Generic Strattera. This drug also works well for anxiety, panic attacks and trouble sleeping because it set your mind at ease with the chemical balance beam right between both halves of your brain.
Soma is a prescription medication that is indicated in the treatment of muscle pain that is a result of trauma or pain that cannot be treated through more traditional means. Buy Soma Online. It works by blocking the brain from communicating pain the way it usually does, therefore providing relief. Soma is usually used in conjunction with rest and sometimes physical therapy to treat injuries. Soma is also used to treat many musculoskeletal conditions, as indicated by the treating physician. | <urn:uuid:fff2d979-b05c-4ba0-8dfd-dfe16f91beed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zithromaxonlineprice.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939842 | 642 | 2.640625 | 3 |
First of all, let me say that I know this is a very delicate issue. In no way should my question be seen as an attempt to endorse negative attitudes towards the LGTB community. I am seeking objective, historical evidence; not speculation or personal opinion.
According to this Wikipedia article, "many forms of religion, including the Eastern faiths and Abrahamic faiths, do not support gay sex. Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, Mormonism, Orthodox Judaism and Islam hold the view that gay sex is a sin and that its practice and acceptance in society weakens moral standards and undermines the family."
Moreover, according a 2009 report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, 80 countries in the world consider homosexuality illegal, with five of them punishing homosexual acts with death.
It seems that the movement to push for the acceptance of LGTB rights is recent when compared to a relatively long history of religious and political entities holding negative attitudes towards homosexuality.
What are some of the historical reasons behind this? | <urn:uuid:9c65e536-e093-4731-af79-3ece9df49f39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/6264/what-are-the-historical-reasons-for-religious-and-political-negative-attitudes-t | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935631 | 206 | 2.046875 | 2 |
To embrace the Dutch cliché about Rotterdam as the city of commerce and money is to miss an important fact. The way it looks, its architecture, its hearty Modernism, is less the result of commercial interests than of a tension between business and politics. What I hadn't realized before my visit was the extent to which politics and planning had determined the shape of the postwar city. Rotterdam is one of the most planned cities west of Dresden. And the planning, which began almost immediately after the bombing in 1940, was social, even socialist.
Some bombed cities—Warsaw, for example—tried to heal their man-made wounds through careful reconstruction or mimicry of the past. This was never the goal in Rotterdam. On the contrary, city planners saw the destruction of downtown Rotterdam as an opportunity to build a totally new, modern city. That was also how the Nazi occupiers saw it; they wanted Rotterdam to be a "great Germanic port." One reason Dutch city planners were so keen to get going was that they didn't want the Germans to do it for them. Not much was actually built during the war, but by the time the Germans were defeated, in May 1945, the blueprint for Rotterdam had been ready for years.
Zones had been plotted, and plans for streets, squares, and parks drawn up. Since all private land-ownership claims had been scrapped, it was possible to start with a blank slate; the rest was up to the architects. They could choose their own styles, but city planning was subject to political and socioeconomic concerns. Industry had to be confined to certain outlying districts. Banks and offices would be in the center, and low-income municipal housing would be built around the downtown core. If you wanted to own a house, you had to move to a suburb. That's why the central residential areas of Rotterdam are still relatively poor. Yet, even before the war, some of the most interesting, and typically Dutch, architecture was built in the less affluent areas. J.J.P. Oud's two-story terraced workers' housing in the south of Rotterdam, for example, is a triumph of 1920's socialist architecture and a perfect example of the Dutch talent for turning thrift into a virtue.
So Rotterdam, despite its reputation for stinking of money, was anything but a capitalist free-for-all. It has been governed largely by Socialists, some of whom, especially in the 1970's, were actively anti-capitalist. When, in 1973, the Shell Oil Co. built an office tower on a prime site, one city alderman called it a "capitalist erection." Because politicians and planners were more interested in social policies than in aesthetics, the architectural style of Rotterdam became a hodgepodge. The downtown is a collection of buildings, rather than a coherent district. And the styles reflect the changing fashions not only in architecture, but also in politics. The 1970's and early 80's saw many small-scale, quasi-traditional, or sometimes self-consciously playful buildings, part of the government's desire to "give the city back to the people."
PATERNALISTIC PLANNING FOR A VIRTUOUS society, and the love of thrift and modesty, are traditional Dutch characteristics, the very ones that have made Holland such a well-ordered, civilized place. But they have also made it a little dull, even oppressive, and this invites rebellion. One afternoon, I had coffee with Chris Dercon, the creative director of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Museumpark near the Netherlands Architecture Institute. Like Koolhaas, or Simon Field, the British co-director of the Rotterdam international film festival, Dercon likes the freedom of working in Rotterdam. But he has the critical outsider's view of Holland. To him, Dutch culture seems stifled by compromise and consensus. Dercon likes rebels. Koolhaas was a rebel, but OMA has become too grand now to cause much outrage. Dercon still rates Koolhaas highly, but the most important artist in Rotterdam, in his view, is a rather peculiar man named Joep van Lieshout.
I had seen pictures of van Lieshout, wearing an aloha shirt and riding in a retooled Mercedes limo, with a machine gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. Koolhaas had warned me that he could be a little "difficult." He had the reputation of being a "sex maniac," a superannuated hippie, a punk survivalist. In fact, he is also a serious artist whose architectural and interior designs have been shown in galleries and museums all over the world. Van Lieshout designed a bathroom for the Boijmans museum and a bar unit for a Koolhaas building in Lille, France. He has also designed jewel-encrusted knuckle dusters, "survival knives," giant phalluses, do-it-yourself mobile homes, and a mobile abortion clinic. He has a farm, where he and his co-workers raise their own pigs. His work is the purest example of deliberate roughness, of using the simplest means. The worst sin, in his eyes, is trying to make something look better or grander than it is.
The Atelier Van Lieshout, a kind of commune in which the artist and his colleagues live and work, is on a wharf surrounded by car wrecks, tanneries, garbage dumps, small factories, and an office for movie stuntmen. Van Lieshout's studio seems the very antithesis of well-ordered, civilized, comfortable, respectable Dutchness. A sculpture of a stylized nude with legs spread wide lies prone in front of the factory-like studio. But, actually, Dutch orderliness intrudes even here. Van Lieshout's street is part of a designated prostitution zone, where special steel partitions are thoughtfully provided by the municipal authorities to give the hookers and their clients some privacy. The official term for these depressing areas is "tolerance zones." | <urn:uuid:6294c938-4d33-49a9-95d8-4d20cd147f7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/double-dutch-october-2001/3?comments_page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97751 | 1,277 | 2.578125 | 3 |
60 Minutes: Searching for Jacob
Genocide and Nationalism
Air Date: 10/22/06 When the Sudanese town of Hangala was bombed and burned by government forces, there were only a few signs of life left behind, among them the school books of a boy named Jacob. In a compelling story of the genocide in Darfur, Scott Pelley goes searching for Jacob -- a journey that takes him into dangerous territory in the Sudan, and then into a densely packed refugee camp in Chad, where Pelley learns Jacob's fate. DVD only. | <urn:uuid:02d6804c-acfb-454c-9329-09cce436cbc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keene.edu/cchs/videosalpha.cfm?Video_ID=967 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941893 | 113 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Buddy Walk for Down Syndrome | VideoMichelle San Miguel | 9/29/2012
About 400,000 people in the United States have Down syndrome. Organizers say the walk helps bridge community support and break down misconceptions.
"I think it`s not knowing that even though you may have a diagnosis of intellectual disability, you`re able to really learn and experience life really no different than you and I," said Roxane Romanick, board president of Designer Genes.
More than 90 percent of the money raised at the walk will stay in the state- helping those with Down syndrome. The funds will also help pay for advocacy at the state and local levels. | <urn:uuid:e1c3e96a-2897-48d8-a42b-31fb137578a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=59535 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933492 | 136 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Throughout the year, most equities are closely tracking the S&P 500. Every December, however, most equities “split off” from the S&P 500 dependency. This feature of the equities markets enables investors to better diversify their risk in the last month of the year, and also allows room for investing strategies that would be too risky in other months. In short, December is the gamblers’ paradise!
Specifically, the dependency under the consideration is a stock’s beta, a measure of how closely the changes in the price of each stock move in tandem with the changes in the S&P 500. For most stocks during most other months of the year, the beta is different from 0 with 99.99% statistical confidence. In December, however, the statistical significance evaporates, implying that the beta becomes statistically indistinguishable from 0 as stocks mysteriously lose their relationship with the S&P 500.
The cause of this phenomenon is unknown. It may be due to the fact that most firms’ fiscal years coincide with the calendar years, and it is their individual end-of-year performance figures that dominate returns in December. In the remainder of the year, stocks are priced relative to market-wide conditions.
Irene Aldridge is a quantitative portfolio manager at ABLE Alpha Trading, LTD., where she supervises creation and production of quantitative and high-frequency trading strategies. Aldridge is the author of High-Frequency Trading: A Practical Guide to Algorithmic Strategies and Trading Systems (Wiley, 2009). Her latest research on high-frequency trading is forthcoming in Equity Valuation and Portfolio Management (Frank Fabozzi and Harry Markowitz, eds., Wiley 2011). She can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:be81fb70-9c0e-42dd-b020-ccccbba436e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hedgeworld.com/blog/?p=3957 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930752 | 366 | 1.59375 | 2 |
CRLS Research Guide Cambridge Rindge And Latin Research Guide
Making a List of Possible SourcesTip Sheet 5
Once you have an overview of your topic, first think about what kinds of information you need. Do you need quotations, maps, diary entries, political cartoons, song lyrics, diagrams, narratives, statistics? Once you know the kinds of information you need, you can make a list of all the possible sources in which you think you can find that information.
These could include any of the following, or others:
- Magazine Articles
- Newspaper Articles
- Maps or Atlases
- Expert people
- Site visits (to museums, etc.)
- Television Shows
- Radio Shows
- Sound Recordings
- Video Recordings
- Electronic Databases
Now star the sources on your list that you will most likely be able to use, given
the time and
sources you have available. Give them a prioritized number order for which you will use first, which second... etc...
Once you do this, you are ready to start locating these sources.
Hint: Librarians are very useful at knowing which kinds of sources can be used to find certain types of information. Use their expertise. It will save you valuable time. | <urn:uuid:08165640-0d12-4818-93b9-9c2e32bfb743> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crlsresearchguide.org/05_Possible_Sources_List.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915516 | 258 | 3.921875 | 4 |
It doesn't take a lot to get a group of 7th grades to perform for a camera, especially when it's their own song that is now available around the world.
The seventh grade class at Tyler's Grace Community School has their own song to sing, "The Bible Rap."
This all started when these kids were sixth graders... in Mrs. Ackerson's Bible Class.
"It all started with Mrs. Ackerson. She teaches everything with a cheer," says 7th grader Tanner Starr, "Mrs. Ackerson is a very unique, one of a kind teacher."
That unique cheer caught the imagination of one student and his father.
"I came home and said Dad, we have this crazy Bible teacher. She is really fun. She uses a cheer for everything. We've got all kinds of cheers, like we have one for Romans 5:8," says Grace 7th grader Benjamin Hinkie, "And my dad said, oh, maybe she would be into the Bible rap."
"Yeah, we figured we all learned our ABC's with one song. Why don't we learn the table of contents of the best seller in mankind's history with one song because there is not one good one out there," says Todd Hinkie, Benjamin's Father.
A little work between parent and teacher and the Bible Rap was born. But not just another cheer in Mrs. Ackerson's Bible class. A couple of parents joined Hinkie and put their talents to work. They professionally recorded and mixed this classes version of the Bible Rap, which is now available worldwide on ITunes.
"It's really fun," says 7th Grader Regan Starr. "It's sort of nerve racking just a little bit just to know you're on ITunes. Out there anyone can buy your music or anything. It's pretty...it's fun though."
"There's a verse in the Bible that talks about how God...even though you're young God can still use you, God can use anyone," says 7th Grader Emily Everett.
And these kids decided God wanted more than a song. Like most songs on ITunes, there is a download charge. These kids decided to take that money and dedicate to a mission project of their choosing.
This school year the students paired up and researched ideas... Regan Starr remember the oppression he saw when he was with his father on a mission trip in India.
"I was going to try to raise money for them to build either temporary sheds or get some money for food, water, clothing for their kids, school stuff," says Regan.
Emily Everett thought of the Chinese orphanage where her now adopted little brother once lived.
"And you can hear lots of kids crying and moaning and it's really sad because they don't get a lot of attention. For my idea I wanted to sponsor some kids in that orphanage and like buy toys and stuff for the kids because they don't have a lot of that, that kind of thing," says Emily Everett.
"Well at first all they could think of was well lets sponsor a kid for something. Then they started getting creative and being prayerful about it," remembers 7th grade father Todd Hinkie. "And boy some of these kids have God inspired ideas. And I wouldn't be surprised if He chooses to use these guys and gals."
In addition to ITunes, the Bible Rap, with or without the lyrics is now available on CD. No one really knows how much these kids may raise to help with mission projects at home and around the world. But they do know more today about the Power of Prayer...regardless of age.
"Me, I think it proves that you're never too young to let God work through you," says 7th Grader Sterlyng Speed, "just let go and let God take you wherever you need to be.
In Tyler, Clint Yeatts, East Texas News.
For a link to the Bible Rap web site go the Know More section of kltv.com and look for the Bible Rap link.
Wednesday, May 22 2013 6:33 PM EDT2013-05-22 22:33:42 GMT
A Lufkin woman was struck and killed by lightning during last night's storms.Around 10:30 p.m., a 32-year-old I-HOP employee was standing in the parking lot holding an umbrella when lightning struck her,More >>
A Lufkin woman was struck and killed by lightning during last night's storms.More >>
Wednesday, May 22 2013 9:32 PM EDT2013-05-23 01:32:31 GMT
ORLANDO, FL (RNN) – A man with possible ties to a Boston Marathon bombing suspect was shot and killed after the FBI interviewed him early Wednesday. The FBI confirmed a special agent fatally shot a manMore >>
A man killed Wednesday during questioning by the FBI said he and Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev were accomplices in a 2011 slaying. More >>
Wednesday, May 22 2013 7:56 PM EDT2013-05-22 23:56:01 GMT
(RNN) – Of the 24 killed in the EF-5 tornado that decimated Moore, OK, 10 are children - two of which are infants according to a release by the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's Office. All the childrenMore >>
The last of the missing from Monday's massive tornado that tore through the town of Moore, OK, have been accounted for. More >>
Wednesday, May 22 2013 6:21 PM EDT2013-05-22 22:21:12 GMT
(RNN) - British officials are saying one man is dead and two others were injured in a possible terrorist attack in London on Wednesday.According to BBC News, eyewitnesses said man was attacked in a streetMore >>
One man is dead after two men attacked him in broad daylight with knives and meat cleavers. More >> | <urn:uuid:38ea5605-f214-45c9-bed6-5443f5848046> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kltv.com/story/9357206/power-of-prayer-the-bible-rap | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977945 | 1,226 | 1.71875 | 2 |
17 June 2003
The appointment of Rainer Grohe as Director of the Galileo Joint Undertaking marks a further key step forward for Galileo, the first civil global satellite navigation programme.
“I am delighted at Rainer Grohe’s appointment to manage the first Joint Undertaking established by the European Space Agency and the European Commission”, said Antonio Rodotà, ESA’s Director General. “His industrial experience will be invaluable to us in carrying out this programme, which can now get fully into its stride for the benefit of everyone in Europe.”
The Administrative Board of the Galileo Joint Undertaking endorsed the appointment on Monday 16 June in Brussels. This means that the JU can now proceed with the various steps towards setting up the Galileo network, which will give users in Europe - and throughout the world - a precise and secure satellite positioning and navigation system.
The Joint Undertaking’s main task is to prepare for the Galileo programme deployment and operational phase, which should culminate in the selection of a concession holder to take charge of running the future Galileo operating company. That private entity will take over to finish deployment of the constellation in orbit and finalise installation of the ground segment necessary to complete the system. It will then manage the operational phase.
In the near term, under the development and in-orbit validation phase, ESA is responsible for the launch of a first experimental satellite scheduled for September 2005. This will serve the dual purpose of securing the frequencies reserved for Galileo until June 2006 by the International Telecommunications Union and testing of the new technologies. To minimise the risks, two contracts will be awarded to industry by early July to build two separate satellites. Three or four test satellites will subsequently be launched for validation of the system around 2006/2007.
All this adds up to a magnificent challenge for ESA and the Commission together with the Galileo Joint Undertaking: achieving European independence in the strategically-important area of satellite navigation, a sector having numerous economic spin-offs.
The core of the Galileo system is its constellation of 30 satellites (27 operational, 3 spare) circling in medium earth orbit in three planes inclined at 56° to the equator at 23616 km altitude. This will be provide excellent global coverage. Two centres will be set up in Europe to control satellite operations and manage the navigation system.For further information: | <urn:uuid:75a8ea8c-1473-4810-ad46-7ee247861739> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esa.int/For_Media/Press_Releases/ESA_welcomes_setting-up_of_Galileo_Joint_Undertaking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901058 | 477 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Photo Courtesy Sears Portrait Studios
17-year-old Carliesha is a great girl. Like most teens her age, she enjoys getting her hair and nails done and going to the mall. Others describe her as pretty, funny, smart, and a girl with a sense of style! If she could change one thing about the world, Carliesha would make people kinder to one another. To her, being adopted means "being a part of a family." Carliesha deserves to be a part of a loving family.
Carliesha has many talents, one of which is writing. Her favorite subject in school is literature. Carliesha expresses herself through her poetry and says writing helps her mentally and emotionally.
Here is one of her poems:
Stone By Stone
I have a wall you cannot see. Because it's deep inside of me.
It blocks my heart on every side and helps emotions there to hide.
You cannot reach in, I can't reach out. You wonder what it's all about.
The wall I built that you can't see results from insecurity.
Each time my tender heart was hurt, the scars within grew worse and worse.
So stone by stone, I built a wall that's now so thick it will not fall.
Please understand that it's not you. Continue trying to break it through.
I want so much to show myself and love from you will really help.
So bit by bit chip at my wall till stone by stone it starts to fall. I know the process will be slow.
It's never easy to let go of hurts and failures long ingrained upon one's heart from years of pain.
I'm so afraid to let you in, I know I might get hurt again.
I try so hard to break the wall but seem to get nowhere at all.
For stone upon each stone I've stacked and left between them not a crack.
The only way to make it fall are imperfections in the wall. I did the best I could to build a perfect wall, but there are still a few small flaws, which are the key to breaking through the wall to me.
Please use each flaw to cause a crack, to knock a stone off the stack.
For just as stone by stone was laid, with every hurt and every pain, so stone by stone the wall will break as love replaces every ache.
Please be the one who cares enough to find the flaws no matter what...
A special thank you to Mokaik Concept Salon for making Carleisha look and feel great. Also, a special thank you to Bridget Ray with Nail Delivery for making a special stop to complete Carleisha's look with a manicure. To learn more about Moziak, please call (314) 395-7552. They are located at 10423 W. Florissant. For more information about Nail Delivery - a full service nail salon on wheels, please contact Bridget at (314) 825-6966. | <urn:uuid:7d977d65-1a28-4641-af19-61ed3e8326ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksdk.com/life/community/adoption/article/268537/38/Carleisha | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963197 | 621 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Prince Hassan Bin Talal - Jordan's former Crown Prince and the uncle of Jordan's current ruler - King Abdullah - has floated a possible new diplomatic initiative by reminding the world that the West Bank was once part of Jordan. Prince Hassan pointed out this very important historic and geographic fact whilst addressing a meeting of the Ebal charity organization in Nablus on 9 October. That meeting had been organised by Jordanian Senate President Taher Al-Masri - indicating that the King in all likelihood would have been given advance notice and approved what Prince Hassan intended saying. The Jordanian website Almustaqbal-a.com reported that Prince Hassan told the meeting:
...the West Bank is part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which included both banks of the [Jordan] River
The report added:
The attendees understood that Prince [Hassan] is working to reunite both banks of the [Jordan] River, and commended him for it.
The West Bank and Transjordan had existed as one territorial entity between 1950-1967 following Transjordan's occupation of the West Bank in 1948 after the newly declared State of Israel had been attacked by six invading Arab armies. Transjordan - as a result - changed its name to "Jordan" and named the territory west of the Jordan River as the "West Bank". Until then - the West Bank had been known for thousands of years as "Judea and Samaria" - the biblical and ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. These decisions were not taken in isolation by a victorious occupier against the wishes of a defeated and dispirited population - but at the request and urging of the exclusively Arab population living in Judea and Samaria. All the Jews who had been living there prior to the 1948 war had been dispossessed and forcefully driven from the area conquered by Transjordan. A conference was held in Jericho on 1 December 1948 - attended by several thousand people including the mayors of the towns of Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, the Arab Legion Military Governor General and military governors from districts in Judea and Samaria, and other notables. The meeting resolved:
Palestine Arabs desire unity between Transjordan and Arab Palestine and therefore make known their wish that Arab Palestine be annexed immediately to Transjordan. They also recognize Abdullah as their King and request him proclaim himself King of the new territory.
Wells Stabler - America's charge d'affaires in Transjordan - reported to the Acting Secretary for State in a confidential cable dated 4 December 1948 that following the meeting - a large delegation proceeded to the King's winter quarters at Shuneh to present the resolution to the King and request his acceptance. The King had replied that the matter must be referred to his government and that he must also ascertain the views of other Arab states. Although usual jealousies and frictions had been apparent during the meeting, the King believed it to be of significance and might be regarded by him as his mandate from Palestine Arabs.
On 6 December Stabler sent a secret cable to the Acting Secretary for State in which he reported that UN Acting Mediator Ralph Bunche had met with the King - when the following matters had been discussed:
The King believed that annexation of Arab Palestine to Transjordan would be an "actual help" in reaching a final settlement.
Arab Palestine was then in a vacuum which needed to be filled and Transjordan was in best position to do it.
Basically any Palestine settlement rested with Egypt, Transjordan and Israel. Egypt and Transjordan could overcome any opposition from other Arab states.
Emir Abdel Majid Haidar, Transjordan observer at the United Nations General Assembly had held talks with Egyptians in Paris but without result.
Bunche had hinted to His Majesty that the annexation of Arab Palestine by Transjordan would probably be accepted as fait accompli in view of Transjordan's present position in Arab Palestine.
The subsequent annexation of the West Bank by Transjordan two years later was only recognised by Great Britain and Pakistan. The failure of other members of the United Nations to recognise such annexation has prolonged a conflict that with a little bit of give and take could have been resolved more than 60 years ago by negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and renounced any any claims to the West Bank in 1988. After 19 years of fruitless negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization since 1993 - the settlement of competing claims by Jews and Arabs to sovereignty in the West Bank still remains undetermined. Prince Hassan's statement on 9 October clearly attempts to resuscitate Jordan's territorial claim to the West Bank. Writing in the 1982 Spring issue of the quarterly publication "Foreign Affairs" - Prince Hassan had asserted:
We Jordanians must add that practically speaking a settlement must also take into account our perceptions. Small as Jordan is, our country is politically, socially, economically, militarily and historically inseparable from the Palestinian issue
Indeed the fate of Jordan and the West Bank has been tied together ever since both these areas of the former Ottoman Empire were included in the territory covered by the 1922 Mandate for Palestine within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted. The attempt over the last 19 years ito divide Jordan and the West Bank into two independent Arab states for the first time ever in recorded history has proved an abject failure - leading Prince Hassan to observe that whilst he did not personally oppose the two state solution - that solution was irrelevant at this stage since:
David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International - an organisation calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com. | <urn:uuid:efea33f9-4a28-4c1f-88b8-39b9f6648e04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14293 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969028 | 1,204 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Checking Google for your latest posts, feels like reading the phone book from A and finding your listing in Z. Can’t be right, you think to yourself. Choosing a long tail keyword from the same post, you begin flicking through the pages again. Page three, this time, in M! Not so bad, but take a look at the articles coming up ahead of you. Some posts seem to be, really quite irrelevant in your eyes. Others a couple of years old. What’s going on? Why are your pages doing so badly in the SERPs? Why are you a no show on page 1 of Google? I know, your not using “SEO Plugin Yoast, for WordPress“. Let’s fix this up, right now.
SEO is “The optimization of web pages for success with search engines.” That’s how I’d best describe SEO in one sentence. SEO is a process where you try to make a page, pages or domain, as a whole, rank as highly as possible in search engines, for the keywords you choose to target. It’s done by using these keywords, and related phrases, throughout your posts. Meta descriptions, with information tagged, for the search engines is also used. Search engines, require the tags, example the title tags, to be placed in the correct place, so that they understand, in the case of title tags, what the page is about.
So how do you Organize SEO for your blog?
Seo is an art and there are some very bright people, luckily for us, who have developed, plugins, for seo. We upload the seo plugin to our wordpress sites, fill in all the questions, and go from there.
This is the important part, filling in the questions correctly. If unsure, check out the help documentation that links from the plugin page on your site. Marking a box incorrectly, could have you telling the search engines that you don’t want them to index your posts or pages, and that would mean, you wouldn’t show up in the search engine pages at all.
So what do you need to do about organizing, SEO for your blog?
To begin with WPCandy.com has an excellent guide which explains all the basics. One thing they do suggest is to organize changing your permalinks to a structure, so that is easy to remember. They say, they try and make theirs an easy to remember sentence.
How to Edit your Permalink
Here’s how to make the permalink different to the title of your post. Where it says Permalink under your main post heading, simply change to what you want by hitting edit. Then save draft. The heading will stay the same but the permalink will change.
SEO Plugins for WordPress
You most probably have an SEO plugin activated on your blog, but did you know in order for them to work you have to fill out all the respective fields.
SEO Plugins need configuring
SEO plugins aren’t the set-it-and-forget-it kind of plugin, unfortunately.
The Title Tag, is displayed at the top of the page if it’s set.
It’s good to include the name of your blog at the end of the title tag also.
The Meta description, if you fill it out correctly, states what the page is about, and not just copying the title and the first few lines of the post. Google will use the meta description, under the title in the search pages, and that’s what people read, when deciding which article to read. To get lots of clicks, it’s important that your meta description, like your title, does a good job at promoting your post.
Make sure to include your keywords when writing your meta description.
Organizing which plugins to use for your SEO
When organizing which SEO Plugins to use, your first choice should be, for your main site SEO Plugin. I use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. I have chosen Yoasts because, of the comprehensiveness of the application.
For starters, this plugin is free, however, there is an even more extensive paid version available as well. I am currently only using the free version. It seems to be all I need at this stage.
It has a host of great features, as well as the usual changing of the
<title> and description, it handles XML site-maps, breadcrumbs and can place some content at the beginning and ending of your RSS feeds.
It scores your keyword density, tells you if you have placed your focus keyword in all the main SEO area’s eg: your url, your title, your first paragraph. Checks you’ve used alt tags with your pictures and gives you a score on how easy or hard your post is to read.
WordPress SEO Plugin Yeost: feature list
Check out the feature list: included here for you is a link to the features in the plugin, straight back to SEO Plugin Yeost site, so if your needing some help with any of these listed below, you’ll find the answer, right there, by following the link.
- Post titles and meta descriptions
- Robots Meta configuration
- Permalink clean up
- XML Sitemaps
- RSS enhancements
- Edit your robots.txt and .htaccess
- Clean up head section
- API Docs
What to do with posts, you no longer want on your site, but you still want to use the post and slightly change the URL.
Check out this post from SEO expert Jill Whalen from High Rankings.com in her article 5 Rookie SEO mistakes that can kill your search engine traffic and some tools to help.
- It’s critical to redirect the old to the new via 301-redirects and not 302s. A 301-redirect causes Google to remove the old URL and also to pass the link popularity of the old URL to the new one. But a 302, while redirecting visitors to the correct new URL, will often still be indexed by Google. This causes duplicate content issues and PageRank splitting problems. That is, any links to the old URL will not pass “link juice” to the new one as long as it’s redirected erroneously via a 302.Check the http header status of your redirected URLs to see if they show a 301 or a 302 via the SEO Consultant’s server header checker tool.
SEO for Pages or Posts in a Series : Enter rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
To get the best SEO for your series posts, and this is important, because, like you, Google doesn’t want, readers, finding your part 3 of your series, before finding part 1. Here’s what Yeost says about rel and prev:
“Now, as it goes with these things, Google has just posted the solution. They’ve asked to add
rel="prev" to paginated archives, so that they can distinguish them as a series and, quote:
Bingo! That’s what we want. The syntax is very simple. On
http://yoast.com/cat/seo/page/2/ we should have a prev link pointing to the first page in the series and a next link pointing to the next page in the series, like so”:
Why I Chose SEO Plugin Yoast
I chose to use SEO Plugin Yoast, Free WordPress SEO plugin, because of an interview I heard. Pat Flynn, from SPI Blog and Michael Dunlop from Retire at 21.com , were discussing that, when their sites had reached a particular stage, where they were getting lots and lots of traffic, both had decided to have, full SEO site analysis done by Yoast. They mentioned that it had been an expensive, however extremely well worth it, exercise.
These are two of my favorite, and most successful bloggers, that I follow and so any recommendation from them, is good enough for me.
Blogging While Angles Sleep, Blog Challenge. Day 48
Today is day 48 of our blog challenge. It’s time to optimize your posts by using a plugin, like SEO Plugin Yeost for WordPress.
Make sure you fill in each section using the guide included with the plugin. Once uploaded and activated, it’s important to in future, fill out all your meta data, that will be featured at the bottom of your post editor. It’s with a plugin like SEO Plugin Yoast, and by you following how to use the plugin correctly, that you’ll begin to see an improvement, in where your posts are placed in the search engine pages, for your targeted keywords.
Which Plugin do you use for your SEO? If you enjoyed this article please share it on Facebook, by clicking the share button on the left. Why not give my routinehabit page a like on facebook while your there.
As always thanks for reading | <urn:uuid:83b86e5e-92c1-46f5-8ddc-d6d5258ac824> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://routinehabit.com/blog/organize-seo-for-your-blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923707 | 1,893 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Gendered epidemiology: Sexual equality and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa
Redirect to Publisher's version
(Publisher's version.url.txt, 50 bytes)
Objectives. Given that HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is largely spread through heterosexual contact, there is marked variation in levels of gender equity across sub-Saharan African countries, and levels of gender equity are likely to influence both exposure to sexual practices that increase the likelihood of exposure to HIV and the efficacy of prevention programs, we hypothesize that levels of gender equity account for the levels of and changes in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS across sub-Saharan African countries. Methods. We explore this hypothesis by first discussing the role of gender and several other contextual variables in the spread of HIV/AIDS. The resulting model is tested with regression analyses of both the level and change of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan African. Result. We find strong support for our hypothesis. Conclusion. This suggests that further policy attention be given to gender equity in combating HIV/AIDS. | <urn:uuid:227bc7a9-1095-490e-b71f-b4036269c435> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19443/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904222 | 213 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Learn the tricks and tips to cleaning and seasoning cast iron cookware.
The hallmark of any country kitchen is an old black cast iron skillet sitting atop the woodstove. And there's good reason for that: Whether you're baking biscuits in a cast iron Dutch oven, flipping pancakes on a cast iron griddle over a woodstove or pan-frying chops on a modern electric range, cast iron makes the best cookware. When it comes to cast iron its important to learn about cleaning and seasoning cast iron cookware to get the best from your cookware.
Types of Cast Iron Cookware
Cast iron cookware has been used steadily in America since the 1600s, though over the last half century or so it has been known primarily as an outdoor cookware, used mainly by campers, hunters and living historians. But with more and more people discovering its virtues, there has been a resurgence in the use of cast-iron cookware in the home.
When folks think of cast ironware, most tend to think of skillets and fry pans, but the fact is there is an iron pot or kettle designed for just about any cooking chore. You can bake in Dutch ovens, make stew in a kettle or even do up a stir-fry in a cast-iron wok. Then there are griddles for making flapjacks, specialized pieces for making corn sticks and muffins, baking pans and large pieces designed specifically for putting up preserves. Cast iron also provides more even heat distribution than today's lightweight aluminum pans. It cooks evenly, cleans up easily and holds heat longer (thus requiring less fuel). Moreover, cast iron also has medicinal qualities. In fact, many medical authorities believe that there are health benefits to cooking in iron since food may absorb and pass onto us traces of the essential mineral.
Cast Iron Cookware Maintenance
But in order to live up to its potential, cast-iron cookware must be properly seasoned (cured) and that cure must be maintained. If done correctly, the iron will not rust, nor will food stick to it and burn.
Curing cast iron means filling the pores and voids in the metal with grease of some sort, which subsequently gets cooked in. This provides a smooth, nonstick surface on both the inside and outside of the piece. While the curing process is similar whether you start with new or used cast iron, there are a few important differences. Let's look at new cookware first.
Choosing Cast Iron Cookware
There are only a handful of sources for new cast iron cookware. Two American companies — Wagner and Lodge — still produce it and the rest comes from Asia. Generally you're better off with the finer grained American-made goods. The imports, though cheaper, have a course grain that is hard to cure and that requires more attention once it's cured.
Also, if you have a choice, avoid designs with self-basting lids. These are either covered with metal nipples or have a series of holes on the inside. They are more difficult to care for, because steam condenses in the depressions and on the nipples and tends to draw out the cure. They're also much harder to dry, resulting in rust on the inside of the lid and a metallic taste in the food that comes from cooking in uncured iron.
Wooden handles — more common on imported ironware — are handsome and stay cool to the touch, theoretically. But keep in mind that they are not appropriate for use on an open fire, and the wooden handles actually do heat up, thanks largely to the aluminum bolts that generally pass through their middles. Also, because you have a soft metal screw going into a hard metal thread, the bolt eventually wears down, causing the handle to loosen.
Seasoning Cast Iron Pans
All new cast iron has a protective coating on it, which must be removed. American companies use a special food-safe wax; imports are covered with a water-soluble shellac. In either case, scrub the item with a scouring pad, using soap and the hottest tap water you can stand. Once the coating is removed, you should never again let soap touch the iron.
Let's repeat that. Do not use soap on seasoned cast iron. The cure (seasoning) is based on grease, and soap's job is to remove grease. So if you wash your iron with soap, you'll destroy the very effect you are trying for.
Also, make sure to remove all of the initial protective coating. If not, you'll get a very strange smell as the coating cooks during the curing process and this funky aroma will often linger, permeating and corrupting the flavor of any food later cooked in the pot.
When the iron comes clean, immediately dry it and wipe a fairly heavy coating of shortening over all the metal, being sure to include the handle and any legs or other protuberances. Historically, lard was used for this purpose. But lard, like all animal fats, has a tendency to turn rancid, so shortening is a better bet. Never use butter, margarine or any fat containing milk or salt to season cast iron.
Heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and bake your cast iron pieces for about an hour. Remove them, blot up any puddles of oil with a paper towel, then let the iron pieces cool. Do not be alarmed if at this point the cast iron feels sticky; it'll lose this once the cure is complete.
Cast iron makers will tell you that the cookware is now ready for cooking, though most recommend that you use it only for frying the first few times. We find that oiling and heating the iron at least one more time before use effects a hotter initial cure. In this case, grease the piece lightly, and the stickiness should disappear; if not, it will the first time you cook with it.
After you've completed the second coating, it's okay to cook in the cast iron pan, but be sure to follow the manufacturer's suggestion and use the piece for frying only. Your ironware will be slightly discolored at this stage, but these first few frying jobs will complete the cure, turning the iron into the rich, black color that is the sign of a well-cured, well-used cast iron skillet or pot.
Faster Cast Iron Seasoning
Usually, curing cast iron takes considerable time. However, there is a way to hasten the process. To achieve a final cure quickly, build a high-flamed fire outdoors. While any fuel will serve, it's best to avoid softwoods as they will deposit creosote on the iron, which is not good for you.
Grease the iron on all surfaces fairly heavily and set it in the flames. When a good coating of soot has been deposited on the bottom, turn the piece and brush the sooty surface with more shortening. Be sure to use a natural fiber brush for this because synthetics will melt. When the topside, now facing the flames, has accumulated a sufficient layer of soot, turn the piece again and grease the sooty surface. Two or three turnings should complete the job. Remove the iron from the fire and let it cool.
Now comes the messy part. Liberally grease paper towels and use them to wipe off the iron. Lots of loose soot will come off, so you'll need plenty of towels. Try not to reapply this loose surface soot to the ware. Keep wiping with greased paper towels, periodically shifting to a clean spot, until most of the heavy soot is removed.
Your iron should new have a deep black finish, which normally only comes with months of use. What you've done is fill in all of the pores and voids in the iron, creating a smooth nonstick surface. The black finish will now help to absorb and hold heat evenly.
You can use the iron right away or clean it to remove any additional surface soot. We usually clean ours, so as not to transfer any soot to the kitchen stove. But should you choose to skip this step, the first cooking job will finish the cure, and no additional loose soot will appear unless you use the piece on an open fire.
Properly Cleaning Cast Iron Cookware
Proper cleaning of cast iron is the secret to maintaining the cure. So let's repeat once more: Do not use soap on cured cast iron. Ever! All you need is hot water (the hotter the better) and a scrub brush.
Once again, use straight hot water from the tap or water you've heated in camp. If outdoors, pour a small amount (a cup or two is all it takes) in the iron and use the scrub brush to vigorously scour all surfaces. Rinse the surface with more hot water. Indoors, merely let the hot water flow over the iron as you scrub it with the brush. If you are concerned about sterilization, pour boiling water into and over the iron after you have brushed it. But frankly, we don't consider this necessary: If the iron has been cured properly, it will not harbor pathogens.
Immediately dry the iron, then coat it with a thin film of shortening. This replaces any you have lost through cooking and cleaning and further prevents rust.
Iron that's been used on an open fire will always have loose soot on the outside. Rather than dirtying the scrub brush, we use one of those plastic scouring pads instead. We keep a few reserved solely for this purpose, to avoid transferring soot to other cleaning products. And we first wipe the ironware with greasy paper towels to remove most of the loose soot.
Depending on what it's used for, cast iron often doesn't have to be cleaned at all. We have friends who reserve one skillet strictly for making cornbread. When the skillet comes out of the oven, they turn the bread onto a rack to cool. The skillet is merely given a wipe with a paper towel, and a new film of shortening is applied. Very often, you can use the same approach even for foods cooked on the top of the range. The idea is to make sure nothing but a thin film of grease is left behind.
Buy Used Cast Iron, But Beware
Used cast iron requires a different approach. Depending on where you acquire it, you are likely to find it coated with everything from paint to crusted-on old food to a thick coating of burned lard. Much of this can simply be burned off by leaving the iron in a very hot fire. There's also the old-time solution of soaking the iron in a mild acid bath (using a very diluted mix of water and battery acid or lye). But given the inherent and very serious dangers of this method (both agents are extremely caustic), it's best left to professional paint strippers, who have the goggles, rubber aprons, respirators, high boots, long gloves — and medical insurance — to work with caustics safely and responsibly.
Less hazardous to the lungs, eyes, skin and environment is to wash the iron in hot soapy water to remove any loose crud, then treat the iron with one of the new benign paint strippers, followed by a putty knife, wire brush, steel wool and some elbow grease. After the iron is clean, merely follow the directions for a new iron. One caveat: Paint can be very messy, so if it's a factor, you may want to work outside.
Some old iron pieces will, after a soapy water wash, look like new. Others will have stains that won't come out no matter how hard you scrub. Don't worry about these; the cure will later hide them. Once the iron is clean, oil and cure it as usual.
You're likely to find a greater selection of styles, sizes and designs in used ware than what is available new. You can find cast iron at flea markets and antique malls, garage sales and farm auctions. But be sure you know what you're buying before plunking your money down. (You might try Ebay, Craigslist and Freecycle, too.)
Cast iron has become hugely popular as a collectible, causing prices to skyrocket. You can easily pay several hundred dollars these days for just about anything that says "Grizwold" on it. Problem is, many pieces of no particular collector value, when found in malls and flea markets, carry inflated prices. A common, everyday corn stick mold, for example, sells new for about $15 just about anywhere. Yet, we've seen them in antique stalls for as much as $35.
Examine used iron very carefully. Much of it is warped or has cracks and pinholes from misuse. This doesn't much matter if an item is destined to be a wall hanger, but you won't want to cook in it. Be especially wary of any piece that has been painted. Unscrupulous dealers often "repair" holes and cracks with epoxy compounds, then use black paint to hide their handiwork. A good welding shop can repair these holes, but it's hardly worth the cost.
Cast Iron Cooking Tips
When cooking with cast iron, heat the piece slowly. Cast iron works best when there is an even heat source spanning the piece's bottom. Old-fashioned wood- and coal-burning stoves are ideal for this (see Cooking With Wood), but very rarely does a modern gas or electric range provide this type of heat. The solution is to set your burner on very low and allow the cast iron to gradually warm up. You can then turn up the heat to medium or medium-high, as necessary. There is no reason ever to use the highest settings with cast iron, as it collects and conducts heat so readily.
Alternatively, you can evenly heat your ironware by popping it into an oven set on low. Once it's heated, simply transfer it to the range top and cook as usual.
Be particularly careful when cooking with an electric range, because the burners create hot spots that can warp cast iron or even cause it to crack. Be sure to preheat the iron very slowly when using an electric range and keep the settings to medium or even medium-low.
Preheating is not a problem when baking or oven-roasting, since the iron will heat evenly in the oven. However, you may find that you do not have to cook the food quite as long as the recipe calls for, because of iron's heat-retaining property.
Finally, be sure to use the appropriate iron for the task at hand. A three-legged Dutch oven is not the right choice for an indoor stove. Nor should a large baking dish be used on top of the range, unless you can perfectly balance the heat from the two burners it sits across.
Pick the right iron, treat it to the proper cure, dig out your favorite recipes and soon you'll understand why grandma spent so much time in the kitchen.
* How Do You Remove Rust From Cast Iron?
* Seasoning Your Cast-Iron Pan
* Cast-Iron Ware
* Country Lore: Crusty Frying-pan Pizza Recipe | <urn:uuid:e9c0ae76-4e71-4b79-9a5f-0069363e3e2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/cleaning-and-seasoning-cast-iron-cookware-zmaz99djzgoe.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949174 | 3,127 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Questions About This Book?
- The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any CDs, lab manuals, study guides, etc.
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The randomized control clinical trial has become the gold standard scientific method for the evaluation of pharmaceuticals, biologics, devices, procedures and diagnostic tests. This trial design has been successfully used in both therapeutic and disease prevention trials. It is superior to alternative designs by eliminating several sources of bias which exist in those designs.
This role has evolved over the past three decades in a number of disease areas including cardiology, opthalmology, cancer and AIDS. While the specifics of using the randomized control design for a specific intervention and disease may differ, the basic fundamentals still apply in developing the study protocol and operational procedures. These fundamentals still apply in developing the study protocol and operational procedures.
These fundamentals include identifying the specific questions to be tested and appropriate outcome measures, determining an adequate sample size, specifying the randomization procedure, detailing the intervention with visit schedules for subject evaluation, establishing an interim data and safety monitoring plan, detailing the final analysis plan and determining the organizational structure.This text is structured to address the fundamentals as the protocol for a clinical trial is being developed. A chapter is devoted to each of the critical areas of a protocol to aid the clinical trial researcher. The fundamentals described in this text are based on sound scientific methodology, statistical principles and years of accumulated experience by the three authors. Collectively, the authors have been active researchers in a broad area of clinical trials including cardiology, cancer, opthalmology, diabetes, osteoporosis, AIDS, women's health and screening tests. In these studies, the authors have served as members of the steering committee responsible for developing the protocol and as members of data and safety monitoring committees. The fundamentals were proposed in the first edition published in 1981 and have not changed substantially in the later editions. However, the number of examples illustrating the fundamentals has greatly expanded base on the collective experience of the authors.
This text is intended for the clinical researcher who is interested in designing a clinical trial and developing a protocol. It is also of value to researchers and practitioners who must critically evaluate the literature of published clinical trials and assess the merits of each trial and the implications for the care and treatment of patients. The test uses numerous examples of published clinical trials from a variety of medical disciples to meaningfully illustrate the fundamentals. Technical design issues such as sample size are considered but the technical details have been suppressed as much as possible through the use of graphs and tables.
While the technical material has been kept to a minimum, the statistician may still find the principles and fundamentals presented in this text useful both in a consulting and teaching capacity.The text assumes that the readers have only a modest formal statistical background. A basic introductory statistics course is helpful in maximizing the benefit of the text. However, a researcher or practitioner with no statistical background would still find most, if not all the chapters understandable and useful.
Clinical trials are an essential step in improving health care. The fourth edition of this standard reference updates areas in which progress has been made, and discusses new areas in which clinical trials are used. It is a valuable reference for practitioners and students in biostatistics, medicine, and public health. | <urn:uuid:1ddfc17b-f833-4dc9-a075-deb5370e0eb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecampus.com/fundamentals-clinical-trials-4th-friedman/bk/9781441915856 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939819 | 735 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Ithaca, NY (WBNG Binghamton) New York State declares a state of emergency even as Hurricane Sandy's intentions are still unclear.
Forecasters are still watching the track to determine where the storm will head and who it will impact most.
"We're quite sure it will impact the Northeast. The exact track of Sandy is still unsure," said Jessica Rennells, climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.
Experts have determined that locally we will be seeing rain as a result of Hurricane Sandy. How much is another question mark.
Sandy is considered to be a late season hurricane with the season ending in November, making it a different type of storm. It reminds some of the "Perfect Storm in 1991."
"In 1991 it was really a low pressure system off of a front that gained moisture from a hurricane. They are different in those cases," said Rennells.
Typically hurricanes will move Northeast towards the ocean, sparing us the brunt of its strength.
"It is more unusual that she is veering west towards the northeast. It is because she is acting with cold from that is coming across the US," said Rennells.
Sandy is expected to hit landfall as a hurricane, increasing the strength of her effects.
"There is potential for severe weather. For flooding and damaging winds, and power outages. It really depends on her track for severity," said Rennells.
The coming days will determine more concrete answers to the path of Hurricane Sandy.
Higher elevations may experience some snow, but locally rain and winds are the primary concerns. | <urn:uuid:c28065cd-be8e-462c-82c3-99feacf9c898> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbng.com/video/Sandy-Prep--176035271.html?vid=a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970283 | 331 | 2.53125 | 3 |
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From left, MTSU student volunteers Deonna Bounds, a graduate student from Collierville, Miranda Denham, a junior from Chattanooga majoring in child development, and Donald Abels, a graduate student from Savannah, Tenn., help plant trees Friday, Nov. 9, along Garrison Creek in east Murfreesboro. (MTSU News & Media Relations)
News and Media Relations contact: Jimmy Hart, 615-898-5131 or Jimmy.Hart@mtsu.edu
MTSU students protect environment with third tree-planting event
MURFREESBORO — About 40 MTSU student volunteers turned out on a beautiful Friday (Nov. 9) afternoon for a tree-planting event along Garrison Creek.
Approximately 125 trees were planted along the creek, an effort organizers say will help provide a border and future canopy for the stream and in turn better protect the community’s groundwater supply.
Volunteers gathered near the Kroger on Lascassas Pike. The creek runs along the rear of the Kroger property, and though the creek was dry on Friday, it can fill quickly following sustained rainfall.
The event was co-sponsored by MTSU’s Stormwater Program, the Tennessee Environmental Council and the city of Murfreesboro.
This was the third planting in a series of several projects this year that will help re-establish this stream segment and support aquatic life within the creek. A similar event in October, that also included cleanup efforts, resulted in more than 200 trees being planted along different parts of the creek.
For more information, contact Cynthia Allen with the Stormwater Program at 615-898-2660 or TEC Executive Director John McFadden at 615-330-5364.
The Tennessean wants to honor the accomplishments of those who make ours a brighter, smarter, better place to call home. Submit accolades here to be published in digital or print formats. | <urn:uuid:44f5bef5-8499-4e89-9d76-32acd838cb45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://data3.tennessean.com/projects/reader-photos/article/View?aid=97 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927106 | 424 | 1.554688 | 2 |
By Kath Noble
The Local Government Elections Act was amended last week, with no debate either inside or outside Parliament. But was the change genuinely uncontroversial? I don’t think so.
Given that the process was initiated in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the 18th Amendment, we should have been more suspicious. The 18th Amendment was part of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s post-war strategy to tighten his grip on power.
He was thinking about how to make use of a moment at which he enjoyed unprecedented popularity to achieve what is best for him. Are we really to believe that reforms to the voting system announced just a few weeks later were about what is best for the country?
People have a general sense that Proportional Representation is problematic, which leads them to assume that a mixture of Proportional Representation and First Past the Post – the new legislation calls for 30% of seats to be decided using Proportional Representation and 70% using First Past the Post – would be better.
The argument goes as follows. The country is unstable with Proportional Representation, since it is difficult for any one party to achieve a majority. Proportional Representation also leads to violence during elections, as candidates fight each other for preference votes. They have to spend more since constituencies are larger and they have to cover a larger area, leading to more corruption. And it is more difficult for voters to hold their elected representatives to account. First Past the Post disadvantages minority parties, but what is being proposed is a compromise.
Will the reforms actually solve any of these problems? Are they even the problems that need solving?
When it comes to accountability, it seems to me that voters will have even less chance of controlling politicians under the new legislation. At the moment, people can choose between candidates while maintaining their allegiance to a party. This is important. They need not vote for a party whose policies they don’t agree with simply because they don’t like the individual the party has nominated in their area. I bet plenty of UNP supporters stayed at home or even backed Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election rather than cast their vote for Sarath Fonseka. That is what happens when choices are limited.
Electoral reform as a means of reducing corruption is even more of a stretch of the imagination. Are politicians compelled to steal in order to pay for election posters? Or is it rather that they pay for election posters in order to be in a position to continue stealing?
Meanwhile, violence may or may not be reduced. Intra-party violence should be wiped out with the abolition of preference votes. But this is not the only sort of violence. Inter-party violence is already a problem, as we saw last month in the Eastern Province – one of the most serious incidents reported was a knife attack on SLMC candidate Azath Salley by supporters of Ameer Ali of the UPFA. That had nothing to do with preference votes. With competition from within the ranks of their own party eliminated, politicians could focus all of their attention on their opponents.
The only real solution is the empowerment of the Police.
Parties themselves can have an impact. They don’t have to tolerate intra-party violence, as the JVP has demonstrated. They don’t have to nominate thugs.
These days, much more of a problem than violence is the abuse of state resources.
Parties must commit themselves to a no-tolerance policy on all electoral abuses. They would be substantially reduced almost immediately, without the need for any change in the voting system. But the Government isn’t interested, since it knows that without electoral abuses its performance would suffer.
The only completely logical part of the argument is the bit about stability, but this is a reason to oppose the reforms not to support them. Under First Past the Post, a party can win representation far in excess of its vote share. It tends to guarantee one party a majority, reducing the need for potentially destabilising coalition building. But surely nobody in Sri Lanka believes that the country is currently short of stability, electorally speaking? Mahinda Rajapaksa isn’t under any pressure from the members of his coalition – on the contrary, he could easily do without them. Does he need a guarantee? Even under Proportional Representation he has managed to secure enough seats in Parliament to change the Constitution, which was supposed to be impossible.
First Past the Post is even more problematic than Proportional Representation.
What kind of a compromise is that?
The new legislation ignores genuinely popular and important electoral reforms, such as a compulsory quota for women candidates. Women make up only 2% of elected representatives at the local level. And according to a 2010 survey by the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the vast majority of people from all communities, including over 90% of Sinhalese, support quotas. They were even promised in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s now forgotten Chintana.
If the voting system is to be changed, the introduction of a compulsory quota for women candidates should be the top priority.
I hope that there would be at least some debate on the matter before the Government gets around to extending the new system to the provincial and national levels, as it announced following the passage of the amendment to the Local Government Elections Act last week. The implications are bad enough at the local level. But at the provincial and national levels, the reforms have even greater potential for causing trouble.
Minority parties, and in particular the JVP whose supporters are spread relatively thinly across the country, will be badly affected. Of course, this is hardly a coincidence, since it is the JVP’s seats Mahinda Rajapaksa wants to take over, in case the UNP gets rid of Ranil Wickremasinghe and starts to challenge him. Changing the voting system is just another way of shoring up his position.
Given that Mahinda Rajapaksa already holds the over-powerful Executive Presidency, shoring up his position is not something we should encourage.
That the task of defining constituencies in the new system is entrusted to the responsible minister with little in the way of oversight is even more reason to be suspicious of the move.
But such a debate is unlikely to be initiated by the Opposition.
Ranil Wickremesinghe has already indicated his support for the new system. Naturally, since the amendment will result in an increase in the power of party leaders. And when it comes to power, he is as obsessed as Mahinda Rajapaksa – only less successful.
Party leaders don’t like Proportional Representation because it gives some of their power to voters. They make their nominations, but it is voters who choose which of the candidates get elected. With First Past the Post, party leaders can give the areas where the party has a strong base to their favourites and consign their bêtes noires to areas where they have absolutely no hope of winning.
It is obvious why that is appealing to Ranil Wickremesinghe. | <urn:uuid:21e0e676-2a60-442a-93ce-532bba01a511> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/11705 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974228 | 1,462 | 2.078125 | 2 |
State Survey Shows Snowpack Levels Above Normal
Winter's first survey of the snowpack level proves that California's mountain snowpack is well above average for this time of year.
Both manual and electronic readings were conducted Wednesday afternoon by the Department of Water Resources. The results showed the statewide water content at 134 percent of average for January 2. That's 49 percent of the average April 1 measurement, when the snowpack is at its peak.
"We are off to a good water supply start for the new year, but we have to remember that we have seen wet conditions suddenly turn dry more than once," said DWR spokesman Ted Thomas.
With all of the recent rainfall this month, it's no surprise the snowpack levels for the Northstate are high.
The Shasta Reservoir is at 73 percent of its capacity, which puts it at 115 percent of normal.
Trinity Lake is at 78 percent of its capacity, which puts it at 114 percent of normal.
Lake Oroville is at 71 percent of its capacity, which puts it at 113 percent of normal.
Snowpacks usually provide about a third of water used by households, farms, and industries state wide. In addition to above average levels, early storms this season have helped replenish California's reservoirs.
Thomas said, "We know from experience that California is a drought-prone state, and that we must always practice conservation."
To view current reservoir conditions, click here. | <urn:uuid:72492cec-237d-419f-963f-36a0d004aadc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/State-Survey-Shows-Snowpack-Levels-Above-Normal/-/14322302/17990534/-/view/print/-/gfb9nc/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968807 | 295 | 2.671875 | 3 |
WAKEFIELD — At a recent Wakefield - Brookfield Historical Society meeting, 40 members and guests packed the historic Little Red Schoolhouse at Wakefield Corner. President Dennis Herman and Vice-President Gerry Hastings had the evening started off with some live music by East Wakefield’s own, Jim Miller on guitar and vocals, and Fred Guldbrandsen of Sanbornville on the harmonica.
Then, President Dennis Herman welcomed John Perrault of the New Hampshire Humanities Council, who made the trip from North Hampton to speak about the Isles of Shoals murders that took place in 1873. Louis Wagner was convicted of, and executed for, murdering Anethe and Karen Cristenson on Smuttynose Island, in March of 1873. Perrault explained the whole story from start to finish, and the whole crowd was so engrossed in what he had to say, at times you could have heard a pin drop.
Perrault, an experienced speaker, is good at what he does and does it with great expression and clarity. Included in his presentation was a nine minute ballad that he wrote several years ago, a guitar and vocal rendition, “The Ballad of Louis Wagner.” The evening consisted of live music, a brief business meeting, John Perrault’s fantastic talk, all followed with coffee, refreshments, and fellowship. A swell time was had by all! | <urn:uuid:b600409c-01e4-47e3-a3e0-525f7d8a698f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121115/GJCOMMUNITY04/121119682/-1/rocnews1401 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973766 | 291 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Village of Pleasant Lake 1919
This village was laid out in February, 1846, by Payne C. Parker, covering a part of what is now Pleasant Lake. The records do not show that Parker or Luther Cleland to whom Parker sold, ever conveyed any lots and the plat seems to have been ignored and the lots sold by metes and bounds.
At the present (1919) the business interests of Pleasant Lake include the following: General Merchandise - Chadwick & Ransburg (department store); R. Imhoff; grocery - Lithwin Gates; hardware - John O. Matson; also carries farm implements; harness - Victor Orwing; drugs - George J. Weaver; auto-garages - H.C. Wald and Bert Enfield Son; meat - C.L. Moreland; bakery - Glen Wheeler; photographer - Fred Fay; restaurant - Sol Tuttle; pool hall - Fern Fuller; barbers - William Uncapher and Daniel Pixley; blacksmiths - Almond Shaffer, Austin and Knight; Ice - Willis Adams; Also Moran Bros., of Fort Wayne put up large quantities for shipment. The other business houses are - lumber dealers: Goodwin Lumber Company handles soft wood lumber and coal; grain elevators - T. I. Ferris; cement blocks and bricks - Albert Mitchell; news stand - Lida McDougal; livestock - James Harpham; cream station - The Martin Creamery Company and Lake View Hotel. There is also a novelty manufacturing company located here and is owned and operated by George Baird, who is inventor of many useful articles which he makes here, including his farm gate, his metal lifting jack, for instantly raising an automobile etc. His wooden pulleys find a ready sale over a large area of territory. He is now seeking a larger place in which to operate.
History of northeast Indiana : LaGrange, Steuben, Noble and DeKalb Counties
by Robert M Waddell
Labels: Pleasant Lake | <urn:uuid:44341826-ed52-4054-b6f3-a07d558a2010> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://steubenindianahistory.blogspot.com/2011/03/village-of-pleasant-lake-1919.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932148 | 415 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Setting: Summer 1540
The episode opens with the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, mopping his brow. It is an incredibly hot summer and has not rained in over two months. Chapuys is writing to the Emperor regarding the weather and the discomfort of the 500 people imprisoned for heresy. Chapuys writes of the King’s perversity, in that he executes both Lutherans and Catholics on the same day. He also writes that the King is secretly married to Catherine Howard.
The King visits Catherine Howard who is naked except for rose petals and a necklace.
The King introduces his bride, Catherine Howard, to the court and talks of their perfect love and their hope for a child. The Seymour brothers discuss the appearance of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, at court. Charles Brandon and Chapuys comment on the absence of Thomas Boleyn, who died recently. The court toasts their new queen.
Brandon introduces the Earl of Surrey to the King and Queen. Chapuys talks to the French Ambassador, Marillac. Henry VIII speaks to Marillac about the death of the Dauphin. Marillac says that the French King proposes a marriage match between Princess Mary and his second son, Duke of Orleans. They also talk of the 17 year old Catherine Howard and Henry’s pride in marrying her.
Catherine asks her ladies to promise that they will dress in the French fashion. Lady Rochford brings Catherine a letter from Joan Bulmer who wants an appointment at court.
The Earl of Surrey talks to Brandon about his time in France. The Earl is not impressed by the “mean” men who are in the service of the King, men like the Seymours who want to destroy the nobility of England. Surrey hates them. Surrey’s ambitions are to surpass the achievements of his father and grandfather.
Henry is out hunting. Even though he hasn’t caught anything, he is happy because of his new wife. Brandon tells Henry that his wife, Catherine, no longer loves him. The King tells Edward Seymour that he wants the Earl of Surrey to be made cupbearer.
The Lady Mary visits Catherine Howard. Mary is not impressed with the new queen. Catherine tries to be friendly but Mary snubs her.
Joan Bulmer arrives and reminds Catherine of their past close friendship. She begs for a position. She reminds Catherine of when “you know who” used to come into their room and slip into bed. Catherine warns her to be careful what she says. Joan ‘blackmails’ her into making her one of her ladies.
France – Henry VIII is concerned about troubles in France. He sends Thomas Seymour and the Earl of Surrey to Calais to investigate and make a show of force.
A giggly Catherine is visited by Thomas Culpeper who comes from the King who wants to take her away on a visit and to settled Baynard’s Castle on her. The King also sends her jewellery. Catherine confides in Culpeper that she is not used to everyone looking at her. He says that they can’t help it.
Catherine puts on a rather sexy puppet show for the King. She then dances provocatively for the King in her nightgown. They make love.
Henry asks Edward Seymour who is presently imprisoned in the Tower. Seymour says Lord Grey who is charged with grave misconduct in Ireland, Lord Lisle who is charged with the same but in Calais, Sir John Neville who led the recent disturbance in the North and the Queen’s cousin, Lord Dacre, who, according to Wriothesley, is a young man who killed an old man in a brawl. Henry orders that the first three be executed and that Dacre should be hanged at Tyburn.
The Earl of Surrey visits Lady Hertford, Edward Seymour’s wife, looking for her husband. Surrey says he has heard about her, her “virtues” and her “talents”, and wants to get to know her. She flirts with him.
The King visits Catherine. He introduces her to Prince Edward and the Lady Elizabeth. Lady Bryan assures the King that Edward is being well looked after. Henry can’t seem to take his eyes off Elizabeth and gazes off into the distance as she leaves.
Lady Hertford talks to her husband about Surrey. He sees the merits in dealing with Surrey, an important man with royal blood.
Sir Richard Rich tells the King that Seymour and Surrey made a show of strength in France and made gifts to the French government. There was no talk of war, only peace. Henry is disappointed, he hungers for war.
Both Henry and Culpeper watch Queen Catherine dance. Back in the bedchamber, a naked Catherine tells the King that the Lady Mary does not treat her with respect. Henry asks her to give Mary time. Catherine tries to seduce Henry, but he is “tired”. He leaves her rather frustrated. Joan Bulmer climbs into bed with Catherine to talk about old times, about the men coming into their room and all “the puffing and blowing” that went on and how Catherine and “him” would kiss and “hang by their two bellies like sparrows”. Catherine comments that there was no harm in it because it was agreed that they would marry. Catherine warns Joan not to tell anyone of it and makes her swear on her honour that she will not speak of it. Joan strokes Catherine’s shoulder and blows on her skin and asks “Do you remember this?”. Catherine replies “I am Queen now. Do as I command” and they burst out laughing.
The men down in Sir William’s cellar are enjoying drinking and Culpeper talks of how wanton the queen is and how she is a “little fireball”. He says to Sir Richard Rich, “Tell me you can’t imagine her without her clothes on”. Rich warns him that Catherine belongs to the King. Culpeper is consumed with thoughts of Catherine.
Catherine watches Culpeper leave on horseback the next morning. Culpeper and his companions come across the wife of the park-keeper. Culpeper rapes the woman as his men hold her. As the men wash in the river, the park-keeper, Mr Roper, finds them and confronts them. He wants to take Culpeper to the sheriff but Culpeper tries to bribe him into silence. Roper refuses and so Culpeper kills him.
Lady Hertford invites Surrey to see her, so that they can be “friends”. They become “friendly”.
The King, Brandon, Hertford, Rich and Sir William men find Catherine and her ladies playing in some mud. The King finds it funny.
The King arrives back in London, The executions have all taken place. The King decides to pardon the 500 men imprisoned for heresy. He discusses the potential marriage match with France but does not trust King Francis. Henry says that hey must look to their coastal defences and favour the Emperor. He also talks of his intention to settle all lands and manors which belonged to Jane Seymour on his new queen, Catherine, and those once belonging to Thomas Cromwell.
Henry and Catherine are in bed when she hears the long awaited rain. Catherine dashes outside and dances in the rain in her nightgown, watched by the King and Culpeper.
- Elizabeth’s age – In 1540 she would be 7 not the 12/13 year old brought in to meet Catherine.
- Irish accent – When Henry VIII says “I’d hoped the French might oblige me this time”, the Irish accent of Jonathan Rhys Meyers shows through.
- Joan’s hair – Joan Bulmer has a modern bob hairstyle, whereas women in Tudor time would have had long hair.
- Joan and Catherine – Joan’s stroking of Catherine’s shoulder suggests some kind of sexual relationship or experimentation between them, there is no evidence of this.
- Henry’s appearance – In 1540, Henry VIII was aged 49 and in his late 40s had a waist measurement of 48 inches, which increased to 52 inches in his final years. He was a far cry from how he is portrayed in The Tudors Season 4.
- Charles Brandon and Catherine Willoughby – There is no evidence that Catherine feel out of love with her husband.
- The Dauphin – Henry VIII speaks of the death of the Dauphin, yet he died in 1536, not 1540.
- Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, was arrested in May 1540 on suspicion of treason but he was not executed and died of a heart attack in 1542 after being given news of his release.
- John Neville, 3rd Baron Latymer, was the second husband of Catherine Parr, and although he was somewhat involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace, he was not imprisoned by the King or executed. In fact, we see him die naturally later in the series.
- A match between Princess Mary and the Duke of Orleans, Francis I’s second son, was proposed in the 1520s, when Wolsey was alive, the Duke was married in 1540.
- Lady Hertford – There is no evidence that Anne Stanhope, Lady Hertford, cheated on her husband, although it was rumoured that his first wife, Catherine Filliol, slept with his father.
- Henry Howard, Earl Surrey – Surrey was only 23 years of age in 1540, not in his 40s, and he was not Catherine Howard’s uncle, he was her cousin.
- There was indeed a very hot summer and drought in 1540.
- Joan’s words to Catherine about “puffing and blowing” and “hanging like sparrows” were actually words spoken by Catherine Howard when she confessed to her former relationship with Sir Francis Dereham.
- A man named Thomas Culpeper did rape a woman and did kill a man who tried to bring him to justice. He escaped punishment when the King pardoned him. Although THE Thomas Culpeper’s brother was also named Thomas, it is thought that it was Catherine Howard’s Culpeper who committed the rape and murder and was pardoned of the crimes because of the fact that he was one of the King’s favourites.
- Lord Leonard Grey. Lord Deputy of Ireland, was in fact executed for treason on the 28th July 1541 for allegedly allowing the Earl of Kildare to escape to France.
The Tudors Jewellery
In this episode, Catherine Howard wears the Catherine Howard Pearl Crystal Set, the Catherine Howard Gemstone Brooch and the Catherine Howard Silver Locket.
Mary wears the Anne Boleyn Pearl Cross Necklace.
Elizabeth wears the Princess Elizabeth Peach Quartz set. | <urn:uuid:fbca6abf-802d-4535-a800-2a7c5c2de457> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/resources/the-tudors-episode-guide/the-tudors-season-4/the-tudors-season-4-episode-1-moment-of-nostalgia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975323 | 2,292 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Rains 'drown' hundreds of fish
By AARON SHAROCKMAN
CLEARWATER -- It's just a part of nature.
But in a quiet residential setting with manicured lawns and azaleas, hundreds of dead fish bobbing at the surface of a small pond is a bit disturbing.
City crews removed 60 bags of dead fish Thursday morning from a dense area of ponds around Jeffords and Duncan streets. In all, city public services director Gary Johnson said, crews have removed hundreds of fish during the past three days.
"It's odd when you see it," Johnson said. The first fish popped up Tuesday, Johnson said, but most surfaced overnight Wednesday.
Johnson was happy to find out the fish farewell wasn't a public crisis.
Sam McKinney, a fisheries biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said the fish "drowned."
He even chuckled.
After intense rains, like the ones Clearwater had earlier this week, organic debris runs off into the pond, McKinney said. The debris then decomposes at the bottom of the pond, which steals oxygen from the water. Nature has a natural combatant to this phenomenon, but cloud cover prevents algae present in the pond from making more oxygen through photosynthesis.
At night, the algae actually make things worse by buring oxygen in the water and releasing carbon dioxide.
Strong winds also can stir the pond, releasing more organic material, grabbing up more of the valuable oxygen. When it happens, the fish die.
McKinney said the event is very common. It doesn't mean the water's polluted, he said.
"Everything is robbing the oxygen from the fish," said Joy Hill, of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
"After a couple of days, they can't take it anymore. That's when you find them floating."
Johnson said the city will continue to clean up dead fish on city land as quickly as possible.
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South St. Petersburg, FL 33701 727-893-8111
From the Times
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Wednesday, April 27, 6:30pm
Religion: with Lucy Fowler Williams, PhD, The Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper of American Collections at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, offers this special program at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 South 36th Street on the Penn campus.
Explore the idea of weaving in the cultural landscape through a series of programs inspired by the work of Sheila Hicks. These lectures conclude with Lucy Fowler Williams, who explores these ideas through her current research on Pueblo textiles and Tlingit clan regalia.
Ms. Williams's talk highlights the importance of ceremonial textiles in American Indian communities today. Examining the work of four contemporary textile artists, she will discuss the production and use of Tlingit textiles in Southeast Alaska and Tewa Pueblo garments in northern New Mexico, illuminating the role textiles play in sustaining contemporary Native American spiritual identities." | <urn:uuid:e06545aa-6b20-4266-863c-c984556ce4cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://penn.museum/events-calendar/details/445-whenever-wednesday-weaving-as-metaphor-lecture-series.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90887 | 187 | 1.851563 | 2 |
1970: Severe thunderstorms produced a few tornadoes and widespread damaging straight-line winds across eastern Iowa. Three tornadoes struck portions of Butler, Floyd, Bremer, and Dubuque counties tracking across rural areas and mostly damaging farm outbuildings. One of the tornadoes moved a pickup truck a hundred yards and destroyed a number of barns in Floyd County. Further southeast winds of 60 to 80 mph produced significant damage and 16 injuries in and around Dubuque.
1912: A year that had begun with one of the coldest and snowiest Iowa winters on record then saw late summer heat persist well into September. The heat wave peaked on the 8th with a high temperature of 104 F at Ottumwa and continued on the 9th before milder air finally moved in on the 10th. Several stations across Iowa registered their latest triple digit heat on record on the 9th, including Burlington with a high of 100 F. Readings of 100 F were also reported at Albia and Bloomfield and the temperature reached 101 F at Allerton, Centerville, and Corydon. Incredibly, a series of ensuing cold fronts during the following week brought temperatures down into the 40s and even upper 30s by September 17th when Storm Lake reported a trace of snow, making it one of the earliest observances of snow on record in Iowa.
|This Day in National/World Weather History …|
Posted under Weather History
This post was written by Schnack on September 9, 2012 | <urn:uuid:fc387791-2913-45dd-b92e-f65af0ccefcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://addins.kwwl.com/blogs/weather/2012/09/september-9-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962043 | 305 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Office of the Public Interest Counsel
The Office of Public Interest Counsel (OPIC) (Address, Phone, Fax) was created by the legislature to represent the public interest in matters considered by the Commission and to ensure that the Commission is responsive to citizens' concerns regarding environmental quality and consumer protection. The Public Interest Counsel is appointed by the Commission. The office is also staffed with six other licensed attorneys. The office does not formally represent individuals. However, OPIC attorneys routinely assist the public by explaining agency procedures and helping citizens gain an understanding of how they may participate in Commission decisions that affect them. Assistance is available to anyone who is affected by a particular permit application or other agency authorization. Public Interest Counsel staff also provide assistance to people with questions about enforcement proceedings.
OPIC carries out its responsibilities by (1) participating as a party in contested case hearings regarding air quality, water quality, water rights, and applications for solid waste disposal permits and utility rate increases; (2) participation in proposed rulemakings; (3) reviewing and participating in enforcement matters; and (4) participation in matters set for consideration at the Commission's public meetings.
As a party to every permitting and utility-related contested case proceeding, the office strives to provide balance to the hearings process. OPIC participation ensures that environmental permitting applications satisfy all legal requirements and will be adequately protective of human health and the environment. With respect to utility rate increase applications, OPIC seeks to ensure that changes in water or sewer rates are justified and reasonable. The office also provides comments to the Commission on proposed agency rules and policy, including rulemaking projects that have a significant effect on public participation.
OPIC works independently of other TCEQ offices to bring forward relevant issues from a public interest perspective. The office's goal is to ensure that all relevant evidence is developed and made part of the record so that the Commission may make informed decisions and issue permits that are protective of human health and the environment. | <urn:uuid:ae3578e8-1f54-4a0a-84fb-bff9ff9074d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tceq.texas.gov/agency/public_interest/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949725 | 396 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.
Your voice sings not so soft, -
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, -
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. | <urn:uuid:498ce761-d5ff-411a-8712-56f394f47c59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fionasplace.net/The%20ArtofLove/GreaterLove.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925404 | 226 | 1.65625 | 2 |
For years, doctors have encouraged mothers to breastfeed their children. In addition to boosting the immune system, protecting against Crohn's disease, and staving off ear infections, it turns out that breastfeeding may also help your child achieve a higher social status later in life. Sound far-fetched? The newly published findings of a long-term, in-depth study offer some very convincing proof.
A team of researchers at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, looked at a total of 4,999 children who were part of the Boyd Orr Study of Diet and Health in Pre-War Britain (1937-1939), and tracked their progress over a span of 60 years.
The Breastfed Edge
Dr. Richard Martin, who led the study, explains, "We thought that if breastfeeding increased IQ and health in the long-term, it may also have an impact on social status." And according to Dr. Martin's research, this prediction was correct. The study found that infants who were breastfed were 41 percent more successful at moving up the social ladder than those who were bottle fed, and that the longer children were breastfed, the greater their chances of upward mobility.
The study also took into consideration families where one child was breastfed while a sibling was bottle fed. In these instances, there was still a difference in the siblings' chances of social mobility: The breastfed child was 16 percent more likely to move up in class. | <urn:uuid:32b93468-5402-4ee3-9201-486a8e358025> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.babyzone.com/newborn/bonding-with-your-newborn/breastfeeding-future-success_65432 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982998 | 294 | 3.296875 | 3 |
2010 REGIONAL PREPARATORY MEETING FOR AFRICA ON WOMEN AND HEALTH
A regional preparatory meeting on the theme “Women and Health” was held on 12-13 January 2010 in Dakar, Senegal. The meeting was hosted by the Government of Senegal, in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The meeting was part of the preparatory process for the 2010 Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) on “Implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to gender equality and the empowerment of women”.
A broad cross section of regional stakeholders gathered to discuss challenges, trends policies and programmes on women and health in Africa, which faces some of the highest maternal mortality rates and HIV/AIDS rates in the world. Topics addressed by expert panelists included approaches to reducing maternal mortality; scaling up efforts to reduce the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV/AIDS; and empowering women in the political, legal, economic and social spheres to improve their own health. A special session was also held to showcase best practices and new initiatives from across the region.
For more information on the meeting, please contact Mr. Alberto Padova, Office for ECOSOC Support and Coordination, UN/DESA (+1 212 963-4759, padova at un dot org). | <urn:uuid:45030fe1-d3b5-492b-93f4-f60f8edbdbef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/newfunct/amr2010senegal.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925593 | 296 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Warning: Christianity and Yoga Do Not Mix them!
Posted by Charlie J S | Filed under Truth
“Yoga purists are bent out of shape”. This was the headline of a recent article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. The article explained that traditional Yoga “experts contend that Hindu religious elements are being profaned by fad versions of the ancient practice.”
So, what are these “fad versions” of yoga that are upsetting the Hindu yogis? The article cites as an example the “millions of Americans… practicing yoga to improve flexibility, strengthen muscles and relieve stress.” These 16.5 million American yoga enthusiasts “spend nearly $3 billion annually on classes and products”.
The problem with this, according to the Hindu yogis quoted in the article, is that yoga was never designed to be an exercise, yet alone an exercise “fad”. Rather, yoga is an ancient Hindu religious practice, intended to unite a person’s soul with the impersonal, universal force Hindus call “god”. The Hindu Sanskrit word “yoga” literally means to be yoked or joined in union. And the goal of every Hindu yogi is to use the religious practice of yoga to lose their personality and individuality and to become one with the monistic-pantheistic spiritual force of Hinduism. This is done through Hatha Yoga (the physical disciplines), where one seeks to call up what Hindus say is the Kundalini or spiritual force described as a “coiled white serpent of light” to aid them in their transcendence to impersonal spiritual monism. There should be no doubt about it; yoga is a 2,000 year old Hindu religious practice designed for very specific spiritual and occult purposes.
This Star Tribune article should be a wake-up call to the thousands, if not millions, of Christians who are regularly practicing yoga. And it should be a wake-up call to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Christian churches that have embraced yoga as a regular part of their weekly worship. Too many Christians have erroneously strayed into participating in various forms of this Hindu religious practice. The common claim is that they’re only doing yoga “for its exercise benefits”; or for those aware of its Hindu religious origins, that their yoga meditation is “directed towards Jesus Christ and not the gods of Hinduism”. The fact of the matter is this, God strictly forbids his people from dabbling in the false religious activities of the world.
As you read through Scripture, you will not find one example of God tolerating His people’s participation in pagan religious activities. Rather, over and over again God explicitly condemns this. So, why should we think that just because yoga has some exercise benefits, that God’s standards have now changed? Why should we think that a pagan religious practice, even one that may work, is suddenly acceptable in God’s eyes? Think about it, there are a lot of pagan religious practices that work (witchcraft, sorcery, spiritism, ouija boards, etc.), but we don’t recommend that our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ participate in them. So, why should yoga be any different?
Christians who have mistakenly gotten involved in the practice of yoga need to stop now; there is no excuse for staying involved in a pagan religious activity. And Christian churches that have embraced yoga as a regular part of their worship need to put an end to this and repent; God will not tolerate His people’s participation in pagan religious practices. God calls His people to be set-apart, to be salt and light to the world. How are we being faithful to this calling if we are participating in the rituals of pagan religions?
Minneapolis Star Tribune “Faith & Values” July 30, 2005, p. B5
by Jason Carlson and Ron Carlson | <urn:uuid:25db9be3-0c63-45ca-b4b6-f953951a1a0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.preachgospelblog.com/truth/warning-christianity-and-yoga-do-not-mix-them.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956049 | 817 | 1.90625 | 2 |
By Michael Goldstein
By Dennis Romero
By Sarah Fenske
By Matthew Mullins
By Patrick Range McDonald
By LA Weekly
By Dennis Romero
By Simone Wilson
Just last month, Mary Angle was a star in the rarefied firmament of Southern California natural-resource management.
She had been a park ranger, a member of former Senator Alan Cranston’s staff and an executive for Save the Redwoods before taking on the $77,000-a-year job as director of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMC for short). But her sudden ouster last month casts a shadow on a new project to bring green space to this region‘s forgotten rust-belt cities.
Accolades at her farewell last week were generous, but questions linger as to why she was replaced, in an ”emergency“ action, by a top staffer of the most powerful land-resource agency in the state.
Angle served 17 months at the newest of the state’s regional land-acquisition trusts. With one paid staffer, volunteers, and resources in the hundred thousands, she had managed to ease two potential recreation and wildlife areas toward public ownership.
More importantly, she oversaw the creation of a complex master plan called ”Common Ground: From the Mountains to the Sea.“ This was a chart, guide and text for the first network of riverside and parkland green spaces in any Southern California urban area. Now, however, Angle‘s being replaced by Belinda Faustinos, the second-in-command of RMC’s better-known big sister, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (SMMC), and some wonder about the RMC‘s future as an independent agency.
It’s more than 20 years since, at the urging of the emergent environmental movement, the state decided to protect California‘s urban hinterlands from overdevelopment with local land-purchase agencies. The biggest and best known of these is the Westside-centered Santa Monica agency. According to its Web site, ”[T]he Conservancy’s mission is to strategically buy back, preserve, protect, restore, and enhance treasured pieces of Southern California to form an interlinking system of urban, rural, and river parks; open space; trails; and wildlife habitats that are easily accessible to the general public.“ The funds come from federal, state, local and private agencies. Most of Santa Monica‘s funding now goes through an adjunct agency -- the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, with a reported $35 million annual budget. The Santa Monica agency was a partner in the San Gabriel group’s Common Grounds plan, and vows to move ahead with the plan.
But the San Gabriel conservancy‘s objective differs from Santa Monica’s. Its ultimate purpose is not just land acquisition, but renovation and the cleaning up of ground and river water. The first California nature conservancy for an urban area, RMC is to re-develop and acquire potential environmental resources for 7 million people in eastern Los Angeles and Orange counties. The final goal is an array of population-proximate wilderness-recreation passages and parks like those of San Mateo, Marin and Alameda counties.
Angle‘s start-up efforts gained praise from official agencies -- including the office of county Supervisor Gloria Molina, who sits on the 13-voting-member, state-appointed River and Mountains Conservancy board to which Angle reported.
No one questions Faustinos’ capability, but some see her as being too closely tied to her current boss, the Santa Monica agency‘s potent and charismatic chief, Joe Edmiston. Her appointment nearly coincides with what the Gray Davis administration hopes will be the passage this spring of a parks-bond initiative that could provide $40 million for the previously cash-strapped RMC.
”Belinda Faustinos is an experienced public servant, but you have to wonder which orientation she’s bringing with her to the RMC,“ said Melanie Winter of the River Project, the nonprofit agency behind the downtown Taylor Yards acquisition.
Angle submitted her resignation in December, after her board voted on her tenure in closed session. The vote followed disagreements over such matters as a stymied request for additional staff and, according to one board memorandum, placing some RMC territory into SMMC‘s jurisdiction. In any case, California Resources Agency spokesman Stanley Young said the change ”was mutually agreeable. [Angle] was planning on leaving this summer. Faustinos was available.“ But Angle insists that, while she was privately considering leaving later this year, she hadn’t yet shared this thought with her employers.
Winter noted: ”Given the legislative history of the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, it will be interesting to see how the cities along the Lower Los Angeles River react to this turn of events,“ referring to these communities‘ successful opposition to a 1990s Sacramento bid to plug the Santa Monica conservancy into proposed riverfront conservation. The cities’ officials then feared that flood prevention might suffer. RMC board (and Long Beach City Council) chairman Frank Colonna said things have changed since: ”We‘ve met with Joe Edmiston for a long time since then, and there’s more trust.“
U.S. Representative Hilda Solis -- who, as a state senator, co-authored the legislation that set up RMC -- sounded skeptical about the management switch. ”This certainly wasn‘t my decision,“ she said after last Friday’s board meeting in Alhambra. The congresswoman earlier stressed that the conservancies had different objectives: ”We‘re talking about an environmental-justice situation here . . . The a SMMC acquires pristine land,“ while the RMC’s territory is mostly overused agricultural and industrial tracts. ”We‘ve got three federal Superfund sites in our area,“ she noted. ”It will take a lot of technical experience to make them usable.“ Solis has proposed federal legislation to survey the area for locations that could become federal recreation or park land. U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s proposed a similar bill.
Find everything you're looking for in your city
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Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:594b9236-4002-4af7-a4d1-b324a8270528> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laweekly.com/2002-01-24/news/trouble-in-paradise/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9312 | 1,364 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Why Guthrie's Jelsma Stadium is the Oklahoma City area's best high school football venue
HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL — Welcome to “The Rock,” a stadium built during the Great Depression in the heart of Guthrie that remains near and dear to those who call it their home turf.
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“I don't know how much of a home-field advantage we had when I was playing, but when you're good I can see (the rock wall) being a big advantage,” said Stephenson, now the head baseball coach at Dodge City Community College in Kansas.
The stadium sits in the middle of historic downtown Guthrie and is source of pride for the state's first capital.
Much of that pride has to do with when the stadium was built — during the Great Depression era.
City leader Lawrence Jelsma was instrumental in building public support for a year-round recreational field in Guthrie, and in 1935, a $14,500 bond issue was passed.
With that and contributions from the Works Progress Administration, the $48,500 sandstone stadium was built and named after Jelsma, who died in 1934 before ever seeing a game there.
Seven decades later, with Jelsma in desperate need of restoration, Guthrie citizens passed another bond issue to give their beloved stadium a face-lift.
Even with the $3 million-plus reconstruction, Jelsma Stadium retained its quaint, historic feel and uniqueness.
ESPN thought enough of the place to name it the 13th-best high school football stadium in the country in 2008.
Guthrie has spent the 2011 season celebrating the 75th anniversary of Jelsma Stadium's first game, played on Sept. 18, 1936, between Guthrie and Edmond.
The dedication booklet that day called the stadium “one of the finest playgrounds in the state.”
As it turns out, Jelsma Stadium still is. | <urn:uuid:a6f08c98-6258-477b-a7d4-1c2fc21fc7af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsok.com/why-guthries-jelsma-stadium-is-the-oklahoma-city-areas-best-high-school-football-venue/article/3619413/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969307 | 410 | 2 | 2 |
Johannesburg—The announcement last week that Microsoft plans to donate free software to 32 000 schools in SA has caused a fair degree of debate in both industry and open source circles. Particularly considering the announcement followed just days after the National Advisory Council on Innovation (Naci), a state body, released a document warning against the threats of proprietary software and urging government to adopt open standards and open source software.
Not only does the announcement of the free software donation steal the wind from Naci's sails, but it also raises a number of questions on government's understanding of software, as well as the degree to which educational ICT efforts are co-ordinated within government. It also brings into question the motivations of a corporation as large as Microsoft, which is known to have monopolistic tendencies.
Unlike most of the media which quickly applauded the Microsoft announcement as the saviour of SA education, I still have a serious sense of unease that the result could well be Microsoft's absolute domination of the local software market, to the exclusion of all other alternatives.
To be fair though, Microsoft's donation of free software to schools is a significant step forward for local education initiatives. Particularly because it single-handedly removes one of the largest stumbling blocks to providing affordable ICT infrastructure in local schools: the substantial cost of software licences. This in itself is a notable achievement that shouldn't be taken lightly.
Response to the announcement has been particularly subdued—unless you count local open source mailing lists—and it is interesting to see that representatives of local open source projects have been very diplomatic in their response. And rightly so. After all, improving education in this country should not be about product wars, but rather about providing the best solutions at the most reasonable cost and as broadly as possible. If Microsoft makes this even slightly more achievable, then the company deserves the credit.
However, this does not negate the fact that there are alternatives to proprietary software that have both cost (at least until now) and technical advantages over many proprietary products. Clearly, documents such as Naci's indicate that the government of the day is starting to realise this and we can only hope that the donation announcement does not obfuscate the issue and blind the powers that be to the real opportunities that lie in open source software.
For open source advocates, the donation should be seen as a challenge rather than an onslaught by Microsoft. For too long now we have been arguing the cost and technical benefits of systems such as Linux over proprietary software. Now that the cost factor has thankfully been taken out of the equation, it is time that Linux advocates start proving the technical benefits of the operating system rather than just falling back on its cost benefits.
While credit should be given where due, it does not mean the country should head blindly down the Microsoft road. As many of its critics have pointed out, this is merely a start to the process. There is still a lot of work to be done, and if school administrators think their computer problems are over, they are in for a big shock. Software needs hardware, which is not cheap. And software needs support, patches and constant maintenance. And who are we going to blame when viruses and security holes play havoc with school records because of lack of understanding and support?
Let's take the donation in the spirit it was intended, but not see it as an end to the education battle. And certainly not allow ourselves to be blind to the available alternatives. | <urn:uuid:bb2f20fc-f470-4701-938b-db9984ff7bb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/200.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96122 | 695 | 1.890625 | 2 |
What's special about the first week of the semester is that, not only do you get to sample an unnaturally wide variety of wares, but by studiously avoiding the "required reading" portions of each syllabus, it's possible to indulge in the illusion that you'll actually take every course you sit in on, including that daunting (and tantalizing!) course on quantitative linguistics. Alas, there are only so many hours in the day, and as my wife and I have discovered, small children demand that some of those hours be spent with them. So greedy!
At any rate, here's my lineup for day two:
History of Science 151: Modern Pasts and Postmodern Futures
This course analyzes the modern age through three complementary perspectives. First, it offers a historical perspective focusing on landmark changes of the period, particularly focusing on science (Pasteur, Darwin, Charcot, Maxwell) and technology (steam engines, rail, telegraphy, photography). Second, it analyzes the work of important writers on modernity and civilization (focusing on Marx, Bergson, Freud). Third: it studies theorists of postmodernity (mainly Lyotard, Jameson, Habermas) who describe the benefits, dangers and/or alternatives to modernity.
I sat in on the first 30 minutes of this class, and I had to cross my legs to hide my nerd lust. I love science and pretentious French postmodernists. Who knew there was a class in which Lyotard and Darwin unite? In the words of the great cultural theorist H.J. Simpson, "Woo Hoo!"
History of Science 162: Science in the Enlightenment
Explores practices of scientific theory, experimentation and observation in Europe and North America, 1681-1815. Topics include: Chemistry, Electricity, Astronomy, Mathematics, Natural History, Newtonianism, Science and the Public Sphere, Science and the State, Science and Rationality, Science and Utility, and Science and the Industrial Revolution.
And I sat in on the last half of this course. Also tempting. A whole week devoted to one of my preoccupations from last semester, changing notions of time. Ever heard of "deep time?" I hadn't either. Sadly, this conflicts with the other history of science class above.
Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning 11: Making Sense: Language, Thought and Logic
What is meaning, and how do we use it to communicate? We address the first of these questions via the second, presenting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human languages. We investigate language as the product of a natural algorithm, that is, a computational facility which grows spontaneously in our species and enables us to expose out thoughts and feelings. Our investigation uses formal models from logic, linguistics, and computer science. These models will also shed light on human nature and basic philosophical issues concerning language.
This one is a little too hearty of fare, even for my substantial appetite. Plus, the professor won't allow auditors to sit in on sections. This is part of the politics of being a Nieman fellow, by the way. Professors generally welcome us—sometimes enthusiastically—to their courses, but due to (I think) administrative restrictions won't let us attend the smaller meetings led by the teaching fellows. This is a problem on a class like this one, where I'd need more, um, intimate assistance if I'm to work out the complex math involved.
Government 98qa: Community in America
Has the social fabric of America's communities and the civic engagement of its citizens changed over the last generation? Why? Does it matter? What lessons might we find in American history? These questions are at the focus of this seminar.
I was born to take this class. Kidding, but only kind of. Anyone who's read my book knows I've wrestled a lot with Putnam and his ideas around community. This is the one course I'm most interested in taking this semester, and it starts in five, so I'm out. | <urn:uuid:65cc04a4-bcfa-4fb4-9b4e-109707847e02> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crowdsourcing.com/cs/2010/01/course-shopping-continued.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94119 | 832 | 1.835938 | 2 |