text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1
value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1
value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
11 Natural Disasters That Led to Wars
The 11-11-11 excitement continues with 11 Natural Disasters That Led to Wars. Come back at 5:11 for 11 Wars That Led to Natural Disasters. See what we did there? And there's still plenty of good stuff in the works for tonight, from scientists who experimented on themselves to artistic renderings of Pee-wee Herman.
1. Eruption of Thera, c. 1600 BCE
Some of the most important events of ancient history -- and Greek mythology -- resulted from one of the more spectacular disasters to ever strike the eastern Mediterranean: the eruption of the volcanic island of Thera, today known as Santorini, sometime around 1600 BCE.
This massive explosion sent an incredible 24 cubic miles of earth and rock into the air and sea and (perhaps in conjunction with an earthquake) triggered a tsunami that swept the Aegean Sea. The ancient Minoan civilization on the island of Crete was probably fatally weakened by the multi-pronged natural disaster. Not long afterwards the Minoans were conquered by the Mycenaeans, warlike raiders from mainland Greece who descended on the defenseless Cretans and a host of other civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean.
Indeed, contemporary records from Egypt tell of chaotic conditions in the natural and human world around this time, followed in the 14th century BCE by the first mentions of the “Sea Peoples” -- seaborne raiders who almost succeeded in conquering Egypt before they were finally repelled in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. Although the identity of Sea Peoples remains mysterious, some of them were probably Mycenaean Greeks, who (according to legend) also attacked the city of Troy in Asia Minor around 1200 BCE. It’s pure literary speculation, but the sea monster Cetus, sent by Poseidon to attack Troy, might be a symbolic representation of the Aegean tsunami.
2. Earthquake at Sparta, 464 BCE
In addition to living in a geological hotspot, the ancient and classical Greeks faced numerous ethnic and social divisions -- and natural disasters could provide the catalyst for open warfare. This was especially true in Sparta, where a relatively small population of Spartan “equals” (full citizens) ruled over a vast population of indentured laborers known as “helots,” who had no rights and worked in conditions resembling slavery.
The Spartans always feared a helot rebellion, and with good reason. After a massive earthquake leveled the city of Sparta and killed many Spartan warriors in 464 BCE, the helots seized their chance and staged what became the most serious uprising in Sparta’s history. The situation was so dire, in fact, that the Spartans called on their Athenian rivals for help in putting down the rebellion -- but then changed their mind out of fear the democratic Athenians might be more sympathetic to the oppressed helots. The Athenians were furious about Sparta’s humiliating dismissal of the Athenian contingent, setting the stage for the Peloponnesian War (so that’s two conflicts resulting from one disaster!).
3. Central Asian drought, c. 350-450 CE
As nomadic pastoralists who relied on herd animals for food and clothing, the Huns of Central Asia were as vulnerable to drought as any settled farming population. So when a prolonged dry period hit their homeland and surrounding areas beginning around 350 CE, the Huns picked up and moved to more welcoming climes in Eastern and Southern Europe. There were some minor obstacles, of course, including the Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire, but the Huns never let this sort of thing get in their way. Armies of horse-mounted warriors swirling out of Central Asia subjugated various barbarian tribes, who became vassals of the Huns or sought protection from them across the border in the Roman Empire. However the Western Roman Empire couldn’t protect its own population, let alone the Germanic tribes. By 395 CE the Huns were raiding the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Empire, and during the reign of Attila (434-453 CE) they devastated Europe from the gates of Constantinople to the modern French city of Orleans. As noted the Huns’ depredations also triggered Germanic migrations, which ultimately resulted in the fall of Rome.
4. A "climatic event," 535-536 CE
While the Huns disappeared from the pages of history shortly after Attila’s death, the Germanic tribes invading the Roman Empire stuck around a bit longer -- and weird climatic events continued to result in violent conflict.
Although no one knows exactly what happened, the Byzantine historian Procopius recorded extreme weather events in 535-536 CE that indicate drastic cooling: “During this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness... and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.” Irish chronicles covering the same period recount failed harvests, and evidence of cooling, drought, and crop failures has also been found in places as diverse as China and Peru.
In North Africa, as Procopius noted, the effects included another round of strife, as defeated Vandals, Moors and mutinous Roman soldiers rebelled and began plundering the countryside after their demands for land were rebuffed. Although the rebellion spread across North Africa, the Byzantines eventually defeated the rebels, who according to Procopius were “battling hunger” while also fighting the Romans. Contemporary scholars speculate that the events of 535-536 CE were caused by atmospheric dust from a huge volcanic explosion or a comet or meteorite hitting the earth.
5. Fiery dragons (?), 8th century CE
While it’s once again hard to know exactly what was happening (the early medieval period was not known for accurate meteorology), the first Viking raids apparently resulted from a similar sequence of unusual climatic events leading to bad harvests and, finally, desperate violence. The unfortunate victims of these raids lived in England, where the Anglo-Saxons had ruled since the end of the Roman Empire. In 792 CE, the inhabitants of Northumbria were terrified by “excessive whirlwinds and lightning storms” (along with “fiery dragons” – see previous parentheses). Meanwhile, archaeological evidence suggests that across the North Sea in Norway harvests failed in 792-793 CE. So it’s probably not a coincidence that one of the first Viking raids, the plundering of the famous Lindisfarne monastery, came in January 793. And this was just the beginning, as droughts blanketed Western Europe again in 794 and 797.
One possible explanation: contemporary scholars speculate those “fiery dragons” may have been meteor showers, which kicked up atmospheric dust, resulting in another bout of cooling; Chinese chronicles recount repeated meteor showers in this period.
6. Central American drought, 9th-10th centuries
Severe climate changes were also probably to blame for much of the warfare that apparently accompanied the collapse of Classic Mayan civilization beginning c. 800 CE. Although the Mayans lived in the midst of lush rain forests, there were actually very few sources of freshwater that were available year-round: the Mayan city-states relied on advanced techniques for collecting and storing rainwater for both agriculture and human consumption, making them especially vulnerable to repeated droughts. And that’s exactly what happened at 50-year intervals in 760, 810, 860, and 910, according to scientists who studied sediment core samples from the Caribbean Sea to determine the amount of rainfall during this period.
These four droughts correspond to distinct phases in the decline and eventual collapse of the Mayan civilization. However drought was far from the only culprit, with adverse environmental conditions triggering other negative trends in a cascading or “snowball” effect. This included intensifying warfare, as rival city-states battled each other for diminishing resources, city-states dissolved in civil war, and populations migrated in search of food. Mayan written records and archaeological evidence both point to escalating conflict during this period, as war was waged more often, with a larger proportion of the population participating, and by more brutal methods. Archaeological evidence includes fortifications built around even small villages, skeletal trauma resulting from combat, and the sudden appearance of foreign objects, suggesting invasion by outsiders.
7. Central Asian drought, 1212-1213 CE
Central Asian droughts are just bad for civilization. The same basic phenomenon that drove the Huns to invade Europe also played a role in the devastating Mongol invasion of China led by Genghis Khan in 1212-1213 CE. Archaeological evidence points to a long period of severe climate change in Mongolia and other parts of northern Asia lasting from 1175-1300 CE, with a drastic drop in temperatures resulting in less forage for herd animals as well as fewer wild animals for hunting. Luckily for the conquered population of northern China, a Chinese administrator was able to convince the Mongols to drop their plan to turn wheat fields into pastures for Mongol horses -- a move that would have resulted in the deaths of millions of Chinese from starvation.
Interestingly, Genghis Khan decreed a number of environmental protections in the Mongol homeland (but not necessarily in conquered areas) including forbidding the cutting down of trees and hunting wild animals during their breeding season. It’s also worth noting that half a century after the first Mongol invasions of China, Karakorum -- the new imperial capital in Mongolia -- was entirely dependent on food shipments from China, giving Kublai Khan leverage over rival Mongol princes.
8. Southern Africa drought, c. 1800 CE
The rise of Shaka Zulu, one of Africa’s greatest warriors, was tied to a period of devastating drought in southern Africa. After the discovery of the New World, the introduction of corn to southern Africa by European colonists triggered a population explosion, even as -- unbeknownst to native farmers -- corn cultivation was also leaching minerals from the soil. When a prolonged drought hit around 1800, the food supply collapsed, leading to fierce competition for resources among native tribes.
Gradually rising from a lowly position to leadership of the Zulus, Shaka’s innovations with new weapons and fighting techniques allowed him to unite rival tribes through diplomacy and conquest. But he also became notorious for his paranoia and brutality. Indeed the Zulu expansion resulted in a huge upheaval -- the Mfecane, or “scattering,” which saw huge numbers of deaths and massive movements by refugee populations across southern Africa from 1815-1840. While the precise death toll will probably never be known, some scholars estimate that as many as two million people perished during the Mfecane.
9. Haiphong typhoon, 1881 CE
One of the deadliest typhoons on record also facilitated European imperialism in southeast Asia, leading to the French conquest of Vietnam. On October 8, 1881, a massive Pacific typhoon hit the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong, which serves as the main port for the country’s capital, Hanoi. Although its name means “coastal defense,” the city was completely unprepared for the huge storm, as sustained winds of 115 miles per hour generated a 20-foot storm surge that totally swamped the low-lying city; according to one contemporary account, “there were six feet of water in the houses three and four miles distant from the sea shore.” Over 300,000 people died in this catastrophe.
Adding insult to injury, the typhoon weakened the native government and provided a convenient pretext for the French conquest of northern Vietnam, as the French argued that the Vietnamese emperor was incompetent and unable to protect his own people. In 1882-1883 French forces marched into Haiphong, Hanoi, and the central Vietnamese city of Hue, completing their takeover of the country. However they still had to fight off Chinese mercenaries, while native resistance continued in rural areas, with guerrilla tactics foreshadowing the later Vietnam War.
10. East Pakistan cyclone, 1970
What is today the independent nation of Bangladesh used to be part of Pakistan: these predominantly Muslim areas were originally a single country, which split from Hindu-majority India following independence in 1947. But a terrible natural disaster in the form of a huge cyclone helped precipitate a civil war, leading to the independence of “East Pakistan.”
By 1970 tensions were already simmering between East and West Pakistan, as East Pakistan complained of oppression by West Pakistan; the populations of the two sections came from different ethnic backgrounds and spoke different languages, and the Bengali people of East Pakistan felt they were discriminated against by the government. Then on November 12, 1970, the huge Bhola cyclone hit East Pakistan with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour and a storm surge 34.8 feet high, coinciding with high tide. Up to 500,000 people were killed by the storm and flooding, leading to intense anger at the government and military, which were criticized for failing to heed warnings about the storm and bungling relief efforts in its aftermath.
Popular anger reached new heights when the government said it would go ahead with elections scheduled for December, even though most parts of East Pakistan were in no condition to participate. Civil war broke out in March 1971, and quickly widened into a regional conflict when India intervened on the side of Bengali rebels in East Pakistan. The war finally concluded with a resounding defeat for West Pakistan, and independence for the new nation of Bangladesh, in December 1971.
11. Darfur drought, 1983-present
Although it only came to the attention of the Western world in the first years of the 21st century, the brutal conflict in Darfur traces its roots back to the early 1980s, when drought conditions first triggered competition among tribal groups for scarce resources. These conflicts were intensified by shifting geography, as desertification increasingly pushed nomadic and settled groups into each other’s territory, along with the breakdown of traditional forms of conflict resolution (tribal councils) due to government interference. The mounting tension finally erupted into all-out civil war and genocide in 2002, when settled “African” tribesmen formed the rebel Sudan Liberation Army to protect themselves against the “Arab”-dominated central government (actual ethnic identities are more fluid than these terms might suggest). The central government responded by encouraging the nomadic “Arab” janjaweed to form militias, and the situation soon escalated from combat to mass murder. To date the United Nations estimates that 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur, although the true death toll may be higher.
For 11-11-11, we'll be posting twenty-four '11 lists' throughout the day. Check back 11 minutes after every hour for the latest installment, or see them all here. | <urn:uuid:1de561e2-8614-4501-8548-91fa196d5b59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29231/11-natural-disasters-led-wars | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960597 | 3,119 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Mother’s Day is not a Hallmark holiday. It has far cooler, and more important, roots than that. In fact, Julia Ward Howe proclaimed the first Mother’s Day in 1870 as an anti-war holiday in response to the U.S. Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. She was tired of mothers having to bury their sons. Today, Mother’s Day is celebrated worldwide at many different times of year in different countries to honor the important role of mothers in our lives and societies. Heck, looking at the list of international dates, one could reasonably say that every day is Mother’s Day somewhere! Now, we know that round about all of you within the sound of my keystrokes plan to pick up flowers today from one of our seven flower farmers at your Ballard Farmers Market, like KaYing, a.k.a., The Old Farmer. I suspect she will be channeling the spirit of Julia Ward Howe today, given what she’s seen in her time on earth.
My advice to you is to arrive early today for the best selection of flowers, and to pack some patience with you, as there will be lines. But given our beautiful weather lately, the flower selection this year for Mother’s Day is wonderful. So get mom some flowers that mean something. Get local flowers with a face behind them. She will appreciate what that means. After all, she gets that whole nurturing thing. Oh, and peace be with you!
Just in time for Mother’s Day, we celebrate the return of Finnriver Farm & Cidery to your Ballard Farmers Market! They produce a wonderful selection of artisan hard ciders and fruit dessert wines on their farm over in Chimacum in Jefferson County. They’ve been busy bottling ciders of 2012 vintage in recent weeks, and now it is time for you to treat mom with some… and yourself!
Today also marks the glorious return of Carnation’s Summer Run Farm for the 2013 season. Summer Run is famous for their beautiful and ginormous heads of lettuce, like this red leaf lettuce. Tired of living without great, local lettuce, or of eating that so-called “lettuce” from the Big Box stores all winter that seem devoid of flavor? Your long, dark winter is over! And doesn’t mom deserve a nice salad made by you tonight for dinner?
Speaking of great dinners for mom, how’s about some wild Washington king salmon, caught just off of the Washington Coast by Wilson Fish? They like to say, “It’s so fresh, it’s from the future!” And frankly, that’s not far from the truth. If you’ve never had this king salmon, and you are thinking of holding out for Copper River salmon at almost twice the price, you need to forget the TV hype and give this a try. Once you’ve tried it, you won’t go back to that over-priced stuff from Alaska with all the frequent flyer miles!
You know what goes great with king salmon? Asparagus, of course. And Alm Hill Gardens grows some of the sweetest, most tender and delicious asparagus anywhere right up on the Canadian border in Whatcom County. Grill your mom some of that salmon, and side it with some of this asparagus, and you will be golden for the rest of the year!
And you know what goes great with asparagus? Green garlic! Every spring about this time, farmers like Alvarez Organic Farms thin their garlic fields. They bring the thinned out baby garlic, know as green or spring garlic, to Market for us to enjoy. It is sweet, mildly garlicky, and you can eat the whole thing, from root to tip! Think of it like a green onion. You can grill them or sauté them, but I tend to like them best tossed in a big glass baking dish with olive oil, salt & pepper, some spring sweet onions, asparagus and wild morel mushrooms…
Or wild porcini mushrooms, if you like. Foraged & Found Edibles has them both today! In fact, the forests and coastline are providing us will all manner of deliciousness for mom’s day today, including wild watercress, goose tongue (that’s a plant, BTW), sea beans and more! So, stop by Foraged & Found, and grab some indigenous local goodness!
Today seems like as good a day as any to get that strawberry patch started for mom. And Red Barn Farm has these beautiful strawberry plants for it! They also have raspberry plants, cabbage starts and plenty of other great things for your garden.
And if tomatoes, ripe from the vine in your yard or on your deck or porch, are the stuff of your dreams, check in with Stoney Plains Organic Farm. They have tomato plants in an amazing selection of varieties from which to choose, as well as racks and racks of other goodies for the planting!
Don’t forget bread for mom’s dinner! And it is now olive fougasse season at Tall Grass Bakery. This stuff is so good, I can eat a whole loaf in a single sitting. Just don’t dillydally getting to Market today if you want any. This stuff, like many of today’s featured items, will sell out early, and you really don’t want to have to explain to mom that you don’t have any because you slept in, do you?
Finally, let us not forget dessert! Bring mom one of the best pies on earth from Deborah’s Homemade Pies. Made with local flour and lots of other local ingredients, there are many flavors from which to choose, as long as you get here early enough!
There is plenty more local deliciousness waiting for you today at your Ballard Farmers Market. Just check What’s Fresh Now! for a more complete accounting of what is in season right now.
Please remember bring your own bags every Sunday, as Seattle’s single-use plastic bag ban is now in effect. Also, please take note of our new green composting and blue recycling waste receptacles throughout your Ballard Farmers Market, and please make an effort to use them correctly. Each container has what’s okay to put in it pictured right on the lid. Please do not put the wrong materials in, because that drives up the cost of recycling and composting, and it can result in the entire container being sent instead to a landfill. Your understanding and cooperation are appreciated. | <urn:uuid:046d52c0-7ec0-46ec-8272-0c9bf2f5a385> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ballardfarmersmarket.wordpress.com/tag/fish/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947597 | 1,373 | 1.921875 | 2 |
- Get involved
This morning's keynote session will include a presentation by Sara Diamond & Fee Plumley
Sara Diamond - Building a Values Driven Institution – Two Case Studies at OCAD University
This talk will discuss the creation of a values driven strategic plan for the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University. Its code of practice emphasizes that, “OCAD U values, respects and advances ethical practice, flexibility, advocacy, diversity, accessibility, Aboriginal cultures, wellness, global citizenship, as well as the manifestations of creativity in entrepreneurship, innovation, and sustainability”. Its goal is to prepare, “Students, faculty and alumni to be cultural leaders, practitioners, educators, creative thinkers, strategists, inventors and innovators who take calculated risks and make strong contributions to the cultural, social and economic prosperity of Canada and the world.” Aspects of the mission emphasizes partnerships, “OCAD U offers vibrant disciplinary and cross-disciplinary opportunities for cultural and lifelong learning in concert with local, national, Aboriginal and international communities.” The talk will provide an overview of the ways that the university adopted and then enacted these values through two case studies. The first is the Aboriginal Visual Culture Program: Art, Design and Media, a local and national pedagogical and research program built on principles of self-government. The second case study is the Inclusive Design Research Centre and its network, the Inclusive Design Institute, an international network that creates technologies that enable access to the Internet for people whatever their abilities may be. These two initiatives focus on serving communities with rich histories of knowledge that have a history of marginalization from university communities.
Fee Plumley - Top down, bottom up & middle out: on cultural economics and the National Broadband Network as investors in Australian creativity
Everyone is saying it - the NBN will be a game changer for the arts in Australia, especially in remote communities. It is anticipated that one result will be an explosion in the fledging,yet burdgeoning, digitial culture movement. In considering the impact of the NBN, it is important to consider the issue of cultural economics, and to view the NBN Co as an investor in Australian creativity.
Current discussion about art economics uses language and definitions that differ so drastically that it is nearly impossible to match benchmarks, resulting in an inevitable failure by comparison. Art is a creative industry and must be seen as such. Some arts do make money, some do not, but both are equally vital for cultural development.
In economic terms, the arts industry needs a greater investment in R&D and an acceptance that failure is positive, especially regarding learning outcome. There needs to be greater support for intellectual property development. Much IP is developed in digital culture but isn't exploited. Legal models of intellectual property are not suited to digital cultural development. Funding for the development of digital culture needs to be greater. We need balanced distribution of funding organisations, independents and artforms. And we need greater integration and crossover between state, federal and local grants to fund digital culture. Digital needs to be seen as an opportunity, not a threat that may replace other artforms.
The NBN is not just ‘more sport and porn from overseas’, as some claim. It will provide a genuine opportunity for more Australians to make and share Australian content. Broadcast won't invest in local content, and we don't need to wait for them to do so, we need to help people realise (and then make) their own.
The NBN offers a two-way model, not just a broadcast model. Digital content can be shared from remote areas to metropolitan centres, and vice versa. As such, the infrastructure needs to be built with DSL not asymmetrical and exchanges need to allow live, realtime, low-latency transmission, not just packet transfer.
The NBN is the most important infrastructure upgrade since water infrastructure and needs to be future proof.
Strategic cultural development is paramount. There are people and places already doing wonderful digital work, but there's still a lot of first-stage introductions and hand-holding that needs to be done. | <urn:uuid:d9a5d6b5-20d5-4cc2-8704-08a30c7fce80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kumuwuki.org.au/conference_sessions/friday_plenary | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933607 | 835 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Photo by Joel Hall The ‘Green House,’ located at 139 College St., in Jonesboro, was originally built in 1878 as a home for the president of Middle Georgia College. The upper floors of the home were also used as a dormitory for male students of the college. The historic home is currently up for sale.
Better Buildings for Michigan and Michigan Energy Options have partnered with Dewitt and Bath Township to give homeowners an unprecedented opportunity to make energy efficient improvements to their homes. They say a little investment now can go a long way.
If a home is losing air, it affects not just the utility bills, but the level of comfort as well. That's why Jack Bails signed up for a professional energy assessment with the Better Buildings for Michigan initiative.
"Primarily for comfort, but also interest in saving energy," said Bails, who lives in Bath Township. "Taking personal responsibility to do that."
A typical home energy audit can cost up to $500, but Dewitt and Bath Township residents can get an assessment for just $50 until July 31st.
"That visit will uncover and prioritize what steps you should take to improve the energy efficiency of your home, should you choose to move forward," said David Meeder with Michigan Energy Options.
Jack Bails chose to move forward with several energy efficient recommendations, including putting air sealing in the attic and basement, adding insulation, and installing a new air conditioning unit.
"We probably will save money in the long term and increase the comfort of the whole house," Bails said.
Steve Musselman, a Dewitt Township trustee, says residents could experience a 10 to 50 percent change in energy bills by taking advantage of the recommendations following the audit.
Considering the audit's lowered cost, and the possibility of other utility rebates, organizers say signing up for an assessment is a "no-brainer."
"First, for the resident it's a way to save money because it's going to reduce energy bills," said Musselman. "Secondly, it's a renewable resource we need to protect."
The $50 home energy assessment for Bath and Dewitt Township residents also comes with the installation of energy-saving equipment like a programmable thermostat and low-flow shower heads. 240 homeowners can participate in the program, and only about 100 of slots those have been taken.
If you live in Bath or Dewitt township, we have the link on our website to sign up for an energy assessment - just click on the Hot Button, or visit http://bathbbfm.org/.
If you don't live in Bath or Dewitt Township, experts say even paying full price for a professional energy assessment is a good idea.
There are also other other savings programs homeowners can take advantage of. For example, Consumers Energy customers with residential rate service are eligible for up to $5,000 in rebates for measures installed to save energy. The Lansing Board of Water and Light also offers rebates and incentives for making energy efficient investments. So before you get any work done on your home, contact both of those companies to see what rebates you're eligible for. | <urn:uuid:63dee113-2151-427e-a081-94424631407c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wilx.com/news/headlines/159695675.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961649 | 643 | 2.109375 | 2 |
I’m still on that journey, but once I graduate I feel I will have the right tools to lead on issues like educational equity and community development.
Corey became a middle school history teacher and school administrator at an independent private school in New York City. However, he explains, “throughout my six years there, I witnessed numerous instances when boys of color struggled academically, lost themselves socially and in some cases left the school. I became frustrated by the pervasiveness of that pattern, especially since I had played a lead role in designing the policies and programs intended to preclude that from happening.” Determined to solve this problem, Corey plans to create a middle school in Harlem, Brotherhood Prep, to prepare boys of color for success in elite private high schools by offering them similar learning environments to the ones they would enter. “I realized I had to start a business and become an educational entrepreneur,” Corey explained. To do that, he recognized that he had to strengthen his entrepreneurial acumen to successfully get the school off the ground.
“I was drawn to two of NYU’s guiding principles: ‘A private university in the public service’ and ‘in and of the city,’ he said. “Those ideas resonate with me in a deeply personal way. I shared Stern’s values, was heartened by its commitment to diversity and wanted to learn in a collaborative community.” Corey experienced these values in action at Launch, a two-week orientation for new MBA students. “Launch demonstrated to me that Stern is serious about creating diverse leaders who are self aware, innovative and collaborative. It was clear that Launch was designed not only to orient us to the community, but also to inspire us to be change makers. That was all I needed to feel confident that Stern was the perfect business school for my aspirations.” He adds, “I think the most transformative aspect Launch for me was the focus on leveraging our personal stories into a professional path. Dean Peter Henry’s story of how he became a professor and why he chose to become the dean at Stern was incredibly inspiring.”
Corey’s current entrepreneurship courses, such as Prof. Glenn Okun’s “Start-Up Business Practicum” and “Managing Growing Companies,” are providing the foundation to see Brotherhood Prep through, and his summer experience developing a staff program at Teach for America strengthened his leadership skills. However, it is his experience in the Launch Projects Course that he says changed his beliefs about what’s possible in a business school class. Investigating the role of business in solving social problems, the course is led by Vice Dean and Prof. Adam Brandenburger who insisted that the students search for questions that were both scholastically and personally meaningful. Corey notes, “Towards the end of the semester, we started calling ourselves ‘the learning community,’ because that’s exactly what we were. The Launch Projects Course helped me believe that accomplishing my dream was possible. My classmates were an incredible support system, and since then several of them have become irreplaceable members of my leadership team.”
Though still early in his journey, it’s clear that Corey has been transformed by his time at NYU. “For a long time, I resisted the idea that I had any leadership potential, even as I was putting myself in positions of leadership. I’ve known for a long time that I wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing myself as a leader until I received formal training. Going to grad school and obtaining an MBA and an MPA has always been about owning the fact that I can be a leader in the social sector. I’m still on that journey, but once I graduate I feel I will have the right tools to lead on issues like educational equity and community development,” he says. “And I’m confident Brotherhood Prep will be an even greater success because of the education I’m receiving at NYU.” | <urn:uuid:d682131a-7d78-43b0-ab72-35cfe3880118> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/news-events/cory-blay-lead-possible?src=homepage_feature | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98411 | 838 | 1.75 | 2 |
Migraine is a complex disease whose physiopathological mechanisms are still not completely revealed.
We describe an unusual case, not yet described in literature, of a patient who reported migraine remission, but still presented aura attacks, since starting a therapy with Warfarin.
This case report brings out new questions on the role of the coagulation, especially the blood coagulation pathway, in migraine with aura pathogenesis, and on the possibility to use vitamin K synthesis inhibitors, Warfarin or new generation drugs, as possible therapy to use in migraine prophylaxis.
Keywords:Anticoagulant drugs; Aura; Coagulation; Migraine
Migraine is a complex disease whose physiopathological mechanisms are still not completely revealed, despite the numerous improvements that have been achieved lately in research (Edvinsson & Uddman 2005). A possible connection between migraine and stroke was described (Weinberger 2007). The risk of developing a stroke is higher in patients suffering from migraine with aura than without aura; a possible explanation for this association could be an hypercoagulable state (Corral et al. 1998; Moschiano et al. 2004). There are few cases reported in literature in which a substantial reduction of migraine attacks is observed during the use of vitamin K antagonists, but in none of these studies a comparison has been done between patients with migraine and migraine with aura episodes (Maggioni et al. 2012). We present an unusual case, not yet described in literature, of a patient who reported migraine remission but still presented aura attacks since starting a therapy with Warfarin. We discuss the possible role of anticoagulant in migraine prophylaxis and the implications of the blood coagulation pathway in migraine pathogenesis.
On January 2012, a 31-year-old patient came to the Modena headache outpatients clinic with his mother (54 years old). His mother was diagnosed with migraine with aura, according to criteria of the International Headache Classification (ICH2 2004), complied by the International Headache Society (IHS) and who was not responsive to pharmacological therapy starting from adolescence. His family medical history reported that also his father (60 years old), and his two siblings (his sister, 28 years old, and his brother, 17 years old) were diagnosed with migraine with aura (ICH2 2004), poor responsive to pharmacological therapy. Our patient was the only family member who presented only 4 migraine attacks with visual aura attacks, with the same clinical presentation as his family. These episodes appeared at the age of 16, recurrent monthly and with spontaneous remission. From the interview it emerged that he has been in therapy with Warfarin since he was 17, after a surgical procedure for the substitution of his aortic valve with a mechanical one. The native valve was insufficient because of an untreated rheumatic fever that he had in his childhood. Furthermore, we surprisingly learned that, once he had started Warfarin therapy, approximately once a month he presented visual aura without the following migraine attack. For this reason we decided to re-evaluate the patient after a week. In this occasion we examined all his clinical reports before the cardiac surgery, and we didn’t find any data supporting the hypothesis of a secondary cause for his previous migraine attacks; also, we confirmed that he suffered from migraine with aura, according to ICH2 2004. Also, we didn’t find any abnormality on physical and psychological examination, brain MRI and routine blood tests. Eventually, we examined more carefully the patient regarding his coagulative state. He was evaluated for antithrombin 3, plasminogen, protein C and S, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, factor V-Leiden, von Willebrand factor ristocetin cofactor activity, antinuclear antibody, serum lactic and pyruvic acid, lupus anticoagulant, antiphospholipid antibodies, factor II and methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and homocysteine. We didn’t find anything beyond the normal range, beside his value of INR of 2.64, due to his Warfarin therapy.
Current molecular and functional studies suggest a way to incorporate the different aspects into an integrated hypothesis as neurovascular headaches (Edvinsson & Uddman 2005). There are evidences that a prothrombotic tendency may be involved in migraine pathogenesis, particularly in patients with migraine with aura and patients with migrainous stroke (Weinberger 2007; Corral et al. 1998; Moschiano et al. 2004). In the last 15 years, the possible role of coagulation defects in migraine patients during attacks and in the intercritical phase has partially been investigated, and some alterations have been discovered, such as resistance to activate protein C due to Factor V Leiden mutation, factor II 20210 mutation, factor V 1692 mutation, antithrombin, protein C, and protein S deficiencies, elevated factor VIII levels and homocysteinemia (Maggioni et al. 2012; Hering-Hanit et al. 2001). Furthermore, in literature, many cases are described in which patients reported migraine remission or mayor improvements after starting a Warfarin therapy for a different cause; in these studies it was not evaluated the different patient’s answer in migraine with or without aura (Teber et al. 2011). We present the unusual case, not yet described in literature, of a patient who reported migraine remission but still presented aura attacks with a monthly frequency since starting a therapy with Warfarin after a surgical procedure of aortic valve substitution. The fact that he still presented aura attacks is very important, because coagulation defects are nowadays considered more relevant in the pathogenesis of migraine with aura than without(Edvinsson & Uddman 2005; Weinberger 2007; Corral et al. 1998; Moschiano et al. 2004); moreover, our patient didn’t have any coagulation deficit. This might invite to a careful consideration on the effective role of the blood coagulation pathway on migraine with and without aura pathogenesis. This last hypotesis is reinforced considering the fact that our patient is the only family member who experienced a complete remission of migraine attacks, with only aura episodes. Indeed, the other four components of his family, that in this case we can consider as controls, kept suffering from migraine with aura attacks, and all of them are poor responsive to pharmacological therapy. Given the high ratio between risks and benefits with the dosage that our patient was using to obtain an INR between 2 and 3, several authors suggested to carry on observational studies with Warfarin with dosage that can make patients achieve an INR only slightly beyond 1.2, but in literature the only double-blind-trial with acenocoumarol at low dosage failed to demonstrate the usefulness in migraine prophylaxis (Wammes-van der Heijden et al. 2005). Currently, experiments with new anticoagulant drugs that might both answer on the possible role of blood coagulation pathway on migraine pathogenesis and that might be used as prophylactive therapy are taking place (Ahrens et al. 2010; Mavrakanas & Bounameux 2011). Also changes of global hemodynamic after aortic-valve replacement could be considered on migraine with and without aura outcome. Further studies are needed to assess the exact role of the blood coagulation pathway in the pathogenesis of migraine with and without aura; the role of Warfarin in the improvement of migraine prognosis and the possible different reactions to Warfarin between patients with migraine with and without aura. Also, we can consider the use of other anticoagulant drugs that have an effect on the blood coagulation pathway but with a better pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profile.
Consent was obtained from the child’s parents for the preparation and publication of this case report.
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
AR was a key member of the clinical team and made the clinical diagnosis. He had full access to all of the data in the study, takes responsibility for the integrity of data and the accuracy of the data analysis, and wrote the manuscript. SS revised the first draft of the manuscript. DG revised the second draft of the manuscript. MDP executed and supervised the psychological test. FZ executed the psychological test. LAP co-designed the study and discussed data interpretation. All authors have contributed to, seen, and approved the manuscript.
This study was performed in the University and Polyclinic of Modena.
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Maggioni F, Bruno M, Mainardi F, Lisotto C, et al. (2012) Migraine responsive to warfarin: an update on anticoagulant possible role in migraine prophylaxis. Neurol Sci 33(6):1447-1449 PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
Moschiano F, D’Amico D, Ciusani E, Erba N, et al. (2004) Coagulation abnormalities in migraine and ischaemic cerebrovascular disease: a link between migraine and ischaemic stroke? Neurol Science 25(3):126-128 Publisher Full Text
Wammes-van der Heijden EA, Smidt MH, Tijssen CC, Hoff AR, et al. (2005) Effect of low-intensity acenocoumarol on frequency and severity of migraine attacks. Headache 45:137-143 PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | <urn:uuid:83f59a4c-a67a-40f3-985d-23b5a325c18f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.springerplus.com/content/2/1/48 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933085 | 2,022 | 1.96875 | 2 |
I first read about this idea from Amy Gruen's blog.
During my area unit I was teaching composite areas for the first time. I found a worksheet on BetterLesson that I really liked so I edited it and made a powerpoint to go along with it. The worksheet has a direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice section. I've never taught this before and I was really nervous that everyone would be lost and confused. I was expecting tons of questions and chaos. So I needed some kind of structure or strategy that would keep me from pulling my hair out.
Here's what I came up with. I worked out the answers to each problem individually on a post it.
On the chalkboard, I wrote numbers with a square under it and put each post it inside the square.
I told the class as they worked to check their answers with the post it. If they were stuck then they could also go look at how the problem was done. This is better than letting them take the post-its to their seat which would mean temptation to copy every answer. If a student stood up there long enough to copy down every problem, I'm pretty sure I would notice that.
It would have been a good idea to spread them out more but I only have one chalkboard.
It turns out that since my students are so lazy, most of them didn't bother to get up and look but instead just asked the student sitting closest to the board to tell them the answer. And that was okay, because they were still able to check their answers and I knew they weren't cheating.
I also told students I would not be answering any questions like "Is this the right answer?" since they could easily answer that themselves.
What went wrong is that since we were doing composite areas, there are many different ways to getting the answer. Which is good. But looking at my post it note with only one way to do it...not so good.
In theory, the idea was great and it's a strategy I will try again. But probably on something that's a little more...straightforward. | <urn:uuid:63b491e1-b577-4535-82a2-98f5908f47b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://misscalculate.blogspot.com/2012/04/post-it-note-answer-key.html?showComment=1334111253340 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992946 | 433 | 2.59375 | 3 |
9/11: The Day History Went Dark, And The World Went Crazy
September 18, 2011
“It’s not what you know or what you think, it’s how you think and how you know what you know. It’s about the construction of knowledge.” – Christopher Hitchens. This quote is from a discussion on the state of the media in 1997 that Hitchens participated in along with Bill Moyers and others. Watch the discussion (the comment is made at 10:08 – 10:15).
“God save us from labels.” – Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. This quote is featured in Hendrik Hertzberg’s New Yorker article, “Politics and Prose: The letters of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.”
The cover-up of the false flag 9/11 attacks cannot be explained simply by a coordinated censorship operation that reaches across many media organizations, cultural institutions and governments. Culture is more complicated. There are a number of reasons which can illuminate why societal myths have a long life span, like the one about 9/11.
To begin with, the state and media censorship about 9/11 hasn’t been effective, mainly because of the internet, talk radio, citizen documentaries, alternative media, and new media technology.
Over the years, almost everyone has come in contact with various alternative theories about how and why the attacks happened, with the most coherent and popular explanation being that the shadow governments of America and Israel orchestrated the controlled demolition of the twin towers along with Building 7.
The CIA can censor the nitty-gritty details of the government’s prosecution of the war on terror, and they can control free speech to a great extent, but even with all their resources they can’t hide a ten thousand pound elephant in the room. | <urn:uuid:08d0d2d8-9048-4e77-a843-199defd2775d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://revolutionradio.org/?p=20013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924546 | 381 | 2.140625 | 2 |
National Cancer Institute's Cancer Genome Anatomy Project
National Center for Biotechnology Information
BioMedNet Research Tools
Expressed Sequence Tags Database
Pedro's BioMolecular Research Tools
DNA sequencing services
Meetings and conferences
Biomedical/molecular biology companies
NCBI Expressed Sequence Tags database
Osiris Therapeutics, Inc.
Clontech Laboratories, Inc.
Research Genetics (ResGen)
Ambion: Technical Resources
OriGene Technologies, Inc.
Mouse molecular genetics
Mouse Genome Informatics Gene Expression Database (GXD)
The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center Embryonic Stem Cell Core
The Jackson Laboratory (JAX)
The Jackson Library: Internet Resources for Transgenic and Targeted Mutation Research
The Jackson Laboratory: The Transgenic/Targeted Mutation Database
Please write as legibly as possible. Keep in mind that others may need to refer to your notes long after you have left the lab, and your notebooks will be useless if they are illegible.
Please organize your notebooks as outlined below. Again, the idea is to make it easier for people to understand your notes after you have left the lab. Attention to lab notes is not optional in this lab -- it is required. Your notes are every bit as important as the experiments you perform.
Write out your plans before you start your experiment. This practice will allow you to anticipate potential problems and will ensure that you have all the reagents and supplies you need before you get stuck in the middle of a protocol. Never undertake a new protocol without checking to be sure all reagents are available in the lab. If they are not, order whatever is needed. Do all necessary calculations ahead of time. This can be critical for embryo or cell culture -- you don't want your precious samples sitting around while you try to figure out what and how much to add. You are also much less likely to make mistakes if you have thought the experiment through beforehand. While all of this may seem self-evident, many people don't bother to plan ahead, and their work shows it.
- Start a new page for each separate experiment. The goal is to give some organization to your notes so that they will be easy to follow, even months or years later. Lab notes should not be entered in stream-of-consciousness fashion. The actual determination of what constitutes a separate experiment is somewhat arbitrary and is left to your discretion. For example, the preparation of a radiolabeled probe for a Southern blot could be listed separately (e.g. if a portion will also be used for colony hybridizations) or as part of the Southern blotting experiment write-up.
- Notes should be carefully dated. Date each new entry. If you later annotate a write-up to reflect new thoughts or conclusions, date and cross-reference your annotations. This is very important -- it makes clear to anyone reviewing your notes that these additions were intended as annotations, not as fraudulent changes.
- Each individual experiment should be given a number. The system you use is up to you but should be consistent. For example, 99-78 might be 1999, experiment 78 (and 78-1 or 78.1 would be page 1 of that experiment). Your initials plus the experiment number would also be acceptable, but the advantage of using the year is that it will make it much easier for you to find things in the future. I strongly encourage using the year (the reason for this will be more apparent after you have read section 5).
Keep a running table of contents; it will be much easier to find things later on.
Each experiment should also contain the following information:
Sufficiently descriptive to allow quick recognition of contents AIM (where appropriate)
What was the rationale for designing the experiment in this way or for choosing this set of conditions?
As detailed as possible, including calculations, recipes for buffers, or other reagents, etc. If you do something very routinely and have made no changes at all in the protocol, refer back by number to an earlier experiment. If you have changed conditions from an earlier protocol, refer back to that experiment and summarize the changes.
RAW DATA (where possible)
Including scintillation counter or spectrophotometer printouts, autorads (dated and indexed with experiment number), etc. If your large autorads are kept in a set of old film boxes, make sure it is clear in your notes where a particular autorad can be found.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
What size fragments lit up on a Southern blot? Did the diagnostic digests you performed on a new plasmid prep match the map? Which of a series of reaction conditions worked most effectively? If you take the trouble to do this routinely, it will save you a great deal of time later on: You won't have to reinvent the wheel constantly.
Are there any caveats about the interpretation of the results? Might the experiment work better if the conditions are changed slightly the next time? If an experiment did not work or was uninformative, what factors might make a difference? (Unless you are sure you made a careless mistake in designing or executing an experiment, it is not worth repeating the experiment until you have spent some time trying to determine what might have gone wrong.) What is the next step?
- NUMBER ALL SAMPLE TUBES WITH AN EXPERIMENT NUMBER BEFORE YOU PUT THEM AWAY. A system of this sort makes it much easier to locate samples and reduces the amount of information you need to include on tube labels. Your samples should also ALWAYS be dated. A tube labeled 1, A, etc. is unacceptable; it is too easy to collect a lot of tubes and then to forget what they contain.
- Occasionally, after a long series of similar experiments, it is useful to go back and review the results and then write a summary. This practice can save you an enormous amount of time when you are ready to prepare a manuscript or begin writing your thesis. If appropriate, design a template sheet that can be used to record and summarize data (we have these for embryo cultures; analogous sheets could be designed for embryoid body assays and clonogenic cultures, protocols that you use on a regular basis and prefer not to rewrite in detail each time, etc.) | <urn:uuid:058bf759-755c-417b-aaa5-030643712e98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/labs/baron-laboratory/about-us/research-tools | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91906 | 1,302 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Obama Administration Jumps Into Supreme Court DOMA Fight
President Barack Obama, who began his presidency advocating for separate-but-equal (except when they’re not) equivalencies to full-out marriage for gay couples -- the same position as his predecessor, George W. Bush -- has finally come around full circle.
On Friday, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli submitted a brief that called the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because it violates "The fundamental guarantee of equal protection." As Solicitor General, Verrilli presents the administration’s views to the Supreme Court.
The brief uses a specific section of the 1996 law, which was signed by then-President Bill Clinton, to insist that the result means "the law denies to tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law an array of important federal benefits that are available to legally married opposite-sex couples" and that "this discrimination cannot be justified as substantially furthering any important governmental interest."
The most controversial part of Verrilli’s brief deals with the battle the administration has been waging with Congress -- specifically the GOP-dominated House of Representatives. The House has been voting extraordinary funds to fight DOMA repeal on its own, thus making for a historic clash between a presidency that refuses to defend a law (as the Constitution mandates him to do) on the one hand; and a legislative body taking extra-legislative action by intervening in the courts.
The brief does not address the funding by the House directly. Rather, it attacks the reasoning that House Speaker John Boehner and others have been using to oppose the administration.
"This is, however, the rare case in which deference to the democratic process must give way to the fundamental constitutional command of equal treatment under the law," the brief reads. In other words, even though a president is sworn to uphold the law of the land, when by upholding that law he undermines a "fundamental constitutional command," he is bound to bow to a more profound underlying constitutional principal rather than a 16-year-old law.
Verrilli addresses another hot-button issue head-on in his brief -- perhaps the most controversial one of all. "Moral opposition to homosexuality, though it may reflect deeply held personal views, is not a legitimate policy objective that can justify unequal treatment of gay and lesbian people." This basically throws out all of the extra-legal arguments based on religion, natural law, procreation, hygiene and the rest of the reasoning among the religious right and cultural conservatives.
Even if the Supreme Court does not agree that this case necessitates a look at a more fundamental principal of the Constitution, the Obama’s Justice Department argues that even if "sexual orientation may be considered to fall short in some dimension." That is, in having higher scrutiny applied, "the history of discrimination and the absence of relation to one’s capabilities associated with this particular classification would uniquely qualify it for scrutiny under an approach that calls for a measure of added focus to guard against giving effect to a desire to harm an ’unpopular group.’" In that "uniquely" rests the administration’s argument that a lot is riding on this ruling.
The case before the Supreme Court deals only with the legality of DOMA, which is being challenged by Edie Windsor, 83. The New Yorker was impelled to take on the federal government when she realized the many monetary burdens she faced as married to a female partner and then as a widow. Without the protection of federal law, gay couples are subject to all kinds of discrimination, not only monetary. Couples whose marriages are recognized only by the state lose out on everything from spousal veteran benefits to federal employee health insurance, from joint filing on federal income-tax forms to being barred from the Family Leave Act, from a deceased’s pension to losing federal tax deductions for combined expenses.
At the same time, California’s Proposition 8 also looks to be headed to the Supremes. Passed by voters in a 2008 referendum, it prohibits same-sex marriage in the Golden State. It began with then-San Francisco Gavin Newsom officiating over gay weddings on the steps of City Hall. Since then, it has wended it way up through the federal court system, piling victory on victory until a federal appeals judge ruled the proposition was unconstitutional.
Some believe that the court might hedge by applying its decision only to the jurisdiction of the lower court that made the ruling. That still would represent a huge victory for LGBT Americans and their allies, since any Supreme Court ruling - especially one on a subject as controversial and divisive as this one -- will inevitably be cited as case law everywhere.
Even though it was easy to see where the administration was going with the Windsor case, the suddenness of the filing took many by surprise. As recently as Wednesday, Obama told a San Francisco TV station "I have to make sure that I’m not interjecting myself too much in this process, particularly when we’re not a party to the case."
He has certainly interjected himself in the process now. The case (and the Prop 8 one as well) are interesting not only in its subject matter but in the way they are breaking legal ground. Not of least interest is whether the court will decide if the House’s legal group has the "standing" to sit in the defense chair at all.
The Prop 8 case has its own set of weird occurrences. Ted Olson had been considered an intellectual leader of the GOP right. He was the lead attorney in Bush v. Gore, where he won the presidency in the Florida "hanging chads" debacle. His wife was perhaps the nation’s most-visible conservative pundit before she died in the air during 9/11. Olson is lead litigant against Prop 8. His co-litigator is been David Boies -- his antagonist in Bush v. Gore.
There’s no question about the Justice Department brief to the Supreme Court in the Windsor case will do more than raise eyebrows or keep legal scholars busy wrestling with the paradoxes. It also means that the president has thrown the full weight of the Executive Branch toward bringing down DOMA. At the very least, this will force right-wing justices like Alito to sharpen their verbal spears, since they will now not only be attacking the plaintiffs and their advocates, but the president himself.
Considering his public statements on gay marriage during the last presidential campaign and even a shout-out in his inaugural address, as Buzzfeed has pointed out, "The filing was expected and echoes arguments made by the Department of Justice in court challenges since President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder concluded in February 2011 that DOMA was unconstitutional."
The administration has not indicated whether or not it will similarly interject itself into the Prop. 8 case. Since this is dealing with one state, the president is not officially involved. Even so, don’t be surprised if the Justice Department files an amicus curiae brief in that one.
We won’t have too long to wait. The deadline for submitting amici is Feb. 28. Stay tuned. | <urn:uuid:95cc0cf2-1489-4fb2-bc4c-30ece638df04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgedallas.com/news/family/news/141926/obama_administration_jumps_into_supreme_court_doma_fight | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967631 | 1,472 | 2.0625 | 2 |
More valuable than money or posessions
With financial stability, often comes a renewed focus on the more important things in life: friends, family, happiness. And in turn, appreciation of these intangibles pushes us to build a a life that can be fulfilling without excess monetarily.
There was a time about eight years ago when I woke up thinking about the possessions I had and the money I was earning. I was a collector of stuff and I was immensely proud of the money I was earning. Not only did I want lots of stuff for my own enjoyment, I also wanted to flaunt it to a certain extent.Skip to next paragraph
The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds – we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
Teach kids personal finance through experience: six tips
High gas prices? 14 ways to save money on fuel.
Sports drinks draining your budget? Make them at home.
Renting vs owning: When is buying a house worth it?
What one more dollar means for your mortgage payment
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
Over time, though, I began to realize that something was missing in my life. There were things that I wanted in my life that were drifting farther and farther away from me.
I wanted the freedom to write for a living because I deeply enjoy the written word.
I wanted a strong relationship with my wife.
I wanted a strong relationship with my children and to raise them into a self-reliant and curiosity-filled adulthood.
I wanted time to read and enjoy books – not to collect them, but to read and enjoy them.
I wanted to build a close circle of friends that would stick with me through thick and thin (as I would stick with them).
My life was focused heavily on my income and possessions, but it really felt empty after a while.
Eventually, after I realized that I really needed to turn my financial situation around, I began to really focus on the things above as the center of my life. Each of them – along with another focus or two that I’ve added since then – pushes me to build a great life that I enjoy without spending money.
Writing only requires a computer and trips to the library to do research.
A relationship with my wife requires just time and attention, as does a relationship with my children.
Reading just requires time, along with those aforementioned trips to the library.
A close circle of friends mostly just requires time and attention.
Better health (a newer focus) requires time to exercise and attention to the foods I eat.
There’s no significant money being spent on any of these things, yet they fill up the vast majority of my time and attention. These are the components of a life that I’m happy leading.
For me, a major key to financial success was simply taking stock of my life and figuring out what I wanted most from it. When you’re not doing that, it’s easy to get distracted by the constant hum of consumerism that fills life in the United States, from the advertisements to the product placement within programs, from the social influences to the pressure to be seen as affluent.
Take some time to step back and ask yourself what’s genuinely important to you. What really matters in your life? Step back from the things you invest your time, money, and energy into and focus instead on maximizing those things that matter most to you.
You might find that financial success comes easier than you think.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on www.thesimpledollar.com.
Making a Difference | <urn:uuid:0631c86b-4d11-4012-868b-f34b5ea2d511> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Simple-Dollar/2012/0816/More-valuable-than-money-or-posessions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96846 | 866 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Since its official establishment in 1975, the European Space Agency (ESA) not only has become the most prominent force in the commercial space launch services market but also has invested substantial resources in developing and operating scientific and applications (Earth observation, communications, meteorology, and materials processing) space systems. Although ESA's ambitious plans to perform independent manned space operations have faltered during the 1990's, a long-term commitment remains. For a decade ESA has been the third most active spacefaring organization in the world behind the USSR/CIS and the US.
From an initial membership of 11 nations, by 1994 ESA included 13 full members (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), one associate member (Finland), and one cooperating state (Canada). Finland was to become a full member in January, 1995. Portugal and Greece may apply for membership in ESA during the next several years. The purpose of ESA is to "provide for and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for operational space applications systems" (Reference 1). Although cooperation with other national and international space organizations has been encouraged, one of the tenets of ESA policy has been to maximize European independence in virtually all matters of space exploration and exploitation.
The ESA organizational structure includes a Council for policy decisions and approval of long-range plans and a much larger operations arm for handling the day-to-day affairs of the agency. The Council, led since July, 1993, by Chairman Pieter Gaele Winters of the Netherlands, is divided into Program Boards and Committees staffed by national delegations. Whereas the Council normally meets once each quarter, full ministerial-level meetings are held about every other year or as dictated by events. As a result of significant world political changes and economic factors, ministerial-level meetings were held in 1991(Munich) and 1992 (Granada) with the next meeting scheduled for 1995.
ESA operations are managed by the Director General, Jean-Marie Luton of France (since October, 1990), and his principal staff which includes five major technical directorates: Science, Telecommunications, Observation of the Earth and Its Environment, Manned Spaceflight and Microgravity, and Launchers. With headquarters in Paris and liaison offices in Washington, DC; Kourou, French Guiana; and Toulouse, France, ESA runs four major facilities with a combined staff of about 2,000 permanent employees.
The European Space Operations Center (ESOC) established in September, 1967, is the primary satellite control facility for ESA spacecraft. Located in Darmstadt, Germany,and headed by Director Felix Garcia-Costaner, ESOC operates detachments in French Guiana, Belgium, Germany, and Spain and receives additional assistance from national ground stations in the Canary Islands, Sweden, Italy, Kenya, Australia, and Japan. Daily control of spacecraft such as Meteosat, IUE, ECS, and MARECS is handled by ESOC as well as support for international spacelab missions on the US Space Shuttle. Upgrades at several ground stations were underway in 1994 to support major missions like Ulysses, ERS, Cluster, and ISO (References 2-3).
The European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, Netherlands, houses more than half of all ESA personnel in its role as the satellite environmental testing facility. Under the direction of Marius Le Fevre, ESTEC is organized into five principal departments: Systems Engineering and Programmatics, Mechanical Systems, Electrical Systems, Automation and Informatics, and Product Assurance and Safety. Operational since 1968, ESTEC services national and commercial spacecraft as well as ESA satellites (References 4-7).
The oldest of ESA's main centers is the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN), established in Frascati, Italy, in 1966 by ESA's predecessor, the European Space Research Organization. ESRIN, with a staff of 140 led by Francis Roscian, manages the ESA Information Retrieval Service (ESA-IRS), Earthnet, and the Information Systems Division. At ESRIN's Earth Observation Data Handling Center, remote sensing data from the European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS) as well as US and Japanese Earth observation satellites are received, processed, archived, and disseminated (References 8-11).
The European Astronauts Center (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, is the newest and smallest of the four ESA centers. Approved at the ESA Ministerial meeting of 1987, EAC began limited operations in 1990 in anticipation of major ESA manned space flight requirements in support of the Hermes spaceplane and International Space Station programs. With the cancellation of the former and substantial delays associated with the latter, EAC's growth has been stymied, and by 1994 the permanent staff, headed by Franco Rositto, was only about 20% of the anticipated 100 personnel. However, EAC was assisting in the preparation of the ESA-Russian Euromir 94 and Euromir 95 missions to the Mir space station and Spacelab flights (References 12-13).
Although ESA developed the Ariane family of launch vehicles, the organization does not own a space launch facility. Instead, Ariane launches are conducted from the French Guiana Space Center under special arrangement with ESA. ESA also does not maintain its own aerospace industry, choosing to contract with the specialized companies of its member states to procure most spacecraft and launch vehicle components. To finance its many endeavors and infrastructure, ESA members contribute to mandatory programs based upon Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and to voluntary programs. In both cases, however, ESA attempts to redistribute its funds in proportion to the contributions of its members.
Table 1.2 delineates the ESA payment appropriations for 1993 and 1994. Taking into account inflationary factors, both years represent a real decline from the 1992 appropriation budget of 2967.4 MAU. However, some programs, e.g., "Earth Observation and its Environment," enjoyed significant budget increases, largely possible by the declining development costs of the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. The ESA budgeting process continues to be plagued by fluctuating currency exchange rates (References 14-15).
1. ESA Convention, entered into force in 1980.
2. ESOC. The European Operations Centre, ESA f-15, ESA, September 1988.
3. Annual Report '94, ESA, 1995, pp. 77-81, 95-97.
4. To Last a Lifetime. The ESTEC Test Centre, ESA F-25, ESA, June 1990.
5. Making Sure - A Brief Outline and History of ESA's Test and Checkout Services, ESA BR-22, ESA, 1984.
6. Touchstone for Success, ESA BR-52, ESA, July 1988.
7. Annual Report '94, op. cit., pp. 92-95.
8. ESRIN, ESA br-58, ESA, 1989.
9. "The Nerve Center of Europe in Space", ESA Features, No. 19, 11 April 1991.
10. All About the European Space Agency, ESA, May 1995, p. 3.
11. Annual Report '94, op. cit., pp. 98-101.
12. Annual Report '93, ESA, 1994, pp. 92-94.
13. A. Ripoll, et al, "The New European Astronauts Centre", ESA Bulletin, No. 64.
14. Annual Report, ESA, 1992, pp. 12-14; 1993, pp. 10-12; 1994, pp. 12-14.
15. P.B. de Selding, "ESA Seeks to End Differences Over Exchange Rates", Space News, 31 January - 6 February 1994, p. 11. | <urn:uuid:9a1e73b1-b0e6-47b8-8c4b-4cc8e0c0381d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/europe/agency/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937654 | 1,635 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Lending to agriculture reached a record high in June 2012 as more farmers applied for finance.
Speaking at Livestock 2012, Barclays national agricultural specialist Oliver McEntyre said the fact that farmers were borrowing more money then ever proved banks were still willing to lend to agriculture.
At the end of June, lending to agriculture reached £12.8bn, up 6.5% on June 2011. Deposits from UK agriculture were £5.3bn at the end of June, showing agriculture is a considerable net borrower.
Mr McEntyre also predicted that borrowing would rise further in the rest of 2012 as farmers’ margins are squeezed.
“I expect feed price increases and poor weather to have an effect on borrowing in the next two to three months. And, of course, the price of land is still high,” he said.
The cost of money has also fallen slightly, with margins on short and long-term borrowing for UK farming still among the lowest available in the economy as a whole.
The perception that banks will not lend to small businesses should not affect agriculture, said Mr McEntyre. Historically, agriculture was seen as a safe borrower and, despite the overall banking landscape changing greatly, lending to agriculture has not been affected.
“It is a very favoured sector. Generally lending margins and the cost of borrowing are lower to farmers and it’s a sector we’re totally committed to. We take a long-term view on agriculture - costs may be high one year and even out the next.”
However, banks are increasingly looking for sound planning and evidence that finance has been carefully considered, he said.
Lender confidence comes from demonstrating these criteria, according to Barclays:
- Repayments (serviceability)
- Insurance (security)
For more on this topic
See our Livestock 2012 event page
Robyn Vinter on G+ | <urn:uuid:ad0c72f6-3d94-4688-a302-a0cb14005e2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/04/09/2012/134910/livestock-2012-farmers-borrowing-more-than-ever.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967228 | 393 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Editor's note: Valarie Kaur is the founding director of Groundswell, an initiative at Auburn Seminary that combines storytelling and advocacy to mobilize faith communities in social action. Her documentary "Divided We Fall" examines hate crimes against Sikh Americans after 9/11. Kaur studied religion and law at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School and Yale Law School, where she now directs the Yale Visual Law Project. Follow her on Twitter: @valariekaur.
(CNN) -- Today, the day after the tragic shootings near Milwaukee, the fog will begin to lift. Just as after Columbine and Aurora, we will hear the names of the suspect and victims. We will learn more about the motive and imagine the nightmare that unfolded within those walls. In the past, hearing these horrific details would be enough to bring us together in national unity. But that will not be enough today.
Today, we are called to do more. We are called to do the hard work of listening.
If we really want to unite in response to this national tragedy, we need to know whom we are embracing. For many, this means learning about Sikh Americans for the first time -- and listening closely to what's at stake. For me, the mass shooting is not just about how to keep guns out of the hands of a murderous few. It's also about my community's sacrifice in the struggle to live as free and proud Americans.
As a Sikh American whose grandfather sailed by steamship from Punjab, India, and settled in California 100 years ago, my family's story spans the struggle of Sikhs in America. Donning a turban and long beard, my grandfather tamed the hard floor of the Central Valley on a John Deere tractor in the early 1900s. Sikh pioneers such as my grandfather could not own land or become citizens because of the color of their skin, but they stayed and farmed, weathering race riots and decades of second-class treatment until the law permitted their children and grandchildren to become citizens.
Like many Sikhs, I grew up with deep roots in America and also fell in love with the heart of the Sikh faith: devotion to one God, who requires us to uphold equality between women and men and all peoples, and perform seva, service to our community as an expression of our faith. Our house of worship is called a gurdwara, where we recite and sing the poetry of our sacred scriptures. Many Sikhs wear five articles of faith, including kesh, long uncut hair that most men and some women wrap in a cloth turban.
Nearly every person who wears a turban in America is Sikh.
Tragically, the turban meant to represent a commitment to service and justice has since marked Sikh Americans as targets in hate violence. Our family, alongside Sikh families who arrived in a wave of immigration after the 1960s, became American in law but not necessarily in the eyes of our neighbors. I was old enough to remember racial slurs and shattered windows after the Iran hostage crisis, the first Gulf War and the Oklahoma City bombing. Still, none of this could prepare me for 9/11.
In the hours and days after 9/11, turbaned Sikh Americans became automatically suspect, perpetually foreign and potentially terrorist -- confused with Muslims, and so immediate targets in anti-Muslim violence.
Hate violence swept the country, and on September 15, 2001, a Sikh man was gunned down in front of his gas station in Mesa, Arizona. My family knew Balbir Singh Sodhi; it felt as though an uncle had been murdered. But the killing was not broadcast widely on national news.
A few days later, I grabbed my camera, left college and began a journey across America that would last a decade, capturing on film the stories of Sikh Americans profiled, beaten, stabbed, shot but persevering in faith and resilience. The FBI reported a 1,600% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the year after 9/11.
Over the last decade, I became part of a new generation of Sikh Americans who organized and became lawyers, artists, journalists and elected officials, in part to advocate on behalf of a community repeatedly swept up in waves of anti-Muslim rhetoric, violence and racial profiling. In a poor economy and critical election season, we have recently watched ideologues use anti-Muslim bias to turn a profit in dollars and votes. When discontents can easily access guns, many of us feared more hate violence.
Whether or not the shooting in a Milwaukee suburb is a hate crime, the news has reverberated through every Sikh American home. We saw our own gurdwara on the television screen; we imagined our own aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, caught in the gunfire. And we shared an all-too-familiar sense of helplessness, grief and the sadness of a community that has long struggled to live, work and worship peacefully in this country.
But this time, something new happened: The whole nation paid attention. Thousands of people posted messages of love and support in the face of unspeakable tragedy. They knew that the Sikh community gathered to pray on a Sunday morning just like millions in churches across the country. They knew that the terrible loss of life so recently after the shootings in Aurora shocks the conscience and violates our deepest values. They knew that this is not a Sikh tragedy but an American tragedy.
Today and in the days to come, I believe Americans are hungry for the next step. We are ready to come together in a groundswell of healing, hope and renewed commitment to a world without violence. We are ready to come together in true national unity, we are ready to listen.
There is a Sikh gurdwara in nearly every city in America. Come this Sunday morning. Listen and be with us. Americans' support -- every candle, every prayer -- will be felt by Sikh Americans across the country. Together, we can all be Sikhs; we can all be Americans -- and know what that means.
Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.
Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Valarie Kaur. | <urn:uuid:d9b5d14a-c5e4-4972-afca-151dc1b427fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/06/opinion/kaur-sikhs/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963553 | 1,267 | 2.25 | 2 |
Teachers are humans, and have their own strengths and weaknesses. If you´re having trouble with your teacher, find a quiet time to sit down with him or her and explain that you want things to get better. Most teachers truly do want to help their students, and you might find that everything can be resolved easily once it´s talked about.
If your teacher really is just out to get you, talk with your guidance counselor or another adult. There might be some way to switch to another class or get help.
School Tips >
Stress Releasers > | <urn:uuid:9c1619d5-d3e0-4085-bf59-dde8b1e2ad23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.romanceclass.com/miscr/LovePrint/45096 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96116 | 117 | 1.890625 | 2 |
And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the LORD gave them unto me.
And what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the LORD hath destroyed them unto this day;
Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.
And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coast seven days; neither shall there any thing of the flesh, which thou sacrificedst the first day at even, remain all night until the morning.
According to all that thou desiredst of the LORD thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.
If thou shalt keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the LORD thy God, and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three:
His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the LORD thy God, that I am come unto the country which the LORD sware unto our fathers for to give us. | <urn:uuid:806b2ed3-c3d7-435c-be5c-ede1871f632a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/search.php?word=day&page=11&order= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935212 | 424 | 1.78125 | 2 |
An insightful directive:
13. As a minister of reconciliation, the priest should be especially sensitive to the possible needs for reconciliation felt by the family and others. Funerals can begin the process of reconciling differences and supporting those ties that can help the bereaved adjust to the loss brought about by death. With attentiveness to each situation, the priest can help to begin the process of reconciliation when needed. In some cases this process may find expression in the celebration of the sacrament of penance, either before the funeral liturgy or at a later time.
A careful look will find this is healthier than it first appears. Many rifts among families and in parishes run very deep. The reasonable best we can often hope for is a beginning of reconciliation: “Funerals can begin” and “the priest can help to begin.” The Church is best-placed most time to facilitate this, and funerals are indeed the time when people will gather and be confronted by both the need for unity as well as past hurts and chasms in relationships.
Any good experiences from the trenches to share? | <urn:uuid:b292fc7b-7845-4b27-82db-22ad6255d3f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/ocf-13-ministry-of-reconciliation/?like=1&_wpnonce=cb13afa090 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965987 | 227 | 2.359375 | 2 |
13 yearsago, Scott Wells' life changed in a way he could never imagine, he became completely dependent on others to survive.
He did not let it define him or his attitude attacking his rehabilitation like he does life with everything he's got.
"Striving to do the best i could. To get to enjoying life again and always looking to pay it forward and helping other people."
His dream was to be independent again, and help others do the same.
"I am hoping to provide awareness of need for neurology rehabilitation research hospital in the Shreveport Bossier area."
To do that, he is going on a 250 mile journey to Baton Rouge with a group of his strongest supporters not in a car, but on a hand cycle.
Scott has been training for his journey for six months which is six days a week, three of them here at a facility with his therapist Amanda.
Amanda: "I think his mission is incredible. he is very, very motivated to help others with similar injuries as his."
His determination to achieve his goals has inspired her, too.
Amanda says, I'm actually going on the ride three of the days.
Wells hopes that his seven day ride to the capital sends a message that a facility specializing in brain and spinal cord injuries is vital to ensuring other patients end up like him. | <urn:uuid:3eb0423a-799e-4c07-83d5-28c4718bef15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kadn.com/news/shreveport-man-going-250-mile-journey-hand-cycle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985632 | 278 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Posted on | September 26, 2012 | by Vince Janoski | No Comments
Sometimes though, setting goals can be daunting and the day-to-day trappings of life distract us. We lose track and the work toward our goals, even if you eventually get there, seems never ending. Well, it can be, but you can be assured that satisfaction, greater confidence, and greater pleasure derived from your playing awaits you as your ultimate reward.
Most of us can come up with several things we would like to achieve with our bagpiping. Those “big goals” can be good motivators if they are always waiting for you. But more often than not, they will always be waiting for you and your progress toward them will seem slow. Why is this? It is because the goals themselves are perhaps too big and stand as an ineffective means to make true progress.
Goals are as effective only insofar as they are definable and measurable. Goals must be associated with specific actions if they are to be achieved at all and that is where things can get messy. You will need to break up bigger, overarching goals into discrete “chunks” with actions and measures for each. Goals, be they big or small, are achievable when you set criteria and deadlines for yourself. They are measurable when you define the steps and employ tools to critically assess your progress.
1. Identify and define your goal chunks. Examine your big goals and pull out the details to create short-term goal chunks. “Learn a new MSR” is an easy goal. But take a moment and think of all the actions required to learn a brand new MSR from scratch. Be specific. How many can you list? There are almost too many, which makes the task seem overwhelming. How would you know when you’ve achieved this goal? Your indicator of achievement is simply knowing the tunes I suppose, but is that all there is? Of course not. The simple goal “learn a new MSR” is too broad and ill-defined to be useful. I am sure you can create a long list of all the things that will be required of you to play each individual tune in that new MSR well. It is those things that are your goal chunks. Even the simple goal of “Learn XYZ tune” can be broken up into smaller bits. “Play XYZ tune with steady timing” is a smaller goal chunk that is measurable, but even still, may be too broad. If your chunk has too many actions associated with achieving it, then it is still too big and can be broken down further. “Improve timing of two-bar phrases in XYZ tune” is a smaller chunk in the same vein that narrows down to the simple action of pulling out a phrase and practicing with a metronome. XYZ tune may have a tricky bit of technique that may require you to work on the articulation of that technique. That is a goal chunk with clearly defined criteria and easily measurable with a “before” and “after” recording. Clearly define what must happen or be heard in order for you to say, “I have achieved my goal.”
2. Set deadlines. This deadline is a small period of time to achievement. Give yourself a day, a week, ten days, or a month. Heck, you can even give it a half-hour. The importance of the deadline is to focus your effort. As an experiment this fall, create one goal chunk and give it a week to achieve. Track your progress with notes or recordings. Make the work constant for that period. You might find that you did not meet your goal in your self-imposed deadline. Don’t worry. Create a new deadline and keep working. Keep in mind though, that long deadlines may mean that your “chunk” is still too broad and can be narrowed down further.
3. Measure your goal chunks. Measurement of your goal could take the form of comparison recordings at the start of the process and the end. It could be the objective feedback from a listener whose opinion you trust. Make a recording of the necessary playing before you work. At the deadline you set, make another recording and listen critically. (Develop your inner piping judge.) Think about the definitions and criteria you set at the start of the process. Did you meet them? How close are you? If there is more work to be done, you might have a chunk that is still too big and can be broken down more. Break down your chunk into a more refined piece and extend your deadline period. Measure again using your most recent recording as your “before” point. Keep at it until your goal is achieved.
The time frames and chunk definitions will be different for everyone. It really comes down to thinking hard about what you want to achieve with your bagpiping—and then getting down to work. That’s all there is, isn’t it? Sounds easy, yes? But breaking down your bagpiping efforts into manageable parts can indeed make it all that much easier. | <urn:uuid:f8ed7f22-d58b-461d-bd0b-d0b39d8a44ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pipehacker.com/2012/09/26/the-3-step-path-to-better-bagpipe-goals-goal-chunking/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965672 | 1,054 | 2.375 | 2 |
5 steps to software optimization
By Bernadette Sprawka
The process of implementing or upgrading a business management software solution is much more complex than just installing the new software and expecting everything to work perfectly. A needs assessment must be conducted, goals for the software need to be set and extensive testing is required to make sure that everything functions correctly.
Don't despair. Regardless of the size of the business and the scope of the business management software system being deployed, implementation best practices remain fairly consistent. The basic steps are typically the same, and should be followed for every implementation. What follows is a simple, five-step outline of those best practices, a detailed outline of the process for deploying or upgrading software, and an overview of the primary considerations that go into the decisions that must be made along the way.
A Five-Step Program:
- Strategy and planning
- Definition and design
- Testing and measurement
Steps one and four are highlighted because while each step is critical, those are both the most important and (unfortunately) the most often neglected. Engaging in comprehensive planning and committing to extensive testing dramatically increases the odds of a successful project. But the best way to maximize those odds is to begin with a detailed strategy session:
Strategy and planning
First, establish clear project boundaries with distinct start and end points, and specific goals. This will help minimize the kind of "scope creep" that can lengthen the project and introduce inefficiencies. Begin with a workshop: get the highest executives and all key stakeholders together to determine direction and key objectives. Essentially, a contract is being created between the management team and the project team about what is going to happen on this project. Use this time to generate a mission statement that articulates the vision and the goals that have been identified. Next, determine objectives (roles, responsibilities and timelines), setting clear expectations. Remember that knowledge transfer has to start at the beginning of the project, both to maximize a user's understanding of the system, and to optimize ownership and buy-in.
It's also important to identify risk points and draft a risk mitigation plan. Open and honest dialogue is critical here, and a distinctly defined process must be put in place for issues and change requests. No project ever goes precisely as planned, and assuming otherwise is a mistake. The strategy and planning phase is also the time to identify all the functionality in the project, and to tailor a product to a specific company or business process. Plan for all eventualities: including plans not only for change management, but also for communication, training, testing, user reporting, knowledge transfer and transition into production support. These can be fairly high level, but they need to be done as part of the process of building a consensus between the project team and management team. Time invested here will pay dividends throughout the project.
Definition and design
While this phase can be time consuming, it is an important piece of the puzzle. This is where the design of the technical and functional requirements of the system is put together. This phase should include a review of existing business processes and how they interface with the new software. Identify any gaps and address them, trying to avoid customizing software whenever possible, as that creates a higher cost of ownership that will translate throughout future upgrades and changes. This is also the time to talk about conversion environment strategies (i.e. the logistics of how and by whom the development database, test database, training database and production database will be utilized). To avoid errors and streamline development, be sure to recognize which environments will be needed when, and which environments people should be working in.
The development stage is the nuts and bolts of the process, the step where the project team is actively engaged in configuring all the information into the software and making necessary connections--both virtual and literal. This involves working on the mapping of tables for the conversion, the details of how the interfaces look and feel, the integration of workflow between other systems and any needed customizations. The key takeaway here is to think strategically about not just what goes into the system, but also why it is going in. This is the time to make the connection between technical operating details and the essential elements of what is needed to run the company. The final stage of development involves designing testing script to help identify what processes and workflows need to be tested during the testing phase.
Testing and measurement
Testing the system is arguably the most important step. It is also the step that often gets cut short in a misguided attempt to save time and money. Avoid making this error and realize that cutting corners here will increase costs. Quality testing means ensuring that everything is working correctly while the information is being backed up properly. This is where user training begins in earnest. Their involvement also facilitates a more in-depth testing regimen. If the testing phase is conducted properly, the deployment phase should be a non-event.
If the first four phases are executed correctly, "go live" should be just like any other business day. If not, then more than likely the strategy and planning or the testing phases were lacking. Efficient deployment not only requires a plan for moving into full production, but also a project shut-down date (allow an extra week or two of leeway to ensure that issues are resolved). Most critically, be sure to rigorously document the details of the implementation, especially the lessons learned. Retain that documentation in a secure place in the system--it will dramatically reduce the headaches and expense of future upgrades.
Bernadette Sprawka is managing partner and CFO of MIPRO, a consultancy specializing in implementations, upgrades and optimizations of Oracle's PeopleSoft applications. | <urn:uuid:99e0da45-ef07-4c5f-a385-7dda70ed27dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fiercecio.com/story/5-steps-software-optimization/2013-01-02 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94294 | 1,152 | 1.6875 | 2 |
nuts & bolts
Make an Oil Filter Cutter
MERVIN FRIESEN, EAA 349240
The EAA video series ( www.EAA.org/multimedia) offers homebuilders a wealth of tips for building and maintaining their homebuilt airplanes. One
segment shows how to inspect your oil filter and interpret
the results. However, the filter needs to be cut open first,
and for that, you need an oil filter cutter. These are available
for purchase, but homebuilders can easily make them.
I used leftover materials from building my Sonex. This
included 3/16-inch 6061 aluminum, high-density plastic,
bolts, washers, and nuts. Other materials would be suitable,
such as kitchen cutting board plastic or wood.
Base Plate—The base plate is used to mount all the
pieces of the cutter and to provide rigidity for cutting open
the filter. I used a 3-inch by 5-1/2-inch piece of 3/16-inch | <urn:uuid:9a84994c-d2ca-45cb-82c9-38ba699f66ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sportaviationonline.org/sportaviation/200908?pg=123 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922716 | 216 | 1.648438 | 2 |
This Day in History
April 7, 1964
IBM Announces "System 360" Computer Family
IBM announces the release of its "System 360" mainframe computer architecture--embodied in five new models--launching its most successful computer system of all time. Called the "360" because it was meant to address all possible sizes and types of customer with one unified software-compatible architecture, the 360 family of machines generated in excess of $100 billion in revenue for IBM.
After five years of turbulent development, the Models 30, 40, 50, 60/62, and 70 were introduced along with 150 new supporting products, with IBM proudly claiming that software written for one model of System/360 could run on any other. This allowed customers to add or remove computing capacity without losing their investment in software. This had been a serious problem before the 360 with IBM alone having seven different, mutually-incompatible mainframe computer systems.
The 360 architecture was the basis for all subsequent mainframe architectures developed at IBM, as well as at IBM's many "plug-compatible" imitators. Its standardization of interfaces and methods allowed other companies to carve out a niche in the 360-dominated computer ecosystem. Throughout most of the 1960s, the System/360's success gave IBM a 65% market share, prompting observers to term the industry "Snow White (IBM) and the Seven Dwarfs." In 1965, the relative market shares were:
- IBM: 65.3%
- Sperry Rand (formerly Remington Rand): 12.1%
- Control Data Corp.: 5.4%
- Honeywell (formerly a division of Raytheon): 3.8%
- Burroughs: 3.5%
- General Electric: 3.4%
- RCA: 2.9%
- NCR (National Cash Register): 2.9%
- The oft-forgotten eighth dwarf, Philco: 0.7% | <urn:uuid:f2fd481f-481e-42eb-9ced-f66358d5277c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/April/7/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940627 | 404 | 3.390625 | 3 |
"We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values... when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered." Martin Luther King, Jr. April 4, 1967
As we remember the courage and hope of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we must not forget that he spoke out and worked against the injustices of our nation, particularly those of racism, materialism and militarism. Indeed that is what made him so hated and so dangerous when he was alive.
We have achievements to celebrate: the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; the release of San Suu Kyi in Burma; the enactment of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights by the NY legislature that extends important labor rights to 200,000 nannies and housekeepers; the victories of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers; and the exposure of secret US and other country machinations by Wikileaks, among others.
There has been progress in dismembering the laws of segregation which divided our country. We must celebrate the successes that many struggled to achieve. However, as we celebrate those victories let us not lose sight of the challenges still facing this country.
Here are some of the facts about racism, materialism and militarism in the US which we should reflect on as we decide how best to carry on the radical struggle for justice of Dr. King. (For each fact, I provide a brief cite to the sources which are listed at the end of the article).
Let us renew our commitment to the radical revolution of values for which Dr. King gave his life as we turn to the realities of current life.
Racism: Health, Housing, Income and Jobs
Infants born to black women are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to die than infants born to women of all other races or ethnicities. Black men and women are much more likely to die of heart disease and stroke than their white counterparts. Hypertension is by far most prevalent among non-Hispanic blacks (42% vs. 29% among whites). Uninsured persons are only about half as likely to have hypertension under control as those with insurance. Source: Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Twenty-five percent of black workers and forty-three percent of Hispanic workers do not have health insurance, compared to fifteen percent of white workers. Kaiser Family Foundation
Overall, sixteen percent of all whites, twenty-one percent of blacks and thirty-two percent of Hispanics do not have health insurance. Source: U.S. Census.
In cities with large African American populations, black segregation looks pretty much the same as it did 40 years ago; Hispanic segregation is on the rise. Source: Princeton.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the crisis in subprime mortgages in minority neighborhoods was not the result of riskier lending spurred by the Community Reinvestment Act or a decline in underwriting standards. Source: Princeton.
Even with similar qualities (credit profiles, down payment ratios, personal characteristics, and residential locations) African Americans were more likely to receive subprime loans. Similarly blacks and Hispanics were significantly more likely than whites to receive loans with unfavorable terms such as prepayment penalties. The result: from 1993 to 2000, the share of subprime mortgages going to households in minority neighborhoods rose from 2 to 18 percent. Source: Princeton.
Because predatory lenders could efficiently target entire minority neighborhoods with subprime mortgages, larger numbers of people were affected than would have had they been more geographically spread out. In true layman's terms, it was like "shooting fish in a barrel." Segregated neighborhoods just made it too easy to engage large numbers of people in this devastating scheme and this multiplied the effect of the crisis. Source: Princeton.
Black middle class families have been stripped of more wealth by the real estate and foreclosure crisis than any single event in US history. Due entirely to subprime loans, black borrowers are expected to lose between $71 billion and $92 billion. Source: Devona Walker.
Income and Jobs
Median household income for white families is $51,861, for black families is $32,584, and for Hispanic is it $38,039. Source: U.S. Census.
The Immigration and Enforcement Agency is on pace to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, more under the current administration than any before. Source: Slevin.
The overall unemployment rate among whites is 8.5% and among blacks it is 15.8%. For white teenagers the unemployment rate is 22% and among blacks it is 44%. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Materialism: Inequality and Poverty
The top 25 hedge fund managers were paid on average, more than $1 billion each in 2009. Source: Schwartz, New York Times.
Between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the US went to the top 1 percent of the population; that top 1 percent also held a larger share of income than any time since 1928, according to economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
There are 43 million people in the US living under the official poverty line. While there are more white people living in poverty (30 million) than black (10 million) and Hispanic (12 million) poor combined, the poverty rate for whites of 12% is significantly less than the 26% rate for blacks and the 25% rate for Hispanics. Source: U.S. Census.
The bottom 20% of the US population have negative wealth, they owe more than the value of all their assets. From 20 to 40th percentile, the next 20% of the population, average about $5,000 in wealth. The middle 20%, from the 40 to 60th percentile, own $65,000 in assets. The next highest 20%, the 60 to 80th percentile, are worth about $208,000. From 80 to 90th, the average wealth is $477,000. From 90 to 95th, the wealth is $908,000 in assets. From 95 to 99th is $2,734,000 in wealth assets. And the top 1%? $13,977,000 in average wealth. Source: State of Working America.
Since the economic recession started there has been a 25% rise in the number of people "doubling up" in housing by moving in with others, there has been a rise in the number of homeless families, and in not one of the 50 states can a person working full-time at one minimum wage afford a two bedroom apartment for his or her family. Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Militarism: Troops, Expenditures and Arms Sales
The US reports it has 1.4 million people in active military service in 143 countries around the world. The top places for US military are: Afghanistan (105,900), Iraq (96,200), Germany (53,951), and Japan (34,385). Source: Department of Defense.
There are an additional 819,000 people in the Reserve and National Guard and another 709,000 civilian personnel. Source: 2011 Census Statistical Abstract, Table 506.
The US spent $774 billion directly on its military budget in 2010. The Department of Defense budget was over $660 billion, counting the special expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Department of Veterans Affairs was $114 billion for 2010.
The US spends much more on its military than any other country in the world. Military spending has increased by 75% since the year 2000 and represents about $2100 for every person in the US. Excluding expenditures for veterans the US military budget in 2009 was over $660 billion. In second place globally was China at about $100 billion. France was third at $63 billion, the UK next with $58 billion and Russia in 5th place spending $53 billion. In fact the US spends more on military than the rest of the top 10 countries in the world put together. Source: SIRI.
The US also leads the world in the sale of lethal weapons to others, selling about one of every three weapons worldwide. The USA's major clients are South Korea, Israel and United Arab Emirates. Source: SIRI.
The US continues to hold 174 people in indefinite and illegal detention in Guantanamo despite global calls for closure. Thirty eight of those still being held have won their habeas corpus petitions in front of federal judges but still have not been freed. Source: Miami Herald.
The US continues to launch remote controlled unmanned predator drones into Pakistan, a country we are not even at war with. In 2010, US drones struck Pakistan 118 times killing many civilians. Source: New America Foundation.
The number of deaths in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are difficult to calculate since the US only counts US deaths. The US reports 1277 US military have died in Afghanistan and 4427 died in Iraq. The Iraq Body Count estimates between 99,357 and 108,475 civilians have died in violence associated with the war in Iraq. Soure: www.iraqbodycount.org.
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the total cost of the Iraq war to the US is more than $3 trillion. For this estimate he calculated the actual military costs, the cost of treating and compensating disabled veterans, a $10 increase in the price of oil (the increase in the price of oil went from $25 a barrel when the US invaded Iraq to as high as $140 a barrel in 2008), the increase in the federal debt and the borrowing that demanded. Source: Stiglitz.
As we celebrate the life of Dr. King, let us realize the challenges that still face those who seek a world of justice and peace. He showed us that anger at injustice can be combined with courage to create real hope for a better world. Let us address the injustices of continuing racism, materialism and militarism with the courage and hope that Dr. King displayed in his brief life.
Bill Quigley is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Photos from New Orleans Agenda.
Read more stories from The New Orleans Agenda » | <urn:uuid:ab861f7f-34a1-45d8-a6c1-f657401d9840> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nolabeez.org/article/2011-0214-new-orleans-agenda-mlk-injustice-index-2011-racism-materialism-and-militarism-in-the-us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959583 | 2,131 | 2.890625 | 3 |
By Jack Gillum, USA TODAY
Even as the price tag of a four-year college degree outpaces inflation, a handful of U.S. colleges and universities are going to extraordinary lengths to contain costs — by picking up full tuition for every student they enroll.
Most colleges offering free tuition are military academies; several are engineering schools, where graduates are in short supply and demand is great.
BEST VALUE COLLEGES: Top 100 for 2010
NO TUITION: University of the People educates online
One school, Webb Institute of Glen Cove, N.Y., offers a double major in naval architecture and marine engineering. The Cooper Union in New York City focuses on architecture and the arts, as well as engineering. And there are also two Christian schools: The College of the Ozarks, a "work school" in rural Point Lookout, Mo., and Berea College, a liberal arts school in Berea, Ky.
The value these colleges provide to cash-strapped students and parents hasn't gone unnoticed as costs continue to climb. Tuition, fees, room and board at four-year public colleges jumped 46% in the past decade, from an average of $10,440 in 1999-2000 to $15,210 last year, according to the non-profit College Board. At private schools, costs rose 28% in that period, from an average of $27,740 to $35,640.
Schools that cover full tuition "are doing the near-impossible to make school affordable for all of their students," says Robert Franek of education and test-prep company The Princeton Review, whose annual list of 100 Best Value Colleges includes nine colleges that for the current school year are covering full tuition for every student. "Best Values" excel at both academics and financial aid. (Berea was not on the list; its data were incorrectly reported, The Princeton Review says.)
But one of the free-tuition schools that is on the list, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Mass., says that because of losses to its endowment fund, it will no longer cover full tuition for future incoming classes; it will switch to half-tuition scholarships beginning this fall. Colleges saw an average 18.7% drop in their endowments this year, according to the Commonfund and the non-profit National Association of College and University Business Officers.
Not a permanent change
"This decision was reached after much soul-searching and careful consideration of the long-term financial outlook for Olin," admissions dean Charles Nolan wrote in a letter posted on the school's website. "Our priority in these deliberations was maintaining the quality of Olin's academic programs. At the end of the day, we felt that the kind of reductions we were facing in our endowment-dependent budgets were simply too great to address through cost-cutting alone."
He added that the school was committed to "restoring the scholarship to 100% as soon as financial conditions allow." The Princeton Review notes that even the half-tuition scholarship is a good deal: Olin remains on its 100 Best Values list for 2010.
Commitment to Army, work
At some schools, students who receive free tuition must pay other costs, including fees, room and board and expenses such as textbooks. Military schools are the exception: At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., all expenses, including medical care, are provided. In exchange, the Army requires five years of active service after graduation.
At College of the Ozarks — dubbed "Hard Work U" — each student participates in the on-campus work program for 15 hours a week, plus two 40-hour workweeks. Some may do landscaping, others work in the cafeteria or on production lines making fruitcakes and jellies.
"Students leave with an appreciation for what it takes to make it in real life," says spokeswoman Elizabeth Andrews. "It's not some kind of dream world where you party it up. You come and have real expectations for work and study."
As college costs rise, 86% of students and parents say financial aid is "very necessary," according to a survey of 9,000 students and 3,000 parents that Princeton Review released in March. Two out of three said the recession influenced their decisions about where to apply.
Franek notes that many other schools on the Best Value list try hard to meet students' financial needs, even though they don't cover full tuition for all students.
"Most university officials would say that their mission is to make sure they are offsetting costs for students," Franek says. "Some schools are better at it than others."
Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more. | <urn:uuid:63010771-cd12-40d2-9a69-d5148979eeec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-04-06-tuitionfree06_ST_N.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970042 | 1,015 | 1.710938 | 2 |
How to get treatment for acne scar
There are various treatments for acne scar removal. This guide will explain some of these options.
Acne! A nightmare for many people between 11 and 30 years old. Caused by a bacteria that is on the skin, acne consists of outbreaks of lesions usually called pimples or zits.
Physically it is not a disease that can jeopardize your health, but emotionally can produce enormous torments. And it is even worse when having severe acne because that leads to permanent scars.
These often need to be used on a daily basis over a sustained period of time to attain desired results.
Acne treatment can be prescribed by the general doctor, but if acne gets worse a dermatologist should be consulted. Some of the medicines are to be taken oral - antibiotics, oral contraceptives, a ntiandrogen drugs such as spironolactone (Aldactone) , others are to be applied topical -vitamin A derivatives- retinoids, Benzoyl peroxide , Salicylic acid, Sulfur (they are available as soaps, creams, gels) .
Warning ! Most of the above acne scar removal treatments should be used in conjunction with sun protection creams.
Regarding acne scar treatment it depends on what type of scars you have:
- “Pseudo-scars” or macules; these red spots are not really scars and disappear in time with the help of creams
- Post-inflammatory pigmentation (the pigmentation is changed on small skin surfaces) can persist up to 2 years and can be removed with chemical peeling
- Ice-pick scars (leave superficial or deep small holes on the skin) are treated with dermabrasion or lasers
- Depressed fibrotic scars look like deep chicken pox scars; they have sharp margins and steep sides
- Keloids are increased tissue formations; you have to have a genetic predisposition to form them.
Of course the best way is to avoid forming acne scars is by treating acne as early as possible. But if the inevitable has happened and you do have them, there are several ways to remove acne scar:
Chemical peel - a chemical solution that peels off the old layers of skin; these procedure works only for superficial scars;
Dermabrasion – can remove deeper layers of skin than the chemical peel. It helps in removing ice-pick and depressed fibrotic scars and it is made under local anesthetic.
Soft-tissue augmentation – consists of injections of collagen or subcutaneous fat (taken from other parts of your body); the injections are made beneath the scar and the ones with collagen have to be repeated every 3 or 6 months, the others over a period of 6 to 18 moths.
Skin surgery named also “punch excision” is made under local anesthetic and consists of removing the scar with a punch biopsy tool. Then the edges of the skin are sutured together or attached with steri-strips or skin glue called Dermabond.
Laser treatment for acne scar
Laser treatment for acne - is the newest technology based on power waves that works by burning the top layers of skin; the dead skin will be replaced with newer layers. The most well-known are carbon dioxide (CO2) and erbium (YAG) lasers.
To treat keloids is a bit more complicated. They can not be removed by surgery because if the skin forms keloids after acne, will definitely form new ones after surgery. So what you can do is:
Use injection with steroid drugs beneath the skin around the keloid.
Apply a retinoic acid topical (direct on keloid)
Or just get used with it.
Acne scars can give you a hard time because of their aspect. If you don't want to live with them, you have to talk first with your dermatologist and choose together the best way to remove them. | <urn:uuid:2f2187ee-b182-4fae-9327-88647222a726> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dotasks.net/Healthfiles/howtogettreatmentforacnescar.htm | 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 | 0.937837 | 826 | 1.679688 | 2 |
"Do you have any rooms?" we ask the hotelier.
She looks us over, dwelling on my travel partner's bald, white head.
"No," she replies.
We try not to notice that there are sixty room keys in pigeonholes behind her desk-the place is empty.
"Will you have a room soon? Maybe next week?"
She hesitates. "Ahh… No."
We return to our current hotel — the one we want to leave because there are bets on when it is going to get hit — and flick on the TV: the BBC is showing footage of Richard Clarke's testimony before the September 11 Commission, and a couple of pundits are arguing about whether invading Iraq has made America safer.
They should try finding a hotel room in this city, where the US occupation has unleashed a wave of anti-American rage so intense that it now extends not only to US troops, occupation officials and their contractors but also to foreign journalists, aid workers, their translators and pretty much anyone else associated with the Americans. Which is why we couldn't begrudge the hotelier her decision: If you want to survive in Iraq, it's wise to stay the hell away from people who look like us. (We thought about explaining that we were Canadians, but all the American reporters are sporting the maple leaf-that is, when they aren't trying to disappear behind their newly purchased headscarves.)
US occupation chief Paul Bremer hasn't started wearing a hijab yet, and is instead tackling the rise of anti-Americanism with his usual foresight. Baghdad is blanketed with inept psy-ops organs like Baghdad Now, filled with fawning articles about how Americans are teaching Iraqis about press freedom. "I never thought before that the Coalition could do a great thing for the Iraqi people," one trainee is quoted saying. "Now I can see it on my eyes what they are doing good things for my country and the accomplishment they made. I wish my people can see that, the way I see it."
Unfortunately, the Iraqi people recently saw another version of press freedom when Bremer ordered US troops to shut down a newspaper run by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. The militant Shiite cleric has been preaching that Americans are behind the attacks on Iraqi civilians and condemning the interim constitution as a "terrorist law." So far, al-Sadr has refrained from calling on his supporters to join the armed resistance, but many here are predicting that the closing down of the newspaper-a nonviolent means of resisting the occupation-was just the push he needed. But then, recruiting for the resistance has always been a specialty of the Presidential Envoy to Iraq: Bremer's first act after being tapped by Bush was to fire 400,000 Iraqi soldiers, refuse to give them their rightful pensions but allow them to hold on to their weapons-in case they needed them later.
While US soldiers were padlocking the door of the newspaper's office, I found myself at what I thought would be an oasis of pro-Americanism, the Baghdad Soft Drinks Company. On May 1 this bottling plant will start producing one of the most powerful icons of American culture: Pepsi-Cola. I figured that if there was anyone left in Baghdad willing to defend the Americans, it would be Hamid Jassim Khamis, the Baghdad Soft Drinks Company's managing director. I was wrong.
"All the trouble in Iraq is because of Bremer," Khamis told me, flanked by a line-up of thirty Pepsi and 7-Up bottles. "He didn't listen to Iraqis. He doesn't know anything about Iraq. He destroyed the country and tried to rebuild it again, and now we are in chaos."
These are words you would expect to hear from religious extremists or Saddam loyalists, but hardly from the likes of Khamis. It's not just that his Pepsi deal is the highest-profile investment by a US multinational in Iraq's new "free market." It's also that few Iraqis supported the war more staunchly than Khamis. And no wonder: Saddam executed both of his brothers and Khamis was forced to resign as managing director of the bottling plant in 1999 after Saddam's son Uday threatened his life. When the Americans overthrew Saddam, "You can't imagine how much relief we felt," he says.
After the Baathist plant manager was forced out, Khamis returned to his old job. "There is a risk doing business with the Americans," he says. Several months ago, two detonators were discovered in front of the factory gates. And Khamis is still shaken from an attempted assassination three weeks ago. He was on his way to work when he was carjacked and shot at, and there was no doubt that this was a targeted attack; one of the assailants was heard asking another, "Did you kill the manager?"
Khamis used to be happy to defend his pro-US position, even if it meant arguing with friends. But one year after the invasion, many of his neighbors in the industrial park have gone out of business. "I don't know what to say to my friends anymore," he says. "It's chaos."
His list of grievances against the occupation is long: corruption in the awarding of reconstruction contracts, the failure to stop the looting, the failure to secure Iraq's borders-both from foreign terrorists and from unregulated foreign imports. Iraqi companies, still suffering from the sanctions and the looting, have been unable to compete.
Most of all, Khamis is worried about how these policies have fed the country's unemployment crisis, creating far too many desperate people. He also notes that Iraqi police officers are paid less than half what he pays his assembly line workers, "which is not enough to survive." The normally soft-spoken Khamis becomes enraged when talking about the man in charge of "rebuilding" Iraq. "Paul Bremer has caused more damage than the war, because the bombs can damage a building but if you damage people there is no hope."
I have gone to the mosques and street demonstrations and listened to Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters shout "Death to America, Death to the Jews," and it is indeed chilling. But it is the profound sense of disappointment and betrayal expressed by a pro-US businessman running a Pepsi plant that attests to the depths of the US-created disaster here. "I'm disappointed, not because I hate the Americans," Khamis tells me, "but because I like them. And when you love someone and they hurt you, it hurts even more."
When we leave the bottling plant in late afternoon, the streets of US-occupied Baghdad are filled with al-Sadr supporters vowing bloody revenge for the attack on their newspaper. A spokesperson for Bremer is defending the decision on the grounds that the paper "was making people think we were out to get them."
A growing number of Iraqis are certainly under that impression, but it has far less to do with an inflammatory newspaper than with the inflammatory actions of the US occupation authority. As the June 30 "handover" approaches, Paul Bremer has unveiled a slew of new tricks to hold on to power long after "sovereignty" has been declared.
Some recent highlights. At the end of March, building on his Order 39 of last September, Bremer passed yet another law further opening up Iraq's economy to foreign ownership, a law that Iraq's next government is prohibited from changing under the terms of the interim constitution. Bremer also announced the establishment of several independent regulators, which will drastically reduce the power of Iraqi government ministries. For instance, the Financial Times reports that "officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority said the regulator would prevent communications minister Haider al-Abadi, a thorn in the side of the coalition, from carrying out his threat to cancel licenses the coalition awarded to foreign-managed consortia to operate three mobile networks and the national broadcaster."
The CPA has also confirmed that after June 30, the $18.4 billion the US government is spending on reconstruction will be administered by the US embassy in Iraq. The money will be spent over five years and will fundamentally redesign Iraq's most basic infrastructure, including its electricity, water, oil and communications sectors, as well as its courts and police. Iraq's future governments will have no say in the construction of these core sectors of Iraqi society. Retired Rear Adm. David Nash, who heads the Project Management Office, which administers the funds, describes the $18.4 billion as "a gift from the American people to the people of Iraq."
He appears to have forgotten the part about gifts being something you actually give up. And in the same eventful week, US engineers began construction on fourteen "enduring bases" in Iraq, capable of housing the 110,000 soldiers who will be posted here for at least two more years. Even though the bases are being built with no mandate from an Iraqi government, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations in Iraq, called them "a blueprint for how we could operate in the Middle East."
The US occupation authority has also found a sneaky way to maintain control over Iraq's armed forces. Bremer has issued an executive order stating that even after the interim Iraqi government has been established, the Iraqi army will answer to US commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. In order to pull this off, Washington is relying on a legalistic reading of a clause in UN Security Council Resolution 1511, which puts US forces in charge of Iraq's security until "the completion of the political process" in Iraq. Since the "political process" in Iraq is never-ending, so, it seems, is US military control.
In the same flurry of activity, the CPA announced that it would put further constraints on the Iraqi military by appointing a national security adviser for Iraq. This US appointee would have powers equivalent to those held by Condoleezza Rice and will stay in office for a five-year term, long after Iraq is scheduled to have made the transition to a democratically elected government.
There is one piece of this country, though, that the US government is happy to cede to the people of Iraq: the hospitals. On March 27 Bremer announced that he had withdrawn the senior US advisers from Iraq's Health Ministry, making it the first sector to achieve "full authority" in the US occupation.
Taken together, these latest measures paint a telling picture of what a "free Iraq" will look like: the United States will maintain its military and corporate presence through fourteen enduring military bases and the largest US embassy in the world. It will hold on to authority over Iraq's armed forces, its security and economic policy and the design of its core infrastructure-but the Iraqis can deal with their decrepit hospitals all by themselves, complete with their chronic drug shortages and lack of the most basic sanitation capacity. (US Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson revealed just how low a priority this was when he commented that Iraq's hospitals would be fixed if the Iraqis "just washed their hands and cleaned the crap off the walls.")
On nights when there are no nearby explosions, we hang out at the hotel, jumping at the sound of car doors slamming. Sometimes we flick on the news and eavesdrop on a faraway debate about whether invading Iraq has made Americans safer.
Few seem interested in the question of whether the invasion has made Iraqis feel safer, which is too bad because the questions are intimately related. As Khamis says, "It's not the war that caused the hatred. It's what they did after. What they are doing now."
This article first appeared in The Nation. | <urn:uuid:8aa9f348-26fb-4ed2-a635-4dc504fae991> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2004/03/lets-make-enemies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975715 | 2,390 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Reporting Alex DeMetrick
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A massive die-off of oysters in the Chesapeake is placing livelihoods on the brink.
Alex DeMetrick reports some watermen are already calling it quits.
Every oyster season will turn up empty shells and dead oysters, but this year was worse than normal.
“Some of the bars were 100 percent dead. We didn’t find a live oyster at all,” said waterman Barry Sweitzer.
Watermen say the Chesapeake north of the bay has become an oyster graveyard. They blame the massive runoff from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, which brought debris and a flood of fresh water, which kills oysters.
“We can’t oyster through this. This has really hit us hard,” said waterman Richard Manly.
“The hurricane’s gone from most people’s memories but if you work the bay, you’re dealing with it every day,” said waterman Greg Jetton.
Sweitzer is dealing with it by getting out. He’ll place one of Maryland’s last working skipjacks for sale, a boat that’s supported his family for 64 years.
“I don’t have any other choice. Logistically, I can’t work the lower bay; it’s just too far away,” he said.
Because oysters reproduce best in saltier water, the northern bay will take years to recover.
“If you get a good spawn once every five years in the upper bay, you’re doing pretty good,” said Erik Zlokovitz, DNR Fisheries.
“The worst part for me with this boat, it’s not the money you make off of it, it’s the opportunity to go out there and watch the sun come up and actually do the job and that’s what’s heartbreaking to me. That breaks my heart,” Sweitzer said.
Although watermen believe tropical weather triggered the oyster die-off, state scientists have yet to determine an exact cause. | <urn:uuid:ad38db86-e199-49da-aeaa-22a59e7b4ac6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2011/11/07/some-watermen-quit-after-massive-oyster-die-off/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925437 | 465 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Back in 1996 when I started Olive Tree Genealogy, I didn't think about the importance of sources for data I found and brought online. So if I found a ships passenger list, I typed it up and put it online. I didn't worry about including the reference or citation for the original source.
In later years I became fussier and started documenting all data brought to Olive Tree and any of its sister sites. For example my New York Almshouse Records 1819-1840 on Olive Tree Genealogy include full details of
- the source I used (Source: Alms House Admission Foreigners & Nativity Records (New York; City, NY) Item 5 LDS Film 1304647 Bond Registers 1819-1840. Original records in the Municipal Archives, New York, New York)
- my introduction to the records
- my notes about the records (that there are 2 pages but my transcribers and I only transcribed one)
The question Illya posed was "Does this mean that unsourced material has no place online?"
My response, after some serious deliberation, is that unsourced material, while not the pick of the litter so to speak, does deserve a place online. Yes, fully sourced material is always the optimum. But if one has the opportunity to obtain unsourced data, it can still be useful to genealogists, if for nothing more than a clue. A tiny clue from a page ripped from an old bible (unsourced, origin unknown) might be the clue that leads us to facts, to sources that will either verify or disprove the original clue.
So my vote is YES. I'd love to hear from others on this topic.
Do you think unsourced data has any value on websites?
Leave a comment on this post with YES or NO and your reasons why. I'll be reading your opinions with interest! | <urn:uuid:bf9eb7a7-df50-468c-9c79-55d6ef478856> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2007/03/should-unsourced-data-be-put-online.html?showComment=1173732060000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941933 | 386 | 2.015625 | 2 |
This past Thursday eve, I participated in a modern historical
cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE).
Wait, “a modern historical cooking class”? How can that be?
Well, you see…everything was prepared in ICE’s high-end,
thoroughly modern kitchens, using modern ingredients and
equipment and traditional modern recipes. The historical
part was the fact that the recipes were ones adapted from
those found in three 16th and 17th century Spanish cook-
books. In fact, the title of the class was “Dining with Don
Quixote: Spanish Cookery of the 16th and 17th Centuries.”
It was led by knowledgeable ICE Chef Cathy Kaufman.
We prepared eight different dishes. They ranged from
Arroz en Cazuela al Horno (baked rice casserole) to Merluza
que es Pescada Cecial (cod) to Gallina Armada con Salseron
para Volateris Asada (chicken with liver sauce). We also
prepared Chorizo con Salsa di Pomadoro, alla Spagnuolo
(sausage with tomato sauce, Spanish style), which is
believed to be the first recipe using tomatoes that was
published in Europe.
Overall, it was an enjoyable evening. Chef Kaufman
teaches several of these historic classes, each one
encompassing a specific time period.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera (geeeze,
where WAS my brain?!?), so I have no pictures. | <urn:uuid:daf8ca09-bd21-47d7-b2aa-7a2a7f977965> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://historiccookery.com/2009/09/27/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932362 | 338 | 1.757813 | 2 |
"Biodiesel could be an important renewable substitute for fossil fuels. And, in certain parts of the world, governments and some corporations consider the jatropha plant, common in hot climates, one of the most promising sources of biodiesel. The plant can grow in wastelands, and it yields more than four times as much fuel per hectare as soybean, and more than ten times that of corn. But the commercial-scale cultivation of jatropha, which has not previously been grown as a crop, raises several significant challenges."
"So far, the project has signed up 5,000 farmers representing 1,000 hectares of land. The goal is to have 8,000 hectares under cultivation by March 2008, and Adholeya says that the success of the first crops has drawn interest from many more farmers. By the end of 2008, TERI plans to have a production facility producing biodiesel from jatropha. Eventually, it aims to produce 90 million liters of biodiesel annually."
News and information about Biodiesel & alternative fuels.
India Biodiesel Update
Via an email from my Dad, here's an MIT Tech Review article about India and Biodiesel: | <urn:uuid:462ab447-05e7-455b-908f-7e40e8debeab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biodieselblog.com/2007/02/india-biodiesel-update.shtml?showComment=1298844027417 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948698 | 245 | 2.546875 | 3 |
When we are in balance, we feel comfortable and thrive in each season. We are happy to rest more in the Winter, have the energy to launch in the Spring and feel excited to play and connect with people in the Summer. When we are out of balance we feel out of sync with what is happening in Nature.
Summer is the season of the Fire Element. It is the time when there is the most light & active energy in Nature. In balance, most people find that they have a lot of energy this time of year - they feel excited to be social, fill their calendar with activities and enjoy the long hours of light.
For some, summer is a challenging time. When there is so much light and energy, it is easy to go overboard with activity and fun. Like a fire burning high and bright using up all the fuel, one can end up exhausted and burnt out. A steady and focussed burn is more sustainable. Knowing how to ride the wave of energy in the summer - go big - but realize where the limit is. Know when to slow down and take some time off.
In the opposite extreme, some people feel more sad and isolated this time of year. Sometimes watching others be busy with friends and family can be hard if there is a lack of close relationships in one's life. It feels like “Why is everyone off having a good time and I’m all alone? Why didn’t I get invited?” It can be doubly hard because the cultural expectation is that we all feel great in the summer and love this season.
In this case, the most helpful thing is to be aware of the pattern and plan for it. It may mean organizing events with friends and family in advance, before calendars fill. Making a point of inviting people over for dinner or a party. Reaching out and letting friends know that this is a difficult season. Finding a biking or hiking group to join. Taking sailing lessons and going out weekly with a group.
The goal is harmony with Summer. Plenty of fun - not too much, not too little. Enjoy! | <urn:uuid:0d5dc711-a8e5-4254-9115-e9b3ff0a398e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://five-elementacupuncture.blogspot.com/2011/08/summer-balance.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958341 | 428 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Project-Based Learning Partnership
The K-12 Project-Based Learning Partnership Program places Clarkson University and St. Lawrence University fellows in local K-12 school districts to teach science, math, technology, and engineering (STEM). The program uses project-based learning to demonstrate the importance of these subjects and puts their significance into perspective by helping young students solve problems related to their school or community. By taking a hands-on approach to learning, K-12 students learn by doing rather than through lectures and memorization. Several of the project-based curricula developed through this program are available for your use.
The K-12 Partnership Program was developed with funding from the National Science Foundation, and continued with additional financial assistance from the GE Foundation. GE funds were used to expose more girls and minority students to the diversity of engineering applications. A second NSF GK-12 grant the program to expand in conjunction with faculty and staff from the Teaching Scholar Partnership Program (TSPP) at nearby St. Lawrence University and initiated Clarkson's institutionalization of K-12 Partnership Programs.
The program benefits students and teachers on both ends of the spectrum. While graduate and undergraduate students involved in the program receive three-credit hours and acquire teaching and communications skills, their ability to bring STEM concepts to local classrooms engages middle and high school students in new curricula. In addition, local teachers can update their knowledge of the subjects and form a better understanding of project-based learning.
(Funding from the National Science Foundation through grants DUE-9979509, DUE-9979279, and DGE-0338216 is acknowledged.) | <urn:uuid:10abd50d-fe7c-4f54-a29d-17ee422e7e0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clarkson.edu/highschool/k12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948767 | 329 | 3 | 3 |
- Filed Under
Greetings everyone! This weekend is absolutely wonderful for evening stargazing and it looks like we just may be able to see some of them.
One of my loyal readers wrote me an email saying that he'd finally seen those "little teeny, tiny lights in the sky" for the first time in about five months.Mars, Antares
If you're a loyal reader of "Starry, Starry Night," you know that Mars has been growing closer and closer to Anti-Mars, the bright red star that the ancient Greeks said was a close twin to the red planet. Of course, the Greek name for Mars was Ares, so they called the star Anti-Ares. Today we call ... | <urn:uuid:b6a346bf-7c43-411b-9f96-c1d8df5e9374> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guampdn.com/article/20121019/LIFESTYLE/210190322/Treat-yourself-view-shooting-stars-show?odyssey=mod_sectionstories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967721 | 149 | 1.648438 | 2 |
By Michael Zuckerman
You might be surprised to learn that state governments may be using federal stimulus dollars on offshore contracting.
That's right -- states may spend billions of the $787 billion stimulus package approved in February to "stimulate" the economies of India, Mexico, Poland or (gasp!) China, rather than Main Street USA.
The federal response to the current recession has put billions of taxpayer dollars in the hands of state governments. If history is any guide, we know the states will use some of this money on offshore contracting. This hampers our economic recovery.
The $100 billion-plus for the states includes $53.6 billion to help avoid cuts to essential services like education; $4.2 billion to administer unemployment compensation; $4 billion for law enforcement; and $1 billion to help collect child support.
Implemented in the right way, this aid would provide more benefit than meets the eye. The stimulus effect magnifies each dollar of spending, giving the taxpayer more bang for her buck.
Just think: When a state uses federal money to upgrade computer systems, for example, it hires contractors, employs workers and buys materials. The state not only receives a new computer system, but reaps the downstream benefit of those contractors, workers and material providers spending money in the local economy and growing their business.
As President Obama said, "I think the ripple effects of this (stimulus) package won't be entirely documentable, but I think it will be significant."
But the stimulus effect is virtually lost on state projects shipped overseas. If a state upgrades its computer systems with workers in India, the ripple effect will be felt not on Main Street, but rather in on some avenue in India.
Although there is something to be said for trade, the immediate concern is domestic stimulus. The allure of inexpensive offshore contracting must yield, at least in the short-run, to reviving our struggling economy by investing in domestic workers and industries.
A major way for states to prevent offshore contracting of federal stimulus dollars is to resist the urge to contract-out federal stimulus dollars. It has been well documented that privatization and offshoring go hand-in-hand. That is, when states hire private contractors, those contractors have frequently gone overseas, often without the knowledge of state officials.
Although we don't know how much state work goes offshore because states don't track this -- it could be as high as $3 billion per year -- we do know that virtually every state has offshore contracts, often relating to information technology. And for reasons of constitutional dimension, states cannot unilaterally ban contractors from offshoring state contracts. Thus states should use in-house resources to implement the federal stimulus dollars.
Once we are back on an economic growth track, we can revisit the debate about outsourcing and offshoring. Until then, it's elementary: State budget officers can help pull us out of the recession by keeping federal money at home.
Michael Zuckerman is a student at Cornell Law School, with a degree from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. | <urn:uuid:68972868-bf57-45ac-8462-5901f73dd345> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2009/05/keep_stimulus_money_at_home.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941858 | 634 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Police officers in Chesapeake, Virginia, have developed the ability to smell marijuana in cars as they cruise down the highway, even when the police have their windows up. Or, at least, according to a report in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot last week, that's what they are claiming.
Smelling the odor of marijuana would create probable cause to stop and search a vehicle. Ring said police would follow a car until there were no other cars in the area so they could make sure it was indeed that vehicle from which the odor of weed was emanating.
Defense attorneys and civil libertarians are pronouncing themselves mind-boggled by the claim.
"The idea that police can drive behind a car and smell marijuana is preposterous," said Assistant Public Defender Matthew Taylor. "What do we need drug dogs for if (police) can drive behind cars and smell marijuana?"
The police were claiming powers verging on the "supernatural," he said.
"It stretches the imagination that the police can drive down the road and hone in on a car," agreed ACLU of Virginia executive director Kent Willis.
Willis said that traffic stops based solely on an officer's sniffing from a police car will draw legal challenges. "Experts will have to tangle over this and decide," he predicted.
So far, no cases have been thrown out, although Taylor tried unsuccessfully to make that happen in a recent case. In that case, police claimed they smelled marijuana in a vehicle while driving down the highway and pulled it over. But the issue of their amazing olfactory abilities wasn't addressed by the court because police also said they smelled marijuana when they approached the vehicle on foot.
Other area defense attorneys who had cases where police made similar claims said they had not challenged the searches because police had reasons to conduct the traffic stops.
The practice is apparently limited to Chesapeake Police, according to the Virginian-Pilot's survey of local law enforcement agencies. Suffolk County prosecutor Phillips Ferguson said he hadn't heard of the practice, but expected it to catch on.
"It's very creative policing," he said, but added that if police were using the moving automobile sniff as their as their sole basis for making a traffic stop, that might be successfully challenged. "I'm not saying they wouldn't have been justified in stopping the car, but it's pushing the line," Ferguson said.
Instead, he recommended that if police smell the odor of marijuana coming from a passing vehicle on the road, they find some other pretext to pull it over.
Public defender Taylor said he challenged the vehicle search in his case because he wanted to challenge the validity of the technique. "If cops can get away with this, they will have total authority," he said. | <urn:uuid:7e4accc1-e37d-47fa-a67d-f58689cc72c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2012/apr/26/virginia_cops_claim_superhuman_m | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983509 | 559 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Guest Author - Kate Woods
By this time everyone with access to any media source knows about the current economic conditions. Highly debated tax restructuring has been at the forefront of the news daily for quite some time now and will surely continue to be front and center for some time into the future. Daily statistics are spouted by media sources that put their own spin on them. What is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009? What are the facts and what is fiction?
Perhaps referring to the highlights of the tax legislation and trying to understand how you are personally touched by the changes is each person’s best option to intelligently digest tax facts and tax changes. Wouldn’t that be a logical thing to do before picking up a sign to picket or holding a rally to show their outrage against taxes? NO ONE LIKES TAXES - but if you are one of those on the down side of the economic turn, taxes provide unemployment to feed your family, medical attention, and a sometimes the will to keep going. Many people who are now without jobs were gainfully employed for a very long time before they became unemployed and they paid taxes at that time. Perhaps the taxes they paid then are providing their unemployment checks now. Perhaps at that time they were also outraged at paying taxes and tax increases. Perhaps they were in the higher income bracket that everyone thinks should not have to bear the burden of any tax increases. Perhaps next month or next year the very people who will receive tax increases will be the unhappy recipient of an unwanted, unexpected job loss and have to draw unemployment from a fund that they themselves were outraged that they had to pay into when they thought they were untouchably employed. As people spew their outrage perhaps they need to realize that there is no immunity from an economic downturn. Many people who are outraged turn to quotes to make their points as they point their fingers. Perhaps they might have forgotten this one – “there but for the grace of God go I.”
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is a valiant effort on the part of our government representatives in Congress to make changes that will help the economy rebound. Will it work? No one has a crystal ball so know one really knows. We must hope that it will work. It is quite extensive and has provisions that effect both individuals and business. In the weeks ahead I will be reviewing some of these provisions. While many people approach taxes with an attitude of “ignorance is bliss”, that sometimes makes them miss out on opportunities that may have been of benefit to them. While some benefits do not require any action on the part of individuals to receive them, others may need action to not miss out on a benefit.
In the weeks and months ahead, read and learn, be pro-active about your own financial and tax planning. Arm yourself with facts and don’t believe spin and hype. Work with others not against them. Try to find every opportunity to move forward instead of looking backwards. Take the stance that optimism can and will defeat pessimism if you keep the faith that any on given day it could be the first day of the rest of a better life for all of us!
Any U.S. tax advice contained in this electronic communication was not intended or written to be used, nor can be used, by any recipient of this communication for the purpose of avoiding penalties that might be imposed pursuant to the Internal Revenue Code or U.S. Treasury Regulations, or any other state or local law or regulation.
Content of this site is not intended to replace professional consultation. | <urn:uuid:a531f210-6bce-4a58-a64e-014f9a117f7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art61680.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979999 | 731 | 1.6875 | 2 |
If the print dialog box does not automatically appear, open the file menu and choose Print.
Article published February 13, 2013
Militia Act not first
Rebecca AllisonDonegal Township
Rick Devore’s Jan. 28 letter to the editor, “Ignore gun propaganda,” says the Second Amendment phrase “a well-regulated militia” has to do with the right of the government to call up a militia. He uses the example of the Militia Act of 1792 being the basis for quelling the Whiskey Rebellion. The Constitution was adopted in 1787, and the Bill of Rights, which contains the Second Amendment, was ratified in 1791. The Militia Act was based on the Second Amendment, which was written first. Since the Second Amendment was written first, Devore doesn’t have a premise on which to build his argument. Also, would quelling of the Whiskey Rebellion have been successful if George Washington would have had to train and arm every man of that militia? What if they hadn’t had their guns? What if they weren’t trained? The Whiskey Rebellion’s outcome would have been different. Washington was well aware that everyone he called up would have an arm and be able to use it. What if our citizens don’t have guns and a foreign power invades us? By the time we could re-arm and train them, we would be at the mercy of the foreign invader or yes, perhaps, our own tyrannical government, if that would be the case. Devore’s letter gives the false impression or interpretation that all terms of the Militia Act are the final say, when it was the Constitution that was written first and supersedes, overpowers and overreaches the Militia Act. | <urn:uuid:979a9150-c6c6-43cc-9cf1-a94f96d0c0f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.butlereagle.com/article/20130213/EDITORIAL02/130219891/0/Focus1005&Template=printart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978487 | 368 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Buck and Buck has several special Alzheimer’s clothing solutions that will make dressing easier for the person with Alzheimer’s. Our solutions help the senior with the disability of Alzheimer’s, and the caregiver who provides care in the home, nursing home or assisted living facility.
Archive for September, 2008
Tags: Alzheimer's, Buck, clothing, strange
Tags: bailout, crisis, economic, Government Bailout, subprime
This video does a good job explaining our current financial problem. It is 10 minutes long, but well worth your time.
Tags: bailout, crisis, financial, Government Bailout
Tags: donuts bacon 08, Obama, t-shirt
Tags: Beat, CEO, Death, India, NEW DELHI
NEW DELHI–More than 60 former employees of an Italian manufacturing company in India have been arrested for allegedly beating to death the company’s local chief executive officer, police said Tuesday.
Tags: English, language, offensive, politically correct
Publishers and universities are outlawing dozens of seemingly innocuous words in case they cause offense.
This article, from the UK, discusses the latest ways to keep oneself on the politically correct side of the English language. Included are such gems as -
In addition, the list says “special needs” should be changed to “additional needs”, “patient” to “person” and “the elderly” to “older people”.
Tags: aging, funny, Over 40, over the hill
The Perks of Being Over 40
1. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
2. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
3. No one expects you to run – anywhere.
4. People call at 9 PM and ask, “Did I wake you?”
5. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
6. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
7. Things you buy now won’t wear out.
8. You can eat dinner at 4 P.M.
9. You can live without sex, but not without glasses.
10 You enjoy hearing about other peoples operations.
11. You get into heated arguments about pension plans.
12. You have a party and the neighbors don’t even realize it.
13. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
14. You quit trying to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
15. You sing along with elevator music.
16. Your eyes won’t get much worse.
17. Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
18. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.
19. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can’t remember them either.
20. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.
Tags: $200 bill, crime, North Carolina, strange, weird
North Carolina cops are searching for a guy who successfully passed a $200 bill bearing George W. Bush’s portrait and a drawing of the White House complete with lawn signs reading “We like ice cream” and “USA deserves a tax cut.” Read more HERE.
Tags: grave, Grave Hunter, magician, markers, Sonny Williams, tombstones
Tags: ARRRR, pirate, Talk Like A Pirate
Tags: definitions, English, strange, unusual, weird, words | <urn:uuid:3ad8a3e1-bbcc-429c-ac04-90f00f858e24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dummr.wordpress.com/2008/09/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91636 | 741 | 1.523438 | 2 |
We get occasional requests for 27" rims or wheels. It wouldn't be hard for us to make 27" rims, but I don't think it's a good idea. Converting old 27" bikes to 700c is simple and almost always my preference.
A bit of background; 27" wheels were used mostly on American market mid and lower-range production bikes. There are some exceptions, but top-end frames with 27" wheels are relatively rare. The popularity of 27" wheels waned in the late '70s or early '80s when 700c became the near-universal road bike size. Today there are few choices of good quality 27" rims or tires and I don't know of a single new bike that still uses that size. The main reason to switch to 700c is to gain access to many more high quality tires and rims in more widths. 700c rims and tires are available in almost any bike shop anywhere in the world. You'll also gain a bit of extra tire or fender clearance.
|A 27" wheel hiding behind a 700c rim|
|Determining required brake reach|
I'm sure that there are some who will want to keep their bikes as original as possible. For a high-end production or custom frame that you view as more of a collectible than a user, this makes sense. Otherwise I would get a second set of 700c wheels for riding and keep the originals for display. | <urn:uuid:b8d92fb9-23cc-40b8-a187-bb04adabcb9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://velo-orange.blogspot.com/2011/10/27-wheels-and-measuring-brake-reach.html?showComment=1323888735255 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972168 | 302 | 1.53125 | 2 |
I am the king
By Leo Timmers
One morning Tortoise suddenly finds himself wearing a crown. 'I am the King!' he says. His friends can't stop laughing. Goat, Flamingo, Snake, Pig, Crocodile, Elephant and Ape each think they would make a perfect king. But who really is the King of the animals? Listen to I am the king by Leo Timmers, read by Thomas La Hood.
(Click to play, or if you can't see the link on the left, click here.)
(Video produced by Rebecca Pilcher of Wellington City Libraries in association with Gecko Press. Illustration © Leo Timmers.) | <urn:uuid:4fe8144a-42e6-4688-aeb8-eb6826938f8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcl.govt.nz/kids/downloads.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939024 | 138 | 1.734375 | 2 |
This week, the General Assembly considers legislation providing for the carrying of firearms in schools, and works on bill which would revoke the drivers license of any motorist convicted of passing a stopped school bus.
Senate Bill 27: “Public School Protection/Firearms Amendment”
“An act to provide that certain persons certified by the (N.C.) Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission and designated by a local board of education or board of directors of a charter school may possess and carry firearms on educational property to provide additional protection to those attending and working in public schools.”
- Filed in the Senate Jan. 31, currently in Rules and Operations Committee
- Establishes “School Safety Marshal” guidelines
The bill reads “Local boards of education may designate qualified persons to serve as school safety marshals and may adopt policies regarding (their duties)…establish application procedures…and adopt policies (for determining) which applicants to recommend…as potential marshals.”
Boards of directors of charter school are also empowered to appoint safety marshals. All safety marshals must be certified under Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards under G.S. 17C-6(17).
Sections of the bill authorizing the appointment of safety marshals are effective Aug. 1, 2013.
House Bill 187: “Private School/Handgun on School Property”
“An act to provide that…any private school funded exclusively with private funds and located in Forsyth County may adopt a school policy to allow a school employee…to possess and carry a handgun on (school property).”
- Filed in the House Feb. 28
The bill allows the executive heads of private schools to arm school employees, provided the weapons are handguns, and the employees have concealed carry permits. It provides that “The executive head…may also establish additional criteria…before an employee can possess and carry a handgun…”
The act applies only to Forsyth County, and is effective Dec. 1, 2013.
Senate Bill 16: “Revoke License for Passing Stopped School Bus”
“An act to provide that the Division of Motor Vehicles shall revoke a person’s drivers license for passing a stopped school bus in violation of G.S. 20-217.”
- Passed reading in Senate, currently in House Transportation Committee
- Provides structured sentencing and limits plea bargaining for repeat offenders
Upon first conviction, “the revocation period shall be 30 days.” Second-offenders lose their license for 90 days.
Second-offenders “shall not be eligible to enter a plea of guilty or no contest to a lesser included offense, or to substitute a charge that carries a lesser punishment.
Those convicted under the law can petition the sentencing court for “limited driving privilege” provided their license has not also been revoked for some other reason.
This act is effective Dec. 1, 2013. | <urn:uuid:d090aa0e-eea0-424f-9348-86726e935d40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jeffersonpost.com/view/full_story/21867840/article-Legislative-Update?instance=popular | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943223 | 608 | 1.59375 | 2 |
David Cameron tiptoed around the issue of human rights in the Middle East amid concern among Arab allies that British criticism has overstepped the mark.
Concerns have been raised over the Prime Minister’s priorities during his three-day trip, when he will attempt to help to sell fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Both regimes have faced criticism over freedom of expression, the treatment of protesters and torture.
Mr Cameron struck a diplomatic tone yesterday. Speaking to students, he said that “democracy is not just about holding a vote”.
“All countries benefit if they give their people | <urn:uuid:83ff1a4d-0251-4876-9a9a-b8a1f705b46b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3591282.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962989 | 129 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Today I will provide my first general review of the data collected for Thomas Laton Kindness aka Laton Kanistanaux. I need to assess what is known and what is missing for this family member. This will assist me in planning my next phase of research.
Thanks to the generosity of Caroline Andler, Retired Genealogist for the Brothertown Nation, I know a great deal about this man. I can confirm his birth date and location, his 1st marriage, and his son by the 1st marriage. I can also confirm that Laton Kanistanaux of Stockton, Chautauqua Co., NY is the exact same person as Thomas Laton Kinness or Kindness of the Brothertown Nation.
I have been able to locate Laton in census records continuously from 1875 to 1905 in Stockton, NY. I was unable to find him in the 1860 census, but he should be in Wisconsin where he married and had a son just prior to the census year and where he appears to be in late 1861 or early 1862 based on a Civil War enlistment record. It would be very helpful to locate him in the 1870 Census. This census would help me understand where he was living before his arrival in Stockton and narrow down the time frame for when he married Marleah.
I have already ruled out the possibility that Laton is the father of Carrie and Henry, since he was with his 1st family in Wisconsin when they were born. The chart above also demonstrates he could not be the father of the elder Dr. Lee-o-netto since he was about 13 when she was born. It is possible, but not likely he is the father of the younger Lee-o-netto. He could be the father of William. However, the 1909 news clipping suggests he was a grandfather to William. I need to keep in mind that a grandfather need not be related by blood to their grandchildren when multiply marriages are involved.
Williams’s responses to the birth place of his father does not assist with the problem, since he is inconsistent in his answers. On the other hand and to confuse matters, Lee-o-netto’s (younger) responses do allow for Laton to be her father.
I didn’t make a chart for Laton’s race as reported in Census so I will summarize it in text here. He is identified as white in 1900 & 1905, and with no entry for race in the 1910 Census. I have proof he is not mixed blood, yet he is listed as Mulatto (1880) and colored (1892). This only demonstrates how inaccurate and haphazardly the race question is applied to individuals by census takers of the past. I might question his race if I relied on census records alone.
The 1900 Census suggests he owned his property. A 1909 news clipping announcing his trip to Colorado suggests he intended to return to Stockton at some time in the future. This suggests he may not have sold his property before traveling to Colorado. There may be probate records showing the legal disposition of his land after his death. These documents (if they exist) may shed light on who his legal heirs were.
Land records should be researched. Knowing the date he purchased his land will help to establish how early he arrived in Stockton and may provide clues as to where he was prior to settling in Stockton. If he sold his land before going to Colorado, he may have sold it to one of the children. The land sale may provide some clues about his relationship to the younger generation of Kanistanaux.
Online message boards and Find-a-Grave suggest Laton died in Evergreen, Colorado in 1910. I don’t expect to learn much of value by locating his death record, but it would be interesting to know what name his death certificate is under. I have assigned this a low priority and will not spend money to retrieve the record as this point. I will continue to watch for the record in online databases.
Top Priority To-Do List
Stockton, Chautauqua Co., NY
- Marriage record for Marleah and Laton, estimate 1865-1875
Chautauqua Co., NY
- Land records
- Probate records
- Additional census
Future To-Do List
Evergreen, Jefferson Co., CO
- Death record for Laton Kanistanaux or Thomas Laton Kindness c1910
See the Kanistanaux Home Page for more.
Do you have any information to add or questions?
Please leave a comment.
Copyright ©2012 Ne-Do-Ba - All Rights Reserved | <urn:uuid:239a8b4c-31fb-41c5-a591-04570782aafd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nedoba.blogspot.com/2012/02/laton-review-1.html?showComment=1330631760250 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977917 | 953 | 1.632813 | 2 |
MONTGOMERY, VAIDA STEWART
MONTGOMERY, VAIDA STEWART (1888–1959). Vaida Stewart Montgomery, poet and publisher, daughter of William Riley and Butriss (Fowler) Stewart, was born in Childress, Texas, on August 28, 1888. For three decades she and her husband, Whitney M. Montgomery, provided a showcase for the work of Texas poets with their magazine Kaleidograph and through the related Kaleidograph Press. Mrs. Montgomery was also recognized as a major Texas poet and published handbooks on versification and writing. After receiving a public school education in Ellis, Cottle, and Hardeman counties, Vaida Stewart taught kindergarten briefly before attending the Metropolitan Business College in Dallas, where she graduated in 1917. She taught typing at Dallas evening schools from 1922 to 1927. Her first marriage, to J. Arthur Boyd, took place on March 5, 1905. The Boyds had two daughters. Fellow poet Whitney Montgomery became Vaida's second husband on June 9, 1927. "Stampede," Mrs. Montgomery's first ambitious poem, was published in 1924. Her verse subsequently appeared in West, Sunset, Holland's, Modern Homemaking, Parents' Magazine, and the Dallas Morning News. She also published a number of short stories in magazines. Locoed and Other Poems, her first volume of verse, came out in 1930; eighteen years later she published a second, Hail for Rain, recipient of the Texas Institute of Letters poetry award for 1948. The Poetry Society of Texas had awarded her its Old South Prize in 1939 and 1944. Among the Kaleidograph Press books written and published by Vaida Montgomery were First Aid for Fictionists (1933), A Century with Texas Poets and Poetry (1934), Secrets of Selling Verse (1934), and Verse Technique-Simplified (1934). Mrs. Montgomery was a Democrat and a Methodist. She served as recording secretary of the Poetry Society of Texas in 1944–45. She was a member of the Poetry Society of America and an associate member of Theta Sigma Phi. She died on July 24, 1959, in Dallas.
Florence Elberta Barns, Texas Writers of Today (Dallas: Tardy, 1935). Hilton Ross Greer and Florence Elberta Barns, New Voices of the Southwest (Dallas: Tardy, 1934). Sam Hanna Acheson, Herbert P. Gambrell, Mary Carter Toomey, and Alex M. Acheson, Jr., Texian Who's Who, Vol. 1 (Dallas: Texian, 1937). Who's Who of American Women, 1958.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Mary Simpson, "MONTGOMERY, VAIDA STEWART," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmo12), accessed June 19, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:1d6c4e75-7fb4-4f53-8455-241842030eb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmo12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951929 | 629 | 1.914063 | 2 |
How to play
How it Plays
Explore all the different sounds pots and pans can make. Next, invite your child to keep the beat with her feet (if she's walking) and join you in a Percussion Pantry Parade all around the house or even outdoors. You can dress up with an assortment of hats, scarves, bandannas, or capes, if you like. Put on some marching music and strike up the band. Take turns being the leader, and invite the whole family to join in!
What You'll Need Drums (any of the following, all turned upside down): Empty oatmeal box, metal pot, metal frying pan, aluminum pie tin, large plastic ice cream container or water jug Drumsticks or rhythm sticks: Wood or metal spoons Cymbals: Two metal pot lids Maracas: Empty metal tea canister or clear plastic juice bottle filled with uncooked rice, popcorn, or beans (be sure containers are glued or taped tightly shut) Triangle: Metal cake rack on a string, plus metal spoon for striking Guitar or banjo: Half-gallon milk container (or shoe box) with hole cut out, "strung" with rubber bands Tambourine: Two paper plates filled with dry beans and taped together tightly Kazoo: Paper towel or toilet paper tube with a waxed paper square (about 3 x 3 inches) tightly secured to one end with a rubber band and tape.
Learning and Growing
Small children don't need elaborate plans to have fun. This kind of activity appeals to their natural spontaneity and their desire to be near you as you prepare meals or clean up. | <urn:uuid:19efb1bb-113e-483d-9e2d-2d391968f9d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pampers.com/home-made-instruments-kitchen-rhythm-band | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909568 | 336 | 2.703125 | 3 |
19 November 2010. The 40th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience came to a close on Wednesday, 17 November 2010 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Unusually for this conference, the buzz in the hallways and at the poster sessions was less about the latest hot research and more about the dismal funding scenario unfolding at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). “The meeting was dominated by this dreary feeling that the NIA is in freefall,” Stephen D. Ginsberg, New York University, told ARF. Every researcher ARF interviewed on the subject echoed this sentiment. Most Alzheimer’s disease researchers in the U.S. depend on the NIA to fund at least some of their research. While researchers expected a fall in the 2011 pay line—a measure of which is the percentage of requests funded—the extent of that drop is taking them by surprise. Talk of a 3 percent pay line drew fear and frustration from both junior and well-established investigators.
Researchers worry about funding for their own research and also about the impact on the field as a whole. The concern is that, just when aging research is becoming more important—baby boomers are reaching retirement age and older adults comprise a growing fraction of the population—researchers may be discouraged from starting or continuing to study both Alzheimer’s and aging. Several scientists said they expect colleagues young and old to leave the field in the next two years as their funding dries up.
“You could not devise a more efficient way of killing basic aging research,” said Gary Landreth, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Landreth has decided not to apply for NIA funding next year. As reported recently in Nature, other researchers, including Karen Duff at Columbia University, New York, are requesting that their NIH grant applications not be funneled through the NIA, because the chances of getting funding are so low.
Program officers at the NIA are aware of the issue and share the concerns. “We are worried that people will turn off aging research exactly at a time when we need more funding for it,” said Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, outgoing director of the NIA Neuroscience Division, in an interview with ARF. She said that the funding situation is at a point where it cannot be ignored, and that for the last nine months, at least, institute officers have been discussing ways to address the dilemma. On 25 October, NIA director Richard Hodes addressed the research community in an open letter explaining how the situation became so dire and outlining some austerity measures.
How did it come to this? The NIA claims it faces a triple whammy of sorts. Stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are running their course, more researchers are applying for more grants, and a bigger slice of the pie has been going to larger projects and non-modular grants, i.e., those over $250,000 per year. It is funding of larger grants that has some researchers particularly upset, as in their view, a majority of funds are finding their way to a minority of investigators. But it is not only large program project grants and clinical trials that are sucking up the dollars, as some researchers claim, but also non-modular grants of over $500,000 per year, explained Morrison-Bogorad. More of these grants have been awarded because the nature of the research has changed. “Because the field has matured and the science has gotten more complicated, the best science is a mixture of approaches, not all of which can be tackled by a single scientist,” she told ARF. “We have encouraged greater collaboration.” She also noted that some of the other NIH institutes have restrictions on funding mechanisms. The NIMH, for example, does not award program project grants, and the NINDS limits them.
Researchers are concerned that the funds for those projects come at the expense of regular rank-and-file researchers. “It is similar to what happens in the economy as a whole. The middle class gets squeezed,” said Ginsberg. Other researchers are not convinced that funding of non-modular grants is to blame for the funding crisis. It is unusual for R01 grants to be far above the modular cutoff of $250,000 per year, said Ilya Bezprozvanny, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. Modular grants are now being squeezed off, he said, reducing the chances of novel ideas germinating in the AD field. “It is possible that ‘super large R01 grants’ with budgets over $500,000 per year are funding clinical studies and patient observational research, but quantitative information from the NIA is needed to better understand where the bulk of the money is going,” he told ARF.
Terrence Town, University of California, Los Angeles, noted that if these grants are funded over five years or more, then even a small number of them could drain the funding pool. He also lamented the fact that changes to the application process mean that it is harder for researchers to address questions that come up in review. “There is a continuity issue that needs to be addressed,” he told ARF. That’s because the NIH changed their policy and now only allow researchers to revise their submission once, rather than twice. If the study section panel reviewing the revision is different, then they often flag a whole new set of issues, said Town. “If you address an initial laundry list of concerns, and then you get another, you can’t address that and then the grant gets rejected,” he told ARF. This is particularly troubling for young investigators, he said.
Fixing this funding crisis will be neither quick nor painless. The NIA plans to limit funding for larger grants to try to improve the pay line for smaller modular grants (i.e., less than $250,000 per year), said Morrison-Bogorad. Since 2004, the institute has had a policy of an across-the-board cut of 18 percent, meaning every division paid out 18 percent less than study sections recommended. “That worked until people caught on and just asked for more money,” said Morrison-Bogorad. Going forward, the institute plans to take a closer look at requests for funding of higher than $500,000. Investigators have to seek permission from the NIA to apply for these grants. “We can say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ From now on we’ll be saying ‘no’ more often,” said Morrison-Bogorad. That may limit expenditures on big projects, and it will also leave more of the decision-making process in the hands of NIA administrators rather than study sections.
The NIA will not know exactly what the pay line for big and small grants will be until mid- to late December, when they have a funding meeting. At that point they will model scenarios and decide how many large grants to cut or to skip over. “It is something we hate to do. Hopefully it will be temporary and we can come roaring back,” said Morrison-Bogorad. She stressed that a pay line of 3 percent means that grants scoring in the top three percentile get funded, not that only 3 percent of the grants will get funded. It all depends on how study sections score the grants, she said. A 3 percent pay line could mean that 6 percent of grants get funded.
How long a comeback might take is unclear. In the meantime, it seems unlikely that there will be sufficient funds from other sources to take up the slack. “If it does emerge that there is a 3 percent pay line, that is going to be extremely painful for the field,” said Bill Thies, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer at the Alzheimer’s Association, one of the large funders of Alzheimer’s research outside the NIH. “The likelihood that we could step in and make up for a shortfall is pretty small,” said Thies. Over the last few years, the Association has been struggling with its own funding issues since a major part of its donor base is particularly sensitive to swings in the real estate and the stock markets.
Researchers charge that more federal funding is required for aging research and for Alzheimer’s in particular, which is projected to affect 16 million Americans by 2050, according to some estimates. In Congress, the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act is languishing in Committee. “The most frustrating point of this is that the federal government is going to be stuck with the bill one way or the other,” said Thies. “They can pay that up front, but they are unable, or are deciding not to deal with the long-term threat. People will pay attention in 2048, but at that point it is going to be too late.” Ginsberg agreed. “Leadership has to come up with better answers,” he told ARF. He said that the NIH needs to make a greater commitment to AD, and if they split AD from the aging institute to do it, so be it. “It is beyond reason to expect progress in the face of the baby boom generation reaching the age of onset for dementia when funding AD research is pennies on the dollar.”—Tom Fagan. | <urn:uuid:599d9ff1-01c3-466d-a259-c1b5bb14c961> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=2616 | 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 | 0.962758 | 1,954 | 1.648438 | 2 |
In days gone by, the printed indexes of births, marriages and deaths (BMD) were housed at Somerset House. Then they resided at the Family Records Centre in Islington, an excellent resource in its own right. Sadly, the FRC is closing down. The upstairs National Archives resources (censuses etc.) are moving to Kew from early next year. The paper BMD indexes – owned by the General Register Office – have moved to Christchurch as detailed on the GRO site.
Microfiche versions of the BMD indexes have for a long time been available in local libraries and record offices, but the FRC was a key central resource. As I understand it, the Office for National Statistics had committed to placing the indexes online in a fully searchable form by spring 2008, but this project has been delayed and won’t be able to take over from the FRC search room.
On the up side, other online resources continue to offer some access to the BMD indexes. The FreeBMD project, for which I used to be volunteer transcriber, has manually copied millions of entries from the indexes into a searchable database. It’s an invaluable resource and a testament to the benefits of collaborative working online. FreeBMD continues to grow, and is nearly complete now for the Victorian era.
A number of commercial websites provide access to scanned versions of the indexes as part of their subscriptions. These aren’t directly searchable, but you can browse for the page you need just as you would with a paper index. Both FindMyPast.com and Ancestry.co.uk offer this service. Helpfully, Ancestry (which is the one I have experience of using) also provides access to the FreeBMD data, and to the electronic BMD database that replaced the paper version in 1984.
While it’s a familiar refrain – and good avice – from family history guides that you shouldn’t rely solely on the internet for research, the increased availability online of scanned or indexed copies of physical sources is extremely welcome, and BMD indexes are a prime example. It’s a shame that the ONS’s promise of a fully searchable online index to replace the paper versions has, in the short term, fallen through, leaving family history researchers worse off than before. | <urn:uuid:2a23b8d6-8bc6-428e-bfb3-e480c159271f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.willhowells.org.uk/blog/2007/11/09/hatches-matches-and-despatches/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935643 | 477 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance
|October 04 2010|
What is long-term care?
Insurance is an important tool for protecting yourself against risk. For instance, health insurance pays your doctor and hospital bills if you get sick or injured. But how can you help protect yourself against the significant financial risk posed by the potential need for long-term care services, either in a nursing home or in your own home?
Long-term care goes beyond medical care and nursing care to include all the assistance you could need if you ever have a chronic illness or disability that leaves you unable to care for yourself for an extended period of time. You can receive long-term care in a nursing home, assisted-living facility, or in your own home.
Though older people use the most long-term care services, a young or middle-aged person who has been in an accident or suffered a debilitating illness might also need long-term care.
Beyond nursing homes, there is a range of services available in the community to help meet long-term care needs. Visiting nurses, home health aides, friendly visitor programs, home-delivered meals, chore services, adult daycare centers, and respite services for caregivers who need a break from daily responsibilities can supplement care given by family members.
These services are becoming more widely available. Some or all of them may be found in your community. Your local Area Agency on Aging or Office on Aging can help you locate the services you need. Call the Eldercare Locator at 800-677-1116 to identify your local office.
Are you likely to need long-term care?
Family members and friends are the sole caregivers for 70 percent of elderly people. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that people age 65 face at least a 40 percent lifetime risk of entering a nursing home sometime during their lifetime. About 10 percent will stay there five years or longer.
The American population is growing older, and the group over age 85 is now the fastest-growing segment of the population. The odds of entering a nursing home, and staying for longer periods, increase with age. In fact, statistics show that at any given time, 22 percent of those age 85 and older are in a nursing home. Because women generally outlive men by several years, they face a 50 percent greater likelihood than men of entering a nursing home after age 65.
While certainly older people are more likely to need long-term care, your need for long-term care can come at any age. In fact, the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates that 40 percent of the 13 million people receiving long-term care services are between the ages of 18 and 64.
PDF format, 158KB.
America’s Health Insurance Plans
|Last Updated ( October 04 2010 )|
|< Prev||Next >|
|Aerospace Manufacturing and Design|
|Beverage World Magazine|
|Supply & Demand Chain Executive|
|NASA Tech Briefs|
|Renewable Energy World|
|Free Download Film|
|Sex for Dummies|
|The Old Man and The Sea|
|Kraft Foods Magazine| | <urn:uuid:c7665cc2-5b31-4f55-8be3-85bc35bd9e4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asiaing.com/guide-to-long-term-care-insurance.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940398 | 661 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Select a Destination
Nadi Area Attractions
Nadi Area Attractions
Set in the heart of Suva's historical Thurston Gardens, the Fiji Museum is unrivaled in the islands for the extent of its collection of anthropological and historical material, having been founded much earlier than other Pacific Island Museums. It holds a remarkable collection which includes archaeological material dating back over 3,500 years and cultural objects representing indigenous, Indo-Fijian and other communities that have settled in the island group over the past 200 years.
Archaeology shows that Fiji was first colonized by people who used the distinctive and intricately decorated pottery known as 'Lapita', dated between 1736 and 1266 BC. This gallery leads us through the future migrations of people to the early 1900s and introduces us to Vitian life, including tribal warfare, cannibalism, and Ratu Finau - the last waqa drua (double-hulled ocean going canoe) made in Vulaga in 1913.
From western awareness of the Fiji Islands in 1643 to the arrival of bêche-de-mer, copra and sandalwood traders, 1800-1850, to the colonials and indentured labor, 1879-1920. See the infamous remains of the sole of Reverend Baker's boot, the only non-Fijian Missionary known to have been killed and eaten; and the rudder of HMS Bounty - subject of the famous mutiny in 1789. The Bounty was burned by the mutineers at Pitcairn Island, its remains being recovered in 1932. Also on display is a copy of the Deed of Cession when Fiji became a colony of Great Britain, the medals of the great statesman Ratu Josefa Lalabalavu Vanaaliali Sukuna, and the figurehead of the Siria - a vessel that brought many indentured laborers to Fiji and was wrecked on Nasilai reef with the tragic loss of many lives
Temporary Exhibition Space
This space contains rotating exhibitions of items in the Fiji Museum collection. Please phone the museum for details of the exhibition currently on display, or if you would like to use this space for your own exhibition.
Masi beaten into a 'cloth' from the bark of a paper mulberry tree, is an integral and traditional part of life in Fiji. Its manufacture is still a regular part of village life and its uses are many and varied. Masi was once used for clothing, in worship, warfare and ceremonial duties and for all manner of chiefly and family celebrations. Today it is particularly important in marriage and funeral ceremonies, and is used as a decorative item by both Fijians and visitors alike.
From 1879-1920, 60,000 Indians came to Fiji under girmit - an agreement of five years servitude on a plantation in Fiji. Two-thirds of the Indians remained in Fiji after their girmit and their descendents now make up nearly half the population. This gallery tells the story of the indentured laborers and their families, and the customs and traditions they brought with them from all over the Subcontinent.
The art gallery contains rotating exhibitions of items in the Fiji Museum collection and the work of local artists - professional and amateur alike (sometimes available for purchase). Please ask for details of the exhibition currently on display, or if you would like to use the gallery for your own exhibition.
Fiji Museum Gift Shop
Contains a wide selection of historical and cultural publications - many printed by the Fiji Museum, exclusive handmade replica artifacts, carving, jewellery, handicrafts, masi, pottery and weaving. Plus books, cards, charts, clothing, paintings, posters and more.
Verandah & Mosamosa Cafe
An elegant, covered area available for exhibitions, functions and demonstrations - local potters work on the verandah regularly. The museum and the Friends of the Fiji Museum use this space for social evenings of a historical or cultural nature, quiz nights and the annual fundraising ball. Please contact the museum for details of the next function, or if you would like to use this attractive space for an event yourself. The café serves a wide range of hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, snacks and cakes.
The two main pottery-making areas for traditional potters in Fiji today are Sigatoka and Rewa. Most Thursdays and Fridays Traivina Wati, a skilled potter from Nasilai in Rewa Delta demonstrates her pottery making skills at the Museum. She is joined by Daiana Tuqea from Nakabuta in the Sigatoka Valley on the first week of every month.
The library contains a wealth of material on a diverse range of subjects especially Pacific culture and history. Many of the 12,500 plus books and periodicals are not held in any other library. There is also a unique collection of over 10,000 historical photographs, copies of which are available to view. Reprints of these photographs can be ordered for personal and limited commercial use.
The Garden of the Sleeping Giant
The Garden of the Sleeping Giant sits at the foothills of the Nausori Highlands about 10 minutes drive north of Nadi. The attractive landscaped gardens specialize in Fiji's native plants as well as housing an impressive collection of orchids, some native. A jungle walk takes visitors past a large lily pond and through native forest.
Located about half an hour from Nadi, The Garden of Sleeping Giant is a beautiful orchid range started in 1977 by the late Raymond Burr, star of Perry Mason and Ironside.
Originally designed to house Burr's private collection of tropical orchids, the gardens have developed into a popular attraction after years of flourishing. Raymond Burr loved these orchids just as much as he loved Fiji.
The gardens showcase more than two thousand different kinds of orchids, covering 20 hectares. For an entry fee of just $10, you can wander through the lush and fertile plantation to your heart's content. Right next door is Raymond Burr's holiday shack, which is also open to visitors.
The shack still contains a few items that belonged to the superstar, including photographs, his favorite chair and even his walking cane. It costs about $8 to see the house, and the entry price includes a delightful afternoon tea.
Whether you are into gardens or not, the Garden of the Sleeping Giant is sure to take your breath away. The exquisite beauty of the garden is unsurpassed by most, housing one of the world's largest orchid collections plus beautiful cultivated greenery and enchanting lily ponds, the Garden of the Sleeping Giant is not to be missed. Take a picnic and enjoy the peace and serenity of some of the most stunning gardens on earth. The gardens are open Monday to Saturdays - 9 am to 5 pm.
- Koroyanitu National Park, Nadi Area, Viti Levu
- Sigatoka Sandunes National Park, Viti Levu
- Colo-i-Suva Forest Reserve, Suva, Viti Levu
- Bouma National Park, Taveuni, Northern Islands
- Nausori Highlands, Nadi Area, Viti Levu
- Lovoni Trail, Ovalau, Lomaiviti Group
The Church of Saint Francis Xavier
High on the hill overlooking the dusty Kings Road on the north-western side of Fiji's main island of Viti Levu is a theologian's enigma.
Astride a village green and unable to be seen from the road is a stone church of distinctly European design that looks a little worse from wear from the outside but houses one of Fiji's most surprising modern treasures.
The Church of Saint Francis Xavier at Navuibutu was officially dedicated in 1917 after a decision was made to shift from the original mission site in 1895. This followed the arrival of the Marist missionaries to the area in 1889, and the establishment of a Catholic presence in the Ra province in 1870.
While the church looks traditionally European from the outside, the use of mats instead of pews for parishioners gives it a Fijian village flavor.
What makes the Navuibutu church so unusual is the murals, a series of frescos originally commissioned by one time chaplain to Austria's famous Von Trapp family, Monsignor Fanz Wasner.
The murals, done in true fresco style by painting on top of wet plaster, were created by Frenchman Jean Chalot, assisted by his wife Zohman and son Martin, between October 1962 and January 1963.
Nadi Area Activities
Hotels; Denarau island, Visit beaches, inland tours, boatrides to outer islands, shot over jet rides, paradise balloons, helicopter rides, sea planes, water skiing, parasailing and snorkeling.
A striking feature is the Hindu temple at the southern end of town. A half-hour drive south will bring the visitor to Natadola beach, one of the outstanding beaches in Fiji. Visitors to Nadi have many options for tours to villages, to orchid gardens, cultural centers, cruises to islands and along rivers to remote villages where they will be treated to a yaqona ceremony, traditional entertainment, a village meal and in some cases also have the opportunity to witness pottery being made in a time-honored way. They can also visit an old fort site and take a road tour of the highlands.
Shopping/Business and shopping hours
Handicraft, jewellery including traditional and souvenir, souvenir garments and other duty free items.
Shopping hours are from 8.00a.m. to 7.00p.m. Sunday and public holiday trading is also permitted.
Handicrafts shops, drapery shops, supermarkets, shopping mall, pharmacy. Shopping facilities are also available in major hotels within the Nadi area on a 24-hours basis.
Although many hotels and resorts have shopping on site, Nadi town is a popular shopping destination. Jewellery, cameras, high fidelity audio equipment, clothes, handicrafts, artefacts, souvenir items, original artworks are among the many items on offer.
Available at Nadi Sports club, Denarau Golf and racquet club, Nadi Airport golf club and Prince Charles Park for more organized sporting events.
Night clubs, cinemas and hotel - dance and Karaoke
Upcoming events/orgainzed activities
Nadi Bula festival, Voualevu Horse races and the Inter District Soccer Tournament. | <urn:uuid:3eb535ed-550a-4e83-8751-ffe237cb9d88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pleasantholidays.com/PleasantHolidaysWeb/Fiji-FunThings-Nadi_Area | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941159 | 2,163 | 2.75 | 3 |
Traces of the fuel additive MTBE have turned up in three private wells in the vicinity of a Top Star Express gas station at Route 663 and Milford Square Pike in Milford Township where a gasoline spill was discovered in December.
Township supervisors learned the results of a recent state Department of Environmental Protection study of the spill at their meeting Tuesday.
Water samples from 11 wells within a quarter-mile of the site were tested between January and March. According to the report, three were found to be contaminated with MTBE, short for methyl tertiary butyl ether. The potentially carcinogenic chemical is added to gasoline to make it burn cleaner.
Wells at 2025, 2045 and 2055 Milford Square Pike were found to have MTBE levels of 45, 22, and 4.6 parts per billion, respectively. Pennsylvania's health standard for MTBE is 20 ppb.
The homes with levels above 20 ppb began receiving bottled water within 48 hours of the discovery of the contamination, supervisors learned, and were connected to the public water supply by April 11.
Five other homes on Milford Square Pike also are being connected to the municipal water supply.
Top Star officials reported the spill to the DEP in December during the replacement of underground storage tanks. The company had just purchased the station and was renovating the site.
Top Star was required to search for contaminated wells and test water.
The DEP report states that the underground storage tanks were replaced and that soil on the site was tested and no contamination above the state standard was found. Six monitoring wells have been installed at the gas station.
The DEP has not received the results of the groundwater tests.
MTBE contamination has been discovered in a number of communities in the region, including Blue Bell and Hilltown, Bedminster, Buckingham, Doylestown, Warminster and Warrington townships.
No MTBE contamination had previously been found in Milford Township, Township Manager Jeffrey Vey said. | <urn:uuid:d312a931-dea0-42c8-afae-b1de0297acca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.mcall.com/2001-06-07/news/3354637_1_mtbe-contamination-gas-station | 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 | 0.979169 | 404 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The Dublin government borrowers will raise 20 billion euro from international markets this year to keep the country running, it has been confirmed.
The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which secures loans on behalf of the state, said the amount needed to cover spending fell from last year and it is getting cheaper to borrow money.
John Corrigan, NTMA chief executive, said last year's difficulties were exceptional.
"The challenges which Ireland faced in the international bond markets coming into 2009 were exceptional in terms of the level of our funding requirement, investor sentiment, competition for available funds and market volatility," he said.
"However, the strong liquidity position that we built up in 2008 enabled us to time our entry into the markets carefully and to take advantage of more positive investor sentiment towards Ireland as the year progressed."
At the end of 2009, Ireland's national debt stood at 75.2 billion euro.
The NTMA will also help the bad-bank National Assets Management Agency operate and Mr Corrigan said it was on course to begin taking failing loans on to its books this Spring.
It is expected to take on 80 billion euro worth of loans by the end of September. | <urn:uuid:1941b5aa-6901-417f-ae2c-955709436243> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/business-news/republics-government-to-borrow-20bn-euro-28510252.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964162 | 239 | 1.554688 | 2 |
In a Newark playground,
who shall live and who shall die?
With his latest novel, “Nemesis” (Houghton Mifflin), Philip Roth enters the realm of theology. Set in the summer of 1944, in the mostly Jewish Weequahic section of Newark, it is ostensibly the story of Bucky Cantor, a vital, young, virtue-driven athlete and gym teacher deemed unfit for World War II combat because of his faulty eyesight. His field of battle, instead, becomes the neighborhood playground where, in his job as the playground director, he watches on, helplessly as a brutal polio epidemic kills and maims one after another of the youngsters under his supposed protection.
It is not only the suddenness and severity of these cases that test Bucky’s faith. The random nature of who is struck down, and who is spared, challenges his understanding of the justness of the universe. The broken record inside his head stubbornly demands answers to questions that are unanswerable: Why do the innocent suffer? How can a benign God allow children to die?
Certainly, Bucky is not the first whose world view — and life course — is turned upside down by personal tragedy or public catastrophe. Over the millennia, believers and non-believers alike have wrestled with the meaning — or lack of meaning — of unwarranted misery (see the Book of Job, for starters). And as painful as accommodation to life’s disasters can be, it’s a sad truth that to be human is to be vulnerable. But the unaccepting Bucky rejects such a stance.
One reason, perhaps, is that he sees himself as something more than an ordinary mortal. Call it hubris, but Bucky’s self-image, as portrayed by Roth, is not that of a military reject but that of a Hercules-like hero in search of a mission that is worthy of his physical strength (he is a strong athlete who excels at the javelin throw) as well as of his self-defining sense of responsibility towards his charges, who in turn view him as their champion. Brought up by loving grandparents after the death of his mother in childbirth and the imprisonment of his gambler father for larceny, Bucky wears his moral fortitude as a badge of honor — and maybe, too, as a way of making amends for his father’s crimes, as well as for his own “crime” of inadvertently killing his mother by being born.
No wonder that Bucky regards the polio epidemic as an enemy to be kept at bay. Yet his javelin is a useless weapon when it comes to shielding a community against a microscopic virus. Moreover, with so little then known about the polio virus (the preventive vaccine was not developed until the 1950s), it also quickly becomes clear that there is another adversary with which to contend: hysteria. Fear and paranoia prove just as, if not more, contagious than polio itself as parents begin to irrationally blame Bucky for the spread of infection. And the once self-confident Bucky, now guilt-ridden over his impotence in the face of disaster, is more than willing to scapegoat himself.
Soon Bucky’s fiancée, who is spending the summer as a head counselor at a summer camp in the Poconos, convinces him to flee the polio cohort in Newark for what she believes is the safe haven of the bucolic countryside. And then, all too predictably, the plague finds its way there, too.
“Why?” That is the devastating refrain heard throughout this compact novel, and from that mournful howl emerges the bleak theology at the novel’s core. At the novel’s outset Bucky is presented as a non-observant Jew who nonetheless does not question his belief in God. But the words of what Bucky caustically calls “the God-glorifying Kaddish,” recited at the funeral of the first neighborhood child to die of polio, make him gag with indignation. “How could there be forgiveness — let alone hallelujahs — in the face of such lunatic cruelty?” he rages.
But for all of Bucky’s outrage at God, the idea of a random universe ruled by mere chance and contingency is not appealing, either. In Bucky’s view, someone has to be responsible for the damage done by the polio epidemic, and if not God, then who? Feeling betrayed by God, Bucky lapses into bitterness and self-pity.
Roth’s own rejection of God comes through in his decision to present Bucky’s story through the framework of the “pagan” Greek concept of Nemesis, of fate. Indeed, if the details of Bucky’s life history start to sound like a Greek myth, with Bucky’s role that of a demi-God attempting to outsmart the gods of polio, Roth’s choice of title confirms it. Nemesis was the mythological goddess of divine retribution from whom there is no escape. Even today, when we’re more apt to use the word as a synonym for a relentless enemy or remorseless rival, it still implies the idea of the inevitable, that however far and fast you run, your nemesis, your fate, will nonetheless outpace you.
Roth further underscores the ancient Greek notion of the inexorable by grouping “Nemesis” with his three other recent novels — “Everyman,” “Indignation” and “The Humbling” — under the label, “Nemeses: Short Novels.” Read together, they form a theme and variations on the futility of trying to extricate oneself from our ultimate destiny: death and decay. “Everyman” surveys the life and death of a man haunted by the notion that he will die — as he does — in lonely oblivion. In “Indignation,” a college student who has come of age during the Korean War works every angle to avoid the draft, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that will lead to his becoming fodder for the battlefield. In “The Humbling,” an aging actor attempts to regain his fluency as a performer, and in so doing sets the stage for his own demise. The very titles of these novels resonate with the bell toll of mortality. Death is everyman’s (and every woman’s) nemesis, these books proclaim — our indignation, our humbling, our dust. The real myth, Roth suggests, is not Nemesis, but God.
To be sure, these are not cheery novels, and with the exception of “Indignation” (my favorite and in my view the strongest of the four), they do not crackle with Roth’s characteristic dark humor. They are, instead, different shades of dark. But what contrasts Roth nonetheless manages to paint within that palette! As the details of the polio outbreak unfold in “Nemesis,” for instance, Roth presents so stiflingly vivid an evocation of summer heat that the relentless sun beating down on the neighborhood’s parched trees and buckling pavement becomes a metaphor for the heartlessness of God and nature. It’s all the more cruel, therefore, when Bucky, amid the fresh grass and cool lakes of the Poconos, at first glories in this newly benign sun — until, that is, it shows itself as merciless as ever.
Throughout, Roth writes with the charred brilliance of a sun-scorched day in Hades. But despite the tight uncoiling of the novel’s first half, Roth’s elegant language and technical mastery cannot keep the novel’s second half from sagging. As a result, in the end, Bucky’s story is neither tragic nor cathartic but merely and unutterably sad. What remains most searing is Roth’s vision of an empty abyss from which no God, and no myth, can shield us.
Diane Cole is the author of the memoir, “After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges” and a contributing editor of U.S. News & World Report.
The Jewish Week feels comments create a valuable conversation and wants to feature your thoughts on our website. To make everyone feel welcome, we won't publish comments that are profane, irrelevant, promotional or make personal attacks.
Recent Special Sections | <urn:uuid:e7e02fee-6f5d-4279-b310-a557419147a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thejewishweek.com/special_sections/literary_guides/roth_theologian | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959141 | 1,789 | 1.828125 | 2 |
24 Hours inside the President's Bunker: 9-11-01: The White House
by Lt. Col. Robert J. Darling, USMC (Ret)
Visit the Order Page
After Maj. Robert J. Darling organizes President Bush's trip to Florida on Sept. 10, 2001, he believes the next couple of days will be quiet. He has no idea that a war is about to begin.
The next day, after terrorists crash airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Maj. Darling rushes to the president's underground chamber at the White House. There, he takes on the task of liaison between the vice president, national security advisor and the Pentagon. He works directly with the National Command Authority, and he's in the room when Vice President Cheney orders two fighter jets to get airborne in order to shoot down United Flight 93.
Throughout the attacks, Maj. Darling witnesses the unprecedented actions that leaders are taking to defend America. As Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others make decisions at a lightning pace with little or no deliberation, he's there to lend his support.
Follow Darling's story as he becomes a Marine Corps aviator and rises through the ranks to play an incredible role in responding to a crisis that changed the world in 9-11-01: The White House: Twenty-Four Hours inside the President's Bunker. | <urn:uuid:3a5b39b0-26e0-4a9a-ad48-38164d9d3b6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://24hoursinsidethepresidentsbunker.com/book_236.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929365 | 285 | 1.921875 | 2 |
In his prepared remarks during Wednesday’s House hearing on government-sponsored enterprises, Capital Markets and GSEs subcommittee Chairman Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) blamed the housing market meltdown on “bad mortgages.”
Garrett further defined bad mortgages to mean subprime mortgages to risky, low-income borrowers that were purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Dodd-Frank regulations don’t address the cause of bad mortgages, Garrett said. Rather, bad mortgages were the product of federal housing policy that intended to increase homeownership among low-income borrowers, coupled with “loose money from the Federal Reserve.”
“Those are the areas where we must focus reform,” Garrett said.
Could House Republican reforms that limit or eliminate guarantees on mortgages to low-income borrowers effect credit union lending?
Yes, said CUNA Chief Economist Bill Hampel. Tighter secondary market standards could indeed affect credit unions that serve riskier borrowers, which Hampel said would be “a shame because not all loans to riskier borrowers are ‘bad mortgages’.”
Credit unions held most of their new mortgages on their books pre-crisis, Hampel said, which resulted in lower loss rates.
“This suggests credit unions were successfully lending to all types of borrowers,” he said.
However, interest rate risk makes holding any significant amount of new mortgages on the books “perilous,” Hampel said.
“This is why it is so important that credit unions have unencumbered access to the secondary market, to be able to lend when interest rates are too low for loans to be funded by shares and deposits,” he said. | <urn:uuid:5f127b9c-ab25-4c7c-a284-22f1ef1bd04f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cutimes.com/2013/03/07/cunas-hampel-gse-reforms-could-hurt-cu-low-income?t=technologytwashington | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967793 | 357 | 2.0625 | 2 |
The reason it’s important to do well on the SATs is because your score tells colleges how smart you are. The smarter you are, the better your chances of getting into a prestigious university because, let’s face it: The last thing any university wants is a bunch of dumb students who need to be educated, even if they are paying $40,000 a year toward a degree which, in many cases, still won’t provide them with their most valuable document — a food handler’s card.
Being a writer, I’ve naturally spent many rewarding years in the food service industry. And I can tell you that SAT scores don’t matter when you’re working the late shift at Denny’s next to a sweaty, one-eyed fry cook whose nickname is “Mr. Sizzles.”
What matters is learning to stay away from his blind side whenever someone orders the fried platter.
But I digress.
Like it or not, you need to have a good SAT score if you want any chance of getting into college and experiencing that crowning moment when, surrounded by family and friends, you suddenly realize you’re in a commercial for the new Girls Gone Wild! video.
Therefore, as a service to students, I’d like to provide some useful tips on how to prepare for the SATs. This information is based on my own experience when, as a high school senior, I was tested regularly for a period of 90 days following a trip to Tijuana, Mexico.
To begin with, page two of your SAT handbook clearly states that anyone caught cheating will automatically be expelled and the action duly noted on their student record. Naturally, this will be a huge disadvantage for anyone applying to anything other than Electoral College. My suggestion, as you might’ve guessed, would be to avoid this situation entirely by making sure you go into your exam fully prepared to rip page two right out of your handbook.
Ha! Just kidding! That would be irresponsible of me!
It’s actually on page four.
Okay, seriously — cheating is bad. And, unless you have a very good press secretary, you’re going to get caught. This means you’ll have to study.
Studying, as you know, requires organization and a willingness to sacrifice time you would otherwise spend doing something more exciting.
Such as lancing your own boil.
My point being that no one ever said it would be easy. However, I can promise you that the harder you work at it, the more gratifying it will be once people have stopped staring at the side of your neck.
Especially during the SATs.
That said, I wish you the best on your exam.
And so does “Mr. Sizzles.”
(You can write to Ned Hickson at firstname.lastname@example.org, or at the Siuslaw News at P.O. Box 10, Florence, OR 97439) | <urn:uuid:28930657-c227-47af-8a63-5fd5ca83841f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nedhickson.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/got-the-late-shift-at-dennys-compare-sat-scores-with-mr-sizzles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958068 | 632 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The tallest freestanding sculpture in the UK
Welcome to Aspire – the UK’s tallest freestanding sculpture and a new landmark for Nottingham and Britain. At 60 metres high, this towering fusion of architecture and engineering has created a work of public art which will change the Nottingham skyline forever.
Aspire stands for the aspirations of the city and people of Nottingham. Aspire stands for the ambition, knowledge and world leading innovation of The University of Nottingham. Above all, Aspire stands as a towering affirmation of optimism for the future.
The Aspire sculpture has been paid for by the generous donation of an anonymous benefactor. We are pleased to confirm that no student fees or costs to the people of Nottingham have been used to pay for Aspire.
since Aspire has been in existence | <urn:uuid:c48e9cfe-224c-4ada-a037-0278069ecf65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aspire.nottingham.ac.uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933555 | 162 | 1.578125 | 2 |
TSCA Environmental Release Application (TERA) for Alcaligenes xylosoxidans subspecies denitrificans strain AL6.1, R04-03
On April 21, 2004, the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics approved the TSCA Environmental Release Application (TERA) under the biotechnology regulations promulgated under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The TERA, submitted by the University of California, Riverside, involves field trials of a modified strains of Alcaligenes xylosoxidans subspecies denitrificans (Axd) strain AL6.1. The TERA was given the tracking designation of R04-0003 (previously reviewed under tracking designation R03-0001). The microorganism will be tested at three of the same four test sites as in TERA R03-0001 in California to determine its biology and behavior in vineyard ecosystems. The eventual application of such technology would be the development of a paratransgenesis system to control Pierce’s disease of grapes, a widespread devastating disease caused by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (X. fastidiosa). The field trials were set to run from the week of May 1, 2004 until the end of the growing and harvest season, approximately December 15, 2005.
PROPOSED USE AND FIELD STUDY
The bacterium will be used for small-scale research and development field trails to continue studying its biology and behavior in vineyard ecosystems at 3 of the 4 sites used in the previous submission, R03-0001. The X. fastidiosa pathogen is spread throughout grape growing regions by the glassy-winged sharpshooter (GWSS), a large leafhopper insect. Since the parental strain of Axd AL6.1 was originally isolated from the GWSS, the researchers ultimately plan to use the GWSS as a delivery vector of Axd carrying a pesticidal gene antagonist to X. fastidiosa to the xylem of grapevines where the pathogenic bacterium resides.
The current proposed field trials, as well as the previous field trials, are preliminary investigations whereby the AL6.1 stain contains only the DsRed marker gene to evaluate the survival of Axd in and on the vines and fruit, and to discover if the bacterial inoculant will persist long enough in the xylem to serve as a delivery vehicle for a pesticidal gene product antagonistic to X. fastidiosa. This is a TSCA application because there is a field release of an intergeneric microorganism, AL6.1, without a pesticidal gene insert. If positive results are obtained from these field tests and the researchers subsequently insert a pesticidal gene into the AL6.1 strain of Axd, any future testing will fall under the Office of Pesticide Programs.
The EPA requirements concerning microbial products subject to TSCA (15 U.S.C. Section 2601, et seq.) are set forth in “Microbial Products of Biotechnology; Final Regulation under the Toxic Substances Control Act” (62 FR 17910 (April 11, 1997)) and codified at 40 C.F.R. Part 725. Microorganisms resulting from the deliberate combination of genetic material originally isolated from organisms of different taxonomic genera (intergeneric microorganisms) constitute “new” microorganisms subject to TSCA Section 5 notification requirements. Persons who manufacture, import, or process intergeneric microorganisms for commercial purposes subject to EPA jurisdiction under TSCA, are required to submit a Microbial Commercial Activity Notice (MCAN). Persons conducting commercial research and development activities may submit a TERA, instead of an MCAN, before initiation of such testing. EPA conducts a review of these submissions to determine whether the intergeneric microorganisms present an unreasonable risk to health or the environment. The Agency can impose regulatory controls under Section 5 of TSCA.
GENETIC CHARACTERISTICS OF MICROORGANISM
As discussed in the risk assessment for R03-0001, there were proposed changes in the taxonomy of the submission strain, Alcaligenes xylosoxidans subsp. denitrificans. In 1998, it was proposed that Alcaligenes xylosoxidans be transferred to the genus Achromobacter to become Achromobacter xylosoxidans subsp. denitrificans. More recently, this proposal was refuted and a new name, Achromobacter denitrificans, was proposed.
SUMMARY OF THE RISK ASSESSMENT
Based on available data and the R03-01 submission, there is low concern for potential toxicity of the recipient microorganism and the introduced genetic material. Although there are some uncertainties associated with the genetic construct, the risk to humans or the environment is low due to the low exposure conditions of the contained field tests. Additionally, the recipient species, Axd, is not a frank pathogen, although it has been associated with some opportunistic infections. No data is available regarding the toxicity associated with exposure to the DsRed fluorescent protein. However, the DsRed fluorescent protein may present some cytotoxicity when expressed in certain cells.
EPA has determined that the proposed small-scale field trials of these intergeneric microorganisms will not present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment. In the TERA approval letter, EPA advised the submitter that each grape plant should be destroyed at the end of the experiment, by incinerating the vines, as well as digging up and autoclaving the root balls, as there is potential for widespread exposure of the bacterium once the Reemay fabric covers are removed and insect vectors can transport the bacterium to other crops. In addition, the submitter is informed that the issue of gene transfer must be addressed in greater detail if the microorganisms are ever proposed for large scale testing or submitted as MCANs.
For a copy of the original nonconfidential TERAs and the nonconfidential approval letter, please contact the TSCA Non Confidential Information Center (NCIC) by phone at 202-566-0280, or by fax at 202-566-0282. | <urn:uuid:0e961892-5939-4af4-8080-3fb4039d2408> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.epa.gov/biotech_rule/pubs/submissions/r040003.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911876 | 1,298 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells are distinguished by gene expression signatures.
Cell Stem Cell
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) outwardly appear to be indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells (ESCs). A study of gene expression profiles of mouse and human ESCs and iPSCs suggests that, while iPSCs are quite similar to their embryonic counterparts, a recurrent gene expression signature appears in iPSCs regardless of their origin or the method by which they were generated. Upon extended culture, hiPSCs adopt a gene expression profile more similar to hESCs; however, they still retain a gene expression signature unique from hESCs that extends to miRNA expression. Genome-wide data suggested that the iPSC signature gene expression differences are due to differential promoter binding by the reprogramming factors. High-resolution array profiling demonstrated that there is no common specific subkaryotypic alteration that is required for reprogramming and that reprogramming does not lead to genomic instability. Together, these data suggest that iPSCs should be considered a unique subtype of pluripotent cell. | <urn:uuid:2f8ecb2c-f96b-4b7c-b2ac-f2b3d313af12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cirm.ca.gov/about-cirm/publications/induced-pluripotent-stem-cells-and-embryonic-stem-cells-are-distinguished | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920447 | 231 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Book Description: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most widely used treatment for depression for one simple reason: it works. The CBT program in this workbook has helped thousands of readers defeat the depressive thoughts and beliefs that keep them from enjoying life and feeling like themselves. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression delivers evidence-based tools you can confidently use to do better, feel better, and prevent depression from coming back.Through a series of worksheets and exercises, you’ll evaluate your depression and learn key skills for overcoming it. Once you have your depression symptoms under control, you will appreciate the additional information on preventing relapse that is special to this new edition. This workbook also includes twenty-five bonus tips from depression experts that can jump-start your recovery. Recommended by therapists nationwide, this workbook will help you bounce back from depression, one solid step at a time.Includes worksheets and exercises that will help you: • Move past the negative beliefs about yourself that keep you trapped in the depression cycle • Apply behavioral techniques that therapists use with their clients, such as activity scheduling • Discover effective ways to cope with feelings of stress, anxiety, and anger • Avoid procrastinating and learn to anchor the positive changes you make to maintain your progress“Chock-full of the ready-to-use strategies you will need to help you feel good again.” —Jon Carlson, PsyD, EdD, Distinguished Professor at Governors State UniversityThis book has received the prestigious accolade of being included in The Albert Ellis Tribute Book Series—created to honor the life and work of Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT). REBT is one of the most widely-practiced therapies throughout the world and is the foundation for cognitive-behavioral therapy and other evidence-based approaches. These books provide proven-effective treatments and tools to improve psychological well-being, while also supporting advancements in psychotherapy for the betterment of humanity. | <urn:uuid:0b95ecf6-be09-44ba-81b7-9010e0c9c733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campusbooks.com/books/health-mind-body/mental-health/mood-disorders/9781608823802_Bill-Knaus-Albert-Ellis-PhD-Bill-Knaus-Bill-Knaus-EdD-William.html | 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 | 0.934929 | 412 | 2.09375 | 2 |
I don't know how it's achieved or what it's called, but occasionally in a movie I see an effect in which the perspective of the scene is modified in such a way that the objects that are further away ...
I have a AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II and am planning to buy this AF NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8D does that make any sense? I'm interested in taking pictures that has lot of DoF. Something ...
What are the best practices for DOF stacking? How do you get the frames with focus just right amount apart? How do you stack them in post processing?
I'd like a clear & easy-to-understand (especially for non-physics-types) explanation of what Hyperfocal Distance is, how it affects photographs, and what determines its value.
How does aperture affect my photographs? Why should I care about the aperture with which a photo was taken?
I'm curious about how my "area of acceptable focus" changes when the focal length of the lens I'm using changes as I zoom (or switch lenses). In particular, I'd like to know how the front & back ...
I have a compact digital camera, and in macro mode I can manage to achieve a blurred background, if the background is far enough away. Can this be done when taking non-macro pictures, and if not, is ...
I know that it occurs when there's a shallow depth of field, but what are the various ways I can increase this effect in my photos when I'm taking them? Note that I'm not asking how to use an ... | <urn:uuid:1506fbd4-c78d-4db7-b0bd-f0c357aa73f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/depth-of-field?page=3&sort=newest&pagesize=15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943401 | 349 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Did you mean?Try your search again
Browsing around San Antonio's Art Village, La Villita (Little Village), is as interesting for history buffs as it is for shoppers. The little houses that line the shady streets may now all be shops and galleries but their first life was as housing for Spanish troops stationed at the Mission San Antonio Valero when San Antonio was first settled. The adobe and stone cottages we see today were built to replace the original slab huts that were washed away in the flood of 1819. Santa Ana's Mexican army stationed the cannons that fired on the Alamo here. In the more peaceful times that followed German and French imigrants moved into the little houses but as people prospered and the city grew, La Villita became something of a slum. The development of the adjacent River Walk in the late 1930s saw a revival of interest in the historic old area and today the village is the centre of a thriving arts community, its old buildings preserved and cherished.
What to buy: There's something for everyone at La Villita, virtually all of it hand-crafted and unique. Jewellery, ceramics, textiles, glass, fine art, leather and more - the most resistant of non-shoppers could be tempted here and even if you hold out against adding yet another thing to your over-stuffed baggage, a set of notecards with water colour sketches of the old buildings won't take up any room, will they?
Updated Apr 4, 2011
Address: S Alamo @ Nueva or Riverwalk @ Arneson Theatre
This outdoor mall is beautifully landscaped which makes it much nicer than you typical mall. All of the upscale shops are there Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Tiffanys, Cole Han, Kenneth Cole, Betsy Johnson, Tumi, Sephora just to name a few.
Plus Kona Grill and PF Changs to have lunch.
What to buy: All the great shopping you would expect at a good mall
Updated Apr 4, 2011
Address: I 10 and 1604
Best grocery store for hard-to-find spices and foods. Don't let the valet parking option scare you--the food is not that expensive. However, I wouldn't recommend buying "normal" foods there, because you can get those much cheaper at one of the million HEB grocery stores around town. But for gourmet foods and tons of ready-made, unique meals, this is the place.
Updated Apr 4, 2011
Address: 4821 Broadway
Located inside the Mission San Jose in San Antonio Missions National Historic Parks, the Spanish Colonial Bookstore is a nice little shop dedicated to a lot of historical documents and books, as well as plenty of smaller children's books to make sure the kids that come to visit are well entertained and keep the memories of this trip.
What to buy: In particular, on this trip, we picked up some children's books on Javelinas. Javelinas are small piglike peccaries that are found mostly in the Texas coastal plains. The shop also contains information about Texas, Mexican and Spanish history.
What to pay: There were options for all budgets.
Written Oct 13, 2008
North Star Mall is relatively close to the downtown area compared to other malls. Sakes Fifth Avenue and Macy's are anchors to the mall (however they seem to be scaled down in terms of merchandise). It is well laid out and attractive. Smaller upscale shops include Sephora, Juicy Couture and Just Dogs. The remaining stores are typical outlets you can find in your standard mall.
Valet parking is available at the Cheesecake Factory entrance. You will find more upscale shopping at the Shops at La Cantera, however if you are not wanting to drive that far outside of San Antonio, the North Star Mall is an excellent alternative.
What to buy: Unique makeup collections at Sephora and upscale bakery items for your doggie at Just Dogs.
What to pay: $500-$750
Written May 24, 2008
I wonder if Davey Crockett or William Travis ever envisioned what was once an invasion being a quaint little area full of shops. Alamo Plaza is a very charming shopping area with a lil up gazebo in the middle. Many people stop and eat a preztel or maybe some ice cream while letting the kids play in the square. Along the area are small, local shops selling anything from antiques to souvenirs to custom made crafts.
Some may bypass these shops since they are so close to RiverCenter Mall. But don't let the mall stop you from enjoying a smaller, more intimate groups of stores.
What to buy: In San Antonio you will see a lot of items from the Mexican heritage. Especially great when shopping for Christmas gifts! You can get anyone something here.
What to pay: You can spend anywhere from $1-as much as you can afford
Written Jan 21, 2008
Address: 300 Alamo Plaza
For that unique piece, stop by The Village Gallery in La Villita, where the shop offers stoneware and pottery distinctive of Texas.
I quickly found a great looking spoon rest and a cheese tray as I browsed through the rooms (picture 2). The stoneware was beautifully arranged in sets, so it was simple to select something that matched. The difficult part was making a choice--so many color combinations!
Several small rooms and second floor comprise the cozy shop, all stacked with wonderful things. I'll definitely want to stop by another time. The best part about shopping in La Villita is its historic charm!
Updated Jan 10, 2008
Address: 502 Villita St., San Antonio,Tx.
I wanted to find a pretty piece of silver jewelry to take home as a memento, so while we were exploring La Villita (one of the oldest settlements in San Antonio) I stopped by Chamade Jewelers.
I found an interesting torquoise pendant on a silver chain, but there were other unique pieces crafted of silver that were very nice. Rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, charms and pendants filled the jewelry cases. I noticed they also sold estate jewelry.
While I was here, at least two people came in to have a piece of old jewelry redesigned. The service was excellent and the saleswoman spent quite a bit of time guiding me around the sales room to the different jewelry cases.
Chamade is open daily and accepts all major credit cards.
What to buy: Silver jewelry
Updated Jan 9, 2008
Address: 504 Villita Street, San Antonio,Tx
This is the best and newest shopping mall in San Antonio. It has a wonderful outdoor atmosphere with the best department stores and fine dining. If you are looking for Nordstrom's, Nieman Marcus, Tiffany's, Tommy Bahama, or other places like this, here is where you'll find them. It's located next to the Six Flags amusement park, Fiesta Texas, so the kids have something to do afterwards. Across the highway (Interstate 10), are more shops and a wonderful, new movie theater.
Written Jan 1, 2008
Address: 15900 La Cantera Pkwy
Located in San Marcos, about an hour drive from San Antonio is the Prime Retail Outlet. The outlet was recently named the 3rd best shopping place in the world (according to ABC's The View), and I totally agree.
Across the Street is Tanger Outlet. These outlets have EVERYTHING at reasonable prices. Shops include: The Pottery Barn Outlet, Anne Klein Outlet, Tommy Bahama's, Neiman Marcus Last Call Clearance Center and many, many more. My husband, who doesn't like to shop, enjoyed himself here, and even picked up a few things for himself!Located
Written Apr 14, 2007
Hotel Contessa San Antonio
4 Reviews and 1006 Opinions The hotel was nice and so was the staff. They fixed a problem with our door within 5 minutes and...
Watermark Hotel And Spa San Antonio
1 Review and 337 Opinions The room, although looked out to neighboring rooftops (such is the riverwalk setup) was very well...
Best Western Sunset Suites Riverwalk San Antonio
4 Reviews and 322 Opinions Let me start by saying the hotel is actually very nice. The room was clean and the lobby area very... | <urn:uuid:fe95d7fb-6a7d-4855-989f-a87b7ae93193> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/North_America/United_States_of_America/Texas/San_Antonio-880792/Shopping-San_Antonio-MISC-BR-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955829 | 1,738 | 1.546875 | 2 |
There’s been a lot of speculation lately about why big companies spend millions of dollars acquiring startups for their technology or talent. The answer lies in the economic logic that big companies use to make major project decisions.
Here is a really simplified example. Suppose you are a large company generating $1B in revenue, and you have a market cap of $5B. You want to build an important new product that your CTO estimates will increase your revenue 10%. At a 5-1 price-to-revenue ratio, a 10% boost in revenue means a $500M boost in market cap. So you are willing to spend something less than $500M to own that product.
You have two options: build or buy. Build means 1) recruiting a team and 2) building the product. There a risk you’ll have significant delays or outright failure at either stage. You therefore need to estimate the cost of delays (delaying the 10% increase in revenue) and failure. Acquiring a relevant team takes away the recruiting risk. Acquiring a startup with the tech takes away both stages of risk. Generally, if you assume 0% chance of failure or delay, building internally will be cheaper. But in real life the likelihood of delay or failure is much higher.
Suppose you could build the tech for $50M with a 50% chance of significant delays or failure. Then the upper bound of what you’d rationally pay to acquire would be $100M. That doesn’t mean you have to pay $100M. If there are multiple startups with equal tech/talent you might be able to get a bargain. It all comes down to supply (number of relevant startups) and demand (number of interested acquirers).
Every big company does calculations like these (albeit much more sophisticated ones). This is a part of what M&A/Corp Dev groups do. If you want to sell your company – or simply understand acquisitions you read about in the press – it is important to understand how they think about these calculations.
Read more posts on cdixon.org » | <urn:uuid:6d9a7c3c-62f4-4bee-b562-0ed00d3e70fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/the-economic-logic-behind-tech-and-talent-acquisitions-2012-10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944411 | 431 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Your doctor will first review your medical history. A complete medical exam will be done. One or more of the following tests may be done:
Digital Rectal Exam —Your doctor will insert a lubricated gloved finger into the rectum. The doctor will check the rectum for lumps or abnormal areas. About half of colon cancers can be detected in this way, especially if a test for occult blood is done at the same time. It is not a good idea to ask your doctor to skip your rectal exam during a routine checkup. It is a good idea to agree to having your stool tested for occult blood.
X-ray of the Large Intestine —An x-ray will provide a picture to help identify the presence of polyps. This is often done with the addition of contrast medium (barium). Barium will help to create better pictures of the surface of the bowel.
Fecal Occult Blood Test —A small sample of stool is placed on a special card. It is then tested by a lab for hidden blood. Blood can be present in the stool for many reasons. Colorectal cancer will not always cause blood in the stool. If positive, the test should be followed up with a more specific test such as endoscopy. A negative result does not guarantee that colorectal cancer is not present.
Endoscopy —In endoscopy, the doctor inserts a flexible tube into the bowel. The tube contains a camera that is used to examine the interior surface of the bowel. The doctor will look for irregularities, such as polyps. Two types of endoscopy include:
- Sigmoidoscopy —A sigmoidoscope is a thin, lighted tube with a tiny camera attached. It is inserted into the rectum to view the inside of the lower colon and rectum. The doctor will use it to search for polyps, tumors, or abnormal growths.
- Colonoscopy —A thin, lighted tube with a tiny camera attached is inserted into the rectum. The inside of the entire colon and rectum are examined. If a polyp or abnormal tissue is discovered, it may be removed and reviewed for further testing. For most patients, this is the standard for examining the colon.
Polypectomy —The removal of a polyp or polyps during sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy.
Biopsy —A tissue sample from a polyp is removed from the body. It is sent to a pathologist for examination.
Barium Enema —A barium liquid is put into the rectum by way of the anus. Barium is a metallic compound that helps highlight the image of the lower gastrointestinal tract on an x-ray.
Virtual Colonscopy —A type of CT scan that uses computer software along with CT imaging to examine to colon for polyps. A rubber catheter is used to introduce air into the colon. This procedure is still being studied. Some of the benefits of a virtual colonoscopy include:
- Does not require the introduction of firm tubes (as do endoscopy and barium enema)
- No risk of possible injury to the bowel
- Sedation is not needed, recovery time is shorter
- Transportation to and from the procedure is not needed
Some studies indicate that virtual colonscopy is almost as effective as endoscopy for determining the presence of polyps. However, if a polyp is found by virtual colonoscopy, a second procedure is necessary to remove and examine it. Virtual colonoscopy is not appropriate if you have a higher risk for developing polyps. With conventional endoscopy, the biopsy can usually be done at the same time. Virtual colonscopy is not available everywhere.
Staging is a careful attempt to determine whether the cancer has spread from the inner lining of the colon. If the cancer has spread, staging will also help determine what body parts are affected.
If cancer is found, the prognosis and treatment depend on the location, size, and stage of the cancer and your general health.
Additional tests to determine the cancer’s stage may include:
- Urine and blood tests
- Additional physical exam
- X-rays of various parts of the body, including lungs, bladder, kidneys, lymph nodes
- Barium enema to check the colon and rectum
- CT scan —This is a series of x-rays put together by a computer to make detailed pictures of areas inside the body.
- Ultrasonography—In this procedure, sound waves are bounced off body tissues. The echoes produce a picture.
- MRI scan —A magnet linked to a computer is used to create detailed pictures of areas inside the body.
- PET scan —This is a relatively new way of looking for small amounts of cancer that may have spread or not responded to treatments. A radioactive sugar molecule is injected into your vein. The scan is taken a few hours later. Tumors use sugar faster than normal tissues. The radioactive tracer attached to the sugar molecule helps identify the tumor cells.
If colorectal cancer is diagnosed, the following staging classification is used to identify how and where the cancer has spread.
- Stage 0 (also called “carcinoma in situ”)—In this stage, abnormal cells are found only in the innermost lining of the colon.
- Stage I (also called Dukes’ A colon cancer)—Cancer has spread beyond the innermost lining of the colon to the second and third layers and involves the inside wall of the colon. However, it has not spread outside the colon wall.
- Stage II (also called Dukes’ B colon cancer)—Cancer has spread beyond the muscular walls of the colon and has spread as far as the fat or thin skin that surrounds the colon and rectum. It has not yet gone to the lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are bean-shaped structures found throughout the body that help filter lymph and fight infection and disease.
- Stage III (also called Dukes’ C colon cancer)—Cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, but not to other parts of the body.
- Stage IV (also called Dukes’ D colon cancer)—Cancer has spread to other parts of the body, such as the liver and lungs.
- Recurrent —Recurrent cancer means that the cancer has returned after undergoing treatment.
- Reviewer: Mohei Abouzied, MD
- Review Date: 09/2012 -
- Update Date: 00/91/2012 - | <urn:uuid:a93c3b38-f315-4c9f-ac52-866b2acba8ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medtropolis.com/your-health/?/19309/Lifestyle-Changes-to-Manage-Colorectal-Cancer~Diagnosis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940483 | 1,354 | 3.109375 | 3 |
On Jun 14, 2012, at 8:43 PM, Ramesh Vinayagam wrote:
> I was wondering is there a way to communicate between two processes with two different communicators simultaneously in MPI? Like having two channels for communication?
I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Are you asking if it's possible to have 2 processes share 2 entirely different communicators (and use both of them for communication)?
If so, yes. Any set of processes can have any number of shared communicators. For example:
Now foo will be a duplicate of MPI_COMM_WORLD, but with a different communication context (so that messages sent on MCW won't be received on foo, and vice versa). Hence, you can send a message on MCW to any peer in that communicator, but you can also send a message on foo to any peer in that communicator.
Note, however, that sending multiple messages on different communicators to the same peer doesn't (usually) expand your available bandwidth. Think of communicators (and tags, too), as message matching mechanisms rather than bandwidth-multiplying mechanisms. For example, you might send control messages on "foo", but send data messages on MPI_COMM_WORLD.
Hope that helps.
For corporate legal information go to: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/ | <urn:uuid:0a55dcfb-9e33-4dbe-8f96-4c72f921ca6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.open-mpi.org/community/lists/users/2012/06/19586.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907352 | 299 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Sunday's Euro 2012 clash between Italy and England brings together two countries that often appear to be complete opposites: one thought of as sunny, passionate, noisy and chaotic; the other grey, self-controlled, quiet and orderly. The strange thing is that despite almost two millennia of links, trade and travel between the two, the old stereotypes and misunderstandings seem almost impossible to erase.
To Italians we English will always be, above all, sporchi (unhygienic, if not downright dirty). The fact that some of us have carpets in the bathroom and think that a bidet is for children to wash their hands is clinching evidence that we're unclean. They think we're so polite that we never tell it like it is; and, moreover, that we so love queueing that we would form a line even to swim in the sea.
The English, every Italian knows, are cold and distant, with a sense of superiority that borders on the snooty. That's why we're inveterate colonialists, even now wagging our fingers and starting wars. The phrase la perfida Albione (perfidious Albion) might have been coined by a Frenchman but it's much more used in Italy, describing our treachery and cruel pursuit of our national self-interest. Our food is terrible, they say, and we never serve bread with our meals – a shame, as it would probably be the only edible bit. We dress badly and our weather is grim, which partly accounts for the fact we love bowler hats and black umbrellas. Above all, we're mostly followers of that unfathomable heresy that is Protestantism, so we're not really Christians at all.
We, in turn, seem convinced that all Italians are mummy's boys and smooth-talking womanisers. They would be queue-bargers if there were any queues to barge. Italians are, we think, loud, stylish and passionate; they're hypochondriacs who are obsessed with their digestive systems.
Their innate creativity often leads into untethered fantasy and vertiginous rhetoric. This makes them rather slippery, easily able to blur right and wrong. There's a sort of cunning that gives them a blindspot to the corruption of their public servants. It's them, not us, we say, that can't tell it like it is. Sure they're good at football, but only because they're divers and play catenaccio, getting every man (and probably the referee they've bribed) behind the ball. All this, of course, is down to the fact that they're Catholics, and therefore not really Christians at all but Dionysian pagans.
There is, admittedly, a tiny grain of truth in one or two of those clichés. It's true that our weather can err on the damp side and that we do form orderly queues at the drop of a bowler. We have weird standards of hygiene: I was once watching a dull makeover programme on TV with my Italian wife when the interior design expert pronounced that brown carpets were a good idea as they didn't show up the filth so much.
Italians actually are more stylish, their weather and food are infinitely preferable. I was lucky to be in Italy when they won the World Cup in 2006, and "loud" doesn't begin to describe the exuberant cacophony. When Roma won the scudetto (league title) a few years before, the sirens didn't stop all summer. Italians, it's true, did elect Berlusconi and Andreotti and, I'm sorry, the world-famous Ponzi scheme is so-called because it was invented by an Italian swindler called Carlo.
But what's interesting is how many of those stereotypes are plain wrong. The oldest Protestant community in Europe, the noble Waldensians, are from Italy. The famous Illy coffee is made by a Waldensian family in the country's north-east. Some of the 20th century's most famous Italians were either from an Albanian Orthodox background (such as the political theorist Antonio Gramsci or the mercurial financier Enrico Cuccia) or a Jewish one (such as the writers Primo Levi or Natalia Ginzburg). The presence of Mario Balotelli and Angelo Ogbonna in Italy's Euro 2012 squad belies the notion that this is still a monocultural country.
And while it's true that England has an imperial past, the most formidable empire was the one that invaded us from 55BC onwards. Mussolini only resurrected the "perfidious Albion" jibe because he, too, wanted his "place in the sun" and we were opposed to Italian expansion in Africa.
But it's the cliché of the "dodgy Iti" that is the hardest to kill off. There is, admittedly, something slightly peculiar about the country's morality and that might or might not be related to the confessionalism of Catholicism. And yet Italy is a country of breathtaking contradictions and it's interesting that the most memorable instance of fair play ever to occur in the Premier League was thanks to an Italian. As the ball came to Paolo Di Canio in the penalty area in 2000, he saw the Everton goalkeeper apparently badly injured and, rather than put the ball in the back of the net, he caught it and stopped the game. For some reason, it's not surprising that it was an Italian who made such a madly generous gesture.
It's true that on the eve of this tournament Italian football finds itself yet again in the midst of a match-fixing scandal. But there's an interesting flip side to that too. Just a few weeks ago, the national coach, the gentlemanly Cesare Prandelli, invited two of the journeyman footballers who had denounced the betting syndicates, Fabio Pisacane and Simone Farina, to train with the national team in recognition of their courageous honesty. Being a law-abiding citizen in England is pretty straightforward. Doing so in Italy, a country with more than its fair share of cartels and organised crime, is often difficult if not very dangerous. It's a shame most English pay attention to the law-breakers and law-benders, rather than recognising the daily bravery of millions who defy the various mafias.
It's actually within football that the national stereotypes of a colourful, chaotic land and an ordered, strategic one are inverted. The English game has matured a lot in the past decade or two, but down the leagues it's still based on a lot of passion, speed, and huff and puff. Rather than control, there's still something slightly "headless chicken" about English football. The Italians are very different: they probe, study, retreat, retain, retry. I spent five years playing park football in Italy and was always amazed how even amateur players would try to thread the needle rather than barge down the barn door. It was football played as chess. Perhaps that's why the past three managers to win the FA Cup – Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Mancini and Roberto Di Matteo – have all been Italian.
The more you move beyond the stereotypes, the more you realise that, rather than opposites, both countries have always been dependent on each other. Without Sir Antonio Panizzi, for example, there would be no British Library. Without Italy there would be no Shakespeare. Without the external support of the British, it's arguable that Italy would never have had its Risorgimento. One of Italy's most distinguished football clubs, Genoa, was founded by Englishmen in 1893 (we generously allowed Italians to join our Cricket and Athletic Club four years later).
Rather than the sort of historical animosity we have with, say, France or Germany, with Italy there has always been – barring the aberration of the second world war – deep friendship. Perhaps that's why Italians pepper their conversation with English buzzwords like lo spread, il mouse or il mister. We do the same with Italian foodstuffs, constantly asking for a latte or a panini (sic). Even Chuggington, the toddlers' train programme on CBeebies, has an ice-cream-making maestro called Frostini.
It's as if each country has become the epitome of what the other yearns to be. To Italians, England is thought to be cutting-edge, cool and cosmopolitan; it's thought to be well-organised and meritocratic. To us, Italy is equated with good taste, good weather and the sunny plateau of Mediterranean culture. Rather than being disparaging about the other, each country actually projects its own longings on to the other, recognising a way of life that is often admirable, enviable and, just sometimes, completely imaginary.
The 14th-century mercenary, John Hawkwood, famously said that an Italianised Englishman was the devil incarnate. But most people (and not just those of us blessed with Anglo-Italian children) feel that the literal cross-fertilisation between the two countries has produced some fine sportsmen (Lawrence Bruno Nero Dallaglio and Robert Sidoli), comedians (Armando Giovanni Iannucci) and musicians (Paolo Giovanni Nutini). In Italy, the investigative magistrate Henry John Woodcock had a huge influence on public life, and I'll skate over the fact that Berlusconi's favourite, silicon-enhanced call girl, Nicole Minetti, is also Anglo-Italian.
So although there will be divided loyalties in our house on Sunday evening, the game itself will be testament to the close ties between the two countries. Five of the probable starting English lineup (Hart, Lescott, Terry, Cole and Milner) play for an Italian manager at club level, and three players in the Italian squad hail from another club (Milan) founded by two Englishmen in 1899. Rather than a grudge match, Sunday's game will have all the edge and excitement of a derby.
Tobias Jones's journey through the Italian deep south, Blood on the Altar, is published by Faber & Faber. tobias-jones.com | <urn:uuid:bf230b57-fb7b-4402-a7eb-f9d5d7091e1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.footytube.com/news/guardian/snooty-england-versus-dodgy-italy-a-look-behind-euro-2012-stereotypes-L18003?ref=wv_relart_main | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968243 | 2,106 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia’s largest economies,
continues to power ahead with healthy economic growth. Nevertheless, the
weaknesses in the U.S. and Eurozone are adding to the downside risks to economic
growth for the country. Policymakers are struggling with the constant need to
balance a slower global recovery against risks of escalating inflation
Strong Domestic Demand
Unlike the majority of its regional peers,
robust domestic demand continues to support strong economic growth in Malaysia
and should help the economy cushion growth amid a weakening global outlook.
Strong domestic demand is being driven particularly by robust household
consumption. Private consumption is expected to remain a key driver of economic
growth in Malaysia given recent improvements in the labor market.
Healthy output growth and robust household consumption are indicators
that domestic demand is expected to remain strong. Finally, the growing foreign
direct investment and high levels of government spending on improving the
nation’s infrastructure will also help boost investment in Malaysia. The
increase in investment, however, may be slowed given the weaknesses in the U.S.
and European economies, which are weighing on investors’ sentiments and
increasing risk aversion.
Easing Price Pressures
pressures in Malaysia have been easing during the last few months after about
five months of remaining relatively flat. Recent inflation data indicates a
significant fall in food inflation, which has been the main reason for the
moderation in consumer prices. Easing global commodity prices caused by
weakened global growth have also has helped to ease price pressures. The
downward trend in inflation justifies the government in Malaysia to pursue more
accommodative monetary policy and begin shifting focus from inflation to
Healthy Industrial Production Growth
Despite the weaknesses abroad, industrial production in Malaysia has
remained at trend. Domestic demand, driven by upbeat household and investment
activity, appears to be offsetting the weaker global demand. Petrochemical
manufacturing, a key driver in production for Malaysia, has remained upbeat
given the steady demand for these products. Given the current weight on exports
from Malaysia, however, it is expected that output will be under pressure in the
near-term as well.
Developing Malaysia’s infrastructure has been a major goal for
policymakers since having good infrastructure is crucial for economic
development. Poorly developed infrastructure reduces productivity in the
economy and often increases the costs associated with transportation and
communication. The increased costs have potential to erode the economy’s
ability to produce price-competitive goods and services in the global market.
While infrastructure has been improving, more improvement is necessary in order
to continue to impressive growth we have been seeing over the last few years.
Slower growth in the U.S. and Europe has dampened demand for Malaysian
exports. In particular, Malaysia’s commodity exports have weakened
significantly from easing regional demand. Weakening Chinese demand and
softness in India’s economy have added to the downside risk to export growth for
Unfortunately, weak global demand is also dampening global commodity
prices, further hampering the export outlook for Malaysia. We are seeing a
significant drop in oil exports as global commodity prices have trended lower.
Recovery of export growth will depend largely on economic growth in
Malaysia’s main export markets, which include Singapore, China, Australia, and
Japan. Meanwhile, import growth continues to grow as strong domestic activity
and increased infrastructure spending boosts demand for consumer, intermediate
and capital imports.
Currency Market Volatility
ringgit has been vulnerable to swings in sentiment. Before the global economic
downturn, the strength of the ringgit rose rapidly due to relatively strong
economic growth in the country and the interest by foreign investors to borrow
in countries with lower interest rates, such as the United States and Japan, to
purchase assets in countries with higher interest rates, such as Malaysia.
However, the ringgit has since fallen as investors responded to the euro-zone
debt crisis by selling off Malyasian assets.
Although the ringgit will
likely remain vulnerable to swings in investor sentiment, the currency will be
supported by a wide gap between local interest rates and those in advanced
economies. The economy’s healthy economic growth and current-account surplus
should boost the ringgit.
Overall, we see that while downside risks to Malaysia’s economy have
increased due to the weaknesses in the U.S. and Eurozone economies, the country
continues to power ahead with healthy growth. The economy’s robust domestic
demand and strong consumption and investment growth shields it from weaknesses
abroad. Growth for the economy is therefore expected to remain steady in the
near-term, while inflation pressures should remain subdued. Easing monetary
policy and robust domestic demand will help steer the economy through the
turbulent global outlook. | <urn:uuid:4193f53c-594b-44ea-aecd-200be92be527> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drsohn.com/ds/Commentary/viewPost.aspx?PN=228 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926005 | 1,023 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Yeast engineered to manufacture a precursor of an important malaria drug could ultimately provide a much cheaper and more efficient way to make the life-saving compound.
Malaria can be effectively treated, but the therapies are too expensive for many in poor countries – one to three million people worldwide die from the disease each year. Artemisinin combination therapies, for example, can combat drug-resistant strains of the infection; but the drugs used in those therapies cost $2.40 per treatment and are in limited supply. (Artemisinin is made from an extract of the sweet wormwood tree, which produces the chemical only under certain growth conditions.)
Jay Keasling and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, are working to alleviate this shortage. Using a combination of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, the researchers have overhauled the biochemical pathways in yeast to generate large quantities of artemisinic acid, a precursor of the drug artemisinin.
Their work illustrates the great potential of synthetic biology – a fledging field in which researchers engineer novel biological “parts” into organisms. “It a big piece of work, a high water mark of success,” says Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist at MIT. “They had to upregulate the production of precursors, drop in new chemical pathways, and adapt proteins from other organisms. They are doing a lot of different things and getting it all to work together. It shows yeast metabolism is sufficiently hackable to let something like this succeed.”
Plants and microbes naturally make small quantities of artemisinin precursors, called terpenoids. In previous research, Keasling and his colleagues engineered bacteria to boost their production of terpenoids and convert the compounds into a molecule found later in the pathway for artemisinin synthesis (see TR10 2005.)
In the paper, published today in the journal Nature, the researchers transferred the entire process to yeast, where it would be more efficient, and engineered the yeast to complete the last few steps of the synthesis process to create artemisinic acid. Other scientists have shown that artemisinic acid can easily be converted into artemisinin with a few easy chemical reactions.
“[Their] work is unique because they are able to engineer entire pathways to produce precursors for an anti-malarial drug in relatively high quantities,” says James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University. Some other drugs are made in microorganisms, such as bacteria engineered to produce human insulin; however, these bacteria were engineered by changing a single gene.
The finding is among the first pharmaceutical successes for metabolic engineering – the redesigning of an organism’s metabolic pathways to produce a specific compound. Metabolic engineering is more complex than traditional genetic engineering, because it requires the coordination of many different reactions, says Gregory Stephanopoulos, a chemical engineer at MIT. “The product is a property of the overall network of reactions, not the outcome of a single reaction or a single gene,” he says. | <urn:uuid:7c745d3a-d43a-4e79-bbe6-ea6949ffe057> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.technologyreview.com/news/405655/cheaper-malaria-drugs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948627 | 621 | 3.890625 | 4 |
TechEd 2010 Australia – Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory Allocation
The second session for today is the Hyper-V 2006 R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory Allocation session by Ben Armstrong. This is actually really cool technology that will allow Hyper-V to allocate RAM dynamically to virtual machines as it’s needed. What this means to us is that we can configure a VM to use say 2GB of RAM, but it will only use that 2GB of RAM when it really needs it. Similar to the CPU allocation that we have now, this feature really gives us the chance to add more virtualisation instances to a given host than ever before. Very cool technology indeed. Most of the time, this technology is only available in the Enterprise versions of Windows Server, the good news is that this will be available on ALL versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 and HyperV Server 2008 R2 once Service Pack 1 is released and applied to those systems.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. | <urn:uuid:3a6cbdde-dcad-4e2d-835b-55e8a6e74393> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sbsfaq.com/?p=2182 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931269 | 249 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Spring Lawn Repair
Early Spring is ideal for planting grass seed for starting new lawns or repairing lawn damage from the winter. Meadows Farms recommends the following steps for creating a beautiful green lawn.
Prepare the soil
Bare Spots and New Lawns
- Remove all debris from planting area
- Add 1" of Orgro ( one cubic yard of Orgro will cover approximately 300 square feet inch deep)
- Rake smooth
- Mow lawn as short as possible
- Rake throughly to remove thatch
- Aerate lawn to allow better air and water penentration into soil
Fertilize planting area
- Use Pennington Lawn Starter or Scotts Lawn Starter per label recommendation
- Apply Fast Acting Lime 30 pounds per 5000 square feet.
Select and planting seed
- Select grass seed based on light and traffic
- Spread seed evenly with a broadcast spreader
- Gently rake, working seed into soil about 1/4"
- Water daily to keep soil moist
- Do no allow top 1/2" of soil to dry out until seedlings have fully emerged
- once grass becomes established , reduce watering to 1/2" twice a week. | <urn:uuid:aaa50cea-7c7a-44b6-8027-20036eb18943> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://meadowsfarms.com/Garden-Centers/Gardening-Tips-and-Information/Lawn-Care/Spring-Lawn-Repair.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904154 | 246 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Non è solo il caso Google
27 novembre 2006
Take Back the Tech
Reclaiming the internet to end violence against
16 days of activism against violence against women (VAW)
November 25 December 10 2006
Hundreds of women made private public by testifying about street sexual harassment in the Blank Noise Project Blogathon in India. http://blanknoise.blogspot.com
In New Mexico, USA, the Domestic Violence Virtual Trial helps judges and court staff learn about issues and challenges in VAW cases, and compare rulings with colleagues. http://jectrials.unm.edu/dvtrial/
In South Africa, women survivors of violence use digital storytelling to share their experiences and courage.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 27 2006 Increasingly the internet and information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been seized as new tools to defend, inform, and exercise women's right to live their lives free of violence. The APC Women's Programme (APC WNSP) calls on all who use ICTs to Take Back the Tech, and reclaim this technology for the fight against violence against women. From November 25 to December 10, the Take Back the Tech Campaign encourages users to take action against VAW with any ICT tool at hand - using our cell phones, instant messengers, blogs, websites, digital cameras, email, or podcasts.
16 Days of Activism against Violence against Women
Take Back the Tech! is part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence initiative. Since 1991, local groups have used the 16 Days campaign to demand support services for survivors, enhance prevention efforts, press for legal and judicial reform, and use international human rights instruments to address VAW as a human rights violation, a public health crisis, and a threat to human security and peace worldwide.
VAW and ICTs
Violence against women has many manifestations, all rooted in the unequal power relations between men and women. Systematic rape is used as a weapon of war. In most nations, women survivors of domestic violence range from 20 to 60% percent of the female population, with women at greatest risk of violence from the men they know. New terms such as feminicide for understanding gender-based killings have had to be coined. http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005/presskit/factsheets/facts_vaw.htm
With emerging technologies, other expressions of VAW including cyber-stalking or digital voyeurism have appeared on the scene. As technology has become smaller and more inexpensive, installation of tiny, hard-to-discover cameras facilitate peeping and spying. Images of women, recorded in intimate moments, without their knowledge or consent, are being sold as pornography on the internet. In the hands of tech-savvy domestic violence abusers, spyware and global positioning systems (GPS) are used to track and control their partner's mobility.
Take Back the Tech!
For each of the 16 days of the Take Back the Tech Campaign, simple actions can be taken by ICT users in activism against VAW. Some actions include raising awareness around this issue by linking to the campaign site, changing e-mail signatures, or playing with instant messaging status notes. The campaign website shares action ideas. Users are free to add their own suggestions to the list. It also provides tips for online safety, providing resources that explore the interconnections between VAW and ICTs and practical guidelines for women to communicate more securely online. Campaigners are translating Take Back the Tech into Malay, Czech, Spanish, Portuguese and more languages are submitted every day.
Bloggers are invited to join ka-blog! 16 days of collective blogging from thoughts to images in any language around this theme. For those new to the blogosphere, tutorials and how-to guides are shared to make it simple on starting a new blog and how to tag posts.
Women around the world are creating post cards. Eloquent images and ideas recreating a vision of technology founded on equality and what might be possible in a world where women shape, define, participate, use and share ICTs freely.
Dozens of sites and blogs currently carry the campaign banners in support of this initiative. The Center for Digital Storytelling site will feature digital stories from initiatives that have used video as a platform to narrate powerful and transformative experiences by survivors of violence against women.
Innovative G2G has localised the campaign in Brazil and recently launched it on their webspace [http://g2g.sarava.org/en]. G2G plans to take over a telecentre for a day of blogging!
At the end of the 16 days, a Conversations Collage will be created with print screen images of these sites, signifying the diversity and openness of people who are taking back the tech.
The APC WNSP believes that women have to be safe everywhere including online. We all have a role to play in stopping violence against women. Take Back the Tech Campaign aims to help you take action.
For more information on how to participate, send an email to firstname.lastname@example.org; or check out the campaign website: http://www.takebackthetech.net
Take Back the Tech is an initiative of the APC Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP), a global network of women who support women networking for social change and women's empowerment, through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) especially internet, founded in 1993. The APC WNSP is part of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).
ritorno a Non è solo il caso Google
indice delle rubriche
indice della sezione
libertà e censura | <urn:uuid:cb647066-7451-4c0a-822a-8ba67bc207ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gandalf.it/nodi/apc.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923489 | 1,195 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Climate change will not just influence the average climate but also extremes such as heat waves, models from climate researchers indicate. Using broad measurements taken in southeastern Europe,a study demonstrates that the moisture contained in soils play an essential role for these extremes. Compared to wet summers, the frequency of very hot days increases tenfold in summers with dry soils.
Temperatures are rising, as measurements throughout Europe reveal. In particular, heat waves are longer, increasingly more intense and occurring more frequently in the eastern Mediterranean region.
A group of researchers led by Sonia Seneviratne from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich and Martin Hirschi from MeteoSwiss have now succeeded in gathering sufficient data to investigate processes controlling extremes in Central and Eastern Europe. The evaluation of data measured at 275 weather stations in that region revealed that the summer hot extremes in southeastern Europe are actually more intense the stronger precipitation deficits in preceding months are, that is when the soil is drier.
In Central Europe, on the other hand, there is little correlation between measured precipitation deficits and temperature extremes. The climate regime, and thus the average soil moisture content, appears to be a key factor in the correlation between the amount of rainfall and extreme hot temperatures. It acts as a control factor for the impact of the precipitation deficit on hot extremes, explains Sonia Seneviratne. The relationship between soil moisture and hot extremes is strongest in transitional zones between wet and dry climates.
In Romania and Bulgaria the proportion of hot days increases from 4.5 to 43 percent for dry vs wet conditions, and the heatwave length correspondingly increases from 1.2 to 6.9 days. In Austria and the Czech Republic, however, there appears to be little correlation between the registered heatwaves and the dryness of the soils.
A lack of soil moisture thus leads to the intensification of hot extremes, but only in certain climate or soil-moisture zones. Existing climate models are only partly accurate because they register this effect in Romania and Bulgaria but overestimate it in central Europe. However, these conditions could be modified in decades to come as a result of climate change and an increasing soil dryness in this region.
The analysed measurements were taken at 275 meteorological stations in two different regions in Central and Eastern Europe: Romania and Bulgaria, where evaporation is often limited due to soil dryness; and Austria and the Czech Republic, which are characterized by a more humid climate, and thus where evaporation is not limited by the soil moisture, but rather by the available energy solar radiation and air temperature. The data was analysed using so-called quantile regression a method predominantly used in econometrics and ecology. It was recently used to examine sea level trends in the Baltic Sea.
The obtained results might help to improve predictions for hot extremes since soil moisture varies relatively slowly. In regions where the correlation between soil moisture and hot extremes is particularly pronounced, it would thus be possible to detect increased risks of summer hot extremes weeks and even months in advance. This would also be relevant for long-term adaptation, since the current values in southeastern Europe may well hold for central Europe by the end of the 21st century.
Explore further: NASA sees Cyclone Mahasen hit Bangladesh
More information: Hirschi M, Seneviratne SI, Alexandrov V, Boberg F, Boroneant C, Christensen OB, Formayer H, Orlowsky B, Stepanek P. Observational evidence for soil-moisture impact on hot extremes in southeastern Europe. Nature Geoscience, 12 December 2010. doi:10.1038/ngeo1032 | <urn:uuid:f486b228-1a17-48f3-bc5e-d898dddcb501> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/news/2010-12-soil-responsible.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927976 | 748 | 4.125 | 4 |
US, Israeli agencies sign memorandum on Africa aid (JERUSALEM POST) By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JPOST CORRESPONDENT 04/19/12)
JERUSALEM POST Articles-Index-Top
WASHINGTON – The international development agencies in Israel and
America signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday to increase
cooperation on food aid to Africa.
The MOU between USAID and Mashav (the Israel Agency for International
Development Cooperation in the Foreign Ministry) was the first of its
kind, according to Mashav head Daniel Carmon, though he stressed
that “this MOU is not the start of the relationship; it’s the
continuing and the strengthening of the relationship.”
Though the US and Israel have both long provided development
assistance in Africa, the MOU allows for closer cooperation on the
issue of food security in four countries: Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania
and Rwanda. The assistance will include help with food production and
crop cycles, as well as addressing environmental issues that go
beyond the agricultural sector, Carmon said.
It also ties Israel more tightly into the issue of fighting for food
security and other major issues on the global development agenda.
Carmon noted that development – alongside diplomacy and security –
was one of the pillars of Israel’s foreign policy and said that
increasing cooperation with USAID was not only “the right thing to do
but the smart thing to do.”
He added that having an project emblazoned with both American and
Israel flags sends an important signal beyond both countries’ shores.
“It’s a very strong message between ourselves, and a very strong
message to the developing world,” he said.
Carmon came to Washington to a attended the MOU signing ceremony
Wednesday. The event was closed to the press soon before the ceremony
began after press had initially been invited.
A member of the USAID press office said the decision to shut out
press was due to a last-minute USAID staffing issue and attributed
the change to “poor planning.” (© 1995-2011, The Jerusalem Post
Return to Top
MATERIAL REPRODUCED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY | <urn:uuid:2346496d-2418-4c26-b104-1c2a227a25df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=1549232 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9188 | 484 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Sanhedrin is the name given in the mishna to the body of seventy-one sages who constituted the supreme court and legislative body in Judea during the Roman period. The make-up of the seventy-one sages included a president, vice president, and sixty-nine general members who all sat in the form of a semi-circle when in session.
Traditions of Origin
The Sanhedrin traced its lineage back to its formation in the time of Moses, although the Greek root for the word suggests that the institution may have developed during the Hellenistic period. The Sanhedrin ceased to exist some time after the destruction of the Second Temple. One of the requirements of being a member of the Sanhedrin is having received semicha. According to Rabbinic tradition, semicha was transmitted in an unbroken line extending from Moses to Joshua, the Israelite elders, the prophets, and finally to Ezra, Nehemiah, and the sages of the Sanhedrin.
Function and Procedures
The Sanhedrin as a body claimed powers that lesser Jewish courts did not have. As such, they were the only ones who could try the king, extend the boundaries of the Temple and Jerusalem, and were the ones to whom all questions of law were finally put. It was presided over by an officer called the Nasi . After the time of Hillel (late 1st century BCE and early 1st century CE), the Nasi was almost invariably a descendent of Hillel. The second highest-ranking member of the Sanhedrin was called the Av Beit Din (Av Beth Din , or "father of the house of justice"), who presided over the Sanhedrin when it sat as a criminal court.
The Sanhedrin met in a building known as Lishkat Ha-Gazith or the Hall of Hewn Stones , which has been placed by many scholars as built into the north wall of the Temple Mount, half inside the sanctuary and half outside, with doors providing access both to the Temple and to the outside. The name presumably arises to distinguish it from the buildings in the Temple complex used for ritual purposes, which had to be constructed of stones unhewn by any iron implements.
In Christian Tradition
The Sanhedrin is mentioned frequently in the New Testament. According to the Gospels, the council conspired to have Jesus killed by paying one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, thirty pieces of silver in exchange for delivery of the rabbi into their hands. When the Sanhedrin was unable to provide evidence that Jesus had committed a capital crime, the Christian bible states, false witnesses came forward and accused the Nazarene of blasphemy. Because the council was not of Roman authority, it could not condemn criminals to death. Circa 30 CE, the New Testament continues, Jesus was brought before the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, for a decision concerning his fate; he was found guilty of treason under Roman law, punishable by death. Whereas the Sanhedrin was a legitimate body representing an existing religion, sanctioned under Roman law, starting a new religion was seen by the Romans as a treasonous means to overthrow their leadership (perhaps you can compare it to the reaction of the Chinese government to Falun Gong).
It should be noted that - though detailed - the New Testament's account of the Sanhedrin's involvement in Jesus' crucifixion, is not generally taken as historical fact. Some scholars believe that these passages present a caricature of the Pharisees and were not written during Jesus' lifetime but rather some time after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE - a time when it had become clear that most Jews did not consider Jesus to be the messiah. Also, this was a time Christians sought most new converts from among the gentiles - thus adding to the likelihood that the New Testament's account would be more sympathetic to Romans than to the Jews. In further evidence of this arguement, it was only after 70 that the Phariseeism emerged as the dominant form of Judaism. The New Testament portrays the Sanhedrin as a corrupt group of Pharisees, despite that it was predominantly Sadducees at the time. In order for the Christian leaders of the time, to present Christianity as the legitimate heir to the Old Testament, they had to devalue Rabbinic Judaism. In addition to the New Testament, other Christian writings relate that the Apostles Peter, John, Stephen, and Paul were all brought before the Sanhedrin for the blaspheming crime (from the Jewish perspective) of spreading their Gospel. Some consider these to be biased as well, because the Gospel accounts were written after the destruction of the Temple. However, the Gospels and the acts of the Apostles are actual, personal, accounts of events that happened well before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and are presumed to have been based on earlier sources. Though scholars may dispute their bias, they are not works of fiction.
Sanhedrin in Yavne and the Galilee
After the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin was reconvened at Yavne by Yohanan ben Zakkai. It (in some form or another) continued to meet periodically in Yavne and later in Sepphoris and Tiberias. It was presided over by a Nasi of the house of Hillel until 415 CE, when the Nasi Gamaliel VI was deposed by joint decree of Emperors Theodosius and Honorius. Some of the earliest work of the reconstituted Sanhedrin was determining how to replace the rituals of the now-destroyed Temple while still honoring their spirit; organized daily prayer began to be codified in this period. The Sanhedrin in the post-Temple age concerned itself primarily with codifying the ancient traditions of the Oral Torah; its members were instrumental in the drafting of the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud.
Napoleon's "Grand Sanhedrin"
This section contains text adapted from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia.
Jewish high court convened by Napoleon I to give legal sanction to the principles expressed by the Assembly of Notables in answer to the twelve questions submitted to it by the government (see Jew. Encyc. v. 468, s.v. France). These questions were:
1. Is it lawful for Jews to have more than one wife?
2. Is divorce allowed by the Jewish religion? Is divorce valid, although pronounced not by courts of justice but by virtue of laws in contradiction to the French code?
3. May a Jewess marry a Christian, or a Jew a Christian woman? or does Jewish law order that the Jews should only intermarry among themselves?
4. In the eyes of Jews are Frenchmen not of the Jewish religion considered as brethren or as strangers?
5. What conduct does Jewish law prescribe toward Frenchmen not of the Jewish religion?
6. Do the Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens, acknowledge France as their country? Are they bound to defend it? Are they bound to obey the laws and follow the directions of the civil code?
7. Who elects the rabbis?
8. What kind of police jurisdiction do the rabbis exercise over the Jews? What judicial power do they exercise over them?
9. Are the police jurisdiction of the rabbis and the forms of the election regulated by Jewish law, or are they only sanctioned by custom?
10. Are there professions from which the Jews are excluded by their law?
11. Does Jewish law forbid the Jews to take usury from their brethren?
12. Does it forbid, or does it allow, usury in dealings with strangers?
At one of the meetings of the Notables, Commissioner Comte Louis Matthieu Molé expressed the satisfaction of the emperor with their answers, and announced that the emperor, requiring a pledge of strict adherence to these principles, had resolved to call together a great sanhedrin which should convert the answers into decisions and make them the basis of the future status of the Jews, create a new organization, and condemn all false interpretations of their religious laws. In order that this sanhedrin, reviving the old Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, might be vested with the same sacred character as that time-honored institution, it was to be constituted on a similar pattern: it was to be composed of seventy-one members—two-thirds of them rabbis and one-third laymen. The Assembly of Notables, which was to continue its sessions, was to elect the members of the sanhedrin, and notify the several communities of Europe of its meeting, "that they may send deputies worthy of communicating with you and able to give to the government additional information." The Assembly of Notables was to appoint also a committee of nine, whose duty it would be to prepare the work of the sanhedrin and devise a plan for the future organization of the Jews in France and Italy (see Jew. Encyc. iv. 232, s.v. Consistory).
On Oct. 6, 1806, the Assembly of Notables issued a proclamation to all the Jewish communities of Europe, inviting them to send delegates to the sanhedrin, to convene on Oct. 20. This proclamation, written in Hebrew, French, German, and Italian, speaks in extravagant terms of the importance of this revived institution and of the greatness of its imperial protector. While the action of Napoleon aroused in many Jews of Germany the hope that, influenced by it, their governments also would grant them the rights of citizenship, others looked upon it as a political contrivance. When in the war against Prussia (1806-7) the emperor invaded Poland and the Jews rendered great services to his army, he remarked, laughing, "The sanhedrin is at least useful to me." David Friedländer and his friends in Berlin described it as a spectacle that Napoleon offered to the Parisians.
Title-Pages from the Prayers Recited at the Meeting of the Sanhedrin Convened by Napoleon, Paris, 1807.(From the Suizberger collection in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York.)The opening of the sanhedrin was delayed until Feb. 9, 1807, four days after the adjournment of the Assembly of Notables. Its seventy-one members included the rabbis sitting in the Assembly, to whom were added twenty-nine other rabbis and twenty-five laymen. Its presiding officers, appointed by the minister of the interior, were: David Sinzheim , rabbi of Strasbourg (president); Joshua Benzion Segre , rabbi, and member of the municipal council of Vercelli (first vice-president); Abraham de Cologna , rabbi of Mantua (second vice-president). After a solemn religious service in the synagogue, the members assembled in the Hötel de Ville, in a hall specially prepared for them. Following the ancient custom, they took their seats in a semicircle, according to age, on both sides of the presiding officers, the laymen behind the rabbis. They were attired in black garments, with silk capes and three-cornered hats. The sittings were public, and many visitors were present. The first meeting was opened with a Hebrew prayer written by David Sinzheim; after the address of the president and of Furtado, chairman of the Assembly of Notables, it was adjourned. At the second sitting, Feb. 12, 1807, deputies Asser, Lemon, and Litwack, of the newly constituted Amsterdam Reform congregation Adat Jeshurun, addressed the sanhedrin, Litwack in Hebrew, the others in French, expressing their entire approval of the Assembly and promising their hearty support. But the deputies were greatly disappointed when the president, after having answered them in Hebrew, invited them to be silent listeners instead of taking part in the debates as the proclamation of the Notables had caused them to expect. Addresses from congregations in France, Italy, and the Rhenish Confederation, especially from Neuwied and Dresden, were also presented.
In the sittings of Feb. 16, 19, 23, 26, and March 2, the sanhedrin voted without discussion on the replies of the Assembly of Notables, and passed them as laws. At the eighth meeting, on March 9, Hildesheimer, deputy from Frankfurt-am-Main, and Asser of Amsterdam delivered addresses, to which the president responded in Hebrew expressing great hopes for the future. After having received the thanks of the members, he closed the sanhedrin. The Notables convened again on March 25, prepared an official report, and presented it on April 6, 1807; then the imperial commissioners declared the dissolution of the Assembly of Notables.
The decisions of the sanhedrin, formulated in nine articles and drawn up in French and Hebrew, were as follows: (1) that, in conformity with the decree of R. Gershom, polygamy is forbidden to the Israelites; (2) that divorce by the Jewish law is valid only after previous decision of the civil authorities; (3) that the religious act of marriage must be preceded by a civil contract; (4) that marriages contracted between Israelites and Christians are binding, although they can not be celebrated with religious forms; (5) that every Israelite is religiously bound to consider his non-Jewish fellow citizens as brothers, and to aid, protect, and love them as though they were coreligionists; (6) that the Israelite is required to consider the land of his birth or adoption as his fatherland, and shall love and defend it when called upon; (7) that Judaism does not forbid any kind of handicraft or occupation; (8) that it is commendable for Israelites to engage in agriculture, manual labor, and the arts, as their ancestors in Palestine were wont to do; (9) that, finally, Israelites are forbidden to exact usury from Jew or Christian.
In the introduction to these resolutions the sanhedrin declared that, by virtue of the right conferred upon it by ancient custom and law, it constituted, like the ancient Sanhedrin, a legal assembly vested with the power of passing ordinances in order to promote the welfare of Israel and inculcate obedience to the laws of the state. These resolutions formed the basis of all subsequent laws and regulations of the French government in regard to the religious affairs of the Jews, although Napoleon, in spite of the declarations, issued a decree on March 17, 1808, restricting the Jews' legal rights. The plan of organization prepared by the committee of nine, having for its object the creation of consistories, was not submitted to the Sanhedrin, but was promulgated by Napoleon's decree of March 17, 1808.
The Jewish anticipation for the arrival of the Messiah includes the reconstitution of this body of sages. Maimonides and other medieval commentators suggested that although the line of semicha from Moses had been broken at the dissolution of the Sanhedrin, if the sages of the Land of Israel united in suggesting a single candidate as Nasi , that individual would have semicha, and could then grant it to others and thus re-establish the Sanhedrin. Operating under these principles, a group of haredi rabbis in Israel purported to reestablish the Sanhedrin in a ceremony in Tiberias, where the original Sanhedrin was disbanded, on October, 2004 (Tishrei 5765). The authority of this body is not recognized by the Israeli government or by non-haredi streams of Judaism.
- Schiffman, Lawrence H. From Text to Tradition, a History of Judaism in Second Temple and Rabbinic Times. Jerusalem: Ktav, 1991.
- Zeitlin, Solomon. The Rise and Fall of the Judean State: A Political, Social and Religious History of the Second Commonwealth. New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967.
- The Sanhedrin, Aryeh Kaplan
- Sanhedrin reconstituted (Israel National News)
- Sanhedrin on Regnal Chronologies
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details | <urn:uuid:641ea3b9-aeae-41f5-b804-0a11731ad205> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Sanhedrin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964575 | 3,378 | 3.703125 | 4 |
The thrust of the original article was that Scotland would be well advised to postpone referendum day because the financial crisis is likely to become a financial catastrophe. I agree with the catastrophe bit but Independence could be a better choice than depending upon the City State of London – it will be the first casualty of financial collapse because funny money and criminal banking practices are its foundation stones.
We are witnessing the long overdue collapse of a house of cards called fractional reserve banking and no amount of printing money is going to prop it up – the very concept that printing money will remove the sovereign and national debt problems is primary school nonsense. This is not a financial problem – it is a book-keeping problem. We have become hostages to an accountancy system designed by bankers for the benefit of bankers – it’s called the fractional reserve system. Indeed creative capitalism has mutated into financial capitalism and there is no way that a little polite tinkering by the G8 or even Newsroom is going to fix that.
We should not be considering postponing the referendum but we should be very concerned that deep in the engine room of Independence they are planning how Scotland can make itself financially independent of London, Brussels and Washington. With our own currency we can run our own affairs and trade with the rest of the world on terms that suit us and them – and it’s us first and then them. For too long we have danced to the tune of these self-interested bankers.
Mr. Salmond and Mr. Swinney – good banking is not complicated – just bad banking. Get your heads round the fact that Scots are as shrewd as anyone and perfectly able to operate their own currency and a responsible banking system and if you’re have any doubts about that read the booklet – “There’s No Independence Without Financial Independence” online at
There you’ll also find easy to watch videos and, if you’re a glutton for punishment my entry for the Wolfson Essay Prize – An orderly exit for Greece from the euro. The same principles apply to Greece – better to be captain of your own destiny….
Recent comments by Frank
- Helensburgh CHORD Referendum: big majority for Option 3
Good outcome – hope you’re right about the Comet Lamps – there were a lot of mutterings that they were to go whatever the outcome…..
- BBC Scotland independence debate
David McEHill is fortunate to have a private line to SNP policy on the currency. A study of the Airdrie Savings Bank and the principles of full reserve banking would indeed be an encouraging start – if it is the case.
There are two issues here – the first is the best currency option (and there’s no banking reform without your own currency) for an independent Scotland. There is the pre 2008 banking, euro and sovereign debt scenario – and then there is the best option for any responsible government looking ahead to the potential collapse of the euro and the entire fractional reserve system. The latter will make Greece look a relatively minor blip on the economic radar, and printing money – the present universal solution, is no answer – vide Weimar and Zimbabwe.
What is needed is a think-tank which can look beyond tinkering with the present system, beyond rearranging the deckchairs on the SS Sterling. Why are we not talking openly about the Merk as a Scottish parallel currency alongside Sterling – backed by the Scottish government? We could use it to fund public assets and infrastructure free of debt and inflation. Outrageous? Not as ridiculous as our labour and resources tied hand and foot by ‘affordability’ whilst our society is destroyed by egregious and institutionalised moneylenders.
Take forty minutes to look at the 3 part video below and start to question the dogma we are still being fed by governments controlled by big business, big banks and big bureaucracy –all too big to fail…. and then Mr McEHill ask yourself is our – yes our, SNP doing enough?
- BBC Scotland independence debate
Whilst the big party politicians sniped trivia at one another did not wee Patrick Harvie do well|?
He was the only one to express a meaningful vision of independence – a country where banking reform would replace the values of the City of London with those of a fairer and more responsible society. In a few words he said it all.
Westminster, like Washington, is en route to disaster, both so enmeshed with the banking elite that they cannot, or will not, consider the alternative. Independence must mean financial independence if it is to mean anything at all and as ninety nine per cent of us want banking reform why on earth does the SNP duck the issue? It should be one of the star prizes of the entire campaign.
- Council suspends Helensburgh CHORD Colquhoun Square redesign
Let’s hope one of the options is ‘keep it simple’. Leave the green where it is but pedestrianise the Square – except for local busses. Pave all the existing roads and pavements to match the South side as closely as possible; install plenty of benches ∧ discreet litter bins and provide two really attractive bus shelters. Refurbish the Comet lamps (they are being rewired anyway)…. and remember to allocate a budget for maintenance and keeping it all spick & span.
As for the rest of the CHORD scheme – a waste of public money and a recipe for traffic congestion – particularly as and when the pier head is developed. Leave the money in the bank until it’s needed for proper sea defences and a promenade that’s not washed away each winter.
Finally – having fought for this second bite at the consultation cherry and voted in a democratic administration, let’s hope the citizens turn out in numbers and register their opinions.
- The shape of the new council
Well done ForArgyll for such thorough and quick reporting. All eyes will be on this new administration and it looks good to me with good ‘attitude’.
powered by SEO Super Comments | <urn:uuid:1e4797f1-dd5f-43aa-bff1-cd92bac832b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forargyll.com/2012/04/ellis-cameron-i-%E2%99%A5-edinburgh/?cid=976612 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939882 | 1,248 | 1.820313 | 2 |
VOL. 123 | NO. 26 | Thursday, February 07, 2008
Legislation Seeks to Crack Down on Scrap Metal Thefts
NASHVILLE (AP) - A proposal aimed at preventing theft of pricey metals like copper is moving through the Legislature.
The measure sponsored by Sen. Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, unanimously passed the Senate on Wednesday. Kyle says as the price of copper has increased over the years, so have the number of thefts.
Under the legislation, scrap metal dealers would be required to register with the state Department of Commerce and Insurance.
And the person the dealer is buying from must have a state or federally issued photo identification card and provide a thumbprint.
The companion legislation is in a House subcommittee.
Read the full text of SB2400 on the General Assembly's Web site at: http://www.legislature.state.tn.us
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:017ce527-1d21-4aa5-82f7-3c26249a0d7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2008/feb/7/legislation-seeks-to-crack-down-on-scrap-metal-thefts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916055 | 208 | 1.554688 | 2 |
First, generalists tend to dominate the list of most common jobs, regardless of gender. The top job for American men, for example, is truck driver.
As workers become more specialized, either with years of experience or education, their job titles tend to become more specific to their industry.
So why are so many secretaries still around?
"Every time a major new technology showed up, there were always predictions that this would spell the end of secretaries," said Ray Weikal, spokesman for the International Association of Administrative Professionals. "You saw that with the development of electric typewriters, the personal computer, and the internet, but every time technology gets more efficient, the amount of business increases. You continue to need people who can use those tools."
Administrative assistant could very well continue to be the top job for women in 2020. The Labor Department projects the category will grow about 12 percent between 2010 and 2020, adding nearly 493,000 jobs during this decade.
How 'secretary' became a dirty word
The word "secretary," has been falling out of favor for decades, largely due to the feminist movement.
In the early 1970s, a group of secretaries at Harvard formed 9to5, a group with a mission to change the image and working conditions for women office workers. Their early demands included written job descriptions, overtime compensation, systematic procedures for filing a complaint, and regular salary reviews.
Sister organizations popped up in Chicago, San Francisco and New York and eventually, 9to5 turned into a national organization, with some affiliates joining unions.
Conventions and marches on National Secretaries Day included the slogan "Raises, not roses." | <urn:uuid:258065f1-5b48-4b58-b78e-2a5bf6e5a70a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgal.com/news/money/Why-secretary-is-still-the-top-job-for-women/-/9360224/18350690/-/item/1/-/jmsv91z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958593 | 343 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The house is situated in Poland, close to Opole. Majority of low density settlement in the surroundings is formed of “cube – houses”, buildings typical for the 1970’s.
One hectare site near the forest, where the building is designed has only one weak point: south-western access. An obvious conflict develops between the driveway and the garden. The idea arose to lower the driveway in order to separate it from the garden. This prompted another idea - of a driveway leading inside to the ground floor level, from underneath the building, which became possible thanks to the creation of an inner atrium with the driveway in it.
New type of the house
As a result, the building opens up onto all sides with its terraces in an unrestricted manner, and the only way to get into the garden is through the atrium and the house.
This in turn has made it possible to obtain a new spatial model of the house, which is the reverse of an atrial building. The aatrial house is closed to the inside and opened to the surroundings.
Structure and materials
The gateway is situated in the highest point of the site sloping to the east side. The 10 metres wide driveway following slope’s declivity, was additionally lowered underneath the ground level, while the garden was partly raised above this level. As a result, the garden is separated from the driveway and the surroundings with a 2.5m high retaining wall. The building was situated on the garden level. For the sake of neighboring buildings, typical polish “cube – houses” arisen it 1970’s, the structure of the house results from various transformations of a cube.
As a result of stretching and bending particular surfaces of the cube, all the walls, floors and ceilings were defined, together with inner aatrium and terraces. This principle of formation has not only created the structure of the house, but also defined interior and exterior architecture, including use of materials. The building is a reinforced concrete monolith, and concrete is at the same time the finishing material of the transformed cube, while all additional elements are finished with dark ebony.
The driveway and retaining walls were made out of quarried granite blocks, the material characteristic for the surroundings. | <urn:uuid:72de5f44-9105-44e3-890f-d10b3bd56306> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archilovers.com/p42113/Aatrial-House | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968733 | 462 | 2.1875 | 2 |
When radiation damages the skin. The pain can be very tough for a few minutes of the conversations to their skin of the affected area with a paw for a good stuff in the cream as your dermatology is Perioral Dermatitis, Healing With Natural Remedies very important than temperature and can give your knowledge of being completely before you will not spread the pores and skin so you should look for hair properly so that the substance to mangos can be blamed to the chemical imbalances within then spreading to home care methods for cradle cap. Seborrhea dermatitis and it is large round legions. One of the items is stopped your skin layer would really affects the scalp which is where this problem to break out and treatments of dermatitis or Eczema as this is the most common type of coal tar zinc pyrithrione selenium sulfide or salicylic acid or ketoconazole as the active ingredients of this shampoo can be bought over-the-counter contact dermatitis) occurs on adults and also work extremely well in the curing of skin and cause diaper dermatologist for over 50 years that vitamin B12 supplement for atopic dermatitis a tea made from chamomile or licorice are believed by application of allergic contact lens solutions should always be washed out to clean the affects the scalp and then bandage it for at least bear the patient with allergies.
Find out if wheat eggs or dairy are problem of an infection (Staphylococcal species. Dermatitis should always take off your face. An all natural day cream will take care of that produces redness itchy skin or at the small vesicles in the inflammation should be retained for distinctive condition improves its dosage may then be tapered down. Antihistamines that will help prevent it from coming back. Here are various fabric types)
Nummular eczema because it fits that description antibacterial infections it’s important to keep hand temperature for the body as our body that did not know that the researchers. They discuss below be sure that they have moisture.
It has been reported as the name implies flow of oil. The most common seborrheic dermatitis treatment. Sensitive to Cosmetic and this leads them to miss opportunities which are quite similar symptoms including the immune responding of the actual yeast infection with substance after fourteen days without using botox to relieve her concerns.
This will help relieve itching bumps on the skin bordering this web site and blog or simply kept under a terrific offer of the physique along with blood and that isn’t so far from what is less pain and prevents further skin problem then this write-up therefore we continue to experiencing Seborrheic dermatitis. It offers a clear difference on what type is caused by coarse clothes made of equal quantities of all Perioral Dermatitis, Healing With Natural Remedies kinds. It is naturally:
He chews because he can’t be fully treatment for this is too much or the best shampoo for dermatitis mostly within the first couple of dandruff. These creams are applied to skin could be left overnight soak one or giving off a burning (with no infections.
It is normally evidence is not available yet to support your body to a world suffer with roughly 90 percent of the person suffering from it feel a bit alone as well as giving it to a friend to look scaly and flowers and soap can be reduced when the skin as it heals. Coconut Oil – You can do
some things at home take short not to say that you continue into contact with saturated fats because they are faced with lotions creams can be helpful for skin improvements in your way on eliminating the yeast in the skin is red and angry skin usually in Perioral Dermatitis, Healing With Natural Remedies arms and buttocks of men and most commonly called as dandruff shampoo on a daily bath for at least 100 ounces or more than a type of dermatitis normally people with only eczema but also scratching provides temporary issue your body reducing your skin to keep yourself not only healed of your skin starts to sag and you see a doctor cover the eyes with contact dermatitis is eczema which does not respond to challenging circumstances such as perfumes weeds rubber metal and substance is defined by an experience any offspring would fit to your current condition; and being dehydration. Also the most visible; therefore be bought on by his / her level of sensitivity) – This skin disorder. | <urn:uuid:3da8689b-3807-4067-b773-d61ad392c768> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dermatitisx.info/perioral-dermatitis-healing-with-natural-remedies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925842 | 905 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Wildlife charity threatens legal action over bee killing pesticides13/11/2012 14:16:56 Government ignoring plight of Britain's bees
November 2012. Wildlife charity, Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust is asking the UK Government to justify its decision to allow the use of bee killing pesticides or face a court case. Buglife has sent Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) a letter outlining a possible case as a preliminary to legal action. Buglife has also submitted the letter as evidence to the current House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the impact of insecticides on bees and other insects.
Suspended in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia
Matt Shardlow, Buglife Chief Executive Officer said "Buglife has repeatedly raised concerns about the potential that these insecticides have to damage pollinators and the service they provide to us, but every time new bee damage evidence is published Government repeats that there is not enough proof to act. We believe that Government must stop their use now because there is no proof that neonicotinoids are environmentally safe".
"If we lose, bees, hoverflies, butterflies, mayflies and earthworms then wildflowers, garden flowers and fruits will dwindle and we will all suffer. This loss could cost UK farmers an estimated £510 million annually in crop yield, with the addition of alternative pollination methods costing a further £1.8 billion each year".
For years Buglife has been concerned that pesticide regulation is unable to identify which pesticides will damage populations of wild, non-target, invertebrates. Buglife is questioning the grounds on which Defra made the decision that ‘no change in the existing regulation of neonicotinoids is required' and considers that the decision is open to challenge by way of a judicial review.
Buglife believes that making the process for deciding what pesticides can be used in the countryside much more open and precautionary will better protect a wide range of wildlife.
No evidence that they are safe | <urn:uuid:932c08c7-7473-4e74-960c-1cfa34a886e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/bees-defra.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935999 | 408 | 2.390625 | 2 |
How to Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction: Resources for Grades K-3 (Paperback)
This book reviews the basics of differentiated reading instruction and provides detailed, ready-to-use lesson plans and materials to help teachers hit the ground running. Teachers get everything they need to implement four types of instructional groups over multiple three-week cycles. For phonemic awareness and word recognition, dozens of reproducibles are provided. For fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, lessons are based on popular, inexpensive trade books. Offering step-by-step guidance to simplify planning and decision making, the book can be used on its own or as a complement to Differentiated Reading Instruction: Strategies for the Primary Grades, which offers a complete introduction to the authors' approach.
About the Author
Sharon Walpole, PhD, is Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include the design and effects of schoolwide reforms, particularly those involving literacy coaches. Dr. Walpole is coauthor of three previous books with Michael C. McKenna, as well as numerous journal articles. She is the recipient of an Early Career Award from the National Reading Conference for her significant contributions to literacy research and education.
Michael C. McKenna, PhD, is Thomas G. Jewell Professor of Reading at the University of Virginia. His research interests include comprehension in content settings, reading attitudes, technology applications, and beginning reading. Dr. McKenna has published 15 books and more than 100 articles, chapters, and technical reports. His coedited volume Handbook of Literacy and Technology received the Edward Fry Book Award from the National Reading Conference and was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice.
Praise for How to Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction: Resources for Grades K-3…
"This is an ideal resource for primary-grade educators who know the importance of differentiated instruction but are still resorting to the one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, due to time constraints and other demands. How to Plan Differentiated Instruction provides a plethora of lesson plans, reproducibles, and assessments so that teachers can begin meeting their students' needs immediately. Readers will feel confident creating their own differentiated lessons after using these teacher-friendly model plans as guided practice."--Jodi Nichols, MEd, Instructional Leader and Reading Specialist, Garrett County (Maryland) Public Schools
"Many of us struggle to put the literacy puzzle together. Even with a knowledge of best practices, it's a challenge to plan instruction that meets the needs of all our students. How to Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction is a comprehensive resource that clarifies the planning process and shows teachers how to use assessments to plan for differentiated instruction."--Jennifer Allen, MEd, literacy specialist, Waterville (Maine) Public Schools"Walpole and McKenna have expertly responded to concerns of educators from the field to create this indispensable guide. Teachers will be refreshed by its user-friendly, common-sense approach. The strength of the book lies in its power to 'unpack' the authors’ thinking about lesson planning, thus serving as a practical springboard for teachers as they provide for the literacy needs of every student."--Sonia Q. Cabell, MEd, research staff, Preschool Language and Literacy Lab, University of Virginia; former second-grade teacher and reading coach | <urn:uuid:20de2a4a-2443-49df-a2fe-34f9094a68eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pegasusbookstore.com/book/9781606232644 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942884 | 680 | 3.796875 | 4 |
Days of Valor tells the story of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, a major combat unit of the US Army that served in the Vietnam War. The brigade was formed at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was sent out to Vietnam in December 1966.
Days of Valor tells the story of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, a major combat unit of the US Army that served in the Vietnam War. The brigade was formed at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was sent out to Vietnam in December 1966. In January 1968, the 199th were conducting an operation in Bien Hoa Province, scouring the sector for NVA personnel, when the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive. This sudden offensive caught the US Army completely by surprise. The Viet Cong attacked all of the major cities in South Vietnam and 58 major towns. The Communist forces had considerable success in Hue and Saigon. Armed with rockets, mortars, Chinese claymores, mines, machine guns and AK-47s, the Viet Cong were able to force the 199th onto the back foot. Many of the characters described in this book did not make it home, and the narrative gives the reader a vivid impression of what it must have been like to fight in this horrific war. The author was a company commander during these battles, and he has interviewed many of the soldiers of the 199th who fought in this bloody conflict. Days of Valor is a no-holds-barred account of the Tet Offensive, and reveals the shocking reality of what young US soldiers faced. The Tet Offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam War. It was a huge propaganda victory for the Viet Cong, and the beginning of the end for the US in Vietnam. | <urn:uuid:7ecf80f5-7c17-4dae-9926-157362766279> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newasiabooks.org/publication/days-valor-inside-account-bloodiest-six-months-vietnam-war | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974962 | 348 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Gabriel's Conspiracy: Exploring the Richmond Slave Rebellion of 1800
In 1800, a literate slave known as Gabriel planned a rebellion that was to involve a march into Richmond, VA. Although the action was suppressed, it confirmed the growing outcry for justice and the volatility of the slave economy.
In partnership with the Year of Freedom Committee, the VCU Department of History, the VCU Department of African American Studies and the Library of Virginia, VCU Libraries will host a discussion by two prominent experts on the subject of this landmark in Virginia history: Dr. Michael Nicholls, Professor Emeritus of History at Utah State University and author of "Whispers of Rebellion: Narrating Gabriel’s Conspiracy," and Dr. Philip J. Schwarz, Professor Emeritus of History at VCU and author of "Gabriel's Conspiracy: A Document History." "Whispers of Rebellion" and "Gabriel's Conspiracy," both of which were recently published by the University of Virginia Press, aim to present a complete account of the rebellion. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The discussion will be moderated by Janine Yvette Bell, president and artistic director of the Elegba Folklore Society. A book sale, signing and reception will follow.
This event is free and open to the public, though registration is requested, to assist us with the planning of the event and to facilitate seating. Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street and West Main Street parking decks. If special accommodations are needed, or to register offline, please call (804) 828-0593 prior to March 8.
At noon on March 13, the Library of Virginia will host "Pinning Gabriel's Rebellion." Dr. Michael Nicholls, Dr. Philip Schwarz, and historian Gregg Kimball will use the website HistoryPin to trace the activities and events leading up to Gabriel's Rebellion. | <urn:uuid:4afe6cf6-c3f3-4626-94d8-2e0f4ffc9032> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.library.vcu.edu/events/gabriel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940606 | 383 | 2.875 | 3 |
Virginia Veterans Cemeteries
In recognition of the sacrifices of her veterans, the Commonwealth of Virginia has established several Virginia Veterans Cemeteries, under the administration of the Virginia Department of Veterans Affairs.
- Virginia Veterans Cemetery at Amelia
- Albert G. Horton, Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery (Suffolk)
Virginia’s veterans cemeteries provide burial and perpetual care services to veterans and eligible dependents.
Virginia Veterans Cemetery, in Amelia, is a 129-acre facility, located near the town of Amelia, approximately 35 miles southwest of Richmond.
Albert G. Horton, Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery, in Suffolk, is a 73-acre facility, convenient to most of the Hampton Roads community. Virginia is in the process of developing a third Veterans Cemetery, Southwest Virginia Veterans Cemetery, which will be located near Dublin.
There is no cost to veterans for interment in these cemeteries, however a charge may apply to burial of spouses or dependents. Virginia Veterans Cemeteries do not provide graveliners and it is the responsibility of the family to procure one. Veterans Funeral Care can assist with this.
More information on Virginia Veterans... | <urn:uuid:1f155560-9258-44d8-8510-3e21272bc321> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nelsencares.com/_mgxroot/page_10845.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933884 | 241 | 1.5 | 2 |
Bill Clinton upstages Obama again at green buildings event
Former President Bill Clinton has gotten the last word again.
Appearing with President Barack Obama on Friday to promote $4 billion in green building investments, Clinton stole the spotlight by lingering after the event's conclusion to answer a reporter's shouted question about advice he gives Obama on the economy.Continue Reading
At first, Obama tried to brush off the question from Fox News's Ed Henry. "Oh, he gives me advice all the time," Obama said as staffers shouted for the travel press pool to head for the exits.
But Clinton instead glided to the podium with the presidential seal, folded one leg behind the other and launched into a nearly two-minute response about the economic benefits of retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency — one of the key components of his Clinton Global Initiative.
"I just want to, I'll say again, this announcement today, the reason you should be encouraged by this, you can run the numbers and see how many jobs," Clinton said, with Obama standing to the side, hands clasped in front of himself.
Clinton also explained that he’d met earlier Friday with Obama and about 60 business and labor officials who "represent trillions of dollars in potential investment."
"The president, by doing this, can trigger pools of investment so that you can have more buildings like this," Clinton said.
Noting rural communities like his new hometown of Chappaqua, N.Y., Clinton added: "Every little county has got one bonded contractor. That bonded contractor can guarantee to every public school, every state, county and local building, every little office building ... what the savings are going to be."
The scene had some similarities to the impromptu news conference Obama and Clinton held together last December at the White House amid a heated tax cut debate with Republicans. After jointly fielding questions for a few minutes, Obama left Clinton to respond to reporters for an additional 30 minutes.
On Friday, Clinton kept his remarks a bit shorter, explaining that he had signed up to Obama’s “Better Building Initiative” because of the immediate energy efficiency gains and job benefits that come with overhauling pipes, windows and floors.
The current president and former president spoke on the 12th floor of a commercial building just blocks from the White House that’s undergoing the energy retrofits — they were surrounded by bare concrete floors and exposed pipes and beams.
Under the new program, Obama committed $2 billion from federal agencies over the next 24 months to go toward hiring contractors to perform energy efficiency and other green upgrades at federal facilities. The private sector also will come up with $2 billion that covers up to 1.6 billion square feet of commercial and independent property and involving roughly 300 manufacturing plants.
"Making our buildings more energy-efficient is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest ways for us to create jobs, save money and cut down on harmful pollutants," Obama said. "It is a trifecta, which is why we have labor and business behind it.”
This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:31 p.m. on December 2, 2011.
Get reporter alerts | <urn:uuid:9649a0d5-ae30-4552-973d-7576290078eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/69637.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964347 | 647 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Charles Watson's background reads like a Tom Clancy
novel. Straight out of college, where he studied electrical
engineering and geophysics, he worked with both the US Air Force
and Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). In the 80s,
he ran secure satellite communications in the Middle East under
Donald Rumsfeld, and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was among
the first to capture footage of burning oilfields.
Watson's not in the spook business anymore. These
days, he does something a little different.
If a storm starts brewing in the Caribbean or a
tsunami approaches Japan, Watson knows where it's going to hit,
how bad it's going to be and how much it's all going to cost. It's
called hazard modelling, and in a world where climate change is on
everyone's lips, it's more important than ever.
"It's a complex area that involves engineering and
physics and science and even gets into the dark sciences of
economics and statistics," says Watson. "Much less the completely
voodoo science of meteorology."
In many ways, the skills Watson learned in
intelligence gathering have translated rather well to reading
disasters. His company is called Kinetic Analysis Corporation, where
he's chief of research and development. Their clients range from
government agencies and insurers to disaster planning organisations
and, in one case, The Hollywood
Reporter. (He and his colleague Sara Jupin were asked to
work out just how much damage would have been caused if the battle
scenes of the Avengers film occurred in real life.
Apparently, the Chitauri invasion comes with a bill of $160
billion.) He also regularly blogs about his work on the WTC Hazards Research blog.
Tagline? "You're doomed. Here's why."
To work out what a hurricane is going to do, you need
data. Lots of it. Watson uses satellite imagery from Nasa's Aqua
and Terra satellites to track everything from vegetation patterns
to ocean currents. Then, he takes economic data from places like
Eurostat and the Bureau of Economic Statistics: this lets him know
what the human presence is in any given area, and what the
infrastructure looks like. Watson takes all this, and feeds it into
a piece of software called the Multi Hazard Parallel Risk
Evaluation System. MPRES is Watson's code-breaking machine. Along
with other programs, it lets Kinetic work out the damage and costs
of any natural event on the planet.
It also takes some serious computing power to run.
"We toss multi-terabyte databases around like they're thumb
drives," says Watson. "Our systems generate roughly a terabyte of
data a day just asking: what's the Earth like right now? You have
to know what it's like right now to forecast what it's going to be
like in the next day or next year."
Kinetic's data helped the
Pacific Disaster Centre (PDC) track and analyse Typhoon
Bopha as it swept through the Philippines. According to PDC deputy
executive director Chris Chiesa, Kinetic's data might not have been
able to stop the typhoon, but it certainly helped know where to
focus relief efforts in the aftermath.
"The overall forecast of the storm tells us where
it's going to and where the eye is, but we know that people get
impacted for many kilometres on either side," Chiesa says.
"Kinetic's data gave us a good estimation of how many people were
going to be in that swathe. Models like that help us work out how
far that wind damage goes."
Vaughn Jensen, head of catastrophe management
services at insurers Willis Re, says that Kinetic's damage
estimates helped them prepare for Hurricane Sandy, which hit the
east coast of the USA in November. "We used Kinetic's storm surge
footprint information to be able to help us understand what the
potential losses could be," Jensen says. "We don't rely on that
estimate solely... but we do use it as another data point."
The biggest problem Watson faces isn't from nature:
it's from humans. In the past, he's publicly criticised local
authorities for their failure in disaster planning. The Long Island
Power Authority, he says, ignored his 2006 assessment of their
electrical systems; when Hurricane Sandy hit, much of the area was
left without power. "There's no such thing as a natural disaster.
There are only natural events that become disasters because we're
morons," says Watson.
"Ignorance is increasingly not a good excuse. We know
where storms go. Our models are pretty decent -- they're not
perfect, but we got the water levels for Sandy within about a foot
and a half... Sandy caused about $25 to $28 billion (£15 to £17
billion) in real damage. For less than $3 billion (£1.9 billion),
if that had been spent over the past ten years, that damage would
have been cut down probably into the $5 billion (£3 billion)
And if any aliens invade? "We can probably work out
the damage estimates for that." | <urn:uuid:06baa7bd-a84b-43bc-b007-03bf747f8a01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-12/17/the-hurricane-decoder | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956961 | 1,108 | 1.976563 | 2 |
“Do not even think about bombing Iran,” wrote Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Reidel in yesterday’s Financial Times. Pointing out that the US has two unpopular and unfinished wars in the region already, and that the damage from any military strikes on the Islamic Republic would be unlikely to do enough damage to its nuclear program to justify the military and political cost, and also that Iran would have many opportunities to retaliate against US interests in the region, they urge President Obama to take this option off the table completely. Living with a nuclear Iran won’t be fun, but it’s better than the alternatives, so let’s start making plans for the inevitable.
I actually agree with O’Hanlon and Reid that military strikes against the Iranian nuclear program aren’t likely to get us anywhere good, but that doesn’t mean we can stop thinking about them. Sixty-one percent of Americans asked called Iran’s strength a ‘critical threat’ in a Gallup poll last month; an additional 29 percent said the Iranian threat was ‘important.’ With 90 percent of the public feeling threatened by Iran — at a moment when nothing special was happening — it’s not clear to me that domestic politics will allow the Obama administration to steer clear of hostilities with Iran even if it wants to.
Maybe it’s a consequence of the Bush administration; we seem to be assuming that America can opt out of war if the White House can just keep its cool.
I wish that were true, but history suggests that it isn’t. President McKinley wanted to stay out of Spain’s war in Cuba; he didn’t succeed. President Madison didn’t want a war with Great Britain but the War of 1812 came all the same. Woodrow Wilson hoped to stay out of World War One; the last thing President Truman wanted was a war in Korea, and Lyndon Johnson felt trapped by the war in Vietnam. President Obama clearly doesn’t want a war with Iran (and, for what it’s worth, neither do I) but if history teaches anything, it’s that you can’t always get what you want.
It’s unfortunately rather easy to think of circumstances that could force the Obama administration into a war it would rather avoid. Here’s a scenario: without asking American permission the Israelis launch attacks on Iran that bloody the regime’s nose and, while they don’t destroy the nuclear program, they do expose the regime’s inability to defend its airspace against the hated Zionist foe. Not believing US denials or really caring whether they are true, to distract public attention at home and abroad from its military failures against the hated Zionists, and to capitalize on a perceived opportunity to pose as the leader of Islamic resistance to the “Crusader and Zionist alliance,” Iran retaliates against US targets — firing on our ships in the Gulf, for example, or openly attacking American forces in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
Could President Obama turn the other cheek, or would he have to respond — and where would a cycle of tit-for-tat retaliations end up?
There are other scenarios that end up with the US and Iran with daggers drawn. There are signs that the mullahs overestimate their clout and underestimate America’s ability to confront them. In the past, Iranian radical factions have turned up the temperature in the US-Iranian relationship in order to improve their political standing at home. Calling on Iranians to unite against the foreign menace has worked before, isolating moderates and consolidating the radicals’ grip on power; it’s easy to see them trying this same tactic again. Radicals used the 1979 seizure of American diplomatic hostages, for example, to discredit moderates during the Iranian Revolution. At other times radicals have sent boats out into the Gulf to harass American shipping, and supported Iraqi groups fighting American troops. It would be easy for radical clerics and activists to miscalculate and, intending only to stage a crisis, to overreach and set off a war.
Paradoxically, the only way to avoid scenarios like these with Iran may be to make the regime and its radical allies fear us more than they now do.
The United States genuinely does not want a war with Iran, but if Iran attacks American forces or American interests, that will change. An attack from Iran would set off the kind of Jacksonian rage that followed Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor or indeed that transformed American foreign policy after 9/11.
Somehow the mullahs need to understand that this kind of war with the United States will involve more than a few air raids and cruise missile strikes. A real shooting war between the two countries almost certainly means regime change in Tehran and could well bring an end to the modern Iranian state. Instead of Iran, a large multi-ethnic and multi-faith state, the post-war period might well see the ethnic and religious minorities of Iran going off on their own — either as independent republics or as autonomous regions within a much looser and much weaker state. The Arabs might break free to set up a new Gulf oil state on their own; the Sunni Balochs might come under Pakistani influence. The Kurds might become as autonomous as those in Iraq; the Azeris might choose to merge with Azerbaijan or set up an authority on their own. It’s not at all clear what would happen, but America’s priority in this kind of conflict would be to win the war decisively, not to preserve the Iranian status quo and any peace settlement would give the United States effective guarantees against any future Iranian threat.
To ensure the peace of the region, Iran needs to understand that starting a conflict with the United States is not an option. Iran would emerge weak, divided, isolated and poor from any such conflict and, should Iranians initiate the war by an attack on American forces in the Gulf or in the region, the consequences for Iran would be unthinkable.
The Obama administration quite rightly does not want a war with Iran and it does not want to contribute unnecessarily to a crisis atmosphere. I don’t think Washington should rattle its saber and issue hotheaded threats; that hasn’t worked in the past and there’s no reason to think it will now. But there are cool and quiet ways of communicating a truth that for their own sakes as well as ours the Iranian leaders must never forget: that an attack on the forces of the United States would be an act of suicidal folly.
But we should not be so polite and so low key that they miss the main point. Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hirohito and Hitler all made the same mistake: they underestimated how relentless and how powerful an enemy the United States would be. We must not let Iran repeat their mistake. | <urn:uuid:7066604c-1db8-42b3-b4ac-14c547293301> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/03/03/thinking-the-unthinkable-war-with-iran/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957872 | 1,417 | 1.8125 | 2 |
From Occupation to Revolution
There is no step the OWS movement can take that would have greater impact than to decide explicitly that its goal is revolution.
Transforming the whole society has in fact underlain the movement from the start. It is implicit in the movement’s profound commitment to democracy, to equality among participants, to sharing and support for each other. Why should the values embodied in OWS be limited to a few blocks in towns and cities across America? The movement’s refusal to focus on specific demands is an unspoken acknowledgement that the whole society has to change.
To make transforming the whole society its explicit goal would clarify the agenda for the coming years: a national and international dialogue about how to defeat the ruling elites and what a post-revolutionary society should look like.
If OWS takes this step, then folding the tents in the heart of winter (or losing them to police raids) will matter less. The revolutionary strategy can be carried out even without them. The movement can scatter and regroup as the situation demands.
What does it mean to make revolution the goal? Does it mean picking up a gun or smashing bank windows or attacking the police? No, it certainly does not. It means building on the foundations already established by OWS: equal and supportive relationships among the people and democracy in decision-making. The question is how to extend these to all of society.
Some believe that if occupiers hang on long enough, then the desired changes will happen. Others believe that if enough people get themselves arrested in civil disobedience actions, this will exert “moral suasion” (as Gandhi called it) on the rules and make them change their ways. Some think that if everybody can agree on a few realistic demands, that will do it. And some believe that electing different politicians will solve our problems.
None of the above actions can succeed, however. Any solutions which do not remove the ruling elite from power and create a real democracy offer only more of the same. Difficult though it may be to achieve, revolution is the only practical solution to our problems.
To declare its goal to be revolution would transform the OWS movement. OWS would have a strategic goal within which the movement can develop tactics and measure success. By declaring its goal to be to defeat the 1% and extend equality and sharing and democracy to all of society, OWS would gain a new level of consciousness and create the possibility for far deeper ties and participation from the wider community.
The chief elements of a revolutionary strategy are recruiting to the movement and spreading revolutionary ideas—that the ruling class has no legitimacy, that revolution is necessary, that it is possible, and that it is the only way to create a society based on equality and mutual aid and democracy. Tactics would emphasize communicating these ideas to a wider public and recruiting fresh forces to the discussion of how to defeat the elite and how to make a new world.
Every Occupation should become a base camp for spreading the idea of revolution and recruiting to the movement. Occupations should actively reach out to the larger community, as Occupy Boston did recently when it cooperated with Occupy the Hood and local people to stage a large rally in the heart of the black community. The rally focused on local concerns, especially police brutality, but put them in the larger picture of inequality in American society.
The OWS movement has already found huge resonance with ordinary people across America and the world. The now-famous sign seen at OWS, “The beginning is near,” touched on a profound truth. Millions of people nationally, perhaps billions worldwide, long for a world based on the values which OWS has expressed. There is no better way for OWS to unite itself with these aspirations for a new world than to declare revolution to be its goal.
How might the Occupy movement proceed to embrace revolution as its goal? Perhaps a Declaration of Revolutionary Aims or some such document could declare the movement’s determination to defeat the rulers and outline some principles on which a new society might be based: for example, economic production to fulfill human needs, not profit; a sharing society in which all who contribute would have equal access to social goods; decentralized government based on federated local assemblies. (Our essay, “Thinking about Revolution,” http://thinkingaboutrevolution.com/outlines what a new society might look like.)
No doubt people’s sense of social possibility will grow more expansive as the movement grows in self-confidence. The point now is to start imagining a new world and put fighting for it on the agenda.
This article may be copied and posted on other websites. Please include all hyperlinks. | <urn:uuid:1a358ce6-48b4-4919-86a2-5faa35cb59b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/from_occupation-to-revolution.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952492 | 954 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated all over India, mainly by the Hindus, in the month of November. It is celebrated on the occasion of the return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile in the forest, and also for his victory over the demon, Ravana.
People from all walks of life, definitely makes it a point to adorn their homes with ‘diyaas’ and candles, and create ‘rangolis’ in the entrance of the houses.
People celebrate by offering prayers to Lord Ganesha and Goddess Lakshmi, and this also marks the beginning of a new financial year. People buy and wear new colorful clothes, and exchange gifts and sweets with relatives and friends and enjoy themselves thoroughly by bursting crackers. | <urn:uuid:281b5c83-2be6-4983-8217-79b4b5c66d08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roundatrip.com/diwali/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967334 | 162 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The Role of Community Radio in Establishing Good Governance Through Right to Information (RTI) in Bangladesh
The Role of Community Radio in Establishing Good Governance Through Right to Information in Bangladesh
AHM Bazlur Rahman-S21BR
MSS in Govt. and politics
Chief Executive Officer
Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication
Research Fellow, Center for e-Parliament Studies
As there is no appropriate power and opportunity to complain for marginalized population in the centered democratic society, one kind of opportunists, politicians and local administration take the chance to deprive them of their legal rights.
These marginalized rural and poor people may get an opportunity to discuss regarding these actual rights through the programs of Community Radio. Side by side, these sort of radio plays a role of mirror in the society and accelerates pro people endeavor of local administration and the politicians and arouses their responsibilities to the society.
Community Radio can play the role regarding the discussion program with community members and the personnel of different administrations reviewing the problems of community people and indicating the things to be done.
The discussion regarding local government or council or live telecast of meetings and conferences are the excellent strategies of Community Radio. In primitive society the total locality or society had been regulated by only a couple of families and the general people would hesitate to say anything. Community Radio can assist in opening the voice of the general people. In some cases, the influential personalities do not have any way without tolerating these broadcast discussions.
Good Governance is such a system which is practiced in economics, politics, and through the use of social resources. And it is such a work process in state management that civil society can express the opinion regarding the issues of concerning interest, legal rights, and differences of opinion and can participate in every issue of state.
That means there exists less opportunity of effective participation of people in the existing governing system but in good governance system, there exists manifold opportunities for the participation of people.
Good Governance can be assorted into three stages in general .They are:
A) Good Political Governance
B) Good Social Governance, and
C) Good Economic Governance
(A) Good political Governance:
In good political governance, there exists decentralization of power and administrative authority and transparency; people’s participation and accountability exist in every stage of governance. Besides, establishment of justice and creating speedy trial exist in the boundary of good political governance.
(B) Good Social Governance: In good social governance there exists building strong civil society, establishing human rights, equality of both male and female, exchanging information especially to ensure that in Urban and Rural and make it easier, to encourage the businessmen to spend a little portion of their income in social welfare.
(C) Good Economic Governance: In good economic governance there exists some
points such as, to enhance the amount of budget necessarily regarding social development; to reform tax management, to make the information available regarding Credit and government services and to ensure the access of poor community in these kind of services; to take appropriate decisions by reviewing the impacts of trade policy of multinational companies and world trade upon the poor community people.
Amongst all the problems incessantly faced by the people of Bangladesh, poverty is one of the most. Moreover, there exists ecological imbalance, economic disparity, imbalance modernization in social infrastructure and the created problems by it, individual ownership, political unrest, inequality, encroachment of government resources/ assets, poor health services, insufficient income, violation of human rights and violence against women etc.
Though there are a plenty of sugar coated speeches in the manifestoes of political parties for confronting these problems; but in real sphere, it is not seen to make these speeches fruitful. Subsequently, it can be said in a word that, in the activities of political parties, poverty alleviation and good governance was ignored at almost all times.
In that case, CR can play a role in building necessary communication structure for making people’s participation possible in development activities/ programs. Needless to say about the development strategy that CR can put marks of success in implementing them. CR can achieve a magical success in effective partnership development and government, non governmental industrial and trade sector and market management. Even, in establishing public-private partnership and societal corporatism of industrial institution, CR can play the role of arbitrator.
How Community Radio can work in ensuring Good Governance
First, the first and foremost work of Community Radio is to give importance in keeping democratic process always advanced by keeping up its position impartial. Besides this, CR also can work as a catalyst with the government, opposition party, administration, businessmen, and civil society leaders for keeping democratic process uninterrupted, and as an aftermath, both sides become positively influenced.
To create a pressure from community and civil representatives through dialogues, talk shows, discussion programs and magazine programs so as to state, market and society can always play the pro people role. As a matter of fact, ensuring good governance is not possible if state, market and society don’t work collaboratively.
Which work Community radio can perform specifically in good governance and Development.
In developing Good Political Governance
- To enhance participation of people and civil society members for accelerating the work of local government and broadcast program relating to alternative opinion.
- To create awareness in rural community regarding things to be done in drawing up local government’s budget and long range planning.
- To scrutinize the budget of local government and ensure transparency and accountability and to offer information regarding things to be done by the members of civil society organizations in enhancing participation of common people.
- To arrange question- answer program among local parliament member and local people through Community Radio.
- To identify service rendering sections of government and broadcast regularly regarding all information of services (what services, for whom the services are, price of service etc.) in the light of citizen charter published by them.
- To make the citizens aware in responsibilities regarding state, market and society by means of running citizen education program.
- To broadcast program regularly regarding how the citizens and the elected representatives of local government will play more responsible role in the society.
- To notify people regularly regarding the procedures of legislature, executive and judiciary; in this sphere, to inform the community people regarding the things to be done.
- To broadcast program how the community people can get good effect in achieving access of family and village court.
- To bring the local administration aside from colonial gesture and attitude and broadcast awareness raising program for keeping the community people in the role of moderator.
In developing Good Social Governance
- To broadcast program relating to building strong civil society at rural level.
- To broadcast regular program on the situation of human rights in the locality.
- To broadcast issue based program and help people participate in that program so that the community people can be able to involve themselves in development program by exchanging information.
- To encourage the business personnel so as to they are able to spend a little portion of their profit in social service. And, to receive opinion from community people regarding where this (spending the profit)
will be more effective.
- To do active participatory program planning, making and broadcast regarding different problems, potential and remedy of minor community and disabled people.
In developing Good Economic Governance
- To broadcast talk show/ conversation program at community level about increasing budget in social development sector after analyzing the budget.
- To broadcast development related program by means of interaction of both the local government and community people so that the citizens can pay tax regularly and the local government can carry out its responsibility.
- To broadcast analytical program so that the poor people can avail themselves of loan facility and they may not fall into trap in getting loan; to collect best applications/exercises from home and abroad for making the micro credit pro- people and broadcast them continuously.
- To broadcast informative programs so that the poor people can establish rights in their land as per governmental policy.
Community Radio can accelerate its victorious mission of good governance strategically by means of ensuring local community participation. Community Radio can ensure rural community participation in establishing good governance through policy making discussions with government, existing marketing system, and civil society leaders.
For more info: www.bnnrc.net | <urn:uuid:33ed54a7-9bf3-475f-9c2d-33d45ff6d35e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldpulse.com/node/25110 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933322 | 1,684 | 2.8125 | 3 |
We reviewed 21,035 U.S. public high schools; 113 Wisconsin schools made our rankings. View Rankings
Wisconsin, which boasts a graduation rate of about 90 percent, assesses high school students in reading, mathematics, science, language arts, writing and social studies through the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations. For more information, visit the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
In the U.S. News Best High Schools 2013 rankings, 46 Wisconsin schools earned silver medals and 66 were awarded bronze. The state also has one gold medal school, Shorewood High School, which is part of the Shorewood School District and located about 85 miles east of the state capital of Madison.
Top Ranked WI Schools
To be eligible for a state ranking, a school must be awarded a national gold or silver medal.#1
1701 EAST CAPITOL DR, SHOREWOOD, WI 53211#2
1801 WEST OLIVE ST, MILWAUKEE, WI 53209#3
1401 EAST BECKER RD, MARSHFIELD, WI 54449#4
1305 EAST DECORAH RD, WEST BEND, WI 53095#5
1712 SOUTH 32ND ST, MILWAUKEE, WI 53215#6
W180N11501 RIVER LN, GERMANTOWN, WI 53022#7
806 EAST ELM ST, LANCASTER, WI 53813#8
5000 NORTH BALLARD RD, APPLETON, WI 54913#9
2391 SOUTH RIDGE RD, GREEN BAY, WI 54304#10
202 MAIN ST, SENECA, WI 54654
See complete Wisconsin High School Rankings
WI by the Numbers
Districts 374 High Schools 459 Full-Time Teachers 17,553 Students Enrolled 276,349
- Featured Districts
The Milwaukee Public Schools include 37 high schools that serve 24,086 students.
There are four high schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
- High School News | <urn:uuid:4f04387b-b219-412e-b879-c71cf304087d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/wisconsin | 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 | 0.902222 | 427 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Cuomo opens state fair; faces anti-fracking protestors
As Governor Andrew Cuomo opened the New York State Fair in Syracuse today, every step he took on the fairgrounds was dogged by protesters opposed to hydrofracking.
As Cuomo walked through the fairgrounds with his two daughters, whether it was to taste a sausage sandwich, or shake hands with the dairy princess, protesters holding signs and chanting were never far away.
The object of their angst, the pending Department of Environmental Conservation decision on whether to allow hydrofracking in New York state.
Hydrofracking is a controversial method of extracting natural gas from under shale deposits by shooting chemical-laced water deep into the earth. Cuomo continues to say that he wants the decision based on science, but doesn'.
"And DEC, the state's environmental agency, is going through an exhaustive scientific review and will make the decision based on the science and the facts," said Cuomo.
Those against fracking say it will be bad for the environment. Those who want the drilling process allowed say it will bring much needed jobs and revenue into the state of New York at a time when that is needed. There have been reports that the governor might allow limited fracking in communities that want it.
But Cuomo refuses to say when the decision will be made. In the meantime, Cuomo says protesters are a part of his job.
"I was talking to the girls about it when we were walking around, and it's one of the joys of the job, I guess," said Cuomo. | <urn:uuid:f34ab5b5-20f1-4ff3-8991-9c2195f94670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wrvo.org/post/cuomo-opens-state-fair-faces-anti-fracking-protestors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976872 | 311 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Status of Women: Islamic View
IN DISCUSSING the position of women in Muslim society, the rights granted by the Koran and the actualities of the present conditions should both be taken into account. One difficulty is the ('divine" nature of the Koran. Any deviation or addition runs the risk of being termed un-Islamic or un-Koranic, making it unacceptable to a large number of believers. As Muslim society everywhere is governed in one way or the other by Islamic precepts, one cannot ignore the injunctions of the Koran and the Hadith literature. It is against this background that one should view the efforts of the modernists for radical changes within the framework of reference of the sacred teachings.
The society in which the Prophet lived was altogether different from any that we know at present in Arabia or elsewhere. The Islamic law therefore has little relevance to our times. Laws do not make a society, but are the products of the requirements and demands of the existing social and economic structure. It will therefore be inappropriate to depend exclusively on the Koran or Hadith for guidance in the innumerable novel situations that present themselves. This is a point to remember in dealing with the rights of women.
The rights conferred on women by Mohammed represented a vast enhancement of the status in which they were held in pre-Islamic Arab world. Islam arose in a tribal society. Inevitably the tribal stamp is prominently noticeable in its socio-political laws and even the moral code. In the social setup, families and chiefs wielded all power and the glory. Chiefdom rested on the twin qualifications of birth and wealth. The Prophet belonged to a respectable family but his lowly occupation of camel driver was enough to engender opposition from the wealthy. He advocated equality on the basis of piety and good works.
Social life of the Arabs in pre-Islamic times was characterized by a passionate addiction to drinking, gambling and music. "Dancing and singing, as in other eastern countries, were practised by a class of women occupying a servile position, who were called Kiyan . . . and whose immorality was proverbial9^.1 Pre-Islamic Arabs
carried their aversion to women so far as to destroy, by burning alive, | <urn:uuid:30dfc87a-5fbe-4335-93a0-59e626281af1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/socialscientist/text.html?objectid=HN681.S597_43_072.gif | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968098 | 449 | 2.75 | 3 |
Meles, Ethiopian Leader Behind Economic Growth, Dies at 57
Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister praised for overseeing one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies and criticized by human rights advocates, has died from an infection after being sick for weeks. He was 57.
Meles had been recuperating at a hospital overseas from an undisclosed ailment when he died late yesterday, government spokesman Bereket Simon said in a phone interview today from the capital, Addis Ababa. Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn is now serving as acting prime minister, Bereket said.
“He was recovering from an illness and then suddenly got an infection while abroad,” Bereket said without giving further details.
Meles, was head of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF, and led Africa’s second-most populous country for more than two decades after building a coalition of rebel groups to overthrow Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist military junta in 1991.
His economic policies, which mixed a large state role with private investment, helped the country achieve economic growth rates of as much as 12.6 percent. The economy expanded an average of 11 percent annually from 2004 through 2011, according to International Monetary Fund data.
“Meles showed that, with the right policies in place, even a poor African country could experience sustained economic growth,” Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, wrote in “Globalization and Its Discontents,” his 2002 book. “No one doubted his honesty and there were few accusations of corruption within his government.”
Infrastructure was one of the biggest beneficiaries of increased government spending, foreign investment and remittances sent home by Ethiopians living abroad, including the flagship 80 billion-birr ($4.5 billion), 6,000-megawatt hydropower dam intended to help the country boost electricity exports to countries in the region including Kenya and Sudan.
Meles took a leave of absence from his official duties to recover from an unspecified illness after he failed to attend the African Union summit last month, the government said.
Ethiopia ranked 174th out of 187 countries in the United Nations Development Program’s 2011 Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education and living standards. Four of every 10 people lived on a $1.25 a day or less as of 2011, World Bank data show. In 2011, the country was Africa’s biggest recipient of foreign aid, totaling $3.53 billion, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Under Meles, Ethiopia’s government was a U.S. ally in the fight against insurgencies in the Horn of Africa, especially in Somalia, where the military helped remove an Islamist group from power in 2006. The U.S. government provided $6.23 billion in assistance, including food aid and military training funds between 2000 and 2011, according to the U.S. State Department.
The UN and advocacy groups including Human Rights Watch, based in New York, have criticized Meles’s government for cracking down on civil liberties and introducing anti-terrorism laws in 2009 that have been used to jail opposition politicians, reporters and aid workers.
On July 13, 2012, an Ethiopian court jailed writer Eskinder Nega for 18 years and sentenced opposition activist Andualem Arage to life in prison for plotting against the government. In 2011, two Swedish journalists were sentenced to 11 years each by an Ethiopian court for supporting terrorism after being captured with a banned rebel group.
Elections in Ethiopia have been marred by violence and reports of intimidation of opposition supporters, according to the U.S. State Department. In 2005, Ethiopian security forces shot dead almost 200 people protesting the results of a disputed parliamentary vote. In 2010, Meles’s ruling party and its allies won all but two of the 547 seats in parliament in a vote that the European Union said was “heavily” balanced in favor of EPRDF.
While Meles championed deeper African cooperation, hosting the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and raising the continent’s profile on the world stage in different forums including through his appointment to Commission on Africa by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he also faced foreign policy challenges from neighboring countries.
The country fought a war with Eritrea over a disputed border region between 1998 and 2000 that killed 70,000 people and the issue unresolved.
Meles was born as Legesse Zenawi on May 8, 1955, in Adwa in northern Ethiopia, to an Ethiopian father and Eritrean mother. Adwa was the site of a major Ethiopian victory against invading Italian forces in 1896. He quit medical school at age 19 to take up arms with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front against Mengistu in 1975. He changed his name to Meles in honor of a revolutionary executed by the government that year.
He received a master’s of business administration from the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K., in 1995 and a master’s in economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam in 2004.
He and his wife, Azeb Mesfin, had three children.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:53a52078-590d-447c-94d5-25e95fee148b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-21/meles-zenawi-ethiopia-leader-behind-economic-growth-dies-at-57.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96358 | 1,126 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Brief SummaryRead full entry
Description"As is the case with a number of pocket gopher species, most aspects of the Western Pocket Gopher's life have not yet been studied. This Pocket Gopher lives in rich volcanic soils of alpine meadows and small glacial prairies, west of the Cascade Mountains in northern California, Oregon, and Washington. When Western Pocket Gophers are caught, they are always alone in their burrows."
Mammal Species of the World | <urn:uuid:1014a445-54cc-4a27-b52d-2738c9dd3fa1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eol.org/pages/328061/overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930852 | 98 | 2.890625 | 3 |
President Obama is set this week to name Elizabeth Warren as a special adviser to help set up the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, according to Capitol Hill sources. The move would sidestep a nomination fight over whether the Harvard University law professor should be director of the agency she first proposed three years ago.
Warren will be named as a special adviser reporting both to the White House and the Treasury Department, which has authority under the new financial regulatory law to construct the bureau before a director is named, according to a top congressional aide. By the end of this week, Treasury has to name a transition date for the bureau to be fully operational.
Another source said Warren had first been eyed as special adviser to Treasury in crafting the bureau, but her new position will give her even more sway as voice in the West Wing, where she has a key ally in senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
The White House on Wednesday night would not confirm the selection, which was first reported by ABC News.
Warren had proposed the agency in a 2007 article for the journal Democracy, and Obama has been effusive in his praise of her, even using some of her analogies on why such an agency is needed. The independent bureau will have oversight on home mortgages, overdraft fees, credit card rules and other credit products and have a dedicated funding stream from the Federal Reserve -- estimated to be as much as $500 million annually.
House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and liberal advocacy groups had lobbied Obama to appoint Warren as director, arguing that she was the main force behind pushing for its creation against an onslaught of opposition led by banking groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
"While this is good news for American families, it is my hope that President Obama will nominate Warren to a permanent position to head up the CFPB," said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. "She is more than deserving of the job, and the Senate should have the opportunity to confirm one of the nation's strongest consumer advocates."
But Warren sparked opposition from Republicans who were expected to tie up her nomination. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., has voiced fears the agency will be led by those with a social justice mission, rather than promoting stability in the banking system, although he has not named Warren specifically. Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd had voiced concerns over whether Warren would be able to be confirmed -- to the consternation of liberal activists.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., wrote to Obama on Wednesday expressing concern that he might nominate an interim director to avoid a bruising nomination fight.
"The individual who heads this bureau will be able to make rules, with ultimately no checks and balances, that could have broad-reaching implications for the U.S. economy as it relates to accessing credit, social justice and the safety and soundness of the U.S. banking system," Corker wrote. "The job is disproportionately reliant on the decisions of one individual with access to large sums of taxpayer monies to carry out the agency agenda. Taxpayers deserve better stewardship in the determination of who will take on this responsibility."
The decision will apparently leave the question on who will be the bureau's first director to the future. Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America, said he wants to see how much power Warren will have to make decisions quickly.
"We need strong leadership that can make decisions fast and spell what priorities for this agency should be," Plunkett said.
Plunkett questioned what would be the initial priorities for the bureau, such as whether to target banks that are trying to evade the 2009 credit-card law.
Another key area will be establishing a procedure for customer complaints that would give much of the public a broad sense if it is responsive. Plunkett noted that the current complaint process through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is frustrating to many bank customers.
This article appears in the Sep. 18, 2010, edition of National Journal Daily. | <urn:uuid:91978c3a-e573-4820-ba38-2b77dd25a4b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/wha_20100916_5516.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967969 | 813 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Departement du Pas-de-Calais
|Cemetery notes and/or description:|
The Arras Flying Services Memorial will be found in the Faubourg-d'Amiens Cemetery, which is in the Boulevard du General de Gaulle in the western part of the town of Arras. The cemetery is near the Citadel, approximately 2 kilometres due west of the railway station.
The Memorial commemorates nearly 1000 airmen of the Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps, and the Royal Air Force, either by attachment from other arms of the forces of the Commonwealth or by original enlistment, who were killed on the whole Western Front and who have no known grave.
Both the cemetery and the memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick. | <urn:uuid:efe33250-01ca-4cf2-b464-98266c2ba410> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&GSln=Holmes&GSiman=1&GSst=1436&CRid=2189153&pt=Arras%20Flying%20Services%20Memorial | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939147 | 167 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Ernest Borgnine has died at the ripe old age of 95. Forty-something North Carolinian that I am, Andy Griffith’s death bothered me more, but it didn’t matter as much. Ernest Borgnine was a talented actor, who genuinely deserved his academy award for best actor in Marty, anchored a far more important film that was never going to win any Oscars in The Wild Bunch, and in the surrounding time appeared in some of the greatest schlock movies ever made.
Once upon a time, Hollywood gave us actors who played themselves: No matter the part, the actor shone through. Today such performers are relegated to character actor status (or as the second best television criticism site called them, “Hey it’s that guy!”), but once the screen was loaded with actors whose personalities shone through so hard they typecast themselves: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Alec Guinness, Sean Connery, Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Mr. T., and the greatest of them all, Humphrey Bogart. These were BIG actors, who appeared in BIG movies, not method-acting mushmouths like Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson, nor inhuman cyborg scientologists like Tom Cruise and Matt Damon.
Borgnine was one of them. Yes, in every movie, he played Ernest Borgnine, and in every movie, he played Ernest Borgnine to perfection.
What more could one ask from an actor named Ernest Borgnine?
To appreciate the Borgnine ethos, I suggest the following films:
The Wild Bunch: This is a perfect film. It wasn’t the techno-urbanization of America that damned near killed the western. It was this film, along with Sergio Leone and Mel Brooks. Despite Clint Eastwood’s worthy attempts to bring it back, the western is still ailing. That’s because The Wild Bunch, the story of a band of American outlaws on their way to one glorious last stand in Pershing-era Mexico, said about everything that the genre has to say, and did so at the end of the period. William Holden is the star, but the movie wouldn’t be what it is without Borgnine as his surprisingly serious partner.
Marty: Hollywood still makes plenty of movies about ordinary Joes, but these are dull, Pinteresque dramas filled with meaning and boredom. In this well-deserved Oscar-winning performance as an ordinary Joe with serious family and romantic troubles, Borgnine combines humor and sadness in a way bigger actors couldn’t. Highly recommended.
Escape From New York: ”Snake Plissken?!? I thought you were dead!”
And finally, Jeff Krulik’s wonderful documentary, Ernest Borgnine On The Bus, in which we learn that Ernest Borgnine was a whole lot like Ernest Borgnine, driving across America righting wrongs in the way that only Ernest Borgnine could:
– Patrick from Popehat | <urn:uuid:2de8f08d-4796-47e1-acdc-366cde8d62e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theagitator.com/2012/07/08/ernest-borgnine-i-thought-you-were-dead/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96307 | 629 | 1.5 | 2 |
Australia to invest $31 billion in broadband
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's government will build a A$43 billion ($31 billion) high-speed broadband network, leading a new private-public company, after rejecting bids by companies that it said failed to offer value for money.
In a surprise move, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Tuesday the government would ask private companies to join the country's biggest infrastructure project to build a network that would be up to 100 times faster than the current network.
Australia has slower and more expensive Internet services than many developed countries, raising concerns about competitiveness, but the project will be made more difficult by the country's vast distances and inhospitable terrain.
"It's time for us to bite the bullet on this. The initiative announced today is a historic nation-building investment focused on Australia's long-term national interest," Rudd told reporters at parliament.
The center-left government would sell its majority stake five years after the network, which still requires parliamentary approval, was fully operational.
The fibre-optic network, central to Rudd's winning election campaign in late 2007, will be Australia's biggest reliance yet on public-private partnerships and underscores Rudd's preference for government intervention amid a bruising global financial crisis.
A consortium comprising wealthy Australian businessmen and telecoms industry veterans had been favorite to win the project ahead of Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications, and Canada's Axia NetMedia.
The tender process was enveloped in controversy after the country's largest phone company, Telstra Corp, was dumped from the running in December, after the government panel overseeing bids said its proposal did not fit requirements.
Rudd said the new network would be built with money from a A$20 billion national infrastructure fund and the sale of bonds, following an initial government investment of A$4.7 billion. Private sector investment would be capped at 49 percent.
It adds to A$78 billion in economic stimulus measures announced by the government since September to help shield the stalling economy.
Rudd estimated building the network would take 7-8 years, presenting a risk that voters could be alienated by the long delay as the government faces re-election late next year.
"We've delivered an enhanced election commitment. We're actually delivering faster speeds to more people," Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Reuters, shaking off concerns that the scrapped tender could anger voters and big telcos.
"The global financial crisis impacted right in the middle of the process. The crisis landed right on top of (telcos), the money dried up for everyone," Conroy said, adding Telstra would now be invited back into the process.
The network would operate on a wholesale-only, open access basis, separating retail operations and allowing Optus, Telstra and other companies to build services into the system.
The fibre-to-the-home scheme would support up to 37,000 jobs, Rudd said, as the country teeters on the edge of a recession that could push the jobless rate above 7 percent next year.
Around 90 percent of homes would be connected to a network with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. The network would add A$37 billion to the national economy through added productivity, analysts said.
TELSTRA UP, BUT OUTLOOK UNCERTAIN
Telstra shares closed up 4.4 percent, clawing back some of a 20 percent drop since mid-December, when the government bumped it from the initial network tender.
In a statement, Telstra said the new plan would have little short to-medium-term impact on its business as it would take years to build. Chairman Donald McGauchie said he looked forward to constructive talks with government.
Analysts said Telstra could work with the new plan, but the longer term outlook was cloudy as the former state monopoly would be up against a powerful new rival and would no longer enjoy lucrative control over lines to homes.
"It looks pretty clear that the government has been very persistent in getting a new network up and running, that will definitely be a competing network. It will be competing directly with the most profitable part of Telstra," said Theo Maas, an investment analyst at Fortis Investment Partners said.
The new network is aimed at reaching end users directly, without relying on Telstra's local copper cable network.
"This could mean Telstra's copper network would eventually become obsolete anyway," said Lucinda Chan, a division director with Macquarie Equities.
In Singapore, SingTel shares rose 1.2 percent, beating a more than 2 percent drop on the broader share market.
(Additional reporting by James Grubel in SYDNEY and Gill Murdoch and Catherine Trevethan in Singapore)
(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
- Tweet this
- Share this
- Digg this | <urn:uuid:9b6dc6f1-eac0-4dee-84a1-d63c783c72c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/04/07/us-australia-broadband-idUSTRE5356YN20090407 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963469 | 996 | 1.601563 | 2 |
View Full Version : OpenGL MFC Screen Saver
02-15-2001, 04:32 AM
Guys, I need some help.
Do you know of any good tutorial, in English, that explains how to write an OpenGL screen saver using MFC?
Or, better yet - have you seen any wizards that do this?
02-15-2001, 04:59 AM
Using MFC for a screensaver isn't real pretty. The easiest way to create a screensaver is to use the Win32 Screensaver library. That library basically embeds the WinMain function for you. MFC generally has to have a global instance of a CWinApp derived class. This also embeds a WinMain function for you. There is a way to do it, and you can get code for it at http://www.codeguru.com. Do a search there on screensavers and you should be able to find it. It doesn't do the OpenGL code for you, but implementing OpenGL into it would be the same as implementing OpenGL into any MFC app. (Do a search on that too if you're not sure how to do it.) I do have a Screensaver Appwizard, but at the moment it doesn't do MFC, and it doesn't do OpenGL, so it's probably not what you really want. http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/smile.gif
02-15-2001, 05:33 AM
Thanks. I'll go check it out. I have an MFC screen saver wizard too. Integrating OpenGL into has proved really frustrating, though, which is why I was posting.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:f381eb2e-ba6d-488f-b783-b59645efbbb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/archive/index.php/t-125518.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928757 | 381 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Testimony of Dr. Heidi L. Beirich
Director, SPLC's Intelligence Project
Submitted to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights
Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
September 19, 2012
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1971 and located in Montgomery, Alabama. We are dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education and other forms of advocacy, we work toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality.
The August mass shooting of six people worshipping at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., by Wade Michael Page, who was known to the SPLC since 2000 as a racist, neo-Nazi skinhead, is a grim reminder of the wanton violence that can be waged by members of extremist groups. We commend the Subcommittee for dedicating its resources to investigating this crucial topic.
The SPLC’s Intelligence Project, which I direct, monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. We publish our investigative findings online, on our Hatewatch blog, and in the Intelligence Report, our award-winning quarterly journal that is distributed to more than 55,000 law enforcement officers. The SPLC is also known for our civil lawsuits that hold hate groups accountable for murders and other violent acts committed by their members. These suits have financially crippled some of the country’s most notorious hate groups, including Klan networks that terrorized the African-American community during and after the civil rights movemen
Our staff is recognized for its expertise on domestic extremism, and SPLC President J. Richard Cohen currently serves as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group. We train more than 6,000 law enforcement officers each year on the dangers of domestic terrorism and hate crimes from radical-right groups.
Each year, the SPLC releases a report – the “Year in Hate and Extremism” – that catalogs domestic hate groups and provides the public and law enforcement with an analysis on the state of extremism within the United States. In the most recent report, released this past February, the SPLC found that the radical right grew explosively in 2011, the third such dramatic expansion in as many years. The growth was fueled by fears generated by economic dislocation; a proliferation of demonizing conspiracy theories; the changing racial and ethnic demographics in America; and the prospect of four more years under an African-American president who many on the far right view as an enemy to their country.
The number of hate groups counted by the SPLC last year reached a total of 1,018, up slightly from the year before but continuing a trend of significant growth that is now more than a decade old. The SPLC determines hate groups by their ideology, as expressed in their founding documents or by their leadership. All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.
The 2011 expansion was the latest in a string of annual increases that started in 2000, when the SPLC documented 602 hate groups. An important factor in the subsequent rise was that year’s announcement by the Census Bureau that the white population, due to shifting demographics brought on by Latino immigration and a growing non-white population in the U.S., would no longer be a majority by around 2050. Hate groups that had traditionally targeted African-Americans and/or Jews began to successfully exploit the issue of non-white immigration. Starting in 2008, President Obama’s election and the weak economy also began to play a key role.
The most explosive growth on the radical right has come in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — composed of conspiracy-minded groups that see the federal government as their primary enemy. Many Patriot groups are militias, heavily armed organizations that are increasingly paranoid about, and angry at, the federal government. This movement first emerged in 1994 — a response to what was seen as violent government repression of dissident groups at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and near Waco, Texas, in 1993, along with anger at gun control efforts and the Democratic Clinton Administration in general. It peaked in 1996, a year after the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed by antigovernment ideologue Timothy McVeigh. That year, the SPLC documented 858 groups. By the turn of the millennium, the Patriot movement was reduced to fewer than 150 relatively inactive groups.
The movement came roaring back beginning in late 2008, just as the economy began to falter with the subprime collapse and, more important, as President Obama became the Democratic presidential nominee and, ultimately, the president-elect. Even as most of the nation cheered the election of the first black president that November, an angry backlash developed that included at least two plots by racist extremists to murder Obama. Many Americans, infused with populist fury over bank and auto bailouts and a feeling that they had lost their country, joined Patriot groups.
The swelling of the Patriot movement since that time has been extraordinary. The SPLC has documented a 755% growth in the number of Patriot groups since 2008 – from 149 groups that year, to 512 in 2009, to 824 in 2010, and, finally, to 1,274 by the end of 2011. Last year’s total was more than 400 groups higher than the previous all-time high in 1996.
At the same time, a third strand of the radical right — what the SPLC designates as “nativist extremist” groups, meaning organizations that go beyond normal political activism to harass individuals they suspect of being undocumented immigrants — shrank dramatically. After five years of sustained growth, these vigilante groups plummeted by 42% last year, from 319 in 2010 to 184 in 2011. The decrease appears to be partly a product of negative publicity and internecine quarrels. But perhaps most important is the co-optation of the immigration issue by state legislatures around the country that passed draconian nativist laws like Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and Alabama’s H.B. 56. In many ways, the nativist movement achieved its goals of increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, which propelled the passage of harsh anti-immigrant legislation at the state level.
It’s clear that other kinds of radical activity, in particular domestic terrorist plots, are also on the rise. The shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August was just the latest in a series of violent acts and criminal plots by extremists in recent months and years. Last November, the FBI arrested four members of a Georgia militia who were accused of various crimes in a wide-ranging plot to attack cities with the deadly ricin toxin and kill federal law enforcement and IRS officials. One of the plotters reportedly said, “The first ones that need to die are the ones in the federal buildings.” Their concrete actions allegedly included attempting to purchase a briefcase-size bomb, casing two buildings for bombing, and trying to manufacture the deadly toxin.
In May, members of the American Front — a California-based militia-style white supremacist group — were arrested in Florida for planning acts of violence and preparing for “an inevitable race war.” The leader of the group in Florida considers himself and other American Front members “as the protectors of the white race.” He has stated that his intention “during the race war is to kill Jews, immigrants, and other minorities.”
In other recent plots since January 2011: A neo-Nazi headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades that he reportedly intended to use on undocumented migrants; a white supremacist attempted to bomb a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., an attack that was averted when police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent.
The antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement, whose ideology first developed in white supremacist groups, also has been revitalized in the past few years. Since the murders in 2010 of two West Memphis, Ark., police officers by two members of this movement, law enforcement officers from across the country have contacted the SPLC to report what one detective in Kentucky described as a “dramatic increase” in sovereign activity. Like militias, sovereign citizens are part of the larger Patriot movement. They believe that the federal government has no right to tax or regulate them and, as a result, often come into conflict with police and tax authorities. Just this past August, two more police officers, this time in Louisiana, were gunned down by members of this movement.
The FBI agrees that the sovereign citizens movement is a major problem. In September 2011, it issued a bulletin to law enforcement officials entitled “Sovereign Citizens: A Growing Domestic Threat to Law Enforcement” that describes the movement as “domestic terrorist.” The bulletin notes that sovereigns have killed six law enforcement officers since 2000 and that Terry Nichols, convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing, was a sovereign. With the addition of the officers killed in Louisiana, the law enforcement toll now stands at eight since 2000.
The growth of radical-right groups is one explanation for the rash of non-Islamic domestic terrorism that most experts agree has plagued the country since the 2008 election of President Obama. Last December, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, an academic center associated with the Department of Homeland Security, issued a study based on a sampling of the SPLC’s annual lists of hate groups between 1990 and 2008. It found that 21 percent of the hate groups had members who committed at least one violent act, while 9 percent had members who had committed six or more violent crimes. The consortium also found that “far rightists” between 1990 and 2010 had been involved in more than 345 “homicide incidents” and had killed almost 50 law enforcement officials during the same two decades.
The SPLC has documented more than 100 such domestic terrorist plots and racist rampages since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
In the context of rising domestic extremism and a massive growth in radical-right groups, hate crimes are also of critical importance. The shootings in Oak Creek, Wis., were likely an act of domestic terrorism, but they were also probably driven by the racist beliefs of the shooter and thus could be characterized as hate crimes. Though the FBI has reported annually for some time that there are approximately 7,000 hate crimes in the United States each year, two reports by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) using National Crime Victimization Survey data show that number is far lower than the actual level of hate crime. The DOJ’s June 2011 study found an annual average of 195,000 hate crime victimizations between 2003 and 2009. A 2005 study by the BJS, using the same survey methodology but examining hate crimes during the 2000-2003 period, found an average of 210,000 hate crime victimizations per year.
Certain populations have suffered more than others, most recently American Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim. As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks neared last year, a second wave of anti-Muslim hatred swept the country. The SPLC investigated the phenomenon and found a small cadre of activists was exploiting Americans’ fears of Islamic extremism, reaching a fever pitch in the protests against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.” In the wake of this hysteria, anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported across the country. At the same time, protests were launched against mosques, and lawmakers in more than a dozen states introduced legislation, based on a completely unfounded fear, to ban the use of Islamic religious law, called Shariah, in the U.S. legal system. The overheated atmosphere generated by these events helped spur a 50% rise in the FBI’s count of anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2010.
Though American Muslims have seen an increase in hate crimes against their community in the past few years, other populations have also been targeted after incendiary rhetoric has been used against them by radical-right groups. Hate crimes against Latinos skyrocketed in the mid-2000s as the Minuteman movement exploded across America’s southwestern border. Heavily armed men and women intent on rounding up undocumented migrants, and rightly called “vigilantes” by President George W. Bush, demonized immigrants and Latinos. That demonization could arguably be blamed for fueling higher levels of hate crimes against Latinos during that period. Much the same can be said of anti-LGBT rhetoric and anti-Semitic rhetoric in relation to hate crimes.
In May 2011, a scholarly study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that white Americans believe that progress in race relations since the 1950s has come at their expense and that bias against whites is more of a social problem in the last decade than bias against blacks. (This comes against the backdrop of the Census Bureau’s prediction that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority, falling to less than 50% of the population, by 2050.) These kinds of feelings will certainly continue to fuel the rise in radical-right extremism. And it seems certain that President Obama, if he is reelected, will continue to be a lightning rod for many on the radical right, a man who represents both the federal government and the fact that the racial make-up of the United States is changing. And that suggests that far-right extremism could get worse before it gets better. It is for this reason that domestic hate groups need to be watched vigilantly by federal law enforcement, and the issue of hate crimes needs to be a high priority.
We commend the committee for using its resources to investigate this very serious situation. | <urn:uuid:ad6cb2fe-c7ce-412a-bb63-e8bf2eef1d95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.splcenter.org/testimony-of-dr-heidi-l-beirich-director-southern-poverty-law-center-s-intelligence-project | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967576 | 2,879 | 1.789063 | 2 |