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US lawmakers are once again investigating telecom equipment makers Huawei Technologies and ZTE over their relationships with the Chinese government, as well as five US consulting firms and work done in Iran.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Tuesday that lawmakers from the US House Intelligence committee-led by Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger-had issued letters to both companies stating its concerns over their ties with the Chinese government, including there being a “party committee” representing the government within Huawei.
The committee also questioned Huawei’s relationships with five US consulting firms including IBM and Accenture, as well as both companies’ work in Iran, the report noted.
Ruppersberger stated that the committee is “concerned” the Chinese government is hacking into the country’s networks via its telecom intermediaries, while Rogers highlighted that the Chinese companies provide opportunities for foreign and economic espionage.
Both Chinese companies told WSJ that their interaction with the Chinese government is typical of regulated companies in China. Huawei said that it is beginning to review questions posed by lawmakers, while ZTE stated that it is committed to “remaining transparent, candid, and cooperative” throughout the inquiry.
This is not the first time the House Intelligence committee had launched investigations. Last November, it launched a probe to assess potential threats to national security posed by China’s networking vendors’ presence and expansion in the country.
The level of distrust between these two global economic powerhouses might hamper their efforts to develop policies and mechanisms to increase online security. Security observers told ZDNet Asia that the lack of trust between ally governments will make international security agreements difficult to enforce. | <urn:uuid:e3a6330b-ad75-45e6-9801-955b82151060> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intellasia.net/us-probes-huawei-zte-over-spy-concerns-209409 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964999 | 342 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Teacher Daniel Bent, inspired by an ActionAid talk about our work in Chembakolli, has raised over £4000 for ActionAid by cycling 15,000km from the UK to the remote Indian village.
Below are excerpts from a book he’s written about his experiences, now available from www.dannybent.com.
“Weaving in and out of the stationary traffic, I tried to keep my eyes on the road but couldn’t help noticing the life on the sidewalks.
Mini tent structures were set up as houses for families, and mothers sat cooking over small stoves or fires whilst their children washed in the gutter water.
Sky scrapers, towered above these people, housing industries powering a world standard nuclear programme and a leading space programme.
I found it hard to come to terms with what I was seeing; people living in slum tents in the countryside didn’t seem as bad as this.
The people who work in these offices, people who have six figure salaries, have to walk past this every day on their way into work.
Between these imposing concrete structures was something altogether more impressive.
Using wood, corrugated iron, plastic and cloth, people have created a whole city at street level - the slums.
Twenty-five million people live here, turning over two hundred and fifty million dollars a year.
They recycle everything and they live amongst vermin. I passed by the Western Railway Cricket fields. Seven different games were proceeding on a pitch the size of a normal cricket ground.
Others were practising in the nets. It was rammed with those who shared one thing in common, cricket, bringing all types of people together - men and boys, rich and the poor. The Indians love it."
“I switched on the video camera with bleary eyes for my last video diary.
The usual red light flashed to let me know it was recording. I was sitting on the edge of a checked mattress with the usual stains I’d come to expect engrained within the fibres.
A couple of mosquitoes were circling me with intent. There was a commotion outside as a man selling pots and pans was escorted away by the police.
I looked back at my camera and still the light was flashing. I got as far as “This is my last…” before emotion dried me up. I couldn’t speak.
Choking down a sob, I grabbed the camera and swept the room with it, recognising that I was starting the last day in the same manner I had the first - surrounded by kit.
Just like me, it looked a little older, sun blemished and in need of a deep soak, but it had made it over fourteen thousand nine hundred kilometres, halfway across the world, crossing fourteen countries in six months and two days. There were only one hundred kilometres to go, meaning I’d be in Vidyadaya School in Gudalur today.”
ActionAid and ACCORD are currently looking for two teachers to fill voluntary teaching placements in Vidyodaya School in Gudular. Find out more and apply here.
If you’d like to buy Daniel’s book about his travels, please visit www.dannybent.com. | <urn:uuid:94bec54d-5e69-4792-ba1c-3a10504ccc0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.actionaid.org.uk/schools/actionaid-schools-blog?page=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973997 | 683 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Public Law 104-127, the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (FAIR Act), was signed into law on April 4, 1996. The FAIR Act oriented trade and food aid programs toward greater market development, with increased emphasis on high-value and value-added products. It reauthorized and revised such longstanding export assistance programs as Public Law (P.L.) 480, short- and intermediate-term export credit guarantees (GSM-102 and GSM-103), the Export Enhancement Program, the Dairy Export Incentive Program, and the Market Access Program (formerly the Market Promotion Program). The FAIR Act also provided for the creation of the Supplier Credit Guarantee Program and the Facility Guarantee Program.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture administers the export assistance programs contained in the FAIR Act, except for Titles II and III of the revised P.L. 480, which are assigned by law to the Agency for International Development. Within USDA, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) is the leader in developing and executing these programs and initiatives.Food Aid Programs
The FAIR Act reauthorized and added activities to one of the oldest U.S. export assistance programs--P.L. 480, also known as Food for Peace. Fiscal year 1999 commodity programming for food aid under P.L. 480 is estimated at $1.4 billion, including $910 million for Title I (including Title I/Food for Progress), $469 million for Title II (including Title II/World Food Program), and $19 million for Title III.
The FAIR Act reauthorized Title I government-to-government concessional sales and included the authority to sign agreements with private entities. It also modified the repayment terms for Title I credit, eliminating the minimum repayment period of 10 years and reducing the maximum grace period from 7 to 5 years. An agricultural trade organization will be allowed to carry out projects or programs in developing countries using funds from the sale of Title I commodities if the organization has a market development plan approved by the Secretary of Agriculture.
For FY 1999, concessional sales of about 3.1 million metric tons of commodities valued at $910 million will be made to 18 countries under Title I and the Food for Progress program using Title I funds. These value totals do not include ocean freight financing and ocean freight grants. As of January 13, agreements were being developed for 2.8 million tons of commodities valued at about $808 million. This included Title I concessional sales and Title I-funded Food for Progress donations of 1.8 million tons valued at about $615 million as part of the assistance package to Russia announced by the Secretary of Agriculture on November 6, 1998.
The FAIR Act reauthorized the Title II emergency and private assistance donations program. It increased the maximum level of funding that can be provided as overseas administrative support from $13.5 million to $28 million and added intergovernmental organizations such as the World Food Program to the list of organizations eligible to receive these funds. For FY 1999, about 2.2 million metric tons of commodities valued at an estimated $469 million will be donated under Title II, including Title II donations through the World Food Program.
The FAIR Act reauthorized the Title III Food for Development program. This program provides government-to-government food assistance grants to least-developed countries. Local sales proceeds can be used to support a variety of economic development and related activities in recipient countries. For FY 1999, 152,000 metric tons of commodities valued at about $19 million will be programmed under Title III.
Another program, Food for Progress, is carried out using commodities available for distribution under Section 416(b), funds available to the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), or funds appropriated under P.L. 480, Title I. The program provides commodities to needy countries as a reward for having undertaken economic or agricultural reform. The FAIR Act extended the authority for the Food for Progress program to provide assistance in the administration and monitoring of food assistance programs to strengthen private sector agriculture in recipient countries through 2002. The authority was also expanded to include intergovernmental organizations in Food for Progress programming, to make sales on credit terms to all eligible countries in addition to the former Soviet Union, and to include the provision of technical assistance for monetization programs.
As of January 5, FY 1999 Food for Progress bilateral agreements using the Title I authority were planned with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, and Russia totaling 272,400 metric tons valued at about $94 million. In addition, a Food for Progress agreement with a private entity using the Title I authority was planned in Russia totaling 56,600 tons valued at about $10 million. Dollar totals exclude transportation. Food for Progress programs using CCC funds were planned with U.S. private voluntary organizations for projects in 20 countries totaling 105,000 tons of commodities valued at about $62 million. The Food for Progress program is limited by a global 500,000-metric-ton legislative ceiling and by a cap of $35 million on noncommodity costs paid directly by CCC (primarily transportation).
The FAIR Act reauthorized the Farmer-to-Farmer Program, which can include middle-income countries and emerging markets. FAIR also increased the minimum percentage of P.L. 480 funding for the Farmer-to-Farmer Program from 0.2 to 0.4 percent.
Section 416(b) of the Agricultural Act of 1949 provides for the donation of eligible commodities held by the CCC to needy countries. For FY 1999, donations of 5 million metric tons of commodities valued at about $681 million are planned under the Section 416(b) program. On July 18, 1998, President Clinton announced a Food Aid Initiative providing for the purchase of wheat by the U.S. Government from the domestic market. Two authorities are being used to carry out the initiative. The wheat is purchased under the authority of the CCC Charter Act and is donated under the authority of Section 416(b). As of January 11, donations of 4.3 million tons of wheat and wheat flour valued at about $569 million were planned under this initiative during FY 1999. In addition, 9,500 tons of nonfortified, nonfat dry milk and 50,000 tons of corn have been determined available for 416(b) programming in FY 1999. As of January 11, about 2,700 tons of the nonfat dry milk had been programmed.Commercial Export Credit Guarantee Programs
The FAIR Act mandates a minimum annual program level of $5.7 billion for the Export Credit Guarantee Program (GSM-102) and the Intermediate Export Credit Guarantee Program (GSM-103), but it allows flexibility in how much is made available for each program. The GSM-102 program guarantees repayments of short-term credits (90 days to 3 years) extended by U.S. financial institutions to eligible banks in countries that purchase U.S. farm products. As of December 31, 1998, GSM-102 allocations of about $3.5 billion were announced to 22 countries and 11 regions, including the Andean, Baltic, Central America, Central Europe, East Africa, East Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Southeast Europe, Southern Africa, West Africa, and West Caribbean regions. Under this availability, GSM-102 registrations totaled about $700 million for nine countries and six regions.
Guarantees issued under the GSM-103 program can cover financing periods of more than 3 and up to 10 years. This program is designed to help developing nations make the transition from concessional financing to cash purchases. As of December 31, 1998, $285 million in intermediate credit guarantees were made available for sales to nine countries and two regionsB the Central America and Southern Africa regions. Under this availability, GSM-103 registrations totaled about $10 million for two countries.
The Supplier Credit Guarantee Program (SCGP) became operational in late FY 1996. This program is designed to encourage U.S. exporters to expand, maintain, and develop markets for U.S. agricultural products in areas where commercial financing may not be available without a CCC payment guarantee. The program can help U.S. exporters who wish to provide short-term credits (180 days or less) directly to their foreign buyers.
As of December 31, 1998, SCGP allocations totaled $341 million in coverage for sales to 11 countries and six regions, including the Baltic, Central America, Central Europe, East Carribean, Southeast Asia, and Southeast Europe regions. Under the announced FY 1999 availability, registrations totaled about $11.2 million.
The Facility Credit Program was implemented in December 1997 to extend credit guarantees for export sales of U.S. capital goods and services to improve agriculture-related facilities in emerging markets. No sales have been registered under this program in FY 1999.Export Assistance Programs
The Export Enhancement Program (EEP), announced by USDA on May 15, 1985, operates under authority of the Agricultural Trade Act of 1978 as amended, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, and the FAIR Act. The EEP permits USDA to provide bonuses to make U.S. commodities more competitive in the world marketplace and to offset the adverse effects of unfair trade practices or subsidies. The FAIR Act sets maximum funding levels for CCC to make available for the EEP each fiscal year through 2002 as follows: FY 1996, $350 million; FY 1997, $250 million; FY 1998, $500 million; FY 1999, $550 million; FY 2000, $579 million; FY 2001, $478 million; and FY 2002, $478 million. However, for FY 1997, the Appropriations Act authorized $100 million for EEP bonuses and a subsequent Supplemental Appropriations Act effectively reduced the amount authorized for EEP bonuses to $10 million.
On June 30, 1998, one-year allocations under the EEP were announced for wheat, wheat flour, barley, barley malt, rice, vegetable oils, frozen poultry, and eggs that coincide with the quantity limitations of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture. The EEP is currently operational only for frozen poultry under a 20,210-metric-ton allocation announced July 1, 1998, to six Middle Eastern countries. As of January 29, 1999, EEP bonuses had been awarded for sales of 1,500 metric tons of frozen poultry.
Section 148 of the FAIR Act extended the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP) through FY 2002. Section 148 focuses the DEIP on market development, providing full authority and funding to reach the volume or spending limits consistent with U.S. obligations as a member of the World Trade Organization. The DEIP operates on a bid bonus system similar to EEP, with cash bonus payments. The DEIP program helps exporters of U.S. dairy products meet prevailing world prices and helps develop foreign markets for the targeted products.
Allocations under the current DEIP program for July 1, 1998, through June 30, 1999, were announced on June 30 last year. The major markets being assisted include Africa, Asia, the Former Soviet Union, Latin America, and the Middle East. As of January 29, bonus values totaling around $105 million were awarded for 94,924 metric tons of nonfat dry milk, 3,656 tons of whole milk powder, 2,662 tons of processed American cheese, 334 tons of mozzarella cheese, and 1 ton of cheddar cheese.
The Market Access Program (MAP) was authorized by the FAIR Act. The MAP is funded at $90 million annually for FY 1996 through 2002 and is designed to encourage the development, maintenance, and expansion of foreign markets for U.S. agricultural products. The MAP forms a partnership among small businesses, cooperatives, state-regional trade groups, trade associations, and FAS to use the experience of specialists deployed around the world and share the costs of eligible overseas marketing and promotional activities. Eligible activities include consumer promotions, market research, technical assistance, and trade servicing. In
FY 1998, USDA allocated $90 million in MAP funding to 64 U.S. trade organizations for export promotion activities in foreign markets. A Federal Register notice was published on February 1, 1999, announcing that USDA is accepting applications for the FY 1999 MAP.
The Foreign Market Development Program (FMD) also provides cost-share assistance to eligible nonprofit agricultural trade organizations to conduct approved international market development activities. USDA enters into agreements with nonprofit U.S. trade organizations that have the broadest producer representation of the commodity being promoted and gives priority to those organizations that are nationwide in membership and scope. Activities conducted under this program generally address long-term foreign import constraints and are designed to maintain and expand long-term growth in demand for U.S. agricultural products.
For FY 1999, USDA allocated $33.5 million to 26 U.S. trade organizations for export promotion activities under FMD. A Federal Register notice was published on February 1, 1999, announcing that USDA is accepting applications for the FY 2000 FMD.[FoodAid/FFP/images/footer.html] | <urn:uuid:d992a08f-25cb-4ba5-9ba3-64aa0663ffd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fas.usda.gov/excredits/quarterly/1999/feb-sum.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948249 | 2,677 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Encrypting for the Future
August 09, 2002
WEP as we know it is not considered great security, but it's better than no security. If you're still holding out for the ultimate in WLAN encryption, here's a look at what is coming to protect your 802.11 connection.
Just as 802.11 describes wireless communications, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) currently describes wireless security. Today, WEP comes in 64-bit and more secure 128-bit, as well as proprietary versions that are designed to stop unauthorized access. But is 128-bit WEP the ultimate in wireless security that will withstand everything that hackers can throw at it? And what about the immediate future for wireless security? For answers, we asked a panel of wireless and security analysts.
The biggest WEP issue today is the inherent weaknesses that remain even as the technology evolves. Navin Sabharwal, Director of Residential & Networking Technologies at Allied Business Intelligence, finds three major flaws in WEP. To start, the technology relies on a short initialization vector (IV), which when used with the shared key is eventually reused. By monitoring a network for an hour or less, hackers can theoretically crack a key that the network is using.
A second major flaw is WEP's use of a static shared key. Should hackers crack the key, it is clearly exposed and easily exploited. Sabharwal says that stronger security demands a dynamic key that, when exposed, is quickly replaced by a new one.
"By using a much larger key, 128-bit encryption provides greater cryptographic protection," says Michael Greeson, Senior Analyst, Director of Broadband Research for Parks Associates. "Although more difficult to hack, 128-bit WEP falls victim to many of the same problems of lower bit WEP encryption. Many observers believe that the 128-bit WEP extension is really not that much more secure than its brethren."
"128-bit WEP is not the final answer, although it will serve as an interim solution," adds Greeson. "WEP is only reasonably effective when combined with more traditional security practices, such as a firewall."
"128-bit is a successive technology approach that links consumer demand for greater encryption," says Frank J. Bernhard, Managing Principal, Supply Chain and Telecommunications Practice, at OMNI Consulting Group LLP. "Most vendors have moved in this direction as an evolving standard but given little thought to the real risk mitigation effects of the technology."
"The apparent downside to 128-bit WEP is really an interoperability issue within mixed vendor environments," says Bernhard. "Networks that apply varying versions of WEP protection find configuration and maintenance challenges to be an operational stumbling block."
"WEP offers a basic level of security for residential users and small businesses, but it is not a suitable solution for large corporations and public access in hotspots," says Monica Paolini a consultant for Analysis Consulting. "Clearly WEP (128-bit as well as 64-bit) is by far preferable to no security."
Proprietary WEP flavors have come to market, most notably, Agere's WEPplus. According to the company, WEPplus remedies the initialization vector problem. However, is the proprietary version more secure than conventional 128-bit WEP?
"The word on the street is that WEPplus is truly more secure than other WEP extensions," says Greeson. "Given the use of a key generation algorithm that avoids weak keys, WEPplus is more difficult to crack." Greeson warns that Agere claims its WEPplus only "reduces the vulnerability," as opposed to eliminating it.
"Orinoco's WEPplus is clearly an interim innovation, which definitely provides added security over the basic WEP protocol," says Sabharwal. "It is capable of defeating AirSnort, though ultimately it implies that both the client and access point devices have implemented WEPplus. [AirSnort is a hacker tool that enables someone with a PRISM2-based 802.11b card, Linux 2.4 kernel based system, and WLAN drivers to guess a network's WEP key after passively gathering between 100MB-1GB of data.] That is why in the longer run the industry must move towards truly standardized security solutions."
Patches and Progress
There are two key technologies that are designed to improve wireless security: Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) protocol. TKIP's dynamic scheme is designed to remedy WEP's static key problem by changing the temporal key every 10,000 packets. While the IV used under TKIP is larger, TKIP still relies on RC4 encryption.
A big benefit here is that most of the 802.11 installed base can upgrade to TKIP though firmware patches. According to Sabharwal, TKIP was initially called WEP2, but its name was changed so it wouldn't be associated with "WEP" security.
Sabharwal says that AES offers far stronger encryption than RC4. The main drawback is that AES requires more processing horsepower, and may only be used with new WLAN products. "Longer-term vendors should look towards AES simply because it is essentially a more secure encryption technology, versus RC4 (which both WEP and TKIP use)," says Sabharwal.
"One must ask the ultimate question of whether or not a "patch" is consistent with their comfort level of security," says Bernhard. "Since TKIP was augmented to fashion itself around legacy technology (and early stage 802.11standards), the patchwork quilt of security may not shore the confidence necessary to convince CIOs and their business peers that the enterprise remains secure."
Graham Titterington, Senior Analyst at Ovum, views TKIP as an unhappy compromise that provides limited security with significant performance overhead. "It does provide a third alternative between doing nothing and moving to full IPSEC VPN level security," says Titterington.
"TKIP is an improvement on WEP and as such it is a welcome measure to address some of the security concerns - especially in the consumer and public access market where standardization and interoperability are key," says Paolini.
"TKIP is a good interim addition, as it can be a firmware upgrade to existing equipment," says Russ Craig, Research Director, Digital Consumer Technology Practice, Semiconductor Practice at Aberdeen Group. "As backward compatibility concerns in the Enterprise Market are very real, TKIP will continue to be supported along with AES for some time to come."
"The long term solution is the IEEE 802.11i standard which is currently being worked on," says Sabharwal. "This specification, which will be delivered by end of 2002, will apply a new security scheme to all the 802.11 protocols (a, b and g)."
According to Titterington, the long term solution will replace WEP with something that is AES-based and offer stronger security without the massive throughput hit.
"While the IEEE pushes the fix into the mainstream, adoption is slow as vendors focus on next generation products that deliver superior encryption schemes and a platform that doesn't attempt to readdress the weakness," says Bernhard.
"I think that increasingly we will see wireless security becoming fully integrated with overall network security (which traditionally has been about wired communications) and as such, there will be a tendency to adopt solutions that are suitable for both," says Paolini. "However, because users will use different devices, different networks and access technologies, it will be difficult for corporations to rely on less flexible proprietary solutions."
"The year 2001 proved to be a wake-up call for corporate IT security and not just because of the 9/11 tragedy," says Bernhard. "In 2002, broad base demand for wireless is coming to critical mass, and the economic viability of mobile user security is being felt across the globe. As more departments and metro networks turn to wireless solutions, the imperative for WEP security and advanced security means will be an obvious investment point." | <urn:uuid:2a8f179f-bdd9-421a-8e3a-bddb95dc74d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/1443911/Encrypting-for-the-Future.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957358 | 1,664 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Hey kids! Free casuistry!
Some time back I posted a set of links to some older works in Scholastic philosophy and theology available online via Archive.org. Fans of Scholastic moral theology will be interested to know that five volumes of The Casuist: A Collection of Cases in Moral and Pastoral Theology, a very useful series published about a century ago, are also available online. Here are the links: Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3; Volume 4; Volume 5.
Also available at the same site is Fr. Thomas Slater's similar work Questions of Moral Theology.
Among the many articles of interest you’ll find within these resources, some readers might find especially interesting “Is It Ever Permitted to Tell a Lie?”, at pp. 44-49 of Volume 3 of The Casuist. This is an issue that I have addressed in a number of earlier posts (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). As my longtime readers know, I endorse the traditional view that (a) lying is deliberately speaking contrary to one’s true thoughts and that this is always and intrinsically wrong, even if not always gravely so, but that (b) broad mental reservation, even when it is hoped that that its use will deceive one’s listener, does not count as lying. A minority view within the tradition holds that a deliberate falsehood counts as lying only when the listener has a right to the truth. In an earlier post I firmly rejected this latter view, but I also emphasized that it has had defenders in the tradition and that it would be unjust to accuse those who hold it of somehow dissenting from Catholic orthodoxy. The article from The Casuist gives a good idea of how seriously this matter was debated by earlier generations of Catholic moral theologians. | <urn:uuid:82e4adc0-5d5b-4e47-a864-81a416de1655> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/11/hey-kids-free-casuistry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959073 | 384 | 2.28125 | 2 |
From the Telegraph.co.uk: President Medvedev Is A Buddhist Goddess
President Medvedev of Russia was hailed as a goddess during an official visit to a Buddhist monastery in eastern Siberia.
During the first trip in 16 years to the remote Ivolginsky monastery in Buryatia by a head of state, he was shown a statue of the White Tara, a seven-eyed, female figure in the Buddhist pantheon, whose embodiment he is believed to be, it was reported.
The spiritual leader of the monastery, Pandito Khambo Lama Damba Ayusheyev, said when asked about the president’s spiritual significance: “It’s very hard to understand this for non-Buddhists and even for some Buddhists too.”
Speaking to the Interfax news agency, he added: “The leader of the country is a man who bears very serious responsibility for others. The Buddhists must support him, identifying him as a deity.”
White Tara is the mother of all Buddhas and is thought to embody compassion, long life, healing and serenity. She is also known as “the wish-fulfilling wheel”.
Russia’s Buddhists, of whom there are between 700,000 and a million constituting less than one per cent of the population, consider the country’s leaders to be an emanation of the female Buddha. This belief dates back to the 18th century, when the Empress Elizabeth officially recognised the religion.
The monastery at Buryatia is 30 kilometres from the region’s capital, Ulan-Ude, and is the biggest Buddhist centre in Russia.
In addition to being hailed as a goddess, President Medvedev promised financial support to the Buddhist community while he was there and announced that he will be introducing Buddhist chaplains to the Russian Federation’s army.
That's it? He's a goddess, and the best he can do is give away other people's money and allow chaplains to minister to the troops? Heck, even Obama, the Messiah, promised lower sea levels when he became President. Can't Medvedev do better than that? | <urn:uuid:ca399fdc-b867-4a10-9007-e6ae0d1f262b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.actsoftheapostasy.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96597 | 456 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Posted 2 years ago
Here are two examples of United States $2.50 gold pieces. Of this smaller denomination I have quite a few. As I have mentioned in the past, coins are my only real passion besides my children & surfing. I've been collecting since I was a kid back in the mid 1960's. These smaller U.S. gold coins were one of the workhorses of the U S economy and for the world economies as well. Both of these examples, while 50 years exactly apart are the same minus a small minute detail that only someone who collects these type coins would know. Both of these are high grade examples and are graded by the very respectable graders of PCGS & NGC respectfully. The U.S. minted gold coins from the late 1700's up to 1933 for circulation in the following denominations. $1.00, $2.50, $3.00, $5.00, $10.00 & $20.00 There were some special pieces struck in a value of $50.00 along with several private mints that struck gold in values of as little as $.25 but these were not minted for the masses. $2.50 back in 1851 or 1901 was a pile of money for the average person. Most of the examples like you see here have been worn out from commerce, and thus very low grade. But the vast majority were confiscated by our own govt when gold was re-called in 1933 and after that, it was illegal to own. Very few survive today in the condition of the two pictured here. If you don't own any gold or silver yet, I beseech you to buy all you can possibly afford. You will not be sorry you did. | <urn:uuid:7064f916-4401-40af-bdf2-9cc832ae481f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/15158-1851-and-1901-u-s-gold-quarter-eagles?in=1235 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981248 | 356 | 2.296875 | 2 |
More than 1,500 New Yorkers gathered today in Manhattan to mourn the death of a 32 year-old gay man, who was shot down on Friday just blocks away from the historic Stonewall Inn in an apparent act of anti-gay bias.
Gay Actors and Ramin Setoodeh: Setting the Record ‘Straight’
Last April, Newsweek ran an article by author Ramin Setoodeh titled “Straight Jacket” in which Setoodeh implies that gay actors are unable to play straight roles convincingly. This week he ran a follow-up in the Daily Beast, in which he says he realized that his premise was wrong – while getting in a few not-so-subtle digs at his critics.
The Internet wasn’t happy with my line of thinking, and blogs twisted my words to suggest that I was homophobic. Hollywood’s gay elite joined in the attacks. Glee creator Ryan Murphy called for a boycott of Newsweek. Cynthia Nixon accused me of setting the gay-rights movement back 10 years. Alan Cumming said I was “a danger to us all, not just gay people... but everyone on the planet.” Perez Hilton posted pictures of me on his blog. I could not walk through New York’s gay neighborhoods without causing a stir.
Was I really a traitor to my own community? Before Promises, Promises closed on Broadway on Sunday, I bought a ticket and secretly went to see the show again. Once inside, I slumped down in my seat, afraid somebody would call the GLAAD police if I were spotted. The lights dimmed, and Sean Hayes opened the show alongside a troop of male dancers. When he sang about his passion for basketball, the men performed aerial splits. Then he started to pine after the office lunch lady (Kristin Chenoweth), and I realized that I had been all wrong.
First off, “GLAAD police?” Really?
More importantly, Setoodeh now says the real problem is that “Hollywood doesn’t even allow gay actors to play gay.”
But I think he’s missing the point again. Re-reading his original piece, I realized that in his criticism of gay actors in straight roles, all he was doing was talking about his own inability to accept those actors in those roles.
- Sean Hayes "comes off as wooden and insincere, as if he’s trying to hide something, which of course he is."
- Neil Patrick Harris and Portia DeGeneres "inhabit broad caricatures, not realistic characters."
- Jonathan Groff "seems more like your average theater queen when he smiles."
- Rock Hudson's performance in Pillow Talk "dissolves into a farce when you know the likes of his true bedmates."
This is no different from a person claiming that attractive people can’t convincingly play scientists. This is not a problem with the actors. It’s a problem with Ramin Setoodeh. And it's at the root of both of his premises - first, that gay actors can't play 'straight,' and now, that gay actors are being shut out of all roles.
The good news is that while Ramin might share these hang-ups with some viewers, American audiences are becoming more accepting with every passing movie and TV season. And because of the trailblazing work of today’s openly LGBT actors, the next generation of actors - and audiences - will be amazed that this was ever an issue. Look no further than Amber Heard who came out (at our 25th anniversary event last month) at the age of 24, and will star as Johnny Depp’s love interest in the much anticipated film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary this year.
While Setoodeh and GLAAD are in agreement that we’d like to see more gay roles in Hollywood films (and not just the Oscar bait he focuses on), the solution isn’t to simply insert openly gay actors into those roles so Setoodeh can finally “believe” the performance. The simple solution is for gay roles to be played by strong actors, and gay actors to perform strong roles. Hopefully, the more common this becomes, the sooner viewers like Setoodeh will be able to set aside long held biases.
Setoodeh is certainly closer to the mark this time than he was last Spring, but the root of the problem isn’t with Hollywood – it’s with him. As he (and audiences in general) continue to become more able to appreciate the skills of actors no matter what their sexual orientation, this issue will fade away like a bad flashback scene. | <urn:uuid:82d22062-1cc4-4f83-a719-c6371b5e75ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glaad.org/2011/01/05/gay-actors-and-ramin-setoodeh-setting-the-record-straight?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971373 | 984 | 1.515625 | 2 |
what others say
SE Asia stands to gain from Abe's policies
Last December, when Japanese voters threw out the left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), commentators warned of rising tensions with China as the incoming conservative government headed by a hawkish prime minister took a tougher line on territorial rows.But amid all the hand-wringing, two more subtle points about the election campaign and its aftermath were largely overlooked.
The first refers to the extent to which the policies advocated by both the right and left of the Japanese political spectrum share increasingly little common ground with their Western counterparts. The second has to do with the way the poll result could encourage business leaders to follow the government by turning their attention towards Southeast Asia.
Japan's confusing political fault lines have been around for some time, but the election underlined the point in a way that made them difficult to ignore.
The trend really began in September 2011, when Yoshihiko Noda replaced Naoto Kan as prime minister of the ruling DPJ government. A fiscal conservative, Noda spent far more time trying to shore up the government budget and rein in public debt than developing the sort of big-spending social assistance programmes that left-wing governments are often associated with. Indeed, he staked his political career on raising the politically unpopular consumption tax rate.
Noda's administration was also known for its disregard for global warming - another issue generally closely associated with left-wing politics in the West.
If Noda's policies were hard for left-wingers outside Japan to swallow, a key reason for the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP’s) overwhelming victory in December must have been equally incomprehensible to Western conservatives. LDP leader Shinzo Abe's support for nationalistic foreign policy stances, as well as his controversial demands for reforms in both the constitution and the education system, received little attention during the campaign.
The main issue was the LDP's plans to revive the economy and end deflation. But unlike his Western counterparts, Abe did not advocate austerity measures to help bring down the national debt. The focus instead was on the need for an extra spending stimulus and a "bold monetary policy" to revive the economy. In other words, Japanese conservatives were advocating big government of the sort that would leave their counterparts in Europe and the United States aghast.
Japan's debt is about equal to 230 per cent of its GDP, higher than that of Greece (175 per cent of GDP) and nearly twice that of Italy (125 per cent).
With the debt overwhelmingly in Japanese hands, and Japan's overseas assets about equal to its debts, the country's situation is different from that of Europe.
Even so, Tokyo's maverick stance may not go down well in other global capitals at a time when international cooperation is essential for economic recovery.
This brings us to the second point about the poll. Regardless of the wisdom of Abe's economic policies, they are likely to have global repercussions; Southeast Asia could be among the chief beneficiaries. This will likely become evident in the second and third quarters when the Japanese economy begins to feel the full impact of the planned stimulus.
Long-term structural trends are pushing Japanese firms to invest overseas. With more liquidity being poured into corporate coffers, this trend should accelerate.
With Abe in power, additional Japanese investment in China involves political risks few corporations are likely to consider. But Southeast Asia presents no such problems. Indeed, Tokyo can be expected to support such a development as a way of currying favour with nations it sees as potential allies against the perceived threat from China.
Significantly, the first overseas trip by new foreign minister Fumio Kishida was to the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei and Australia. And earlier this month, Abe visited Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, with the aim of deepening economic ties.
Abe was seen pushing high-speed rail systems in Bangkok and nuclear power plants in Hanoi. In Jakarta, he met President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and discussed bilateral relations in trade, investment, infrastructure development, tourism and employment. Not surprisingly, China's maritime claims were on the agenda in all three countries.
December's election did more than change the diplomatic situation in Northeast Asia. | <urn:uuid:31e3e34c-ef72-422d-83cb-8772755ff87f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/SE-Asia-stands-to-gain-from-Abes-policies-30199086.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969979 | 861 | 1.789063 | 2 |
This is the section probably a lot of people are really interested in, since these are actual techniques while the previous section was more thought-training, Active Techniques typically give much better short-term performance. However the draw-back is that most of them wear out over a protracted period of time, as the energy you produced runs out. Additionally since they are techniques, they are harder to use, and require more practice to use effectively.
When some people see the concept of generating energy which will be presented in this section they think they can now become a limitless energy source. This is wrong for so many reasons. First and foremost, Conservation of Energy says energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Before anyone tries to counter my physics with quantum physics remember that most quantum physics principles only work on a very small scale, around 10^-15 or so (credit to Cullen for this).
What this means is even if you generate more energy, the power to do that has to be coming from somewhere. That somewhere is assumed to be the food you eat. So even if you could keep up the technique for a very long period of time, you’re going to run out of the resources to create energy eventually. Stuffing your face also will not work because it takes time for the body to process the food you eat.
Also its unsure for a lot of Energy Management techniques whether one is actually generating energy or rather restructuring their available energy to bring what reserves they already had forward to be used. If this is the case, you definitely do not have a limitless energy source. Additionally many Energy Management techniques inherently have a limited number of uses as the energetic state they bring on makes it harder to focus. Eventually you will be too excited to properly perform the technique. In both the first and third case attempting to continue using Energy Management in spite of the finite limit can result in injury. So don’t be stupid. That is all. | <urn:uuid:6cc6190a-7c44-4970-944a-f8bf77873996> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psionicsonline.net/active-techniques-introduction | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967528 | 391 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Kieren Keke remembers growing up on the Pacific island of Nauru, the world's smallest independent republic.
"The weather patterns were predictable," he says. "There was a wet season and a dry season, an annual cycle. When there was drought, it was limited."
"Now it's different," he tells CNN. "There's no predictability -- periods of drought can last seven or eight years, and when we get storms they are more intense. The coastline is being eroded. Now the sea is right up to people's doorsteps."
Keke is now foreign minister of Nauru, and leads the Alliance of Small Island States at the current U.N. Climate Change conference in Doha, Qatar. The Alliance is fighting a David-and-Goliath battle with the world's biggest polluters -- trying to shame them into tougher action to limit emissions and curb the warming of the planet.
The 43 members of the Alliance include countries that are literally disappearing amid rising sea levels. And they accuse the likes of India, China and the United States of not addressing climate change with enough urgency.
The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that sea levels would rise between seven and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) this century, but a rate of ice-melt in the Arctic that is much faster than anticipated has prompted many scientists to raise the projection to about one meter, more than three feet.
Among those most threatened are the Marshall Islands, halfway between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea. The highest point on the 29 atolls and five islands is 33 feet (10 meters) above sea level. The capital, Majuro, is just three feet above sea level and was inundated by high tides four years ago.
"Low-lying atolls across the Pacific are slowly vanishing," Keke says.
In Nauru, too, people don't have many places to go. The island -- which on satellite imagery looks like a white pebble in the deep blue expanse of the Pacific -- is eight square miles (21 square kilometers) and has a population of some 10,000, almost all of whom live on the coastline. The highest point is 200 feet above sea level, but much of the interior has been ravaged by the effects of phosphate mining. And the nearest neighbors are some 180 miles (almost 300 kilometers) away.
Keke says the Alliance wants the 190-odd delegations in Doha to "ramp up their ambitions" because current scientific projections about the warming planet will otherwise wipe out a number of low-lying states. But time is pressing. The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding international agreement on emissions, expires in less than four weeks. And the Doha conference is due to end later this week. | <urn:uuid:bdbf6237-f61a-4a21-b10d-7aaaa2d6bb34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.4029tv.com/news/national/Rising-sea-level-puts-island-nations-at-risk/-/8897558/17646706/-/h015bc/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96067 | 568 | 2.9375 | 3 |
|Food type||Jewish kosher style delicatessen|
|Street address||205 East Houston Street, Manhattan, New York City|
|City||New York City|
|Website||Katz's Delicatessen New York (official site)|
Katz's Delicatessen, also known as Katz's of New York City, is a kosher style (not kosher) delicatessen restaurant located at 205 Houston Street, on the southwest corner of Houston and Ludlow Streets on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City.
Since its founding in 1888, it has become popular among locals and tourists alike for its pastrami sandwiches and hot dogs, both of which are widely considered among New York's best. Each week, Katz's serves 10,000 pounds of pastrami, 5,000 pounds of corned beef, 2,000 pounds of salami and 12,000 hot dogs.
In 1888, the Iceland brothers established what is now known as Katz’s Delicatessen on Ludlow Street in New York’s Lower East Side. Upon the arrival of Willy Katz in 1903, the establishment's was changed from Iceland Brothers to Iceland & Katz. Willy’s cousin Benny joined him in 1910, buying out the Iceland brothers to officially form Katz’s delicatessen. Their landsman Harry Tarowsky bought into the partnership in April 1917.
The construction of the subway system required the deli to move to the present side of the street, although the entrance remained on Ludlow Street. The vacant lot on Houston Street was home to barrels of meat and pickles until the present storefront facade was added in the period 1946-49.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the Lower East Side was home to millions of newly immigrated families. This, along with the lack of public and private transportation, forged a solid community such that Katz’s became a focal point for congregating. On Fridays, the neighborhood turned out for franks and beans, a long time Katz tradition.
During the peak of the Yiddish theater, the restaurant was frequently full of actors, singers and comedians from the many theaters on Second Avenue as well as the National Theater on Houston Street. During World War II, the three sons of the owners were all serving their country in the armed forces, and the family tradition of sending food to their sons became sealed as the company slogan "Send A Salami To Your Boy In The Army".
The next change in ownership took place with the death of Willy Katz, as his son Benny took over. In the late 70’s, both Benny Katz and Harry Tarowsky died, leaving the store to their offspring, son-in-law Artie Maxstein and son Izzy Tarowsky, respectively. However by the mid-1980s, the new generation of owners realized that they had no immediate offspring of their own to whom they could leave the business. Long-time friend and restaurateur Martin Dell, along with his son Alan (who was a chef and a manager at a neighboring deli) and son-in-law Fred Austin, officially bought into the partnership in 1988 on the establishment's 100th anniversary. Alan’s son Jake officially joined the business in late 2009 and is currently in charge of all major operations.
Support for American troops
During World War II, Katz's encouraged parents to "send a salami to your boy in the army" which became one of the deli's famous catch phrases, along with "Katz's, that's all!" which is still painted on the side of the building. The former phrase is referenced in the Tom Lehrer song "So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)", in the lyric: "Remember Mommy, I'm off to get a commie, so send me a salami, and try to smile somehow"; the lyrics are by Hal David.
Katz's continues its "Send a salami to your boy in the army" to this day. The deli has arranged special international shipping only for U.S. military addresses and has been a source of gift packages to the troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As each customer enters Katz's, a door attendant hands them a printed, numbered ticket. As they receive their food from various stations/areas throughout the deli (separate for sandwiches/hot dogs/bottled drinks/fountain drinks/etc.), employees compute a running total of the pre-tax bill. If several people's orders are combined on a single ticket, a cashier collects the blank tickets.
Katz's has instituted a "lost ticket fee". If a customer loses a ticket, an additional $50 surcharge is added to the bill. The fee's purpose, as stated by the management, is to encourage patrons to go back and find the lost ticket in the hopes of preventing theft (substituting a smaller ticket for a larger one).
In popular culture
- Katz's was the site of Meg Ryan's and Estelle Reiner's famous "I'll have what she's having" fake orgasm scene in the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally...; the table at which she and Billy Crystal sat is marked with a sign that says, "Where Harry met Sally...hope you have what she had!".
- It was the site of Johnny Depp's character meeting with an FBI contact in Donnie Brasco (1997).
- Katz's Deli is the site for a scene in Across the Universe (2007), in which one of the main characters reveals he has been drafted into the Vietnam War.
- Katz's appears in the movie Enchanted (2007) with Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams.
- The deli appears in We Own the Night (2007).
- Katz's appeared in the background of the claymation movie Mary and Max (2009), in most of Max's bus stop scenes.
- In the French film Nous York (2012), Manu Payet and Dree Hemingway visit Katz's, where Fred Austin greets them at their table.
- According to Jewish dietary law, or kashrut, milk products and meat may not be eaten together. (See Kashrut: Jewish Dietary Laws on the Judaism 101 website). Katz's menu includes a Reuben sandwich, which includes corned beef and Swiss cheese, which violates this proscription. (See Katz's menu)
- "Katz's Delicatessen" on the Zagat website
- New York City Travel Guide: Katz's Deli, accessed September 24, 2006
- "Mile End" on the Zagat website
- "Salamis to Fend Off Military Blandness", The New York Times, May 22, 1991. p. C8
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Katz's Delicatessen| | <urn:uuid:ad5a2ab6-d497-48b4-8d0a-e19f3303675f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz's_Deli | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953543 | 1,414 | 1.5625 | 2 |
06. 10. 2008 - Czech Airlines Celebrates 85th Anniversary of its Operations
Prague, 6 October 2008
Today Czech Airlines celebrates the 85th anniversary of its establishment. The first flight of an aircraft in the colours of Czechoslovak State Airlines, an Aero A-14 Brandenburg, was flown by the field pilot Karel Brabenec, even three weeks after the company establishment and during the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the new state, on 28 October 1923. Due to the adverse meteorological conditions, it was only a symbolic flight around the Kbely Airport. The first real flight with the first passenger took place one day later, on 29 October, when the weather improved significantly, from Prague-Kbely to the Bratislava Vajnory Airport.
“On this damp and chilly day, the rookies of the Czechoslovak Aviation Regiment No. 1 stood in formation, waiting to be sworn in. With them, there were other protagonists, too: military dignitaries, representatives of industrial, business, and economic life, airport staff, mechanics, pilots, and also crowds of eagerly waiting people, who had come to see with their own eyes the still thrilling invention – the airplane – and to be the witnesses of a truly historical event – the ceremonial launch of the operations of Czechoslovak State Airlines …”
Cited from the book: “Czech Airlines for 80 years at home in the skies”, by Libor Zeman
At first, the Airline operated with a winter break. In the first year of its operations, i.e., from 28 October to 30 November 1923, Czechoslovak State Airlines carried a total of 13 passengers on the Prague – Bratislava route, and seven passengers on the occasion of a show flight in České Budějovice.
The main milestone of the 1930s was the relocation of air operations from Kbely to the newly opened Ruzyně Airport in 1937. In its time, the new Ruzyně Airport was one of the most modern airports, boasting not only all of the equipment and lighting for night-time operations, but also radio equipment. Czechoslovak Airlines started operating from the new airport on the very day of its grand opening, i.e., on 5 April 1937, on the Prague - Brno route.
The promising development of civil aviation was interrupted by the Second World War and again, after the war, by the 1948 political putsch. In spite of that, in the 1950s, Czechoslovak Airlines became on of the first airlines in the world to use jet aircraft, when Tupolev TU 104s joined its fleet.
In August 1960, a Czechoslovak Airlines aircraft crossed the equator for the first time in the airline’s history, on the 15-hour flight from Prague – Cairo – Bahrain – Bombay – Rangoon – Phnom Penh – Jakarta. The airline’s first transatlantic flight, with the leased Bristol Britannia BB-318 aircraft, took place in 1962, flying from Prague to Havana. In 1964, Czechoslovak Airlines carried more than one million passengers for the first time in its history, but primarily on national routes.
In 1970, Czechoslovak Airlines finally realised the plans born shortly after the war and launched a scheduled service on the Prague – Montreal – New York route, operated by Iljushin Il-62s. At that time, Czechoslovak Airlines aircraft also first crossed the Arctic Circle, on the Prague – Helsinki – Rovaniemi route.
The early 1980s were marked by a worsening economic situation in the world, which was also reflected in the operations of Czechoslovak Airlines. National flights were significantly cut back, including the most heavily used Prague – Brno route, following the completion of the D1 Motorway. Service was also reduced to a number of countries in Europe, Africa, and the Far East. On the other hand, in 1983, Czechoslovak Airlines introduced a Business Class on board its aircraft which meant an improvement in the quality of the service provided.
The 1989 revolution meant that Czechoslovak Airlines no longer had to follow a political dictate, concerning among other things the renewal of the aircraft fleet. In 1991, the first western-produced aircraft, an Airbus 310, joined its fleet. On the other hand, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc entailed the disintegration of established markets and caused a significant drop in the number of passengers. Air France became a strategic partner for Czechoslovak Airlines. The cooperation did make possible the renewal of the airline’s fleet, but failed to live up to financial expectations and was terminated after two years.
The start of a new millennium was attended by a major economic decline. Under the present management, the Airline was successfully revitalised and has again generated a profit since 2007, in spite of the record growth in oil prices. After years, the Airline can again afford to plan its development.
Between 2006 and 2008, the medium-haul fleet underwent a major modernisation. The older Boeing 737 aircraft were gradually replaced by 12 of the most modern new-generation Airbus A320/319s. The improving results allowed for the upgrades to continue, and Czech Airlines has already taken advantage of an option for the supply of another eight Airbus A319s between 2011 and 2012.
The Airline has launched work on three development projects with a major yield potential. At the end of this year, it will deploy MRO - a new integrated information system for aircraft maintenance, administration, and management. The new method for managing and planning maintenance, and keeping track of and administering aircraft units and spare parts, will significantly reduce costs and improve the functioning of the Czech Airlines Technical Division, which provides for the repair and maintenance of the airline’s own aircraft equipment and also provides its services to external companies. Also, a new comprehensive airline system is being prepared (SAS) for supporting key sales activities, such as bookings, pricing, ticketing, passenger and baggage handling, and Internet sales, as well as a transition to a modern pricing method, called O&D. All these projects will yield savings in the order of hundreds of millions, and a further increase in profitability.
Presently, Czech Airlines operates a fleet of 50 aircraft. On long-haul flights, it deploys Airbus A310s; on medium-haul flights, Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s; and on short-haul flights, ATR42/72 aircraft. Czech Airlines, in association with its code-share partners, offers connections to 135 destinations in 48 countries.
Czech Airlines Press Spokesperson | <urn:uuid:cc9196ae-6412-47fd-ab21-3b9afee420cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.czechairlines.com/en/portal/quicklinks/news/news_tz/news_tzarchiv_data/tz_06102008.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953806 | 1,369 | 2.03125 | 2 |
When a blood vessel is cut or damaged, blood loss needs to be stopped. This happens through coagula...
Read the full transcript »
When a blood vessel is cut or damaged, blood loss needs to be stopped. This happens through coagulation or clotting of blood to form a plug. Clotting begins when cell fragments called platelets circulating in your blood begin to clump or stick together. This is called platelet aggregation. The clumps of platelets are held together by a network of protein molecules called fibrin activated by clotting factors in your blood. A blood clot is made up of fibrin and clumps of platelets. Antiplatelet drugs prevent clumping of platelets. Millions of people take them to prevent inappropriate or dangerous clotting that can block blood flow and cause a stroke or heart attack. They are used to treat a variety of conditions. For example, they can prevent blood clots in an artery clogged with plaque. Antiplatelet drugs are also a very important part of care after placement of a stent to restore free blood flow through a clogged artery. Sometimes stents can become blocked with scar tissue. This is called restenosis. Some stents are coated with medicine to help prevent this. Blood flow is also occasionally blocked when platelets attracted to the stent site and healing process form blood clots. This is called thrombosis; it can cause a potentially fatal heart attack or necessitate a repeat procedure. Antiplatelet drugs help to keep these clots from forming. Different antiplatelet drugs work in different ways. They need to be taken for as long as your doctor directs. Don't stop them without permission of the doctor who prescribed them. | <urn:uuid:e8ba3643-78aa-42ea-8892-9e4c5efea872> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthline.com/vpvideo/what-are-antiplatelet-drugs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953255 | 352 | 3.984375 | 4 |
Earth has been experiencing an incredible increase in the number of global earthquakes just since 1973.
- In 1973, there were more than 5,000 Global Quakes
- In 1983, there were more than 10,000 Global Quakes
- In 1993, there were more than 20,000 Global Quakes
- In 2003, there were more than 30,000 Global Quakes.
We are on target now for over 40,000 Global quakes by 2013.
The March 11, magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan may have shortened the length of each Earth day and shifted its axis. But do not worry! You will not notice the difference.
Using a United States Geological Survey estimate for how the fault responsible for the earthquake slipped, research scientist Richard Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., applied a complex model to perform a preliminary theoretical calculation of how the Japan earthquake—the fifth largest since 1900—affected Earth’s rotation. His calculations indicate that by changing the distribution of Earth’s mass, the Japanese earthquake should have caused Earth to rotate a bit faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).
The calculations also show the Japan quake should have shifted the position of Earth’s figure axis (the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced) by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), towards 133 degrees east longitude. Earth’s figure axis should not be confused with its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This shift in Earth’s figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it will not cause a shift of Earth’s axis in space—only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets can do that.
Both calculations will likely change as data on the quake are further refined.
In comparison, following last year’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile, Gross estimated the Chile quake should have shortened the length of day by about 1.26 microseconds and shifted Earth’s figure axis by about 8 centimeters (3 inches). A similar calculation performed after the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake revealed it should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth’s figure axis by about 7 centimeters, or 2.76 inches. How an individual earthquake affects Earth’s rotation depends on its size (magnitude), location and the details of how the fault slipped.
Gross said that, in theory, anything that redistributes Earth’s mass will change Earth’s rotation.
“Earth’s rotation changes all the time as a result of not only earthquakes, but also the much larger effects of changes in atmospheric winds and oceanic currents,” he said. “Over the course of a year, the length of the day increases and decreases by about a millisecond, or about 550 times larger than the change caused by the Japanese earthquake. The position of Earth’s figure axis also changes all the time, by about 1 meter (3.3 feet) over the course of a year, or about six times more than the change that should have been caused by the Japan quake.”
Gross said that while we can measure the effects of the atmosphere and ocean on Earth’s rotation, the effects of earthquakes, at least up until now, have been too small to measure. The computed change in the length of day caused by earthquakes is much smaller than the accuracy with which scientists can currently measure changes in the length of the day. However, since the position of the figure axis can be measured to an accuracy of about 5 centimeters (2 inches), the estimated 17-centimeter shift in the figure axis from the Japan quake may actually be large enough to observe if scientists can adequately remove the larger effects of the atmosphere and ocean from the Earth rotation measurements. He and other scientists will be investigating this as more data become available.
Gross said the changes in Earth’s rotation and figure axis caused by earthquakes should not have any impacts on our daily lives. “These changes in Earth’s rotation are perfectly natural and happen all the time,” he said. “People shouldn’t worry about them.”
Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. | <urn:uuid:31cd3bc0-9d21-4b5b-8133-393cbd0ea9f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scarletwhore.com/?p=4758 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943278 | 927 | 4.0625 | 4 |
medicare law: an overview
Medicare was enacted in 1965 as one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. The current version of Medicare can be found at 42 U.S.C. § 1395 et seq. The Medicare system was originally administered by the Social Security Administration, but in 1977 management was transferred to the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, since renamed the Centers for Medicare and Medicade Services).
Medicare is a federally funded system of health and hospital insurance for U.S. citizens age sixty-five or older, for younger people receiving Social Security benefits, and for persons needing dialysis or kidney transplants for the treatment of end-stage renal disease. Typically, Medicare beneficiaries can receive medical care through physicians of their own choosing or through health maintenance organizations and other medical plants that have contracts with medicare. (See Health Law)
Eligibility for Medicare does not depend on income; almost everyone who is sixty-five and older is entitled to coverage. Workers are not required to retire when they reach sixty-five to be protected by Medicare. Coverage under Medicare is restricted to reasonable and medically necessary treatment in a hospital; to skilled nursing home, meals, and regular nursing care services; to pay the costs of necessary special care; and for home health services and hospice care for terminally ill patients. For further information, a good starting point is the official site for Medicare.
Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary
A federal government program that assists older and some disabled people in paying their medical costs. The program is divided into three parts. Part A is called hospital insurance and covers most of the costs of a stay in the hospital, as well as some follow-up costs after time in the hospital. Part B, medical insurance, pays some of the cost of doctors and outpatient medical care. Part D pays for some of the cost for prescription medicine.
Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.
August 19, 2010, 5:19 pm | <urn:uuid:22c34a42-7485-450c-95cc-adf979a7ab8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Medicare | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958145 | 416 | 3.21875 | 3 |
As Europe copes with economic stagnation, center-left parties across the continent have struggled to gain traction. But Helle Thorning-Schmidt, leader of Denmark's Social Democrats, bucked the trend on Sept. 15 by leading her left-leaning bloc to power and ousting the coalition government of Lars Lokke Rasmussen. During the campaign the mother-of-two pledged to end conservative austerity measures, to introduce taxes on the wealthy, and to fire up the economy through increased public spending. But it's not all change. In a nation that prizes consensus, it's unlikely Thorning-Schmidt will stray too far from the stringent anti-immigrant policies laid down by her predecessors who were in alliance with the anti-Islam Danish People's Party. The victory of her left-leaning bloc is the first in Scandinavia since right-wing extremist Anders Breivik carried out his devastating massacre in Norway in July. | <urn:uuid:1a3c4010-2534-4446-bd37-3345d8fb4ecc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2005455_2005458_2093513,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951393 | 185 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Hindu Press International
Meet William Cowherd, England's 18th Century Vegetarian Evangelist
ENGLAND, December 16, 2012 (BBC): The Beefsteak chapel hardly sounds like a place where vegetarians would be welcome, but more than 200 years ago, this tiny chapel in Salford was the British birthplace of the meat-free diet.
In an even greater twist, the cleric who preached the moral virtues of vegetarianism was the Reverend William Cowherd. His Beefsteak Chapel was the country's first vegetarian church.
Cowherd, born almost 250 years ago on Sunday 16 December, demanded his congregation eat a meat-free diet. At this time the poor would eat the cheapest meat. This meant a diet featuring a great deal of offal - sometimes stomach or intestines. Cowherd believed that God inhabited every animal and as such it was a sin to eat meat. His followers - aptly named Cowherdites - went on to form the Vegetarian Society.
The health effects of a meat-free diet were unknown and many feared they would be catastrophic. A fellow minister of Cowherd, Robert Hindmarsh, blamed deaths among Cowherd's followers on their meat-free diet.
Much of Cowherd's novel social outlook appears to have been influenced by 18th Century Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg.
Abstinence from meat became part of the church's creed. Cowherd told his congregation it was a sin to eat meat and it could make them behave aggressively.
The Vegetarian Society quotes him saying: "If God had meant us to eat meat, then it would have come to us in edible form as is the ripened fruit."
In a city like Manchester, with people removed from daily, rural reminders of animals being slaughtered for food, intellectuals for the first time began to debate the ethics of eating animals.
After Cowherd's death in 1816, Joseph Brotherton became the Beefsteak Chapel's minister and continued his mission. Along with other Cowherdites, Brotherton helped form the Vegetarian Society in 1847.
There were more vegetarian restaurants in Victorian Manchester than there are today.
The comments are owned by the author. We aren't responsible for their content. | <urn:uuid:1a3697a0-a233-41f7-adaa-42d7bea70b3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hinduismtoday.com/blogs-news/hindu-press-international/meet-william-cowherd--england-s-18th-century-vegetarian-evangelist/12586.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977662 | 464 | 2.8125 | 3 |
It's easier to shop for a snow thrower when you know the differences between single- and two-stage units. Each kind is designed to clear different amounts of snow from different sizes of driveways. Generally, single-stages are best for light snow and small driveways, while two-stages are best for heavier snow and larger driveways.
Single-Stage Snow Throwers
These snow throwers take in snow and throw it out of the chute in one action. The auger acts like a paddle, which pulls snow into the unit and propels it out of the chute.
Light, powdery snowfalls
Clearing smaller areas
Two-Stage Snow Throwers
These larger snow throwers work in two stages. First, the auger uses its serrated blades to break up snow and ice as it pulls them in. Then the impeller launches snow up and out of the chute.
Larger, heavier snowfalls
Clearing larger areas | <urn:uuid:3ed037a7-4b74-49aa-8afc-97a2a06f514d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.troybilt.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DisplayContentView?pageName=featured%2FsingleVsTwoStage2013.html&storeId=10001&mpe_id=735656&intv_id=12132&evtype=CpgnClick&catalogId=14102&ddkey=http:ClickInfo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932631 | 201 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Hay is for houses
On an Indian reservation in Montana, students and volunteers build homes out of straw.
Fri, May 01 2009 at 3:46 PM
Each year, David Riley, an associate professor in Penn State's Architectural Engineering Department, takes a group of students, alumni, and other interested parties to Montana. There, Riley leads the group in building homes and other community buildings for the Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe.
While it may sound similar to Habitat for Humanity, there’s something decidedly unique about the structures Riley’s crew builds: They’re made out of straw. Despite the experience of the first little pig whose house was blown down, these buildings are sturdy. And an added eco-bonus is that straw is a sustainable building material.
“People need houses,” Riley says, “and they need to be durable and affordable.”
Riley started the American Indian Housing Initiative (AIHI) in 1998. He used straw from the beginning for economic and TK reasons. These days, straw remains the base building material, but Riley is aiming to make the houses even more sustainable. AIHI’s newest project will add renewable energy in the mix as the group continues to help address the housing crisis many Native Americans face.
More than 40 percent of the homes on reservations are overcrowded or in serious disrepair, and the Native American Indian Housing Council estimates there is an immediate need for over 200,000 housing units. Adding to the problem is the high number of Native Americans living in poverty.
Straw, which is used to make strawbale houses, is “an abundant and low-cost material with over 140 million tons produced in North America annually,” says Jude Simpson, an employee at Penn State University’s Center for Sustainability, who has accompanied Riley to Montana. “Since it is a secondary agricultural waste product from grain production, its embodied energy is low.”
Other factors that make straw desirable are the material’s high insulation properties, its availability in Montana, and the organic feel of a strawbale home on the landscape. In addition, says Riley, the simplicity of the process allows people with little building experience to play a vital role in the construction process.
“It’s a housing concept that combines a holistic solution,” says Riley. “It’s appropriate for the region.”
AIHI’s initial aim was to build only houses. But Riley recognized that it was important to focus on the good of the entire Northern Cheyenne reservation, so he started with the first of five community-based projects, which include an Early Childhood Learning Center. The building was the most ambitious project to date, consisting of a strawbale shell and an energy-efficient design that allows maximum daylight lighting, floor radiant heating, and evaporative cooling. The learning center adheres to the guidelines of a LEED Gold certification.
Currently, AIHI is focusing more sharply on sustainability and renewable resources. Riley is now constructing two prototype homes in conjunction with Penn State’s Solar Decathlon Team. One of the homes will be used as a renewable energy laboratory. The other will be a demonstration solar home on the campus of Montana’s Chief Dull Knife College, which Riley sees as the future of his strawbale construction.
Riley also sees his work constructing homes and public buildings as just the first step in helping the Northern Cheyenne tribe develop a viable and sustainable community. Already the tribe has constructed a factory on the reservation to manufacture sections of the building, particularly the part of the home that houses the HVAC and similar units. Most of the house is built from local products. “It’s a house that also creates jobs,” Riley says. “And the money used to build and buy the homes stays as close to the community as possible.”
“This type of building process adds value of engaging members of the tribe with the building process to help dispel apprehension about this relatively new and different building technique,” says Simpson. “I believe the Northern Cheyenne will embrace these housing solutions as a viable option to the present government housing programs.”
Story by Sue Marquette Poremba. This article originally appeared in Plenty in August 2007.
Copyright Environ Press 2007 | <urn:uuid:502aa00a-2c21-4a15-852e-7445d3b24de7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/stories/hay-is-for-houses-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948362 | 902 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Swiss Watchmakers May Not All Be Swiss Enough to Scale Barriers
Mondaine, the maker of Official Swiss Railways watches, may have to shut a two-year-old factory because its timepieces aren’t Swiss enough.
The future of the 10 million-franc ($11 million) plant in Solothurn and its 110 workers would be jeopardized should larger rivals such as Swatch Group AG (UHR) succeed in calls for fewer non- Swiss components to be allowed in Swiss-made timepieces, according to Mondaine co-owner Ronnie Bernheim. Mondaine, which has been making watches modelled on the nation’s train-station clocks for 25 years, uses imported dials and cases.
“This law would be cutting the industry into two,” Bernheim said in an interview in Basel. “The volume business will be killed, except for the big companies. Our foreign competitors are laughing.”
Watches were Switzerland’s fastest-growing major export last year. The industry has rebuilt itself since teetering on the brink of collapse in the 1970s. To keep its lead as other manufacturers shift to countries such as China in search of cheaper labor, the industry is trying to erect higher barriers to entry, which would make Swiss watches a scarcer luxury.
Since 1971, watchmakers have been allowed to use non-Swiss components for less than 50 percent of the value of the watch’s movement, or motor. The Federation of Swiss Watchmaking, which includes Swatch Group and competitor Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, asked the government in 2007 to add higher requirements on the use of Swiss components in the value of the entire timepiece. The government proposed that for industrial products, 60 percent should come from Switzerland. A final decision may be made next year, said Jean-Daniel Pasche, head of the group.
The proposal is a “tough issue” because it’s part of measures that would affect branding across a broad range of industries including food, according to Pasche.
“Swiss-made is kind of a synonym for quality,” said Thomas Chauvet, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in London. “For the longer-term preservation of the industry’s strength, and the fact that they have no rival, it’s important to raise the bar.”
Makers of luxury Swiss watches such as Swatch Group’s Breguet brand would benefit from tighter laws because they source most of their components from Switzerland, according to Rene Weber, an analyst at Bank Vontobel in Zurich. Less- expensive watch brands made in the country use cheaper imported parts because they face more competition from Japan or China, Weber said. Mondaine’s Official Swiss Railways watch sells for as much as $595, while Breguet timepieces can exceed $700,000.
“Swiss-Made is very important as the basis for this industry,” Swatch Group Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek said at a March 10 press conference. “We’re not going to produce in India, Russia or anywhere else.”
The proposed rule changes would threaten jobs at producers of less-expensive Swiss watches, Bernheim said. Two-thirds of industry jobs are at companies with fewer than 500 employees, according to the Swiss Watch Industry Employers’ Organization.
The “big hurdle” is the cost of producing mechanical movements, Bernheim said. Building an assembly line that makes them costs at least 20 million francs and can take five-to-10 years of testing, he said. Many watchmakers in the industry need to buy cases, crowns, dials and hands from outside Switzerland, because there isn’t enough production in the country, he said.
Luxury watchmaking is one of the few manufacturing industries that has resisted a full shift of production to Asia. Still, the industry’s growth has attracted non-Swiss companies.
Tianjin Sea-Gull Watch Co., a Chinese company founded in 1955, has begun producing complicated watch mechanisms such as tourbillons, which on a Swiss watch can command prices of more than $50,000. MontieK, an Amsterdam-based company, this year is starting to sell European-designed timepieces with Sea-Gull movements for as little as 1,300 euros ($1,883).
“In the future we can compete with the Swiss,” Keith Choi, sales manager for Tianjin’s Tsinlien watchmaking unit, said in a March 25 interview. “At least we can hold the market among the middle class now.”
The strength of the Swiss franc, which has risen 18 percent against the dollar in the past year, makes it easier for watchmakers to use more non-Swiss components and still claim the “Swiss-Made” moniker, said Jean-Marc Jacot, CEO of Parmigiani, whose timepieces cost $70,000 on average.
Making Swiss watches might become more difficult if Swatch Group succeeds in negotiations with Switzerland’s competition regulator to end rules requiring it to sell timepiece movements to competitors. Swatch’s ETA unit has a de facto requirement to sell to third parties because of its dominant position, according to the regulator, known as Comco. ETA makes as much as 80 percent of Swiss-made movements, analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein estimated in a March 18 report.
‘Down The Drain’
A watch company might buy a movement from ETA for 250 Swiss francs and sell the timepiece for 10,000 to 20,000 Swiss francs, Swatch Group CEO Hayek said in February. Watchmakers could spend 40 million francs to 60 million francs to set up their own factories and make components themselves, he said.
According to Mondaine’s Bernheim, Switzerland’s lower-end watchmakers will be sacrificed should the country adopt the rule changes being sought by the larger companies.
“There’s generations of work done by people that will just go down the drain,” the executive said. “This law would really be a slap in our faces.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Mulier in Geneva at email@example.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:67b01538-6d2d-4a83-96d7-df0a19e449d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-10/swiss-watchmakers-may-not-all-be-swiss-enough-to-scale-barriers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94735 | 1,410 | 1.726563 | 2 |
How many of you met with your accountant this year on or before April 15 and were shocked by the amount due? How many of you did not plan in advance and had no idea what number you would end up with?
This is not a good feeling for anyone, and rest assured, there are ways to avoid this guessing game. Furthermore, in today’s challenging economic climate, cash flow planning is imperative. This includes planning for income tax payments (or refunds).
We have all heard about the under-payment penalties and interest that the Internal Revenue Service tacks on to your tax bill if you underpaid your taxes or did not pay enough early during the year.
You want to make sure that you have paid in enough in advance to avoid any of these penalties.
While these penalties and interest can add to your tax burden, nobody wants to overpay the IRS either. While the government charges penalties and interest if you underpay, they don’t pay you any interest if you overpay.
So, good cash flow management will mean that you pay just enough to avoid penalties, but not too much to create an interest-free loan to the government.
To find the right balance, you need to understand the estimated tax and withholding rules. This starts with making sure estimated tax payments and withholding combined meet the safe harbor amount as determined by the IRS.
There are two options for paying your safe harbor amounts.
The first option is to pay 100 percent or 110 percent (if your adjusted gross income is more than $150,000) of your prior year tax liability. This is usually done by making estimated tax payments and withholding consistently throughout the year.
Now, since most accountants are not fortune tellers, your tax accountant has likely provided you with a schedule of estimated tax payments on the first safe harbor mentioned above to keep you protected from underpayment penalties.
However, throughout the year, if it looks like things are not going as well as the prior year with your business, you can choose the second option, which is to pay in 90 percent of your current year tax liability.
You are probably wondering how on earth you are possibly going to know what 90 percent of your current year tax liability will be if you are only one quarter of the way through the year.
The great thing about this option is that you can annualize your payments. This means that you can look at the income that you earned each period and pay your taxes accordingly. This option allows for you to plan for your taxes in a dynamic fashion, adjusting throughout the year, which optimizes your cash flow.
Hence, you will not be giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan throughout the year and you will be able to better manage your cash flow related to income taxes.
Of course, to do this requires that you talk to your tax preparer/adviser throughout the year. There is no way to plan for the future if you do not have open communication with your accountant. Hopefully, you still like that person after April 15.
Having these discussions frequently will allow you to discuss whether business is up or down this year and whether you should adjust your estimates.
Did you make any large purchases, are you planning to make large purchases, do you want to put a retirement plan in place, etc.? All of these things have the potential to greatly impact your tax liability, and the sooner you discuss these with your accountant, the sooner you can start planning for your income taxes.
This should also help you sleep better the first two weeks of April next year.
Alisha Williams is a certified public accountant at BiggKofford P.C. She can be reached at 579-9090 or email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:4d2aee64-0c80-47e2-903c-bd83080caa6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://csbj.com/2009/04/24/planning-is-key-to-not-being-surprised/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971098 | 770 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Women will find Bermuda a far more benign traveling environment than many places in the Caribbean, Central America, or even a typical North American city. Bermudians pride themselves on the safety of their island, and violent, arbitrary crime is extremely rare. Female travelers should nevertheless use common sense and practical measures to keep safe, especially at night and if alone or in more remote areas.
Generally, Bermuda is conservative and modern in its attitudes towards women, and women won’t notice any gender issues they wouldn’t encounter in London or Los Angeles. Women doing business on the island will be treated with the same respect as their male colleagues (the local and international business communities count a growing number of women in top corporate jobs). And women need not feel unsafe or out of place touring most areas of the island, or eating alone in restaurants. They need not expect to encounter unwanted harassment, either, although Bermudian men have the habit of issuing a surreptitious hiss to catch your attention. Whether you smile, wave, or have no reaction, there’s rarely any further approach. The exception may be on the beaches, when local men sometimes try to chat up foreign women.
Women take part in most sports and clubs on the island, and a few annual sporting events are geared to them, such as the PartnerRe Women’s 5K Run & Walk (www.partnerre5k.bm) in mid-October, an event launched in 1998 by Mid-Atlantic Athletic Club (MAAC); since then, it has raised more than $200,000 for island charities benefiting women. Top female match-race teams compete in an annual championship qualifier for the prestigious King Edward VII Gold Cup International One design competition, also in October.
Should you need help or advice, the Women’s Resource Centre (58 Reid St., Hamilton, tel. 441/295-3882, crisis hotline 441/295-7273, fax 441/295-9833, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.) is the island’s prime advocacy group, and its services include emergency response, counseling, assistance for victims, and a crisis intervention hotline. Other women’s support and networking resources include the Business & Professional Women’s Association of Bermuda (21 Somerset Rd., Sandys, tel. 441/234-5733), and the Bermuda Junior Service League (tel. 441/332-2575, www.bjsl.bm).
© Rosemary Jones from Moon Bermuda, 2nd Edition | <urn:uuid:f6e2f00f-b02a-40d6-b602-c3a44a1e463e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moon.com/destinations/bermuda/essentials/tips-travelers/women-travelers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915344 | 522 | 1.5 | 2 |
Zero-day exploit targets IE; some researchers advise switching browsers
Some security experts are urging individual and enterprise users running Internet Explorer to switch to another browser for now, in the face of a new zero-day exploit affecting IE.
Security researcher and blogger Eric Romang discovered a new zero-day exploit over the weekend that targets multiple versions of IE, which runs on about 40 percent of the computers in North America.
Microsoft, in an advisory, said the vulnerability affects Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and 9 (but not IE 10) running on just about any Windows operating system. But the company noted that on Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2, the browser runs in a restricted configuration that mitigates the vulnerability.
Time to give up on Java?
Not surprisingly, Microsoft does not recommend switching from IE. It recommends installing the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, a limited support utility that helps prevent exploitation of vulnerabilities but which is available only in English. It also recommends setting Internet security settings to high to block ActiveX controls and Active Scripting. A full patch is expected sometime in the next week.
Meanwhile, some in the security community are recommending that users abandon the popular IE browser, at least until a fix is available.
“Internet users are strongly advised to switch to other browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox, until a security update becomes available,” recommended Metasploit, developer of the open-source penetration testing tool. “The exploit had already been used by malicious attackers in the wild before it was published.”
The exploit can download the code to a vulnerable computer visiting a malicious Web site.
The news comes just weeks after a zero-day exploit for Java 7 hosted on the same server raised the question of whether the risks of running Java outweighed the benefits. Oracle addressed that vulnerability with an unusual out-of-cycle patch, but the popularity of Java with hackers and its ubiquity in browsers had many in the security community recommending that it be at least turned off in the browser, if not removed from computers.
The Java flaw was being exploited by a hacker group apparently based in China, which Symantec had dubbed the Nitro gang, that in 2011 had attacked systems in the chemical industry and some defense contractors, researchers said. Romang said the IE exploits were possibly from the same group.
So is it time to get rid of Internet Explorer? There are those who have long advocated for other, supposedly more secure, browsers who undoubtedly will say yes. Microsoft still has a commanding market share, with IE 9 claiming a quarter of the North American market as of August, and IE 8 about another 14 percent. But Chrome has a strong 21 percent and Firefox comes in with about 14 percent, according to StatCounter global stats.
As long as Microsoft continues to lead the browser market, IE is likely to be a popular target for attackers. For the short term, dropping IE might make sense for you, as long as it isn’t more trouble to replace browsers in your enterprise than it is to patch them. But you never know for sure just how secure a commercial product is until it has been subjected to a trial by fire, and if other browsers replace IE, they are likely to feel the heat. | <urn:uuid:e415cd0f-9867-4f06-accf-7c396d65e15e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gcn.com/articles/2012/09/18/cybereye-ie-zero-day-browser-switch.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950564 | 666 | 1.734375 | 2 |
(Incoherence of the Philosophers)
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111 CE)
Translated into English from Urdu Translation by Sabih Ahmad Kamali
Having recognised the origin of the world because of God's will, the Muslims proceed to infer knowledge from will, and life from knowledge and power. From life they further infer that, since all living beings are self-conscious, God Who is the Living must also know Himself. This is a position which is intelligible and sound. But you deny the Will and the Creation; and assert that whatever emanates from Him emanates of necessity and by way of nature. Therefore, what is the difficulty for you in believing that His being is a being which had the function of causing forth the first effect only: that from the first effect necessarily followed the second effect, and so on down to the end of the Order of Being; and that, in spite of all this, the First Cause does not know Himself — as fire (from which heat necessarily follows) and the Sun (from which light necessarily follows) do not know themselves or any thing else?
He who knows himself knows what emanates from him; thus he knows what is other than himself. And we have shown that, according to the philosophers' principles, God cannot know what is other than Himself. To those who would not agree with the generally held opinion, we have made such opinion inescapably binding, in accordance with their basic postulates. And when God is not to know the Other, it is not difficult to believe that He should not know Himself either.
If it is said
Ever one who does not know himself is dead. How can God be lie the dead?
we will answer
This is what necessarily follows from your basic thought. There is no difference between you and one who would say: (a) that everyone who has no volitional action; no power; no choice, and who does not hear and see, is dead; and (b) that he who does not know what is other than himself is dead. If it were possible to consider God as devoid of all these attributes, why need it be supposed that He could know Himself either?
If they revert to the position that all that is divested of Matter is essentially intelligence, and thus knows itself, we have made it clear that this is an arbitrary assumption for which no argument is available.
If it is said
The argument is as follows: Beings are divided into the living and the dead. The living are worthier and nobler than the dead. God, Who is the Worthiest and the Noblest, must therefore be living. And every living one has selfconsciousness. It is impossible that there should be living ones among His effects, while He Himself should not be living.
we will answer
These are arbitrary assumptions. Why, let us say, is it impossible that from one who does not know himself should proceed another who knows himself — through many intermediaries, or through none? If the impossibility arises from the fact that (on this view) the effect will be nobler than the Cause, why is it impossible for the effect to be nobler than the Cause? Such an impossibility is not axiomatic.
Then, how will you disprove one's saying that God's nobleness consists, not in His knowledge, but in the fact that universal being is subordinate to His being? This can be proved as follows: The Other knows things besides himself, and sees, and hears; whereas God does not see or hear. If somebody were to say
Beings are divided into the seeing and the blind; and the knowing and the ignorant. And those who see or know are worthier, then it would follow that God can also see, as He knows things. But you would reject such a conclusion, saying that worth or nobleness does not consist in seeing or knowing things, but in being able to do without sight and knowledge, and in being of such a character as to produce the universe wherein there might be many who could see and know.
Similarly, therefore, worth and nobleness may not consist in self-knowledge, but in being the principle of other beings gifted with knowledge. And such nobleness is to be considered as peculiar to Him.
Thus, perforce, will the philosophers be driven to deny God's self-knowledge, since self-knowledge can only be inferred from will, and will can only be inferred from the temporal origin of the world. If there is error in regard to the question of the origin of the world, all the rest is bound to be erroneous — on the part of those who would understand things by means of theoretical investigations.
Thus, all that the philosophers have to say — to prove some of the Divine attributes, or to disprove others — has for its basis, not any cogent arguments, but sheer conjecture and surmises — too wild to be admitted even by the jurists in their avowedly conjectural work. No wonder if the Intellect is confounded in its inquiries concerning the Divine attributes. The wonder is that the philosophers are so proud of their arguments, and flatter themselves with the idea that they know these things with certainty — whereas, in fact, their knowledge is vitiated by conceit and frivolity. | <urn:uuid:d6abf28c-183a-4eaa-9a68-79470c7c30cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ghazali.org/books/tf/Problem_XII.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977009 | 1,093 | 2.453125 | 2 |
The problem with this question is that there are too many variables.
A university degree in a subject like computer science will not significantly increase a native Japanese speaker's kanji vocabulary. A degree in biology or medicine will add some, but a degree in philosophy, history, or literature could potentially add thousands of rarely used (outside of that specialization) characters.
There's also a huge question about "what does it mean to 'know' a kanji?" Even very common characters have unexpected readings.
How often a person needs to look up kanji varies depending on what they generally read. There are some lists of kanji for particular contexts, but even those are usually too high-level to be of much 'use'. An American who habitually reads "The Economist" is much more likely to need their dictionary on a regular basis than one who just watches the nightly news.
(I've marked this as CW to avoid gaining rep for what is essentially an extended comment complaining about the question, rather than an answer) | <urn:uuid:2ac35a45-20ee-4d68-b6fe-d672bc65eed8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11123/how-many-kanji-do-japanese-people-know | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968847 | 206 | 1.804688 | 2 |
National Wetlands Update 2012
Issue No. 20, February 2012
A strategy for engaging people in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway
Christine Prietto, Ramsar CEPA NGO Focal Point, Hunter Wetlands Centre Australia
Birdlife on Eighty-mile Beach, WA (Gayle Partridge & the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities)
In September 2011 a group of wetland specialists gathered at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in Singapore to develop a Communication, Education, Participation and Awareness (CEPA) Strategy for the East Asian-Australasian (EAA) Flyway Partnership. The Partnership provides a framework for international cooperation for the conservation of migratory waterbirds and the sustainable use of their habitats. The workshop included staff from the Ramsar Secretariat, the Flyway Partnership Secretariat and representatives of sectors with an interest in the EAA Flyway.
Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve is 130 acres (52 hectares) of tidal wetlands, and the coastline of Malaysia is clearly visible from the edges of the reserve. It is the only area of dedicated nature reserve in Singapore that includes mangrove habitat. The significance of the area for conservation was identified by the Malaysian Nature Society in 1986 and the reserve was gazetted in 2002. Many of the viewing platforms for visitors at Sungei Buloh have been developed around observing migratory birds during their migration and the reserve is a favourite destination for serious bird watchers and nature lovers alike.
The Flyway encompasses 22 countries, stretching from the Russian Far East and Alaska, southwards through East Asia and South-east Asia, to Australia and New Zealand. Each year more than 50 million waterbirds from 250 species migrate through the flyway. During migration these waterbirds rely on a chain of highly productive wetlands to rest and feed, building up sufficient energy to fuel the next phase of their journey.
Importantly, the Flyway is also home to 45 per cent of the world's human population and in many locations people obtain their livelihoods from the same wetland systems that are supporting the birds. Despite efforts over many years, waterbirds and their coastal and inland habitats are under increasing pressure from rapid population growth and economic development, particularly in East and South-east Asia. These pressures impact on the waterbirds that spend the non-breeding season in these countries as well as those waterbirds that use the central parts of the flyway during migration.
East Asian - Australasian Flyway http://www.eaaflyway.net
The EAA Flyway Partnership was launched in 2006 in recognition that a flyway-wide approach is critical to the conservation of migratory waterbirds. Australia played a leading role in establishing the Partnership and continues to provide ongoing support. The Partnership supports development of a Flyway Site Network that has the potential to include at least 200 sites of international importance for migratory waterbirds.
The Partnership recognises the importance of economic development for communities that share important sites with migratory waterbirds. Tourism is one area of economic development that often shares desired locations with those of migratory birds. This poses challenges as well as opportunities. Singapore provides a wonderful example. The island state is home to 6 million people and the population is climbing, so the demand for land is high. At the same time tourism, and particularly nature tourism, is a growth industry in Singapore. Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve is developing an expansion plan to incorporate a new interpretation area to cater for greater numbers of visitors without impacting on the ecosystem values of the existing site.
The Partnership also recognises that success in building and promoting a Flyway Site Network for migratory waterbirds will depend on awareness raising and capacity building at a local level. This will involve a range of activities to increase knowledge and raise awareness of migratory waterbirds, as well as training activities that build capacity for the sustainable management of migratory waterbird habitat and sustainable development of economic activities that benefit people. These activities were the focus of the workshop.
The task in Singapore was to develop a CEPA strategy to reflect the work done so far by the Partnership Secretariat. The strategy would need to be adaptable and meaningful for the many cultures represented among the Flyway partners. At the workshop selected participants delivered short presentations on the issues that should be included in the CEPA strategy, based on their experience with specific target groups/topics and related to the objectives in the EAAFP implementation strategy. Presentations included:
Partnership for the East Asian - Australasian Flyway http://www.eaaflyway.net
- the Flyway Partnership (Lew Young, Ramsar Secretariat)
- migratory Waterbirds (Phil Straw, Australia)
- wetlands (Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat)
- local communities (Amy Lecciones, Philippines)
- government (Agus Sriyadi Budi Sutito, Indonesia)
- private sector (Sharon Chan, Singapore)
- wetland centres (Christine Prietto, Australia).
The Draft EAA Flyway Partnership CEPA Strategy was reviewed at the Meeting of Partners in November 2011 in Indonesia ahead of implementation in 2012.
For further information contact email@example.com or visit: | <urn:uuid:1eb89726-ed56-4b37-a9a4-479ced4ecf18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.environment.gov.au/water/publications/environmental/wetlands/wetlands-australia/wa20/visitor-engagement/eastasian-australasian-flyway.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934736 | 1,084 | 2.5 | 2 |
NGSS Writing Team Leader: Ramon Lopez
Ramon E. Lopez is a Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research is both in space plasma physics and physics and space science education.
Dr. Lopez is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2002 he was awarded the APS Nicholson Medal for his extensive work in education, and he has received other awards for his work both in space physics and education from organizations including NASA, APS, and SACNAS (the Society for the Advancement of Native Americans and Chicanos in Science). He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Lopez has always had an interest in communicating his science to the public. In 2002, with journalist Michael Carlowicz, he published Storms from the Sun, a popular science book about space weather, and in the late 1990s he was a co-developer of Electric Space, a 4000-square foot traveling museum exhibit about the space environment.
In addition to his research and education work at the university level, Dr. Lopez has been very active in pre-college science education. He worked as a consultant for the National Science Resources Center, assisting them in their professional development programs and contributing to the development of several of theScience and Technology for Children science kits for elementary grades. He was a member of the design and writing team for Active Physics, a High School curriculum project. Dr. Lopez was a member of the writing team for the College Board's Standards for College Success science standards. He has also served as a science education consultant for numerous school districts and state departments of education, as well as other organizations
Dr. Lopez earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his master and doctorate degrees in space physics from Rice University. | <urn:uuid:3d2bf3df-4401-4c39-a942-033b8de18854> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nextgenscience.org/ngss-writing-team-leader-ramon-lopez | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978295 | 388 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Scientists grow PV crystals with record efficiency
According to a release from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) The basis for the high efficiency is a specific technique to grow the semiconductor material for the solar cells. The cells are made of III-V-material on GaAs or Ge substrates. The technique of 'amorphous multiple cells' developed by the institute avoids the formation of impurity traps which normally emerge where in the transition zone of materials with different lattice constants. The Fraunhofer experts say they succeeded in concentrating these defects within an electrically inactive area of the solar cell. The active areas however remain largely defect-free which in turn is a condition to achieve high efficiencies. "This is a good example how the control over crystal defects within semiconducting materials can cause a technological breakthrough", said institute manager Eicke Weber.
The efficiency of 41.4 percent was achieved in an experiment in which the light was concentrated by a factor of 454 and directed to what the scientists called a multiple solar cell which covered an area of 5 square millimeters.
Besides the 'amorphous multiple cell' technique the scientists chose a material composition that created a spectral sensitivity distribution very similar to the spectral distribution of sunlight. This was another criterion for the high efficiency.
In order to bring the technique to market as fast as possible and to improve its competiveness against conventional generators, Fraunhofer ISE collaborates with Azur Space (Heilbronn, Germany) and Concentrix Solar GmbH (Freiburg).
Andreas Bett, department director at Fraunhofer ISE, pointed to the connection between solar cell efficiency and power costs. "The high efficiency of our solar cells is the most effective way to reduce the energy costs for this type of photovoltaic systems," he said. "Our aim is to achieve competiveness of photovoltaics against conventional ways to generate electrical energy."
- 6.5 million euros European project AMBASSADOR aims for eco-friendly districts
- PowerSecure increases ownership of LED and Solar businesses to 100 percent
- Mouser sign global distribution agreement with Advanced Thermal Solutions
- Ultra compact DC-DC converters offer a voltage trim capability
- Nujira surpasses own world record for ET PA linearity
- Silica moves to fast lane in Europe's LED market
- PCIe clock generators offer the smallest footprint and lowest power
- Low-power wireless projected to make waves in remote controls according to IMS Research
- 60-V integrated power modules extends power capability of low load-impedance Class D audio systems
- Expanded ecosystem of ultra-low power MCUs speeds capacitive touch design development
- Volvo evaluates flywheel hybrid drive - fuel savings of up to 25%
- PV storage market is set to grow to USD19bn by 2017
- Ultra-low-power SoC supports world's smallest Bluetooth location stickers
- Power-One enters into patent license agreement with Microchip
- Quad-MOSFET solution boosts efficiency and eliminates heat sinking in active bridge applications
- Imec and Renesas collaborate on ultra-low power short range radios
- Solar industry capital spending hits seven-year low in 2013 but upturn is on the cards
- Market for GaN and SiC power semiconductors set to rise by factor of 18 in next decade
- Advanced microcontroller combines floating point and low leakage technology to achieve longest battery lifetime in portable applications
- World's lowest power Bluetooth smart chip is unveiled
- Dangers of Aftermarket Counterfeit Battery Packs
- High Voltage Surge Stoppers Ensure Reliable Operation During Power Surges
- Motor-Drive Design made Simple
- Adaptive Cell Converter Topology Enables Constant Efficiency in PFC Applications
- Micropower Isolated Flyback Converter with Input Voltage Range from 6V to 100V
- Derating of Schottky Diodes
- Heatsink Optimization
- High Performance ZVS Buck Regulator Removes Barriers To Increased Power Throughput
- Waste heat replaces batteries
- Stepper Motor Control IC | <urn:uuid:c28563d3-d6de-4bb8-96fe-6e7db22b3035> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.power-eetimes.com/en/scientists_grow_pv_crystals_with_record_efficiency?cmp_id=7&news_id=212900903 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900149 | 853 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Don’t come to Germany for the supermarkets. Come for the Weißwursts, Volkornbrot and Leberkäse. Come for specialist corner shops that sell only Wildfleisch (wild game). Come for wine merchants which stock the world’s finest Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling. But don’t come for the supermarkets.
Britain long ago surrendered itself to supermarkets and the popular myth is that they ruined the place. The Temples of Consumerism have caused much damage: loss of neighbourhood grocers and butchers, strangulation of the High Street, erosion of green field sites, increase in vehicle traffic. But these negative points must be seen in context. British supermarkets offer customers vast choice, convenience and competitive pricing. Likewise in the States, Canada and especially France where a visit to a hypermarché can be a culinary adventure par excellence.
In contrast Germany doesn’t do supermarkets, or at least it doesn’t do them well. There are of course biggish, one-stop shops like Lidl, Edeka, REWE and Kaufland which sell all the standard food stuffs. Customers push around their trolleys and buy their pork, pickles, bread and yoghurt, considering themselves lucky if they saved a few pfennings on a box of Müsli. But there the similarity ends. If shoppers want a real bargain, or fancy something out of the ordinary, something new, then they need to make tracks for somewhere else.
In Germany it’s the supermarket – not the customer – which dictates what goods are on sale. Special offers tend to be pitiful. There are no ‘deep discount’ loss leaders. And finally few shops stay open until a time that’s convenient for the working man or woman.
What does this tell us about German society? First, many German women – especially outside the large cities -- are housewives who do the family’s shopping. They trek between local stores then hurry home to look after the kids and cook the family supper. (Bear in mind also that school starts here as early as eight o’clock and usually ends around lunchtime, keeping many mothers out of full-time employment -- an outdated structure which harks back to an agrarian age when children helped in the fields).
Second, German home cooking isn’t adventurous. In North America and Australia, mass immigration has ensured that supermarkets stock a wide range of ‘ethnic’ foods. Likewise the British, with the revolution in their international travel habits, brought a taste for the foreign home from their holidays. At my old local Tesco’s in rural Somerset for example I could always find Thai green curry paste, Mexican tacos, Japanese soya sauce and prepared Jamaican jerk chicken. On the rare occasions when I couldn’t locate a specific item, Customer Services would order it for me.
Third, Germany – for historical and geographic reasons – has resisted absorbing (and being changed by) the culture of its ethnic minorities. These days Britain’s national dish is considered to be chicken tikka massala (chicken tikka is an Indian dish, the massala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of Brits to have their meat served in gravy). Many, many more Brits now eat Indian food than roast beef on Sundays. But I know a Bavarian who would rather drown himself in a vat of Paulaner Hefe-Weißbier than accept that Turkish babaganush might become more popular than bratwurst.
Fourth, food is more functional in Germany than it is in, say, France. The French live to eat but the Germans, like the Scots, eat to live.
Fifth, Germans are conservative and loyal to their local shops. In contrast the Brits are willing to be seduced by loss leaders and convenience.
Sixth – and importantly, most Germans don’t want vast supermarkets…at least not yet. The English nation-of-shop-keepers chose to become a nation of convenience shoppers. No one forced them to forsake their local High Street and join a traffic jam on the by-pass outside their nearest megastore.
Perhaps German supermarkets will improve over time, but any change will only come about through customer demand. And there’s the rub. As usual I’m willing to do my part, starting now at my local Lidl. At the customer service desk I’ll politely ask them to order me a big jar of Patak’s mango chutney or Marshmallow Fluff… So why are German readers laughing at my suggestion? Because most German supermarkets do not have a Customer Service desk. And if they did, they’d probably tell me to go shop somewhere else. | <urn:uuid:37dd3974-8635-4247-b14d-bcadf2f01717> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.goethe.de/meet-the-germans/archives/53-Whats-for-supper,-Liebling.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943686 | 1,002 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Buckle ornamentation refers to a garment or accessory which is embellished by a buckle, which may or may not have a functional purpose. Buckles are devices designed mostly for the purpose of fastening straps but are also employed by designers as fashionable ornaments, particularly in boots and gothic fashion, to convey an edgy look.
About Gothic Boots:
Gothic boots are boots characterized by their design and lifestyle of the gothic culture. Gothic boots are generally black or dark colors and may feature lavish ornamentations such as buckles or chain.
Harley-Davidson Serita Cool Boots
January 30, 2013
Reviewer: Debrasueski from Billings, MT
I really like these boots. I ordered them in my regular size and had to exchange them for a half-size larger; but then they fit fine.
Wears this shoe: I wear this shoe with jeans. | <urn:uuid:2bd63200-52f5-4096-8c3b-a2c6b6115fa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outletbuy.com/discount-size-8.5-buckle-ornamentation-gothic-boots.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968423 | 188 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Bachelor of Science in Technical Communication
Southern Polytechnic's degree in technical communication ranks among the best in the nation. Our faculty in Technical Communication includes two winners of the coveted Jay R. Gould award for outstanding teaching from the Society for Technical Communication. Because we are housed in a small engineering tech school, we can offer a much wider range of courses than similar programs at more traditional schools, and we have the up-to-date hardware and software to support them. You will get a solid grounding in rhetoric as well as hands-on experience with new media tools and technologies.
With our TCOM degree, you will learn much more than just how to use words effectively—you will have opportunities to learn document design, graphics, multimedia, web design, and video production as well as science and environmental writing, proposal writing, and medical communication.
Students in other majors can minor in technical communication through a range of campus-based and online course offerings. For students interested in distance learning options, Southern Polytechnic also offers a 15-credit undergraduate certificate in technical communication delivered entirely online.
Many TCOM courses are taught using a combination of on-site and online sessions that students with jobs especially appreciate. We make sure we offer enough late-afternoon and evening courses so that working students can make steady progress toward their degree.
Kami Anderson, Assistant Professor
Carol Barnum, Professor
Terry Carter, Associate Professor
Jeff Greene, Assistant Professor
Kim Haimes-Korn, Professor
Keith B. Hopper, Associate Professor
John Lindsay, Instructor
Monique Logan, Instructor
Matthew McCool, Assistant Professor
Mark Nunes, Associate Professor and Department Chair
Betty Oliver, Professor
Iraj Omidvar, Assistant Professor
Jeffrey Orr, Instructor
Laura Palmer, Assistant Professor
Ann Parker, Lecturer
Nancy L. Reichert, Associate Professor
Cheryl Shinall, Instructor
Herbert J. Smith, Professor
Charlotte Stephenson, Instructor
Mark K. Stevens, Associate Professor
Melissa Weaver, Lecturer
Jim Werner, Assistant Professor
The Bachelor's program in Technical Communication is designed to prepare students for a variety of communication careers.
Possible positions include:
Instructional designer or training specialist
Website designer and content developer
The program also can serve as a pre-professional background for students who plan to attend graduate school.
Students pursuing the degree must complete:
The Core Curriculum
Required upper-division courses in technical communication
A concentration in one area of technical communication
Additional elective courses in the major
Students must make a grade of at least a C in all TCOM major courses.
Included below are the complete requirements for the programs.
Technical Communication - Bachelor of Science Requirements | <urn:uuid:45d7e3bb-450c-418c-89d5-55ff498a95b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spsu.edu/undergradcatalog/programscourses/undergradprogramsofstudy/techcommoverview.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902507 | 569 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Nov. 16, 2007 The cells which thicken the womb wall during a woman's menstrual cycle contain a newly discovered type of stem cell, and could be used in the treatment of damaged and/or old tissue, according to new research.
Dr Xiaolong Meng of the Bio-Communications Research Institute in Wichita, Kansas, led the research team consisting of scientists from the University of Alberta, University of Western Ontario and Medistem Laboratories. The team identified a new type of stem cell that can be reproducibly isolated from menstrual blood collected from healthy female subjects.
"We have many problems with our current methods of stem cell therapy, like those taken from bone marrow," commented Dr Meng, "They may be rejected by the recipient and/or have limited potential to generate new tissue. Now we've found a possible new way to overcome these difficulties by using cells from menstrual blood."
The growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing blood vessels is an essential part of the uterine or womb phase of the menstrual cycle. Cells collected from the menstrual blood of women include types which can be cultured in the laboratory, which replicate almost 70 times in a very rapid time span. This replication rate is far faster than cells which are currently used, taken from umbilical cord blood and bone marrow.
The cells are so unique in their ability to develop into at least 9 different cells including heart, liver and lung, that researchers called the cells Endometrial Regenerative Cells (ERC). Not only do ERC replicate at a phenomenal rate of almost every 20 hours, but they produce unique growth factors at a rate of almost 100,000 greater than cells from umbilical cord blood.
A mere 5ml of menstrual blood collected from a healthy woman provided enough cells which after two weeks of culture provided beating heart cells. The results of this breakthrough research indicate that these cells could be cultured at a large scale, thereby providing an alternative to the current methods of using bone marrow and umbilical cord blood, which itself poses threats of rejection.
This research was sponsored by Medistem Laboratories.
Article: Xiaolong Meng, Thomas E Ichim, Jie Zhong, Andrea Rogers, Zhenglian Yin, James Jackson, Hao Wang, Wei Ge, Vladimir Bogin, Kyle W Chan, Bernard Thebaud and Neil H Riordan, "Endometrial regenerative cells: A novel stem cell population" Journal of Translational Medicine (in press)
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:32c79670-42f5-4471-b0d7-8126c4feac0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071115082303.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919068 | 547 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Reduce Consumption of your Monitor
Posted by Craig on 18 October 2011, 9:16 pmA monitor is of course an integral part of a PC when gaming, though I have not yet considered it as a candidate for increasing energy efficiency, and so I have decided to investigate further.
There was one thing that I was almost certain of before starting; that reducing the brightness will also reduce the power consumption of your screen, though to what degree was unclear and so this will be the focus of this investigation.
Along with the brightness, I have tried many different settings to see which of them affect the energy consumption of monitors, and have found that the only one actually to have an effect is in fact the brightness.
Settings that were tried but gave no impact:
- The contrast on the monitor itself
- The resolution
- The Brightness in windows
Black vs. White
One very interesting fact that I have discovered is that when displaying white pixels; LCD screens use a few extra watts compared to black. Since finding this I have done some research and have found that LCD uses a diffuser to change the colour of each pixel, and so displaying black does indeed use more power than white.
LED monitors use the same technology for producing a picture as LCDs and so this will also be the case for newer screens, though the opposite was true for the older CRT screens.
Even if we were able to make games display with mostly white pixels and nothing else, this would be a ridiculous way to play and so I will not be testing this today.
On with the testing
As always, this test is performed using a power meter at the socket and so is giving the power reading for each monitor, five readings were taken; 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100 brightness to see if there is a 'sweet spot' for energy efficiency.
I have two monitors today of which I will be testing the power consumption; a Belinea 2225 S1W 22" and a Packard bell Viseo 19W 19", it might be worth noting that the Belinea is at least 2 years older than the Packard bell and so I would expect it to be less energy efficient even if they were the same size. I am using two monitors for this to ensure that any results are typical of Monitors and not an anomalous result.
As the results are very simple for this test, I will start straight away for the graph:
What does it all mean?
As you can see the increase seems to be very consistent for both monitors; at 0 brightness both use roughly 50% and at 50 brightness both show roughly 75% power consumption of full.
There is a subtle increase from both monitors showing that the higher the brightness the steeper the increase in consumption, and so however small, the biggest savings will be found in the upper half of the brightness settings.
You can halve the consumption of your monitor by playing at 0 brightness, though I personally find a monitor at less than 40 uncomfortable. 50 is usually where I have mine set, and it is of course great to discover that I have been saving 12w without even trying for all this time.
One thing is abundantly clear and that is that if I choose to use the smaller monitor, I could cut the power used for my gaming screen in half. Though the reduction in resolution from 1680x1050 to 1366x768 is just too much for my tastes in both gaming and desktop space.
Both of the screens that I own are unfortunately only have cathode backlights and so this cannot be applied to the newer and more efficient LED backlit monitors, further investigations would be needed into LED monitors for a comprehensive result.
If this has piqued your interest, you should check out my other Eco Investigations | <urn:uuid:c775c7b5-8699-4bfd-a5e9-a4cc3f32b12c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ecogamer.co.uk/viewpages.php?page=Reduce_Consumption_of_your_Monitor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971358 | 772 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Book Description: Learn all about flight with the science activities. Kids will eagerly soar into the wonderful world of aerodynamics when they build the spinning, flying, rocketing creations described in this book. There are 69 science demonstrations and projects to construct and test, from boomerangs and water rocket launchers to homemade hovercrafts. Many of the experiments can be extended to become topics for school science fairs using the author's easy-to-follow suggestions. Icons alongside each model explain the physical principles involved, while troubleshooting tips keep the experiments running smoothly. It also includes a timeline of major flight achievements. Water science activities for home, school, and the beach! Ed Sobey helps kids explore the wonderful world of water with 69 lively hands-on projects for the beach, swimming pool, and kitchen sink. Using everyday materials, he combines the fun of water games and toys with the scientific concepts behind water pressure, hydro-power, and other key principles. These activities can be expanded into science fair entries too. Not only are the physical principles explained but special demonstration and troubleshooting tips are included to ensure hours of fun. | <urn:uuid:a8477313-4d4d-4f70-9a40-13e12c775ccd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campusbooks.com/books/childrens-books/ages-9-12/general/9780071348096_Ed-Sobey_Wack-Water-Fun-with-Science.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922771 | 226 | 4 | 4 |
CLACI Fosters High-Level Discourse
International experts in the panel discussion ”Mexico’s Security Crisis.“
Miami Dade College’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Initiatives (CLACI) remains steadfast in its mission to strengthen intellectual, cultural, political and socioeconomic ties to the Americas.
In collaboration with the University of Miami’s Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), CLACI recently presented “Mexico’s Security Crisis,” an engaging and timely lecture and panel discussion on the violent drug wars currently raging south of the border.
Internationally renowned Mexican security expert and El Colegio de Veracruz Director Jesús Alberto López González led a panel comprised of CLAS Director Ariel Armony, MDC Wolfson Campus Social Sciences Department Chair Dr. Víctor Vázquez Hernández, and UM Chair of International Studies Bruce M. Bagley. Moderated by CLACI Director Carlos Barrezueta, the panel reviewed the monetary, political and diplomatic costs of the Mexican security crisis as well as its effects on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Social scientists refer to borders as borderlands because they really comprise a region rather than a dividing line,” said Vázquez Hernández. “Going after the drug trade in an area that has operated in a certain way for hundreds of years is much more complex than most might imagine.”
Speakers compared Mexico’s current approach to the war on drugs and that employed by Colombia in the 1990s. They also addressed its influence on U.S. drug policy.
“Discussions such as these provide a vital service to the community by opening a dialogue around subjects that don’t always get the kind of attention they should,” said Vázquez Hernández. | <urn:uuid:37e1ab79-4a8e-4bbf-a5c0-ce2b999be6f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mdc.edu/main/collegeforum/archive/vol16-01/powerfulpartnerships/l0400_claci.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921384 | 397 | 1.765625 | 2 |
TULSA - Within six years, experts anticipate Oklahoma will have the highest obesity rate in the nation.
From super-size cups of sugary soda to soda cans, some political leaders are declaring war on fizzy drinks.
"Obesity is the only public health issue in this country that's getting worse," said Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor. "And everybody's wringing their hands, 'I've got to do something about it.' Nobody's doing anything about it!"
Mayor Bloomberg made headlines in 2008 when New York City banned trans fats in restaurants. Now the mayor is targeting soda after learning Americans consume at least 22 teaspoons of sugar a day. It adds up to an average of 75 pounds of sugar a year per person.
"If you want to act irresponsibly, as long as you're only doing it to yourself, that's up to you." Bloomberg added. "What I will say, in New York City we estimate we have a $4 billion cost of dealing with obesity, and the public is picking up that tab."
State Representative Rick Brinkley doesn't think banning sales of soda over 16 ounces would ever pass in Oklahoma.
"Especially when it comes down to personal choices people make while in their homes or while shopping," Brinkley said. "That's not the role of government, that's personal responsibility."
Victoria Bartlett, wife of Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett and spokeswoman for GetLean Tulsa , agrees.
"But I do believe it's the role of government to get the message out there, to inform people what's good and what's bad," she said. "Simple things you can do to improve your health."
She and the mayor are spreading the word of good health with the city's GetLean Tulsa program. Based on former Mayor Kathy Taylor's Tulsa Million Miles healthy and fit initiative, the city has expanded the program into community activities and online support with diet advice, meal planning and even recipes.
"It's a full resource for anyone who wants to start taking care of their body and logging," Bartlett added. "And it's all free!"
Oklahoma's obesity problem has the state ranked near the bottom in the nation for health. Experts warn the Sooner state will lead the nation in obesity by 2018. The potential loss of productivity and rising healthcare costs have some area employers stepping into the wellness arena.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma built a state of the art gym for employees at its downtown Tulsa offices.
There is an exercise physiologist on staff, as well as a wellness coordinator, a public health nurse and others dedicated to employee wellness. The gym is a popular place at lunchtime and during breaks.
"They encourage us to [exercise] during our breaks so it's kind of silly not to take advantage of it," said Kim Miller, BCBS employee. She has lost 30 pounds by improving her diet and starting a running routine. She admits she's gained ten pounds back and now plans to tackle that challenge again.
"Started out running one minute, walking three," Miller added. "And now I just signed up today for a marathon!"
BCBS employee Pam Vanmeter told 2News she has lowered her body fat by six percent.
"And my blood sugar and my cholesterol dropped like 12 points," Vanmeter said. She also connects lower stress levels to the workout program.
"I sleep a lot better. Used to have problems with sleeping," she said. "I don't have that problem anymore."
More than 70 percent of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma employees now participate in the company's wellness program.
However, that was not always the case. BCBS wellness coordinator Stephanie Brown noted some initial resistance when the health care provider first offered a weight loss program.
"Once you explain what it really is that you are doing, you really explain the confidentiality -- that people are not going to be holding you to a certain accountability because of your weight, they're not going to be looking at your report to see what you weigh -- once they understood that they were very supportive of it," Brown said.
To make participation easy, BCBS employees can track their activity online from their company computer. There are also programs for exercise and weight loss, as well as diet and meal planning.
In the cafeteria, the company posted signs on soda vending machines to remind employees that sipping one can of pop means swallowing 16 teaspoons of sugar. The goal is a gentle reminder without mandating employee choices.
"If you want it, go ahead -- we're not going to take it away," Brown said. "But at least they know when they make that decision that's what they are going to get."
The firm's overall goal is raising awareness by making healthy choices easier. From the vending | <urn:uuid:dd67a9bd-2e55-4584-9a5e-4f222b6a9c51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/battle-on-obesity-oklahomas-strategy-to-win-the-war | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974924 | 979 | 2.171875 | 2 |
The System Development Foundation was a scientific funding organization which distributed all its funds within a finite period
of time. The Foundation was formed in 1969 from a corporation in existence since 1956, made its first grants (in the form
of stock) in 1974, and was involved in an active grant-making program from 1980 to 1988. The majority of the records held
by Stanford University Libraries date from 1980-1988. A small amount of material dates from the years 1956-1969, when SDF's
predecessor, the System Development Corporation, was a not-for-profit corporation. The majority of not-for-profit SDC's corporate
records were transferred to for-profit SDC, and then to The Burroughs Corporation upon SDC's purchase in 1980. Burroughs later
merged with The Unisys Corporation; interested researchers are referred to the Unisys Corporation Archives in Bluebell, Pennsylvania.
The System Development Foundation (SDF) got its start in the 1950s as a not-for-profit corporation researching and developing
computer software in the information sciences. To clarify its rather complex origins, which go back to The RAND Corporation
of Santa Monica, California, a bit of background information is required.
Property rights reside with the repository. Literary rights
reside with the creators of the documents or their heirs. To
obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the
Public Services Librarian of the Dept. of Special Collections. | <urn:uuid:3e4ada6a-9094-4b7d-95f7-3dd20bb6eb4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf429003m4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926129 | 303 | 1.625 | 2 |
Canaries, Frogs and the National Congress of American Indians: What's Realistic?
Felix Cohen, author of the original Handbook of Federal Indian Law, played a major role in the Indian New Deal (aka, Indian Reorganization Act) to end the Dawes Act allotment era. In 1953, the year he died, he wrote, "Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere." What he meant was that attacks on Indian self-determination are a sign of danger to everybody's freedom.
Canaries are sensitive to poisonous gasses; they were companions for miners in the days before detection devices: When a canary stopped singing and started to sway on its perch, the miners knew it was time to get out of the mine. What threatens the canary threatens the miners… and the canary knows first.
Cohen worked within the Interior Department Solicitor's Office; but he stretched legal doctrines of federal domination (e.g., "wardship") to support Indian rights. His emphasis was on government's responsibilities to Indians, not on the powers of the U.S. against Indians. This changed soon after Cohen's death, when Interior issued a "revised edition" of the Handbook.
In the years since, as evidenced, for example, by decisions in the Navajo coal royalties case and the Oneida land litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court has been turning federal Indian law away from Indian rights and toward federal power.
Is the canary still alive? If so, it would have stopped singing and started swaying on its perch, telling us the atmosphere for Indian rights (and hence, as Cohen suggested, all human rights) is getting poisonous. The basic doctrines Cohen thought could protect Indians are withered, like the "trust" doctrine, or undermined, like the right to lands that have never been sold or ceded. And, as Cohen predicted, keeping pace with these attacks on Indians, comes an array of "national security" laws strangling American freedom. As Cohen wrote, the government's "treatment of Indians…reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith."
The problem seems to be that the canary is still singing, but not its own song. For example, an NCAI staff attorney was recently quoted on whether Native leaders will hold the US accountable for Indigenous Peoples' "traditional ownership" of lands, as called for in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She responded that tribal leaders—in the US—do not interpret such articles literally: "The vast majority of tribal leaders are more realistic, today. They still interpret [the Declaration] in a reasonable manner. They just think they should have more access and control of lands than they do right now."
What does it mean to be "realistic" when faced with opposition to a fundamental right like land ownership? One might think it would be to name the opposition for what it is, instead of going along with it to be "reasonable." What is "reasonable" anyway? Does it mean pulling back from a strong critique? Does it mean moving away from your own position when your opponent is moving aggressively against you? These questions were not asked or answered by NCAI.
NCAI President Keel is fond of referring to "our America" and emphasizing that Indians are "American citizens." In his 2012 State of Indian Nations speech, he went further, thanking Native people in the military for "protect[ing] the sovereignty of the United States and the tribal nations of North America." He did not discuss how the 1924 Citizenship Act was an extension of the Dawes Act assimilation process; nor did he examine how the US denies equal sovereignty to "tribal nations."
What's going on here? Was Felix Cohen wrong about Indians as canaries? Steven Paul McSloy, in "A Bird's Eye View of Native American Law," suggests that the canary in the coal mine is an apt metaphor for the way Indians were "incorporated" into the United States. But he reminds us that, while Cohen was "looking at Indian law from a sympathetic perspective,…he was wearing the miner's headlamp, looking at the canary."
How is it that an Indian leader today can sing the song of the miner instead of the canary, the song of the U.S. instead of the songs of the Native peoples?
Maybe the best metaphor is the boiling frog. It's not a literal story, like the canary, but it shows how people can ignore warning signs that occur gradually. Attacks on Indian nationhood come in fits and starts, sometimes subtly; one might get used to them and fail to take protective action. One may be seduced by soothing words that often accompany the attacks, like allotment and citizenship sponsored by "Friends of the Indian."
Cohen warned, "power-drives are always accompanied by soft music." Will the canary be lulled to sing to the soft music instead of warning us by not singing at all? Maybe we should ask the frog.
Peter d’Errico graduated from Yale Law School in 1968. Staff attorney in Dinébe'iiná Náhii?na be Aga'diit'ahii Navajo Legal Services, 1968-1970. Taught Legal Studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1970-2002. Consulting attorney on indigenous issues. | <urn:uuid:13aba46e-3fdc-4aaa-ac32-6cfeedb4f948> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/opinion/canaries-frogs-and-the-national-congress-of-american-indians-whats-realistic-96883 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960415 | 1,115 | 2.75 | 3 |
Fungi clean up
New knowledge about fungi biochemistry opens doors for better bioremediation options
A new study has revealed the molecule at the heart of what makes fungi excellent cleanup agents for contaminated environments: the highly reactive superoxide, or O2-. The study that gave this insight was led by EMSL users from Harvard University and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For their work, the research team chose the model fungus, Stilbella aciculosa, which they isolated from a treatment system used to remediate coal mine drainage water contaminated with manganese (Mn), and they focused on Mn reactions. The team found that when Stilbella cells divide, they release superoxide. Hungry to react with the elements that surround it, superoxide oxidizes—or steals an electron from—Mn(II), resulting in the formation of Mn oxides, which are also very reactive. Mn oxides in turn participate in a myriad of chemical reactions with hefty consequences for carbon, nutrient, and metal cycling and availability. For example, Mn oxides help sequester harmful lead and uranium. The research team confirmed the superoxide mechanism, showing that no Mn oxides formed if superoxide scavengers were added to the mix. Giving deeper insight into superoxide biochemistry, the team also showed that no Mn oxides were formed if the enzymes responsible for superoxide production and cell differentiation, NADPH oxidases, were inhibited. Interestingly, these contributions of fungi to the carbon, nutrient, and metal balancing act appear to be of no benefit to fungi, just an unintended side effect—but a side effect that opens new doors for better bioremediation options.
Learn more by reading the Harvard University press release about this work.
Participants: Harvard University, National Museum of Natural History, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource
Reference: Hansel CM, CA Zeiner, CM Santelli, and SM Webb. 2012. “Mn(II) Oxidation by an Ascomycete Fungus is Linked to Superoxide Production During Asexual Reproduction.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(31):12621-12625. DOI 10.1073/pnas.1203885109
Acknowledgments: This project was funded by the National Science Foundation. Portions of the research were conducted at two national scientific user facilities: EMSL and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource.
User Proposal: 40062
Released: August 08, 2012 | <urn:uuid:6f413c64-59c8-457a-920d-6717e0b599fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emsl.pnnl.gov/news/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=391 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923937 | 519 | 3.46875 | 3 |
“Concrete and comprehensive action plans are needed to ensure
implementation of human rights”
[03/11/08] The 1993 World
Conference on Human Rights expressed concern about the gap between the
agreed norms and the reality in a number of countries. It recommended
that all governments should produce a national plan for the
implementation of their human rights obligations.
Fifteen years have passed since that conference in Vienna but only a few
countries have produced national plans, among them Azerbaijan,
Lithuania, Norway, Moldova and Sweden. Several other countries, however,
are now in the process of developing theirs.
The idea is to be systematic about implementation and the first step is
to identify the existing problems in the form of a baseline
study. Normally, there is no lack of information about human rights
shortcomings. Local non-governmental groups, ombudsmen, and
international bodies usually provide such information as well as the
media and relevant authorities. Such data must be collated and analysed
in a structured manner for the purpose of planning.
It may also be advisable to undertake in-depth studies into some areas
of particular interest. Views from minorities or marginalised groups
should also be obtained.
Problems which tend to come up in serious baseline studies include an
assessment of the record on ratification of international human rights
treaties, gaps in legislation and shortcomings in the judicial
proceedings. An obvious area for analysis is the functioning of existing
monitoring systems, such as ombudsmen or national human rights
rights education is a strategic area which also deserves special
attention, both the situation in schools and universities as well as
specialist training for professionals. Awareness among the population
about human rights is certainly an important aspect to consider in this
The relationship between the authorities and civil society should be
looked at critically. A media policy which respects freedom of
expression and encourages many voices to be heard is clearly an issue
for examination in a number of countries.
A thorough baseline study should lay the ground for discussion about
priorities and what action ought to be taken. A comprehensive human
rights action plan or a series of more specific action plans can
be drawn up. Observations and recommendations from international human
rights bodies – including those from Council of Europe – should be of
substantial help at this stage.
As financial constraints and lack of human resources make it difficult
to address all problems at once, there is a need to discuss priorities
thoroughly and to plan for the medium and long term. All interested
parties should be involved in this discussion, including politicians,
representatives of the governmental authorities at different levels and
non-governmental groups. This would create a sense of shared ownership.
To encourage authorities on board, it is necessary that they perceive
this process as relevant for their own work. In the long term, a human
rights perspective should be mainstreamed in the day-to-day activities
of different authorities including in the budgetary decisions. Active
participation by representatives from the political opposition during
the drafting process can contribute to the continuity of the work.
Human rights work involves many, if not all, authorities. Coordination
and cooperation within the government and among different authorities at
national, regional and local levels is thus essential. One tested method
is to establish a coordinating body consisting of representatives
from all the relevant ministries and agencies.
Such a mechanism provides a forum for the exchange of experiences and
information, discussion and cooperation. It is also useful for reporting
to international human rights monitoring mechanisms and may in fact save
resources, minimising overlap in reporting obligations.
Actors other than the authorities should also be involved in the
continuous work for human rights. Focus groups representing civil
society, indigenous and national minorities, national human rights
structures and enterprises can be established for this purpose.
It takes time to build effective mechanisms to protect human rights,
especially when laws need to be changed and institutions reformed. At
the same time, the plan should not project too far into the future,
otherwise it risks being too vague. Experience so far indicates that the
time-frame for such national plans should be between four to five years.
Action plans should be evaluated when the time is up. It is equally
important to assess the process, in terms of participation,
inclusiveness and transparency, as it is to evaluate the end result. The
conclusions of this review should be openly presented and a debate about
the effectiveness of the process encouraged. All those who participated
in the planning process should be able to contribute to the evaluation.
The evaluation will provide the foundation for a new cycle of the
process. A new baseline study should be developed with an equally
inclusive, transparent and participatory approach. If well designed,
benchmarks and human rights indicators can be valuable tools for
follow-up and evaluation, taking both quantitative and qualitative
aspects into consideration.
Systematic work for human rights is a continuous process.
Baseline studies, action plans and evaluation exercises are tools for
clarifying and assessing the steps to be taken to reach our objectives.
They inform us what has worked and what has not.
This Viewpoint can be re-published in newspapers or on the internet without
our prior consent, provided that the text is not modified and the original
source is indicated in the following way: "Also available at the Commissioner's
website at www.commissioner.coe.int" | <urn:uuid:2694870c-18c0-4d15-8d5e-bae39d87e39e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/viewpoints/081103_en.asp?toPrint=yes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926522 | 1,153 | 3.171875 | 3 |
From the Editors
At the Station of a Train
Which Fell Off the Map
(March 13, 1941 - August 9, 2008)
Grass, dry air, thorns, and cactus on the tracks
There, the shape of the object in the absurdity of non-shape is chewing its own shadow
There is nothingness there, tied and surrounded by its opposite
Two doves flying over the roof of an abandoned room at the station
The station is like a tattoo which has dissolved into the body of the place
There are also two thin cypresses, like two long needles
embroidering a lime-yellow cloudand there is a tourist photographing two scenes.
The first: the sun lying down on the bed of the sea
The second: the wooden bench without the traveler’s sack
(The hypocritical heavenly gold is bored of its own solidity)
I stood at the station, not to wait for the train
or for my hidden feelings in the aesthetics of some distant object
but to know how the sea went mad and how the place broke like a porcelain jar
to know when I was born, where I lived,
how birds migrated South or North
Is what is left of me still enough for the light imaginary to triumph
over the decay of the real?
Is my gazelle still pregnant?
(We have aged. We have so aged and the road to the sky is long)
The train moved like a peaceful snake from Syria to Egypt
It’s whistling hid the hoarse bleating of goats from the wolves’ voracity
as if it was a mythical time to tame the wolves to befriend us.
Its smoke billowed over the fire in the villages
which were blossoming like trees.
(Life is self-evident and our homes, like our hearts, have open doors)
We were kind and naïve. We said: The land, our land
is the heart of the map and will not be afflicted by any external ailment.
The sky is generous with us and we rarely speak classical Arabic:
At prayer time and on the night of al-Qadr.
Our present converses with us: “We live together.”
Our past entertains us: “If you need me, I will return.”
We were kind and dreamy
so we did not see tomorrow stealing its prey, the past, and departing.
(Just a second ago our present was growing wheat and gourds and dancing with the valley)
I stood at the station at sunset:
Are there still two women in one who is polishing her thigh with thunder?
Two mythical enemies-friends and twins on the roofs of the wind
One flirts and the other fights with me?
Has the shed blood ever broken a single sword so I can ask:
My first goddess is with me?
(I believed my old song to belie my reality)
The train was a wild ship docking . . . and carrying us
to the realistic cities of imagination
whenever we needed some innocent play with destinies.
The windows of the train have the status of the magical in the mundane:
Everything runs. Trees, thoughts, waves and towers run behind us.
The scent of lemons, the air and all things run.
So does the yearning for an ambiguous distant. The heart runs.
(Everything was concordant and discordant)
I stood at the station
I was abandoned like the time attendant’s room in that station.
I was a robbed man looking at his coffers and asking himself:
Was that field, that treasure, mine?
Was this lapis lazuli, wet with humidity and night dew, mine?
Was I, one day, the butterfly’s student in fragility and boldness at times,
and her colleague in metaphor at others?
Was I, once, mine? Does memory fall sick with me and have a fever?
(I see my trace on a stone and I think it’s my moon so I stand and recite:)
Another elegy and I will kill my memories by standing at the station.
I do not love this dry and forgotten grass now
This absurd despair, writing the biography of forgetfulness in this mercurial place.
I do love, as do the daisies on prophets’ graves.
I do not like my salvation through metaphor
even if the violin wants me to be an echo to myself.
I only love returning to my life so that my end can be a narrative for my beginning.
(Like the sound of bells: Time was broken right here)
I stood when my wound was sixty years old
I stood at the station not to wait for the train
or for the cheers of those returning from the south to grain spikes,
but to preserve the shore of olives and lemons in the history of my map.
Is this . . . all this for absence? And what is left of the crumbs of the unseen for me?
Did my ghost pass by and wave from a distance, and disappear?
Did I ask it: Is it whenever the stranger smiles and greets us that we slaughter a gazelle?
(The echo fell from me like a pine cone)
Nothing guides me to myself except my intuition.
Two fugitive doves lay the letters of exile on my shoulders
and then fly at a pale height.
A tourist passes by and asks me: Can I photograph you to respect truth?
I said: What does that mean?
She said: Can I photograph you as an extension of nature?
I said: Possible . . . everything is possible
Have a good evening and leave me alone with death . . . and myself!
(Here, truth has one lonely face and therefore . . . I will recite)
You are you even if you lose
You and I are two in the past and one tomorrow
The train passed by and we were not watchful
Get up intact and optimistic!
Do not wait for anyone except you over there
Here the train fell off the map half way on the coastal road
Fires consumed the heart of the map and then were put out by the late winter
We have aged, we have aged so much before returning to our first names!
(I say to the one who sees me through binoculars atop the watchtower: I do not see you. I do not see you)
I see my place, all of it, around me
I see myself in the place with all my parts and names
I see the palm trees correcting the errors in my classical Arabic
I see the habits of almond blossoms training my song for a sudden joy
I see my trace and follow it
I see my shadow and I pick it up from the valley
with the tweezers of a bereaved Canaanite woman
I see the invisible gravity of the full and complete beauty
that flows in the eternity of the hills. I do not see my sniper.
(I become a guest to myself)
There are the dead who light fires around their graves
There are the living who prepare dinner for their guest
There are enough words for metaphor to rise above events
Whenever the place is distressed, a copper moon lights it and expands it
I am a guest of myself. Its hospitality will embarrass and overjoy me
I will choke on words and words will choke on difficult tears
The dead will drink the mint of immortality with the living
and will not talk too much about resurrection.
(There is no train. No one will wait for the train)
Our country is the heart of the map
the heart pierced like a metal coin in the market
The last passenger from somewhere in Syria to Egypt did not return
to pay the sniper’s fee for his extra work, as the strangers expect
He did not return and did not carry his death and birth certificate with him
so that the scholars of resurrection would know his place in Paradise
We were such angels and fools when we believed the banners and horses
and believed that an eagle’s wing would lift us above!
(My sky is a thought, and earth is my favorite exile)
It’s just that I only trust my intuition.
For proofs there is impossible dialogue.
For genesis there are the lengthy interpretations of philosophers.
For my idea about my world there is a defect caused by departure.
For my eternal wound there is a tribunal without a neutral judge
Tired of truth, the judges tell me: It is just that traffic accidents are common.
The train fell off the map
And you were burned by past’s ember
It was not an invasion!
But I say: It’s just that I only trust my intuition.
I am still alive!
[Translated by Sinan Antoon from the Arabic original published May 15, 2008, in al-Quds al-Arabi . Previously published in Banipal 33 & MER (248)]
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- سعادت حسن منتو: قصة قصيرة
- Reports Roundup (May 18)
- Injuries, Arrests and House Raids: The Case of a Bahraini Family | <urn:uuid:ad13731f-1e29-4c2e-b322-9b7e05ab332f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/6788/mahmoud-darwish_at-the-station-of-a-train-which-fe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924242 | 2,368 | 2.1875 | 2 |
When Mother Nature decides it is time from some snow we earthling have to learn to cope with the consequences, even if it is not officially winter yet and global warming is everywhere:
China: The biggest snowfall in 52 years.
Snow caused power outages in 57 villages, brought down thousands of trees and killed numerous domestic animals.
Temperatures fell by as much as 14 degrees below zero in some areas.
Japan: Blackouts in more than 56,000 households in Hokkaido Prefecture
Hokkaido Electric Power company said the snowstorm has affected power transmission cables in the cities of Muroran, Noboribetsu, Toyako, and other cities and municipalities.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency warned of continued snowfall through this evening, with cumulative snow expected to reach as much as 16 inches (40 cm) in the heavy-hit southern coastal areas of Hokkaido through tomorrow afternoon.
Canada: More than four times the monthly average
David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said he was shocked to see that the 55 to 60 centimetres (about 23½ inches) of snow that has fallen on Regina this month has already surpassed all of last winter’s total of 52 cm.
With a week left in November, Regina has already broken the monthly record of 53.7 cm set in 1941.
The snowfall amounts are also surprising because the bulk occurred over five or six days, Phillips added.
“It’s happened in huge, almost Paul Bunyan-like snowfalls,” he said.
“Not to scare you, but whenever there has been a November with lots of snow, it seems to me you end up with a snowy winter.”Since 1883, Regina has received an average of 13.8 cm of snow in November.
United Kingdom: Snow and cold on the way after flooding rains.
The mercury is expected to plunge to -15C with widespread snowfall by Saturday kicking off an “Arctic week” and a month of winter misery for much of the UK.
In the first taste of what promises to be one of the UK’s coldest winters in a 100 years, long-range forecasters warn that tonight’s cold snap heralds a freezing winter ahead.
According to the Daily Mail, temperatures could plummet to minus 3°C this week and as low as minus 20°c (4°f) in some areas through December and January.
H/T to Ice Age Now for some of the links. | <urn:uuid:ab357440-7ecc-49e3-b784-a50a9f63cfbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nextgrandminimum.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/on-the-cusp-of-a-long-long-winter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961121 | 526 | 2.234375 | 2 |
A Special Issue on Functional Nanophotonics and Nanoelectromagnetics
Nanophotonics and, more generally, nanoelectromagnetics(including magnetism, and the spectral ranges around microwave and THz frequencies) have become an extremely active research field, encompassing new materials,new physical phenomena and new design concepts.In both areas, design scenarios typically attempt to confine optical/electromagnetic functionality into the smallest possible volume in order to meet specifications in terms of integration density and device performance unparalleled by state-of-the-art technologies. This approach is based on the fundamental assumption that proper functionality is viable at the nanoscale and accessible from an environment whose scale is larger by several orders of magnitude. Nano-photonic/electromagnetic scientists are actually faced with devices that are operated at their physical limit and therefore have to rely on holistic designs when exploiting new material properties to lift restrictions posed by conventional optical designs, and when addressing the aforementioned interfacing problem. The objective of this special issue is to address these conceptual challenges while highlighting novel trends in nanophotonics and nanoelectromagnetics, including recent progress in modeling and component development.
Dieser Eintrag ist freigegeben. | <urn:uuid:10223d5a-4a46-4b86-91e7-2345cd5d05af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DozBibEntryServlet?mode=show&id=22949 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911688 | 256 | 1.976563 | 2 |
I have set up my email address on Voda Host which all seems fine. I am now trying to set up the email on Outlook, I think it is version 2003. I have listened to the tutorials many times and tried to follow the instructions to the letter, but when I have completed filling in the fields and then press 'Test account' the feedback is -
'Some errors occurred while processing the tests
Followed by -
Send test email message. The specified server was found, but there was no response from the server. Please verify that the port and SSL information is correct.
It also says -
Found the outgoing mail server but unable to connect.
It instructs to go to 'More settings'
Then it asks 'Server port numbers' which have been pre-populated
Incoming server (POP3) 110
Outgoing server 25
I can see the outgoing server port is confirmed as 25 on the email section of the control panel but there is no number identified on the control panel for the incoming server. I have been coming back to this problem all day and I really do bnot know were I am going wrong, can anybody help?
T: 0044 1782 612646 | <urn:uuid:9c4e46ad-9db5-41ea-b5a8-14a896bfe02a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/email-problems-pop-smtp-webmail/52622-problems-setting-email.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953969 | 249 | 1.570313 | 2 |
A step-by-step guide to becoming a C++ programmer... Guaranteed
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I wrote Jumping into C++ to be the best introduction to C++, taking nothing for granted. Jumping into C++ starts by taking you step-by-step through getting the tools you need, including access to free compiler software and building and running your first program, all in the first chapter. You'll learn the same concepts that you would if you took a programming class, plus you'll get a ton of additional information on how to design and implement more advanced programs. I'll even guide you through how to use a debugger, with four sample debugging sessions that will show you the techniques and tricks you'll need to quickly make your programs work correctly.
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Jumping into C++ is a great companion book to an intro C++ class. Drawing from my years as a teaching fellow at Harvard, Jumping into C++ covers all the topics you'll hear about in lecture: intro to C++, loops, functions, pointers, linked lists, binary trees and gives you in depth explanations for all of them.
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Yes! Jumping into C++ is available for purchase as a digital download from almost every country in the world. The only countries where the book is not available are Iran, Libya, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea.
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Where can I download the sample source code that comes with the book? | <urn:uuid:673cf36b-507b-49a6-ade2-2cbc601bad59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cprogramming.com/c++book/?inl=bc1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951462 | 1,181 | 2.453125 | 2 |
by Stephen Fry
Category: Fiction / General
Publication date: 5 August 2004
Number of pages: 400
Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic. Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth. The Liar is a thrilling, sophisticated and laugh out loud hilarious novel from a brilliantly talented writer.
What the papers say:
"A quite brilliant first novel" Sunday Times "The Liar is hilarious - page after page of the most outrageous and often filthy jokes, delicious conceits, instant, brilliant ripostes that would only occur to ordinary mortals after days of teeth-grinding lunacy" Literary Review "Brilliantly entertaining and consistently outrageous" Daily Mail "Sublime" Cosmopolitan
Stephen Fry was born in Hampstead in 1957 and, following a troubled adolescence, went on to study English Literature at Queen's College, Cambridge. As well as being the bestselling author of four novels, The Stars' Tennis Balls, Making History, The Hippopotamus, and The Liar, and two volumes of his autobiography, Fry played Peter in Peter's Friends, Wilde in the film Wilde, Jeeves in the television series Jeeves & Wooster and (a closely guarded show-business secret, this) Laurie in the television series Fry & Laurie. More recently, he presented Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, his groundbreaking documentary on bipolar disorder, to huge critical acclaim. And his legions of fans tune in to watch him host the popular quiz show QI each week.
In Stock: 25 copies | <urn:uuid:e3dad265-9aa8-4d4b-8a37-6a15bb88c205> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenmetropolis.com/book.aspx?isbn=9780099457053&seller=184599 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929857 | 379 | 1.601563 | 2 |
All healthcare fields are working to improve the diversity in their professions. The goal is to have a healthcare workforce that is representative of our population. A diverse workforce is more responsive to cultural differences among patients and practitioners. Many patients also prefer seeing providers who come from similar backgrounds. African Americans, Latino/a, and Native Americans are especially needed in medicine – though they make up 25% of the overall population, they make up only 12% of the workforce.
Efforts to improve diversity range from providing schoolchildren with special lessons to summer enrichment and research opportunities for underrepresented students. This work is often referred to as improving the medical pipeline because it helps channel more students into healthcare fields. | <urn:uuid:08ddf7d5-523a-4bbf-a3ce-5a3f36149414> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.purdue.edu/prehealth/current_students/general_information/underrepresented.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96561 | 138 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Carrying the most advanced payload of scientific gear ever used on the Martian surface, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity Rover launched in November is about 10 times larger in mass and capability than the earlier MER rovers that arrived on Mars in 2004.
The rover's robotic arm (RA) is a critical mechanism to the MSL's mission. It acquires, processes, and handles samples from the surface of Mars and delivers 5 of the 12 science instruments. The robot arm, with five degrees of freedom, is very similar to robotic arms used on earth, but it is designed to survive the large temperature changes in space.
Made mostly of titanium, it is lighter than steel but has similar thermal expansion properties as the steel bearings in its joints when the temperature swings from about -110 degrees C at night to +50 degrees C during the day. Many engineering improvements were made over the last two rovers to create a new robotic arm capable of carrying more instruments with expanded capabilities and surviving a lifetime seven times longer than any previous in-situ planetary mission.
Larger to Carry More Instruments
MDA Information Systems, Inc. developed the MSL's arm and has designed and built every other robotic arm successfully deployed and operated on the surface of Mars since the Viking landers. Rius Billing, director of engineering, notes some of the most important differences between the new robotic arms and those from the MER (Spirit and Opportunity) and Phoenix programs.
The titanium arm has two joints at the shoulder, one at the elbow, and two at the wrist. Each joint moves with a cold-tolerant actuator custom-built for the mission.
Not only is the MSL rover larger, but the RA is larger and heavier as well. It carries five instruments on its turret. In addition to an MAaHLI microscopic imaging camera and an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, an arm-mounted drill is capable of capturing rock samples from the Martian surface.
Billing says the Curiosity's robot needs to provide pressure. "The instruments and drilling tools on the end of the arm are now larger to obtain better samples," he says. "On the MER, robotic arms touched the Mars surface but didn't apply pressure. The robot lifted and lowered equipment into place. On the MSL, the robot not only places instruments, but also provides loading for equipment like a drill."
Another new instrument carried by the RA is a Chimera rock crusher that sifts and crushes dirt and rock removed from the ground by the drill. It uses gravity, vibrations, and coordinated arm movements to deliver sorted samples to rover-mounted science instruments.
This image shows the arm in a partially extended position. The arm has a reach of about 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) from the front of the rover body. Photo: NASA
Finally, the RA carries a "Dust Removal Tool," a brush that cleans rock surfaces for imaging. A brush was present on MER that scored and polished surfaces a bit, but the brush on MSL provides a more gentle touch so sample gathering and acquisition can be done with other tools on the arm.
Billing notes that handling the heavier arm was more complicated since it could no longer be lifted by a single person. Designing, making, and testing mechanical ground support equipment became "almost a project unto itself."
Efficient Cable System
Containing more instruments, the RA needed a way to deliver more electrical signals each with custom voltage and current requirements. A new proprietary flex cable was designed to accommodate the almost 1,000 wires that provide independent signals traversing the 2-m-long robot arm.
A flat "paper thin" flex conductor cable on the MLS RA is an efficient use of mass and volume. The flex cable is unique in that it spans from the rover bulkhead to the instrument turret in a single piece, and about 10 m of flat flex cabling is required to get the range of motion required in the 2-m long arm. The flat cable design also offers thermal benefits over using round wire since it is more flexible in cold temperatures.
Robotic arm cabling on MER only required about one-fourth as many conductors. On Curiosity, about 600 conductors support the actuators and the rest support the instruments.
Saving Space and Mass
Since the MSL RA and the equipment it carries are so massive (more than 100 kg), a complex dual-purpose lock and re-stow system helps keep mass and volume down and provides protection in multiple modes.
During launch, the arm is tightly locked by a caging mechanism so it is capable of surviving landing loads of over 20 g. After deployment on the Mars surface, the same caging system was designed to passively re-stow and protect the arm and instruments to survive loads up to 8 g during rover driving maneuvers.
This was "an interesting design problem" according to Billing, since the titanium arm mounts to an aluminum panel on the front of the rover, with a vastly different CTE. It was important that the caging system not over-constrain or bind the RA during large temperature swings.
Their solution was to fully constrain the instrument turret in 6 DOF (degrees of freedom) at launch, and "only constrain the elbow in directions needed to protect the actuators and structure, allowing the arm to expand and contract relative to the rover front panel," Billing says.
Keeping Dirt Out
Protecting the latching mechanisms, flex spools, and cabling against rock, dirt, and sand pebbles is critical on the MSL arm since the system contains a large drill and a rock crusher and tends to get very dusty, says Billing.
Phenolic seals were included at each rotating interface entering and exiting the flex spools, and their protection was verified with life testing to ensure that dirt couldn't get between the layers of flex cable, causing abrasion of the outermost protective layers over time. They also designed large enough dimensional tolerances so dust wouldn't stick.
MSL is expected to land on Mars in August 2012, and the newly designed systems put to test. Until then, expected operation of the MSL and robot can be seen in this video animation.
Debbie Sniderman is a consultant, an engineer, and a contributing writer to Mechanical Engineering.
On the MER, robotic arms touched the Mars surface but didn't apply pressure…On the MSL, the robot not only places instruments, but also provides loading for equipment like a drill.
Rius Billing, director of engineering, MDA Information Systems, Inc. | <urn:uuid:9a9ec29a-f687-4ce3-8b05-6466417dad20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asme.org/kb/news---articles/articles/aerospace---defense/curiosity-explores-the-red-planet | 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 | 0.951616 | 1,352 | 3.640625 | 4 |
This is a must watch video presented by TED featuring the winner of one of the prestigious TED prizes, Mr. James Nachtwey. Nachtwey is one of the most famous war photographers in the world, having documented several of the most important recent conflicts of our time. In this video, however, Nachtwey focuses on one issue that has become his most pivotal- the fight against tuberculosis and the development of multi-drug resistant TB.
I worked in a large HIV/TB clinic and the infectious disease ward of a public government hospital in Kampala, Uganda where I saw several patients suffering from these illnesses, but the pictures that Nachtwey has taken were shocking even to me. Literal skeletons. This is a must watch video– it is one man’s global cry for support, awareness, research, and action. His photographs and the full scope of the movement against XDR-TB can be found here. I highly recommend it, both from the perspective of a future physician and a current photographer. Nachtwey is innovating a new field, one I would deem “health photography”, that has the potential to start major movements for global health.
Dr. Sherry Wren, a Professor of General Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine, answers this question as she advocates for the addition of surgical care as a major facet in the global health dialogue.
Dr. Wren bullet points the following facts that elucidate the scope of inequity in access to surgical care worldwide:
234 million surgeries are done worldwide per year- only 3.5% of those are done in low income countries
90% of deaths from physical injury, avertable by surgical intervention, occur in low income countries
2 billion people worldwide (for perspective, the US population is 313 million) have no basic access to surgical care
30% of the world’s population receives 75% of the world’s operations, mostly in high income countries
The # of operations are 7x greater than the # of HIV infections (~34 million) in the world [note: while I believe it is important to compare the magnitude of diseases, it is only to emphasize the importance of surgery and not to downplay the importance of HIV)
Surgery is not explicitly part of the Millennium Development Goals, despite playing a large role in two of the goals, Improving Maternal Health and Reduction of Child Mortality Continue reading → | <urn:uuid:cb8bce53-2a1d-4c0a-a545-79212cb3808c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://swasthyamundial.com/category/what-im-watching/interviewslectures/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961413 | 497 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Transforming Your Workplace
By Ariel & Shya Kane
Have you ever wondered what could improve your personal effectiveness, productivity and sense of satisfaction? We have. In fact, the two of us have devoted the past 20 years to discovering and rediscovering the answer to this question. Over this time we have repeatedly seen that no system of rules has lead us to be our personal best.
Sometimes it has been the supportive words of a friend, and other times it has been gathering the strength to overcome a challenging obstacle. Still other times, it has been discipline and simply going for it that has helped us to shine. Above all, it has been the willingness to look and re-look at the view we take of the world, our environment and ourselves that has supported us in continuing along our own personal paths.
If you want to be happy and satisfied, it is important that you investigate how it is that you relate to your world, your workplace and to yourself.
The Workplace as a Gateway to the Moment Let’s look at the workplace to access how you relate to your life. By and large, most people spend the majority of their waking lives at work. If you consider the time it takes to get dressed, take yourself to work and bring yourself home at the end of the day, not to mention all of the time you spend thinking about what needs to be done there, then a huge portion of your life and life energy is invested in your occupation. Because “work” is such a major portion of the average person’s life, we thought we would look at this aspect.
A powerful approach is to assume that life is holographic. In other words, if you look at any one aspect of your life, it will reflect how you are in all aspects. This could be equated to DNA. The DNA in a strand of your hair is the same as the DNA in your bone marrow, the same as the DNA in your blood. So for the sake of this article we will assume the way you are at work is typical of how you are in all aspects of your life.
It has been said that it is easy to become enlightened on a mountaintop but difficult in the marketplace. On the “mountain” there is not much in the way of distractions, intrusions or deadlines. In the “marketplace,” however, life is full of distractions, intrusions, interruptions, frustrations and unexpected events. Add to this people. Lots of people and all of the dynamics that come along with dealing with different cultures and personalities. It is easy to be satisfied when all the circumstances line up perfectly, but for most of us in our jobs, life does not always turn out the way we prefer and the challenge is to find real balance in a day-to-day sense.
I’m not sure what I should be doing, but This Isn’t It!
The two of us, like everyone else, must eat. Therefore we shop for food and this brings us in contact with supermarkets. Frequently when we go through the checkout counters the clerks ask, “How are you today?” Our response is usually somewhere between good and excellent. When we ask them how they are doing the response is interesting to say the least. Frequently it will be, “I don’t know yet,” or, “I will be better in two hours, at the end of my shift,” or, “I’ll know when I get home.” Recently, we brought our items to an available cashier. Rather than ring our order, the employee stood complaining to her co-worker that her hours had been cut back. She told her fellow cashier (and us) how she couldn’t understand why the boss wasn’t more feeling and why he failed to recognize her contribution and hard work. Loudly she wondered why she used to work 20 hours a week and had just been cut back to 6 hours. We thought that complaining about the boss in front of customers might be at the top of his list of reasons.
Thinking that you could or should be doing something different than what you are doing acts as an inhibitor not only to workplace satisfaction but also productivity. If you were just to look and see what was needed at your job and do it, without resisting, without complaining in your head whether you should or not, you would get a whole lot more accomplished with a whole lot less effort.
You can look at it this way —you have to do the work anyway. You might as well just do it rather than complain about it and then still have to do it. If you just do it without complaining, you become the author of your life. That is a cool idea, isn’t it? Satisfaction resides in the moment. If you are in your life without resisting what shows up, life (and your job) is satisfying.
It’s Flu Season. Get Virus Protection for Your Mental Hard Drive
Large office buildings have trouble with air conditioning/heating systems re-circulating the same air and spreading viruses through the work force. Well, office gossip can debilitate your productivity and satisfaction much like this season’s strain of the flu. It works like this: a co-worker “sneezes” his or her current complaints in your direction. The boss is a jerk, I hate my job, I’m not appreciated around here. There is a short incubation period, 24 to 48 hours, and soon you come down with the same virus which you then pass back and forth and on to others until the workplace becomes infected with a never-ending, evolving strain of “This isn’t it.” The best virus protection against the workplace attitude flu is to really get involved in your work, and to bring “complaints” only to those who can actually do something about them. Incidentally, a friend of ours, a president of a computer company and manager of a sales force, has noticed a direct correlation between productivity and complaints — those who are producing don’t find things to complain about and those who aren’t producing always complain that something or someone else is the cause for their lack of success.
Don’t Tell Me What to Do
Many people mistakenly have the idea that not wanting to be told what to do is a sign of independence or individuality. It is not. It is actually an old, conditioned program that springs from early childhood, sometimes referred to as the terrible twos. Small children, while trying to define themselves as individuals, frequently say, “No, I don’t want to,” to any request made upon them. When you are capable of following instructions exactly, then there is room for true creativity and genius. If you must always modify requests or projects to make them your own, then you are forever destined to be reactive to those around you.
Transforming Your Workplace
There are three principles that are essential to transformation. We will give them to you here so you can see how they apply to your workplace or situations in your work environment.
1. Anything you resist will persist and grow stronger.
2. No two things can occupy the same space at the same time.
3. Anything that you choose to be exactly the way it is will complete itself, in that moment, and lose its power over you.
Here are the principles in practical terms. First, anything you resist will persist and grow stronger. For example, take a look at those things about your boss or co-worker that you focus on because you don’t like them. Notice how they seem to intensify? Notice how when you focus on these dislikes your productivity and satisfaction levels are non-existent?
This brings the second principle into play: No two things can occupy the same space at the same time. In other words, if you are focusing on your complaints, then you can’t be doing your best work. Of course, the converse is also true — if you are focusing on doing your best work then you can’t be complaining. This dovetails nicely with the third principle: Anything that you choose to be exactly the way it is will complete itself, in that moment, and lose its power over you. Another way of looking at this third principle is anything you leave alone will leave you alone. There are often compelling distractions in your business environment, either circumstantial or personality conflicts. However, if you turn your attention from your disagreement with the way things are, it minimizes their impact and allows you to get on with your day.
Don’t Change your Job, Transform It
What we are going to suggest is that you don’t change the way it is that you work. In fact, don’t change anything about you. What we wish to suggest is that you bring awareness to how it is that you interact with your job. Our definition of awareness is a non-judgmental witnessing, viewing or seeing what is. If you simply become aware of the amount you resist being told what to do or complain, you will begin to have an accurate depiction of how you are interacting with your life. If you become aware of what occupies your time at work, you will see how negative conversations or complaints to others or internally to yourself, deplete your satisfaction with what you do accomplish. We are of the opinion that the acknowledgment of what is, the simple seeing of a behavior, is enough to complete it. If you see how your automatic complaints and resistance to being told what to do dominate your life, there is the possibility of no longer being dominated by that automatic, reflexive behavior.
Ariel and Shya Kane are internationally acclaimed seminar leaders and business consultants whose revolutionary technology, Instantaneous Transformation, has helped thousands of individuals and companies worldwide. The Kanes’ best-selling book, “Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work,” is available at local and online bookstores, by calling toll-free (800) 431-1579 or via the Kanes’ website: www.ask-inc.com .
Return to the September/October Index page | <urn:uuid:c5590306-bd51-4d46-9045-36d3ffe33939> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://awarenessmag.com/sepoct2/SO2_TRANSFORMING_WORKPLACE.HTML | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967191 | 2,112 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Essential to life on Earth, forests are more than just a collection of trees. They provide homes for people—three hundred million people worldwide live in forests, and 1.6 billion depend on them for their livelihoods. Forests also provide habitat for a vast array of plants and animals, many of which are still undiscovered.
But forests are being destroyed and degraded at alarming rates. Deforestation comes in many forms, including fires, clear-cutting for agriculture, ranching and development, unsustainable logging for timber, and degradation due to climate change.
Combining Avon’s global presence with WWF’s experience, we work together to protect the world’s forests, and as a result, our planet, biodiversity and peoples’ well-being.
Why We Are Partnering
Healthy forests are important to both WWF and Avon. WWF’s mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on Earth. Forest conservation is a top priority in WWF's work.
Avon Products, Inc is the world's largest direct seller of beauty, fashion and home products, with more than $11 billion in annual revenue. As one of world’s largest catalogue producers and consumers of paper products—distributing product brochures in more than 120 countries—Avon can drive sustainable solutions throughout the pulp and paper supply chain.
Where We Are Focusing Our Efforts
Recognizing its potential to generate positive outcomes in many of the world’s most valuable and threatened forests, Avon is working with WWF in two key areas. As a member of WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), Avon is helping to drive sustainable solutions in the pulp and paper supply chain. Similarly, Avon’s is engaging its own customers in halting deforestation through a unique education campaign called Hello Green Tomorrow.
Responsible Paper Sourcing
© WWF-Canon / Dado Galdieri
Deforestation, especially in tropical climates, is accelerating, leading to climate change and a rapid decline in critical habitat for several species, notably primates, tigers and elephants. WWF’s Living Planet Report finds that biodiversity has declined 61% in tropical areas. The report estimates that more than one billion people living in poverty rely directly on forests for their livelihoods, while about 32 million acres have been lost globally each year between 2000 and 2010, a size equal to the state of Mississippi.
Responding to the alarming rate of deforestation driven by demand for timber, paper and agricultural products, Avon joined WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN) in 2010, committing to purchase responsibly sourced paper. By participating in GFTN, Avon receives technical support from WWF to help meet its commitment that all papers used for the company’s product brochures and other marketing papers are sourced responsibly.
Specifically, Avon has committed to purchase 100 percent of its paper from independently certified or post-consumer, recycled-content sources by 2020, with a preference for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper through the Avon Paper Promise. As of 2011, 74 percent of Avon's brochure paper met the Avon Paper Promise commitments, and approximately 25 percent of paper used in Avon's product brochures is sourced from FSC certified forests.
Helping Halt Deforestation
Many of the world’s most threatened and endangered animals live in forests. Millions of people around the globe rely on forests for food, clothing, traditional medicine, shelter and subsistence agriculture. Yet the world’s forests are disappearing at a rate of 36 football fields per minute. This rapid forest loss is having devastating consequences for the environment as well as the wildlife and communities that depend on forests for their survival.
Avon’s Hello Green Tomorrow campaign is actively supporting WWF’s reforestation efforts in Indonesia. Home to orangutans, tigers and countless other species—as well as millions of people. In more than 50 countries the campaign is raising funds and building awareness to help end deforestation and restore critically endangered rainforests.
As a company committed to empowering women, Avon knows that forests also provide a direct source of income for hundreds of millions of entrepreneurial women. In addition to traditional forest-related employment opportunities, Hello Green Tomorrow has funded WWF projects that provide well-paying jobs for women.
To fund these important projects, Avon has turned to its customer base for support. In the U.S., 100 percent of the net proceeds from an exclusive Hello Green Tomorrow reusable water bottle, and other products go to WWF and other conservation organizations for the restoration of critically endangered forests. Through this partnership, Avon has committed a minimum of $250,000 to WWF through December 31, 2012 in addition to more than $800,000 already donated from fundraising in 2011, providing critical funding for forest conservation. | <urn:uuid:56e8f2d6-b587-4632-9c19-3b3ff7b2e954> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldwildlife.org/partnerships/avon-products | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945493 | 1,002 | 3.1875 | 3 |
How To Choose Wisely A Credit Card
So, you've made the decision to apply for a credit card. It's an important step for any consumer. Whether this is your first application in an effort to establish your credit, an addition to your existing credit card portfolio, or a plan to re-establish unsatisfactory credit, it is critical to research and fully understand the plans associated with various types of credit cards.
Before beginning the research process, consider and decide how you will use your new credit card. Will you be using the card for everyday purchases, or will you be taking an exotic vacation? Do you plan to pay the balance in full each month, or do you prefer to make monthly payments? Since APRs (annual percentage rates) vary for each card and respective payment plan, it's important to make these types of decisions before the credit card selection and application process.
Obtaining credit is not free, but can be economical and less costly if you understand the finance charges (the cost you pay for using a credit card). Grace periods may help reduce certain finance charges, depending on the individual credit card company offer. A grace period is the number of days you are given to pay your credit card balance in full before you are charged a finance charge. In most cases, finance charges are applied to new purchases only. (Cash advance finance charges are usually imposed immediately following the advance.)
Familiarize yourself with the annual percentage rate. An annual percentage rate represents the interest rate associated with using your credit card for purchases and cash advances. The APR is often a determining factor for many consumers when selecting and applying for a credit card. Credit card companies may vary their APRs, offering a different rate for purchases, cash advances, introductory periods and penalties. Traditionally, purchases carry the lowest APR. An exception may be an introductory APR for new purchases or balance transfers that may be offered at 0% for qualified applicants.
Many credit card companies competing for your business may offer a lower introductory APR of 0% for a specified period, for example, six months. At the end of this specified period, the APR will change to a pre-determined APR. (This information will be included in the credit card offer.) Therefore, it's very important to understand the APR following the introductory rate period, particularly if you will be using the card for large purchases and/or balance transfers. Also look for companies offering 0% interest on balance transfers with no time limit. Cash advances usually carry a slightly higher APR than purchases, but will vary for each credit card company.
An annual fee is another cost associated with using a credit card. Many think of annual fees in this way, the greater the APR, the lesser the annual fee. While this may be true in some cases, these fees are typically charged annually and usually will be subject to finance charges. Some special credit card offers, such as unsecured or unlimited credit card types and lines, may impose a higher annual fee.
In addition to a possible annual fee, many credit card companies impose charges through other fees such as late payment penalties, over limit fees and cash advance fees.
With the growing competition amongst credit card providers, new plans such as rewards and points programs are offered as incentives. These programs may offer earned 'points' or privileges for consumer items, travel (vacations and frequent flier miles) and other premium services, but oftentimes impose an enrollment participation fee in addition to any annual credit card fee. If you are a frequent traveler, these special programs and incentives may appeal to your taste.
When reviewing each credit card offer, look for the specific information outlined here to best determine the most appropriate card type and plan for your needs. You may elect to use a comparison chart of your own when considering credit card programs to more carefully select the best offer. Using the categories listed above (APR, finance charge, grace period, annual fee, etc.) create a left-hand column containing specific information about each category. Then, create a column for each credit card offer you are considering. This method will afford you a side-by-side, line item comparison to assist you in making a final decision.
About the Author: Do you want a new credit card but can't choose? Don't panic! abc-of-credit-cards.com gives you all the basic information you need to know before applying for a credit card. For more info visit: http://www.abc-of-credit-cards.com | <urn:uuid:8d308f9c-e5ca-4924-84b1-152f119bc289> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roseindia.net/articles/using-credit-card-credit-card-companies.page | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940824 | 913 | 2.046875 | 2 |
WASHINGTON, June 11 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday the private sector should be "the main engine of job creation," but government can help with training and education.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president said there is "no quick fix to our economic problems" but "there are certain things we know we can do."
"Now, government is not -- and should not be -- the main engine of job creation in this country," he said. "That's the role of the private sector. But one thing government can do is partner with the private sector to make sure that every worker has the necessary skills for the jobs they're applying for."
Obama announced this week U.S. businesses, colleges and the National Association of Manufacturers had agreed on a program to enable 500,000 community college students to receive a "manufacturing credential that has the industry's stamp of approval."
"If you're a company that's hiring, you'll know that anyone who has this degree has the skills you're looking for," he said. "If you're a student considering community college, you'll know that your diploma will give you a leg up in the job market."
Obama said Saturday he will travel Monday to North Carolina, where he will meet with other administration officials "and talk about additional steps we can take to spur private sector hiring in the short term and ensure our workers have the skills and training they need in this economy."
The president said "more and more jobs are being created in the clean energy sector, so we're investing in wind power, solar power and biofuels that will make us less dependent on foreign oil and clean up our planet for our children."
Obama said such steps "will make a difference in people's lives -- not just 20 years from now, or 10 years from now, but now, and in the months to come."
|Additional U.S. News Stories|
TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 20 (UPI) --An investigation into the killing by the Philippines coast guard of a Taiwanese fisherman is focusing on whether rules of engagement were broken.
LAS VEGAS, May 20 (UPI) --Teen pop star Justin Bieber was greeted by both cheers and jeers when he picked up the Milestone Award at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas.
TOKYO, May 19 (UPI) --The Nikkei index, maintaining its upward momentum, jumped past 15,300 points on the Tokyo Stock Exchange early Monday, its highest level in 65 months. | <urn:uuid:9c778766-7187-43c9-b03a-bce5908fecfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/06/11/Obama-Private-sector-key-to-jobs-growth/UPI-37351307786400/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973737 | 525 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Published February 15, 2013
| Associated Press
HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has issued an official proclamation setting March 16 as the date for the nation to vote on a new constitution.
A government notice formally published on Friday leaves a calendar month for distribution of the 160-page draft document and campaigning for a 'Yes' or 'No' vote. Independent advocacy groups say that is not long enough for a free poll to reflect the wishes of electors.
The draft constitution was completed on Feb. 6 after three years of disputes, bickering and delays. Democratic reforms to the constitution were a key demand of regional mediators after violent, disputed elections in 2008.
About 90,000 copies of the draft are being printed for distribution starting Monday.
Zimbabwe has nearly 6 million registered voters out of a population of 13 million. | <urn:uuid:ef54fc2f-7912-47d5-9fa7-0bddfbe36029> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/02/15/zimbabwe-president-robert-mugabe-announces-march-16-for-vote-on-new/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92946 | 174 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Since 1997, community college programs have been meeting the challenges of the Temporary Assistant for Needy Families (TANF) a block grant that eliminated welfare entitlements and requires federally or state-approved work activities for welfare recipients. This volume examines TANF from its inception and presents research and applications from welfare-to-work programs across the country. Chapters discuss internal and external partnerships that community colleges must foster and the constituencies they must serve. Examples of effective programs include a job placement program meeting the needs of rural welfare recipients, short-term and advanced levels of technical training, a call center program for customer service job training, beneficial postsecondary training, collaborative programs for long-term family economic self-sufficiency, and a family-based approach recognizing the needs of welfare recipients and their families. With research from state and institutional responses as well as an analysis of the welfare student population, this is a comprehensive resource for community college educators involved in the development and implementation of work-first programs on their campuses.
This is the 116th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Community Colleges. | <urn:uuid:0f20f169-9533-4d5b-a84e-5c42251bdfaf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-078795781X.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951848 | 218 | 1.835938 | 2 |
THE 10 MISUNDERSTANDINGS
2. Blindly for
6. Wrecks jobs?
7. Small left out?
8. Tool of lobbies?
9. Weak forced to
WTO in Brief
are by consensus. Agreements are ratified in parliaments.
would be wrong to suggest that every country has the same bargaining
power. Nevertheless, the consensus rule means every country has a
voice, and every country has to be convinced before it joins a
consensus. Quite often reluctant countries are persuaded by being
offered something in return.
also means every country accepts the decisions. There are no
is more, the WTO’s trade rules, resulting from the Uruguay Round
trade talks, were negotiated by member governments and ratified in | <urn:uuid:ceffbced-a5bb-4828-b7d5-be6d19a0cf4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/10mis_e/10m10_e.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923185 | 162 | 3.5 | 4 |
Wed January 30, 2013
Reality And Perception On The Containment Of China
Originally published on Wed January 30, 2013 2:57 pm
The dispute between Japan and China over small islands in the East China Sea is escalating. The two nations first dispatched unarmed vessels to stake their claims, then patrol boats, and then, unarmed aircraft.
Most recently, both countries sent fighter jets to the islands — known as the Senkaku in Japan, and the Diaoyu in China. The islands are uninhabited, but sit in a strategic location between Japan and Taiwan.
On a recent visit to China, Joseph Nye, former chair of the National Intelligence Council, heard officials there describe this dispute in the context of Cold War containment policy. In a piece in The New York Times, he explains that the U.S. efforts in the region are seen as part of a campaign by the United States and its allies to isolate China and restrict its navy's access to the Pacific Ocean.
NEAL CONAN, HOST:
The dispute between Japan and China over small islands in the East China Sea is escalating. The two nations first dispatched unarmed vessels to stake their claims, then patrol boats. Unarmed aircraft came next. Most recently both sent fighter jets over the islands. The Senkakus, as they're called in Japan, are uninhabited but set in a strategic location between Okinawa and Taiwan. If you'd like to see exactly where they're situated, you can go to our website at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION.
On a recent visit to China, Joseph Nye heard officials there describe the dispute in the context of containment. Part of what they see is a campaign by the United States and its allies to isolate China and restrict its navy's access to the Pacific. Joseph Nye is a university distinguished professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He served as assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. His op-ed "Work with China, Don't Contain It" ran in The New York Times over the weekend. He joins us now on a smartphone from his office in Cambridge. Nice to have you back with us.
JOSEPH NYE: Nice to be back with you.
CONAN: And you cited a recent article in The Economist which warned that this dispute could spiral into war.
NYE: Well, there is some danger. I don't think either side, Japan or China, wants to have this lead to a war. There's always a danger that something can take place locally that can get out of hand. For example, in 2010 a Chinese fishing trawler bashed into a Japanese coast guard cutter off the Senkaku Islands, or Diaoyu, as the Chinese call them, and that led to a series of actions which eventually meant China embargoed rare-earth exports to Japan, and that turned Japanese opinion very much against China.
It turns out that that fishing trawler captain who bashed into the Japanese coast guard cutter didn't do it on orders from Beijing. He was drunk. So the great danger is that some pilot or some ship captain cuts things a little too close, and before you know it the governments are caught up in a set of interactions tit for tat that goes beyond where they want to be.
CONAN: And you were, as we mentioned, recently in Beijing, where officials were saying this is part of the containment policy. The United States' pivot to Asia is a blatant attempt to, well, contain China, and China, they say, cannot be contained.
NYE: Well, there is a tendency of the Chinese to see American policy as containment, but the - but President Obama has said that his pivot or rebalancing toward Asia is not containment, that what he is trying to do is not just look at this in military terms but also in trade terms and cooperation in other areas like energy and environment. And what's more, if you look at containment back in the old Cold War days, when we were - had a policy of containment towards the Soviet Union, there were no Soviet students to speak of in the United States.
There are 150,000 Chinese students in the United States today. We had virtually no trade with the Soviet Union. And today we have not only massive trade, but a trade deficit with China. So this is not your grandfather's containment.
CONAN: Yet if you were a Chinese admiral sitting there on the coast and looking out to sea and trying to figure out how to get your navy into the Pacific, all you could see was a series of islands from Japan in the north, all the way down to Australia, all United States allies, all controlling chokepoints that would prevent you from sending those vessels to sea.
NYE: Well, if you're talking about a war, that's problem. But let's hope we're not going to get into a warlike situation. One of the things I recommended in that New York Times op-ed was that we should start talking to the Chinese about their global role, including the role of their navy in protecting sea lines for the oil that they're going to import increasingly from the Middle East, whereas our imports of oil from Middle East are probably going to decline in the next decade.
After all, right now, we and the Chinese and other nations cooperate off the coast of Somalia in combating piracy. And in the last year the incidents of piracy have gone down.
CONAN: We're talking with Joseph Nye about an article that he wrote recently for The New York Times. You can find a link to that at our website. Go to npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And you were, again, talking about the situation with China. But as they look at those oil lines, those lines of supply from the Middle East, they run through the South China Sea. And again, it is China that's - well, from the point of view of its neighbors - bullying them and trying to claim total sovereignty over an enormous stretch of water, which may have enormous deposits of oil and gas underneath it.
NYE: Well, the Chinese have inherited - the Chinese communist government has inherited from the previous nationalist government, a map which has nine dashes; it's called the nine dash line, which looks like there's a deep pocket that encompasses the whole South China Sea. Now, the Philippines and Vietnam and Malaysia and others don't agree with that.
What China has in this - and a little bit ambiguous as to whether they're claiming the sea or just some of the islands in the sea - the problem is along with the islands go the underwater resources. So China has not been totally clear about this, but it does have this large claim. And one of the problems for China is that it's worsened its relations with its neighbors by doing this. So China's going to have to come up with a clearer strategy on its own part if it's going to be able to deal with these issues with its neighbors.
CONAN: Let's see if we get a caller on this conversation. Pete is on the line with us from Berkeley.
PETE: Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, I want to invoke history here because I was reading David McCullough's book "The Path Between the Seas," about the Panama Canal and the pre-canal period, and so the United States and Great Britain had come close to war over Nicaragua prior to the Gold Rush. A crisis was averted by a treaty specifically binding the U.S. and Great Britain to joint control of any canal at Nicaragua, or by implication anywhere else in Central America.
And it goes out to say it turned out really great for the U.S. because they got all these other concessions along with this deal. So I'm just - it's interesting to hear about the underwater rights, so those seem to be very tangible. The rest is symbolic. But I just want to get this out there. It's, hey, what about joint control and some kind of cooperation agreement?
CONAN: Joseph Nye?
NYE: Well, I think it would be useful for Japan and China, actually, to proceed ahead with an agreement, which they signed in 2008, to do joint exploration of some of the gas fields that lie under the East China Sea, near the line between the two countries' territorial claims. And I think also an interesting idea would be for Japan, which claims sovereignty over the Senkakus, to say, yes, we claim that we have sovereignty but we'll devote them to being a maritime preserve so that six square kilometers of rocks don't become militarized. So I think there maybe some cooperative resolutions there if we try hard enough.
PETE: Thank you.
CONAN: And the United States says it has no - don't have a dog in this fight. It has no determination as to which of those countries' claims over the Senkakus or the Diaoyus, as the Chinese called them, is correct. But on the other hand, United States has a treaty to defend Japan.
NYE: Yes. Well, what we, United States, says is that back in 1890s, we don't take a position on who hit whom first on the origins of this dispute. If they want to dispute that, what we call ancient history, they should take it to the International Court of Justice.
But in 1972, when the United States handed Okinawa back to Japan, the Senkakus were then part of the territory that we handed back. We'd occupied this whole area at the end of World War II in 1945. So we argue that the Senkakus are covered by the U.S.-Japan security treaty even though (technical difficulty) we don't have a position on the ancient history. So we're neutral on the ancient history (technical difficulty) in '72, which is (technical difficulty).
CONAN: And we're - we just have about a minute or so left, but I wondered if you'd seen a way forward, speaking with those Chinese officials, about a way to resolve the disputes over the South China Sea. United States would like them all to be handled at the same time. The Chinese say no, we'll do it one at a time. And the various neighbors saying we don't want to do it one at a time because China is too powerful.
NYE: Well, what we've said is that we'd like to see these disputes settled peacefully through negotiations, and we've urged the Chinese to work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on a code of conduct, something which would help. At one point the Chinese looked like they would do that. Then after 2009, they seemed to have the bit in their teeth and they wanted to do more of this bilaterally. I think it would be in China's own interest not to do this in - I mean to change their way of doing things.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEPING)
CONAN: Our smartphones are betraying us, but thank you very much, Joseph Nye, for being with us today. The line sounded wonderful. There's somebody calling you there, undoubtedly to tell you that they can hear you on the radio.
NYE: On a landline. That's modern technology.
CONAN: There you go. Thanks very much.
NYE: Nice to be with you again.
CONAN: Nice to speak with you. Joseph Nye with us from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, with us by smartphone, as we mentioned, from his office in Cambridge. You can find a link to that op-ed on our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | <urn:uuid:c4d1ca47-78da-45e5-8e06-0569a1af6d85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kwgs.org/post/reality-and-perception-containment-china | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975668 | 2,479 | 2.453125 | 2 |
'You're not a victim of domestic violence, are you?'November 5th, 2007 in Medicine & Health / Other
Doctors who ask the right questions in the right way can successfully encourage abused women to reveal that they are victims of domestic violence, even in a hectic emergency department, a team of researchers from the United States and Canada has found.
The study of doctor/patient discussions of domestic violence in emergency departments, the first such work in more than 25 years, appears in the Nov. 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The emergency department is typically a busy place where doctors are required to make quick decisions about triaging people based on the seriousness of their problems. But it is also a place where women who are victims of domestic violence come for medical help, even if the cause of their injuries is not immediately apparent. The researchers reviewed 871 doctor-patient interactions audiotaped in an urban and a suburban emergency department. About a third of these interactions included screening for domestic violence.
“As we looked at the transcripts we noticed that asking about domestic violence was often very routinized and similar to asking about health behaviors such as smoking or allergies. In addition, questions were often framed in the negative ‘you aren’t a victim of domestic abuse, are you"’ which elicited a negative or incomplete response,” said Richard Frankel, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a Regenstrief Institute research scientist.
According to Dr. Frankel, who is a medical sociologist specializing in doctor-patient communication, patients were more likely to disclose experiences with abuse when providers used open-ended questions to initiate the topic of domestic abuse and probed for abuse by asking at least one follow-up question.
“Taking the time to be empathic, voicing concern, checking to be sure that the patient is not in any current danger, and reinforcing the importance of following up with referrals are all part of effective provider-patient communication that can stop domestic violence,” said Dr. Frankel.
Source: Indiana University
"'You're not a victim of domestic violence, are you?'." November 5th, 2007. http://phys.org/news113482022.html | <urn:uuid:a92cbb69-08c5-485a-8087-8c3cd4804eb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/print113482022.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955815 | 465 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Battles & Leaders of the Civil War
HOOKER'S COMMENTS ON CHANCELLORSVILLE.
LANCE USED BY THE 6TH PENNSYLVANIA CAVALRY.(RUSH'S LANCERS).
IN October, 1876, I accompanied General Hooker to the battle-fields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Antietam, - fields on which he had borne conspicuous parts. It was the only occasion on which he visited them after the battles. He had previously placed on my hands his official papers and memoranda for the preparation of a history of the Battle of Chancellorsville, at the same time requesting me to make this journey with him, that I might have the advantage of a thorough knowledge of the field, and of his interpretion of the manner in which the battle was fought. At this period he was partly paralyzed from the injury received in the Chancellorsville battle, and he could move only with great difficulty by the aid of his valet.
After our arrival at Fredericksburg, General Hooker was the recipient of many courteous attentions from the leading citizens, and at night he was serenaded, when a great crowd assembled in front of the hotel, to whose repeated cheers he made a brief response, in which he said that he had visited their city but once before, and although his reception now was not nearly so warm as on that former day, yet it was farm more agreeable to him, - a conceit which greatly pleased his hearers.
Our drive over the Fredericksburg field, which we visisted on the way, was on one of the most perfect of autumnal days, and at every turn fresh reminiscences of that battle were suggested. As we approached the flag-staff of the National Cemetery, on the hill adjoining Marye's Heights, where more than fifteen thousand of the Union dead of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania are buried, General Hooker said: | <urn:uuid:e15bceb0-4480-4bde-b686-01a61cd15955> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/books/battles/vol3/pageview.cfm?page=215 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982672 | 422 | 2.015625 | 2 |
* * *
If you think buying junk food in small packages will help you eat less, look out — marketers know the truth.
Two new marketing studies found that some people tend to consume more calories when junk food portions and packages are smaller. For some, it’s because they perceive small packages to be . . . get this . . . diet food.
For others, it’s just the temptation of small sins.
* * *
Manufacturers are releasing more and more products in smaller packages. And in recent years, several brand-name products, from chips to cookies to candy, have been released in smaller packages promoted as having just 100 calories. In terms of sales, the tactic has proven successful, past research shows.
The strategy might seem counterintuitive, because in many past studies, people tended to consume more when given more. . . .
But one of the new studies, led by Rita Coelho do Vale at the Technical University of Lisbon, found people believe smaller packages help them “regulate hedonic, tempting consumption,” but in fact their consumption can actually increase. Large packages, on the other hand, trigger concern about overeating.
The participants watched episodes of “Friends” and were told the study was about evaluating ads. Bags of potato chips — of differing sizes, of course — were slipped into the test.
The result: Smaller packages are more likely to fuel temptation. “Because they are considered to be innocent pleasures, [small packages] may turn out to be sneaky small sins,” the researchers conclude.
The finding is detailed [here] in the October 2008 issue the Journal of Consumer Research
* * *
* * *
Chronic dieters tend to consume more calories when foods and packages are smaller, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research [here]. Authors Maura L. Scott, Stephen M. Nowlis, Naomi Mandel, and Andrea C. Morales (all Arizona State University) examined consumer behavior regarding “mini-packs,” 100-calorie food packages that are marketed to help people control calorie intake.
The researchers believe their research shows that the ubiquitous small packages may actually undermine dieters’ attempts to limit calories. “On the one hand, consumers perceive the mini-packs to be a generous portion of food (numerous small food morsels in each pack and multiple mini-packs in each box); on the other hand, consumers perceive the mini-packs to be diet food. For chronic dieters, this perceptual dilemma causes a tendency to overeat, due to their emotion-laden relationship with food.”
In a series of studies, the researchers assessed peoples’ perceptions of M&Ms in mini-packs versus regular-sized packages. They found that participants tended to have conflicting thoughts about the mini-packs: They thought of them as “diet food,” yet they overestimated how many calories the packages contained. In subsequent studies, the researchers assessed participants’ relationship with food, dividing them into “restrained” and “unrestrained” eaters. The “restrained” eaters tended to consume more calories from mini-packs than “unrestrained” participants.
The authors conclude that dieters should keep an eye on small packages: “While restrained eaters may be attracted to smaller foods in smaller packages initially, presumably because these products are thought to help consumers with their diets, our research shows that restrained eaters actually tend to consume more of these foods than they would of regular foods.”
* * *
Thanks to Brad Rosen for alerting us to these stories.
For those interested, here is a list of related Situationist posts to date: “The Situation of Eating – Part II,” “The Situation of Eating,” “The Situation of the Dreaded ‘Freshman 15′,” “Our Situation Is What We Eat,” “Social Networks,” “Common Cause: Combating the Epidemics of Obesity and Evil,” “The Situation of Fatness = Our ‘Obesogenic’ Society,” “Innovative Policy: Zoning for Health,” “Situational Obesity, or, Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat and Veg,” “McDonalds tastes better than McDonalds, if it’s packaged right,” “The Science of Addiction, The Myth of Choice,” “The Situation of our Food – Part I,” “The Situation of Our Food – Part II,” “The Situation of Our Food – Part III,” and “The Situation of our Food – Part IV.” | <urn:uuid:671e7190-a89d-425c-8eb6-5c70afee8e24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/tag/dieters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944093 | 997 | 2.3125 | 2 |
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The Israel Medical Association journal [journal]
- Making war a part of medical education. [Editorial]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):174-5.
- Effects of allicin on cardiovascular risk factors in spontaneously hypertensive rats. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):170-3.
Allium sativum, the active ingredient in garlic, is known to have a beneficial effect on major cardiovascular risk factors, including dyslipidemia, blood pressure, blood glucose and insulin levels. However, the data on the significance of these effects are inconsistent due to methodological limitations, especially the use of whole garlic cloves which does not allow controlled dosing of the active compound.To study the effects of purified allicin on the cardiovascular system.Spontaneously hypertensive rats treated for 6 weeks with a daily dose of 80 mg/kg/day of purified allicin added to their chow were compared to control rats that were fed regular chow. Weight, systolic blood pressure (SBP), triglycerides, cholesterol, insulin and adiponectin were measured at baseline and at the end of the study.Allicin had no effect on body weight whereas it reduced SBP significantly from 190 +/- 7.5 mmHg to 168 +/- 5.7 (P < 0.0001) and triglyceride levels from 96 +/- 25 mg/dl to 71 +/- 19 (P = 0.009). Allicin had no effect on plasma cholesterol, insulin and adiponectin levels.Allicin lowered blood pressure and triglyceride levels in spontaneously hypertensive rats. This effect was not mediated through weight loss.
- Septicemia following rotavirus gastroenteritis. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):166-9.
Rotavirus gastroenteritis is a prevalent childhood illness rarely complicated by secondary bacterial sepsis. Although there are case reports of septicemia after rotavirus infection, there are no recent reviews on this topic.To add new cases of septicemia after rotavirus to the literature, review the few cases of septicemia after rotavirus that have been reported, calculate the incidence of septicemia in children hospitalized for rotavirus gastroenteritis, and discuss the characteristics of septicemia after rotavirus infection and implications for current pediatric practice.We identified children whose illness was complicated by septicemia from among all hospitalizations at our facility for rotavirus gastroenteritis from May 1999 through May 2010. We also review the few cases reported in the English literature.We identified two cases of septicemia from among 632 hospitalizations for rotavirus gastroenteritis in this time period, for an incidence rate of 0.32%, which is comparable to other estimates in the English literature. The typical course for cases of bacterial superinfection involves a second peak of high fever; other clinical signs are variable.Septicemia after rotavirus gastroenteritis is a rare but dangerous entity. Early identification of a child developing bacterial superinfection after rotavirus, as in any case of sepsis, is of the utmost importance, as is obtaining blood cultures in a child with a rotavirus infection and a second fever spike.
- Failure to insert a levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system: a survey based on self-reports by Israeli gynecologists. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):163-5.
The insertion of a levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUS) requires experience and is associated with a low failure rate.To assess the reasons given by gynecologists why they failed to insert a LNG-IUS.We obtained data from the sole distributor in Israel that prospectively recorded these cases when contacted by gynecologists following an insertion failure.The mean rate of failed insertions was 0.95% (range 0.77-1.03%) for the 5 year study period 2006-2010. The most common reasons reported by gynecologists for LNG-IUS insertion failure were loss of sterility of the device, inability to insert the device due to a stenotic cervical canal, accidental removal of the device following a successful insertion due to hasty removal of the inserter or the use of blunt scissors, and removal of the newly inserted LNG-IUS following ultrasound evidence that it was misplaced.Gynecologists should be aware of the common pitfalls associated with insertion of an LNG-IUS. Several techniques that may aid in avoiding these mishaps are described.
- Open globe eye injury characteristics and prognostic factors in southern Israel: a retrospective epidemiologic review of 10 years experience. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):158-62.
Open globe injury (OGI) is a common cause of unilateral visual loss in all age groups.To describe and identify clinical characteristics, prognostic factors and visual outcome in a group of patients with OGI in southern Israel.We conducted a retrospective review of all cases of OGI examined in the ophthalmology department at Soroka University Medical Center, Beer Sheva, Israel, from 1996 to 2005. A total of 118 eyes with OGI were detected and analyzed statistically. We recorded demographic data, cause of injury, initial visual acuity (VA), associated globe morbidity and injuries, Ocular Trauma Score (OTS), surgical procedures, postoperative complications, and final VA.The mean age of the study group was 36.1 years and included 84% males. The median follow-up was 13.3 months (range 6-66 months). The annual incidence of open globe injuries was 3.1 cases/100,000. In 84 cases (71%) the mechanism of open eye injury was laceration. Most of the injuries were work related (45%). Bilateral injury was observed in two patients. An intraocular foreign body was observed in 45 eyes (38%). Primary surgical repair was performed in 114 eyes. Six patients (5.1%) had complications with posttraumatic endophthalmitis and 12 patients (10.1%) underwent evisceration or enucleation. Clinical signs associated with poor visual outcomes included reduced initial VA, eyelid injury, and retinal detachment at presentation.In our study population the most important prognostic factors in open globe injury were initial VA, eyelid injury and retinal detachment.
- Patients' perceptions of radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer: a qualitative study. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):153-7.
Radical prostatectomy is one option for treating localized prostate cancer, but it can cause functional impairment of the urogenital system.To describe the outcomes of radical prostatectomy as perceived by the patients, and their ways of coping with them.We conducted a qualitative study of 22 men with localized prostatic cancer 1 year after surgery. The key questions related to the effect of the disease and the surgery on their lives and their view on the value of the surgery.The surgery was perceived as a necessary solution for the diagnosed cancer. All the participants suffered from varying degrees of urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Urinary incontinence caused severe suffering. The impaired sexual ability affected relations with partners and led to feelings of shame and guilt and a decreased sense of self-esteem. In retrospect, the participants still viewed the surgery as a life-saving procedure. Faith in the surgeon contributed to their affirmation of the decision to undergo surgery despite the difficulties.Patients were prepared to suffer the inevitable physical and psychological sequelae of radical prostatectomy because they believed the surgery to be a definitive solution for cancer. Surgeons advising patients with localized prostatic cancer on treatment options should address these difficult issues and provide psychological support, either themselves or in collaboration with professionals.
- Comparative outcome of bomb explosion injuries versus high-powered gunshot injuries of the upper extremity in a civilian setting. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):148-52.
Explosion injuries to the upper extremity have specific clinical characteristics that differ from injuries due to other mechanisms.To evaluate the upper extremity injury pattern of attacks on civilian targets, comparing bomb explosion injuries to gunshot injuries and their functional recovery using standard outcome measures.Of 157 patients admitted to the hospital between 2000 and 2004, 72 (46%) sustained explosion injuries and 85 (54%) gunshot injuries. The trauma registry files were reviewed and the patients completed the DASH Questionnaire (Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder and Hand) and SF-12 (Short Form-12) after a minimum period of 1 year.Of the 157 patients, 72 (46%) had blast injuries and 85 (54%) had shooting injuries. The blast casualties had higher Injury Severity Scores (47% vs. 22% with a score of > 16, P = 0.02) and higher percent of patients treated in intensive care units (47% vs. 28%, P = 0.02). Although the Abbreviated Injury Scale score of the upper extremity injury was similar in the two groups, the blast casualties were found to have more bilateral and complex soft tissue injuries and were treated surgically more often. No difference was found in the SF-12 or DASH scores between the groups at follow up.The casualties with upper extremity blast injuries were more severely injured and sustained more bilateral and complex soft tissue injuries to the upper extremity. However, the rating of the local injury to the isolated limb is similar, as was the subjective functional recovery.
- Foreign students' experience during a time of war. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):143-7.
Due to the war in Gaza in 2009, Ben-Gurion University's Medical School for International Health with a student body of 165 international multicultural students canceled a week of classes. Third-year students continued clerkships voluntarily and fourth-year students returned to Israel before departing for electives in a developing country. A debriefing session was held for the entire school.To assess the academic and psychological effects of political conflict on students.We asked all students to fill out an anonymous Google electronic survey describing their experience during the war and evaluating the debriefing. A team of students and administrators reviewed the responses.Sixty-six students (40% of the school) responded (first year 26%, second year 39%, third year 24%, fourth year 8%, taking time off 3%, age 23-40 years old). Eighty-three percent were in Israel for some portion of the war and 34% attended the debriefing. Factors that influenced individuals' decision to return/stay in the war zone were primarily of an academic and financial nature. Other factors included family pressure, information from peers and information from the administration. Many reported psychological difficulties during the war rather than physical danger, describing it as "draining" and that it was difficult to concentrate while studying. As foreigners, many felt their role was undefined. Although there is wide variation in the war's effect on daily activities and emotional well-being during that time, the majority (73%) reported minimal residual effects.This study lends insight to the way students cope during conflict and highlights academic issues during a war. Open and frequent communication and emphasis on the school as a community were most important to students.
- Health ramifications of the Gush Katif evacuation. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Mar; 15(3):137-42.
Following the 2005 evacuation of Gush Katif, a community of Jewish settlements located in the greater Gaza Strip, many evacuees reported a deterioration in their health status.To determine if and to what degree the evacuation of Gush Katif caused a worsening in the health status of the evacuees.In this retrospective cohort study we assessed the medical records of 2962 evacuees for changes in prevalence of diabetes, hypertension and ischemic heart disease in the period beginning 1 year before and ending 5 years after the evacuation. The findings were compared to those for the general israeli population. A questionnaire was distributed to 64 individuals to assess lifestyle and social change.An increase in diabetes and hypertension was found in men aged 45-64. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the 45-54 male group rose from 8.7% in 2004 to 12.6% in 2007 to 18.7% in 2010; in the 55-64 age group it rose from 24.6% in 2004 to 29.9% in 2007 to 32.9% in 2010. Hypertension in 45-64 year old men rose from 27.1% in 2004 to 35.12% in 2010. The increases in diabetes were significant and higher than those in the general population. The increases in hypertension were of similar magnitude. The prevalence of heart disease did not change and is similar to that in the general population. The questionnaire sample showed an increase in depression and overweight.The Gush Katif evacuation appears to be associated with increased morbidity of chronic disease. This may be attributed to any of several mechanisms, with unemployment, depression, inactivity and overweight playing significant roles. Preventive medical interventions and measures should be employed to screen and treat this population which underwent a major stressful event and as a result seem at greater risk than their peers.
- The first Israel-Italy meeting on advances in Autoimmunity and Rheumatology, Haifa, Israel, October 2012. [Journal Article]
- Isr Med Assoc J 2013 Feb; 15(2):125-30. | <urn:uuid:08444ae3-ef75-4bc5-8b2c-c9e1b256c087> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/journal/The_Israel_Medical_Association_journal?start=0&next=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939115 | 2,860 | 1.9375 | 2 |
A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDF)
If the title of this grammar seems similar to another heavyweight tool for Greek study, it's no accident. In fact, Robert W. Funk consciously styled his translation of Blass-Debrunner's grammar after Bauer's Greek-English Lexicon, calling them "twin tools for the study of the language of the primitive church." And it's no exaggeration to say that A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDF) is just as essential for serious study of the Greek New Testament as A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG).
Logos Bible Software is pleased to announce the first-ever electronic edition of this indispensable reference work! It is the first advanced (reference) grammar for Greek to be made available on any Bible software platform. The electronic edition will include many features that add value far beyond the print edition and make it a first-rate addition to your digital library.
BDF contains longer explanations with more examples, it serves as a kind of "commentary" on a word or word form and its grammar and syntax. This detailed commentary can help you arrive at sound exegetical conclusions and give you increased confidence in your scholarship or preaching!
Virtually every seminarian and pastor today uses and/or has used BDF in their training and ministry. While some researchers make use of Moulton-Howard-Turner in their work—and, indeed, that four-volume set is not to be disparaged in the least—it cannot readily accompany a person into ministry in the way that a concise yet comprehensive volume such as BDF can.
Simply put, BDF is a classic reference work that condenses centuries of New Testament scholarship into a highly manageable format.
This work was created by Friedrich Blass, professor of classical philology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, and was continued after his death by Albert Debrunner, professor of Indo-European and classical philology at the University of Bern until his retirement in 1954. The grammar has passed through ten editions from 1896 to 1960.
Robert W. Funk, in translating this long-established classic, has also revised it and, in doing so, has incorporated the notes which Professor Debrunner had prepared for a new German edition on which he was working at the time of his death in 1958. Dr. Funk has also had the co-operation of leading British, Continental, and American scholars. The translation places in the hands of English-speaking students a book that belongs in their.libraries and in the libraries of every theologian, philologist, and pastor, alongside the Gingrich-Danker Greek-English Lexicon.
This grammar sets the Greek of the New Testament in the context of Hellenistic Greek and compares and contrasts it with the classical norms. It relates the New Testament language to its Semitic background, to Greek dialects, and to Latin and has been kept fully abreast of latest developments and manuscript discoveries. It is at no point exclusively dependent on modern editions of the Greek New Testament text but considers variant readings wherever they are significant. It is designed to compress the greatest amount of information into the smallest amount of space consistent with clarity. There are subsections discussing difficult or disputed points and copious citations of primary texts in addition to generous bibliographies for those who wish to pursue specific items further.
- Jump straight to a discussion of your verse or passage within the grammar
- Each abbreviation is encoded in the text so that you can simply hover your mouse over it and see its expanded meaning in a temporary tip window
- Search for a Greek lemma or inflected form and jump to the page where it is discussed
- Part I: Phonology
- Part II: Accidence and Word-Formation
- Part III: Syntax
Praise for the Print Edition
The Blass-Debrunner Grammar is of the advanced type, of special usefulness for research purposes. Its formulations are concise; its notes, illustrative material, and references are rich and copious; and its bibliographical leads are valuable. The student will need to use other grammars along with it; but he will not be able to do without it.
—John H. Skilton, Westminster Theological Seminary, in Westminster Theological Journal Vol 25 (1962)
A reference grammar for New Testament Greek, in English, with an introduction and 3 main parts: 1) Phonology, 2) Accidence and Word-Formation, and 3) Syntax. There are subject, Greek words and forms, and references indices. The references index includes references to the NT, the Apostolic Fathers, the NT Apocrypha, the Pseudo-Clementine Literature, and the Septuagint.
[BDF] is at present the most authoritative NT Greek grammar.
—Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, An Introductory Bibliography for the Study of Scripture
- Title: A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
- Author: Blass and Debrunner
- Editor: Robert W. Funk
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication Date: 1961
- Pages: xxxviii, 265
About the Authors
Friedrich Wilhelm Blass was a German Protestant classical scholar who lived from 1843 to 1907. During the course of his life, he published extensively on textual criticism of classical authors, such as Demosthenes, Isocrates, Dinarchus, Aeschines, and many others. In the New Testament he published critical editions of the Gospels and Acts, which eventually became the basis of his work Philology of the Gospels. In Indo-European Linguistics and Greek grammar his major contributions included his monograph, Pronunciation of Ancient Greek, his important Grammar of New Testament Greek, and his revision and significant enlargement of Raphael Kuhner’s classical grammar.
Albert Debrunner was a professor of Indo-European and classical philology at the University of Bern. | <urn:uuid:ef282f93-1738-4e0f-8a78-9db77191e5d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.logos.com/product/4225/a-greek-grammar-of-the-new-testament-and-other-early-christian-literature | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93959 | 1,270 | 2.109375 | 2 |
More than half of nursing homes lack plan for pandemic flu
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If an influenza pandemic hits the United States, acute care hospitals are likely to be overwhelmed. Nursing homes may then be expected to assist with the patient overflow, but a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that many are not prepared for such a task.
Of the more than 400 nursing homes in the study, just 23 percent had a specific pandemic influenza plan. Another quarter of the nursing homes had a pandemic response incorporated into an overall disaster response plan. And more than half – 52 percent – did not have any pandemic plan.
“If nursing homes are called upon to serve as alternative care centers for patients who can’t be treated in overcrowded hospitals, the impact on the nursing homes could be vast. Nursing homes serve a vulnerable population prone to dire consequences from an emergency,” says lead author Philip W. Smith, M.D., professor and c
hief, Section of Infectious Diseases, University of Nebraska Medical Center
. “While most facilities felt that nursing homes were being counted on to take hospital overflow patients in a pandemic, in reality few homes would be able to do so.”
“Nursing homes may not be equipped to handle an influx of influenza as well as non-influenza patients. They may also be unwilling to accept overflow patients, if it means displacing their current residents,” adds senior author Lona Mody
, M.D., M.Sc, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System
and research scientist, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center
at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System. “Nursing homes run a high occupancy rate, making it logistically difficult to accept a lot of patients if there is a time crunch.”
“Specific areas for improvement,” Mody says, “include communication with nearby health departments and hospitals at planning stage and exercising formulated plans. Planning for staff shortages is also critical.”
Half of the nursing homes in the study had stockpiled some commonly used supplies such as gloves and hand hygiene products. Less than half had provided pandemic education to staff members. Just 6 percent had conducted pandemic influenza outbreak exercises.
In more optimistic findings, more than three-quarters – 77 percent – of all Michigan and Nebraska nursing homes had a person or staff position designated as being responsible for pandemic preparedness. Access to laboratory facilities for the detection of influenza was available at 84 percent of these nursing homes. Another 71 percent provide mental health and/or faith-based services.
A pandemic is an outbreak of a disease on a global scale. Typically, a pandemic is lengthy and would create a strain on traditional health care institutions, infectious disease experts say. To relieve some of that burden, additional sites known as Acute Care Centers and Neighborhood Emergency Help Centers would be set up at places such as schools, armories, shopping malls and nursing homes.
Methodology: The researchers sent a questionnaire to all 656 state health department or Centers for Medicare and Medicaid-registered nursing homes in Nebraska and Michigan to assess their preparedness. The response rate was 69 percent.
Authors: In addition to Smith and Mody, authors of the paper are Valerie Shostrom, MS, and Al Smith, BA, from University of Nebraska Medical Center and Michael Kaufmann, BS, who was doing a research rotation at the University of Michigan.
Funding: National Institute on Aging, the Association of Specialty Professors/American Geriatric Society T. Franklin Williams Research Scholarship, and Student Research Training in Aging for Medical Students.
Reference: Journal of the American Medical Association, July 23, 2008, Vol. 300 No. 4.
For more information:
Federal government’s information about pandemic influenza preparedness
State-by-state information about pandemic preparedness
# # # | <urn:uuid:4c0b7bdb-9881-4283-900d-f3f0f2554e0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=475 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945853 | 819 | 2.265625 | 2 |
AMES, Iowa – With the weather forecast of temperatures in the mid-to upper 90s and heat index expected to top 100 degrees in Iowa this week, Iowa State University (ISU) Extension beef veterinarian Grant Dewell reminds beef cattle producers that preparing for these weather conditions is vital to maintaining herd health.
Here are five steps to avoiding heat stress in your herd.
Plan ahead. After cattle get hot, it’s too late to prevent problems.
Don’t work cattle when it is hot. Finish working cattle before 9 to 10 a.m. in summer, and remember that during a heat wave it’s best to not work cattle at all.
Provide plenty of fresh, clean water. When it’s hot and humid, consuming water is the only way cattle can cool down. Make sure the water flow is sufficient to keep tanks full, and ensure there’s enough space at water tanks (3 inches linear space per head). Introduce new water tanks before a heat event occurs so cattle know where they are.
Feed 70 percent of the ration in the afternoon. Heat from fermentation in the rumen is primary source of heat for cattle. When cattle are fed in the morning, peak rumen temperature production occurs during the heat of day when they can’t get rid of it. By feeding 70 percent of the ration in late afternoon, rumen heat production occurs when it is cooler.
Provide ventilation, shade and/or sprinklers. Environmental temperatures compound the heat load for cattle during a heat wave. Remove objects that are obstructing natural air movement. Indoor cattle will benefit from shade provided by the building as long as ventilation is good. Outdoor cattle will benefit from sprinklers to cool them off. Make sure cattle are used to sprinklers before employing them during a heat wave.
Factsheets on dealing with heat stress, resources and ISU Extension staff who can help are available on the Iowa Beef Center (IBC) website. Dewell offers more details on heat stress in a longer article on the ISU Veterinary Medicine Beef Extension website. Keep an eye on the 7-day heat stress forecast for your area at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service website. | <urn:uuid:a286845f-37ea-414e-b1fa-a74f0fd840b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.extension.iastate.edu/article/plan-ahead-avoid-heat-stress-cattle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921635 | 452 | 2.859375 | 3 |
“It’s humbling how tiny we are,” said Edwin Faughn, managing director of Rainwater Observatory & Planetarium in French Camp.
Still, the Bible says the awesome sky above provided a sign of glad tidings some 2,000 years.
According to Matthew 2:1-2, “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’”
Christmas songs and stories celebrate the Star of Bethlehem and its message, but was it really a star? Could it have been a meteor, a comet, a supernova, a planetary conjunction or a supernatural event?
“These questions have been studied and debated by theologians, historians and scientists for centuries,” Faughn said.
He dove into scripture and scientific texts to explore the possibilities behind the Christmas Star. He recently shared his findings with an overflow crowd of about 130 people at the observatory.
“What then was the star?” Faughn said.
A case could be made that it was a meteor, a space rock that entered the atmosphere and blazed across the sky. They’re commonly called “shooting stars” or “falling stars.”
“Although they can be extremely bright and spectacular, it is doubtful that the Christmas Star was a meteor,” he said. “Primarily because they only last a few seconds at a time. The phenomenon that produced the Christmas Star needed to stay in the sky for a long time in order to guide the Magi on their long journey from the east.”
Comets are collections of cosmic rock, dust and ice that fly through the solar system and occasionally become visible to people on Earth. They have far more staying power than meteors, but there’s one significant knock against them.
“In general, comets were considered bad omens and harbingers of doom,” Faughn said. “These things might have scared the ancients to death. It looks like a ghost in the sky.”
Halley’s Comet was blamed for bringing the Black Death to England, and the Incas in South America recorded a comet that foreshadowed Francisco Pizarro’s arrival.
However, the artist Giotto uses what appears to be a comet to stand in for the Christmas Star in a painting of the Nativity from the 1300s.
Another possibility is a supernova, which happens when a star runs out of fuel, collapses onto itself and explodes. For a period of time, a supernova could outshine all the other stars in a galaxy.
“They can be visible to the naked eye in broad daylight and linger for weeks or months at a time,” Faughn said.
A supernova covers a lot of the criteria for the Christmas Star, but there are questions. The ancients tended to make note of such spectacular events and there’s nothing in the record for the time in question.
“The brightest recorded supernova was in the year 1006,” he said. “It was described by observers in China, Egypt, Iraq, Japan, Switzerland and possibly even North America.”
Planets in motion
A planetary conjunction occurs when a planet appears close to another planet or a star.
The Magi were learned men who studied objects in the night sky. They believed the movements of the heavens predicted the fates of kings and kingdoms, Faughn said.
Matthew is the only writer to include a star, and the gospel seems to suggest Herod was surprised by its appearance.
Matthew 2:7: “Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.”
“Perhaps the ‘star’ was not necessarily a spectacular sight attracting the masses but was something very significant to the highly trained eyes of the Magi,” Faughn said.
The case for a planetary conjunction must travel through the 1600s, when Johannes Kepler discovered the laws governing planetary motion.
“Through orbital mechanics, he was able to run the ‘celestial clock’ backwards and see if any planetary conjunctions occurred about the time of the birth of Christ,” Faughn said. “Though conjunctions are common, there were a number of interesting ones that occurred during this time, including a very rare and spectacular triple conjunction.”
Here are a few things the wise men of the day might have seen:
• Aug. 12, 3 B.C., Venus and Jupiter are less than a quarter of a degree apart in the morning sky.
• Sept. 14, 3 B.C., Jupiter and the star Regulus are in conjunction in the constellation Leo, “The Lion.”
• Dec. 1, 3 B.C., Jupiter begins a second conjunction with Regulus.
• May 8, 2 B.C., Jupiter and Regulus are in conjunction again.
• On June 17, 2 B.C. Jupiter and Venus align and appear as one very bright object, and Regulus isn’t far away.
Regulus was considered a “Royal Star” and Jupiter was the “King of the Planets.” In Hebrew, Jupiter was called “Sideq,” meaning “The Righteous,” and the word also is used as a synonym for “Messiah.”
The great unknown
Faughn made a solid circumstantial case for planetary conjunction, but he doesn’t expect the cosmic question to be settled.
“If it was a supernatural event, all bets are off as far as figuring that out,” he said.
Mysteries may be explored and knowledge gained, but the vastness of the universe will always have more secrets to uncover. To study the planets and stars, he said, is to embrace humility.
Job 26:14: “Indeed these are the mere edges of his ways, and how small a whisper we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” | <urn:uuid:c24b1fb7-df3f-4d1f-88de-17ed8b29450d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://djournal.com/view/full_story/21222594/copyright_policy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969475 | 1,327 | 3.109375 | 3 |
About Objects has released a new suite of courses geared exclusively towards enterprise development with Java open source frameworks. Enrollment is now open for public classes, and classes can also be delivered onsite at your location or in private training sessions at our fully-equipped facilities.
If you or your team is looking for training on Struts, JSF, Hibernate ORM, Spring, AJAX, and the like (or Objective C/Cocoa for that matter) and would like to learn from folks who are authors and open source committers, who love to teach, and who aren't satisfied unless each student leaves prepared to do some meaningful work in the technology under study, please give us a call or drop us an email.
The following schedule is for public classes offered in our Reston, VA location during the month of November:
Nov 5 – Nov 9: Introduction to JSF, $2,495.
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Nov 26 – Nov 30: Java Programming, $2,495.
Please visit our website
for more information, including a full schedule
of upcoming classes. A free PDF download of our new curriculum guide is available here | <urn:uuid:cf9c2904-4bd7-4006-b47f-2146a7ab1444> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=47094 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929242 | 294 | 1.515625 | 2 |
HGS-ETR2 - A fully human monoclonal antibody to TRAIL-R2: Results of a phase I trial in patients with advanced solid tumors
Reviewer: John P. Plastaras, MD, PhD
Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Last Modified: June 3, 2006
Presenter: A. Patanaik
Presenter's Affiliation: Cancer Therapy and Research Center, San Antonio, TX
Type of Session: Scientific
- Death receptors, such as TNF-alpha receptor, Fas, and TRAIL-R (TNF-alpha Related Apoptosis Inducing Ligand Receptor)-1 and –2, can stimulate the extrinsic apoptotic pathway in tumor cells when activated by their cognate ligands
- Stimulation of TNF-alpha receptor and Fas have been associated with unacceptable systemic toxicities, limiting the clinical utility of targeting these pathways. In contrast, pre-clinical data has shown that stimulation of the TRAIL receptor can selectively kill tumor cells without systemic toxicity
- There are two human TRAIL receptors: TRAIL-R1 (DR4) and TRAIL-R2 (DR5).
- Lexatumumab (HGS-ETR2) is a fully humanized monoclonal agonistic antibody to TRAIL-R2.
- Lexatumumab has been studied in a Phase I study in the UK, with Grade 3 dose limiting toxicities (DLT's) occurring in 1 patient at the 1 mg/kg level and 3 patients at the 20 mg/kg level
- This was an open-label, two-center Phase I study of lexatumumab in patients with incurable solid tumors
Materials and Methods
Phase I study design:
- 31 patients with advanced solid tumors
- Dose escalation: 0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, 10 mg/kg i.v. administered every 2 weeks until tumor progression or unacceptable toxicity
- Toxicity, pharmacokinetics, immunogenicity and best responses were assessed
- Tumors were measured every 2 months
- 167 courses were given to 31 patients, median = 4 courses
- One patient has continued treatment for over a year
- No Grade 3 DLT's observed in first 4 dose cohorts.
- One patient in the 10 mg/mL cohort had Grade 3 hyperamylasemia, however this patient had a Grade 2 baseline elevation and this normalized after dose. Incidentally, this patient was taking supplement with mushroom extract.
- Most of the observed toxicities were Grade 1/2 fatigue, nausea, pain, and anorexia that would be expected in the heavily pre-treated group of patients
- Best responses:
- Stable disease in 10 patients for 4 to 16 cycles
- Mixed response (shrinkage and progression of different lesions) in one patient with refractory Hodgkin's disease
- Dose dependent and linear, two-compartment model that shows distribution into tissues
- half-life was 11 days
- No antibodies against lexatumumab were detected.
- Lexatumumab can be safely administered every 2 weeks up to 10 mg/kg. Responses were not overwhelming, and combination studies with chemotherapy are warranted.
- This confirms the UK Phase I trial (ETR2-ST01) that lexatumumab can be safely administered in doses up to 10 mg/kg. The primary difference in this trial was that lexatumumab was given every 2 weeks instead of every 3 weeks.
- Serum amylase levels should be monitored closely in patients receiving lexatumumab
- The long half-life (11 days) is potentially advantageous compared with the pharmacokinetics of the native ligand, TRAIL (half-life=0.6 hr). The selective activation of only TRAIL-R2 (DR5) is a potential disadvantage compared to TRAIL, which can activate both isoforms.
- The underwhelming overall response rates, especially from an agent that supposedly induces apoptosis, indicates that the TRAIL pathway will likely require combination therapy. Which agents to combine with TRAIL receptor-activating agents, however, remains an important unanswered question | <urn:uuid:8e820c01-ed58-4860-bd0d-2a9629cd41e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oncolink.org/conferences/article.cfm?c=175&id=1397 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921459 | 870 | 1.523438 | 2 |
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,”a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong.
So began Peter Arnett’s 8 Feb 1968 report from the town of Ban Tre. Published in the New York Times under the headline “Major Describes Move“, time has improved the quotation to various forms of “we had to destroy the village to save it”. Questions of the proportionality of response to a threat have been present in war reporting from the start of the craft in the Nineteenth century to the present conflict in Afghanistan. However the questions raised by Peter Arnett have been debated for more than a millennium in the theological and philosophical speculations of “just war” theory.
The moral issues surrounding the use of unmanned drones has been been raised from time to time in the U.S. press and addressed by my colleague Mollie Hemingway on the pages of GetReligion. However, the European press has been particularly exercised over their use in the battle with the Taliban. Tuesday’s Guardian in London gave the issue the front page treatment in its story on the activation of an RAF squadron operating from Britain that will control drones flying over Afghanistan. However the Guardian approaches the issue of ethics without reference to religion.
The article entitled “UK to double number of drones in Afghanistan” begins:
The UK is to double the number of armed RAF “drones” flying combat and surveillance operations in Afghanistan and, for the first time, the aircraft will be controlled from terminals and screens in Britain.
In the new squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), five Reaper drones will be sent to Afghanistan, the Guardian can reveal. It is expected they will begin operations within six weeks. Pilots based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire will fly the recently bought American-made UAVs at a hi-tech hub built on the site in the past 18 months.
Details of the new squadron’s operations are discussed and then the story moves to the moral issues involved in the use of unmanned drone attacks.
The use of drones has become one of the most controversial features of military strategy in Afghanistan. The UK has been flying them almost non-stop since 2008.
The CIA’s programme of “targeted” drone killings in Pakistan’s tribal area was last month condemned in a report by US academics. The attacks are politically counterproductive, kill large numbers of civilians and undermine respect for international law, according to the study by Stanford and New York universities’ law schools.
After raising the moral issues, the Guardian steps back somewhat and dives into eight paragraphs of operational details before resurfacing with this statement.
The MoD insists only four Afghan civilians have been killed in its strikes since 2008 and says it does everything it can to minimise civilian casualties, including aborting missions at the last moment. However, it also says it has no idea how many insurgents have died because of the “immense difficulty and risks” of verifying who has been hit. …In December 2010, David Cameron claimed that 124 insurgents had been killed in UK drone strikes. But defence officials said they had no idea where the prime minister got the figure and denied it was from the MoD.
Let me start off by commending the Guardian‘s reporter for raising the moral issues surrounding the targeted killing of America and Britain’s enemies. A story published the same day in the Washington Post on the administration’s plans to create kill lists of enemies was silent on the moral issues — though it did mention that there had been legal challenges to the government’s use of drones to kill American citizens in enemy ranks. As an aside, I am surprised by the lack of outrage over the targeted killing program from the press. America has been down this road before. The Phoenix program in Vietnam sparked congressional hearings and a steady flow of moral outrage up through the Carter Administration.
Was it sufficient for the Guardian to put forward the objections of some American law school professors when raising the moral issues of drone warfare? There are any number of philosophers and theologians who could have offered cogent critiques of the morality of drone warfare — Britain’s smartest man, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has been outspoken in his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and has lectured on the issue of “just war” to military audiences. The choice of whom to quote, of course, lies with the author — but my sense of this story is that the religious element is outside the reporter’s knowledge. Ethics for the Guardian is not tied to religion.
This is, for me, is the journalism question in this story. There is an ethical ghost here — but what sort of ethical ghost, secular or religious?
The Christian tradition holds that morality without religion is impossible. There can be ethics without religion, but these ethics are necessarily incomplete or flawed. In his book Morality after Auschwitz, Peter Haas asked how Germany could have willingly participated in a state-sponsored program of genocide. His answer was that:
far from being contemptuous of ethics, the perpetrators acted in strict conformity with an ethic which held that, however difficult and unpleasant the task might have been, mass extermination of the Jews and Gypsies was entirely justified. . . . the Holocaust as a sustained effort was possible only because a new ethic was in place that did not define the arrest and deportation of Jews as wrong and in fact defined it as ethically tolerable and ever good.
If there is no God, there is no good and evil, no right and wrong, or as Fyodor Dostoyevsky said in the Brothers Karamazov, “If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted.”
Against this view we have philosophers and ethicists such as Prof. Peter Singer of Princeton University who have argued “that an intellectually coherent ethic has to be independent of religion and that’s an argument that goes right back to Socrates and Plato.”
Whether unconsciously or by choice, the Guardian has come down on one side of this argument. There is no God.
For those of us who are unpersuaded that there can be right or wrong without a God, should it have provided the arguments of religious ethics when addressing morality? Or should we take another newspaper?
What say you GetReligion readers? How should intelligent journalism address this question? | <urn:uuid:3198b916-aee5-4117-8bb4-e71b080d316a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/tag/peter-haas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961949 | 1,346 | 1.921875 | 2 |
THERE IS NO TAQLEED IN FOUNDATIONS OF A'QEEDAH
08-28-2007, 01:14 PM
THERE IS NO TAQLEED IN FOUNDATIONS OF A'QEEDAH
<div align='center'>THERE IS NO TAQLEED IN FOUNDATIONS OF A'QEEDAH</div>
THERE IS NO TAQLEED IN FOUNDATIONS OF A'QEEDAH . Not even the misguiding masters' who promote rigid blind following will claim the legitimacy of ignorance in the method to establish the foundation of belief.
Whoever claimed that Islam is present by following alone is not only part of a deviant sect, but has opened the doors of doubts and kufr for himself and others.
Pride and ta'assub [unlawful clinging] to deviant a'qeedah are some of the main things that prevent people from becoming Muslim, so how an earth can someone reach a conclusion that such blind allegiance is also the method to enter the Deen?
The Following ayaat prove that there is no taqleed in a'qeedah. This is because Allah condemned the kuffar for making 'following' the basis of their belief. Allah (swt) says:-
* "And when it is said to them: Follow that which Allah has sent down' they say Nay, we shall follow that which we found our fathers (following).' Even if Shaytaan invites them to the torment of the Fire (Luqmaan 31:21) So this ayah shows that the nature of kufr belief is that it involves following something which does not deserve to be followed. This means the individual, must analyse the subject and its proofs. Many people today influenced by false traditionalists' propagate their pride in taqleed but they clearly don't understand the rules of taqleed. We are not allowed to follow a mujtahid in everything. Some matters we are prohibited from following in, however knowledgeable the one being followed is.
* "Come now to what Allah has sent down, and the Messenger," they say, Enough for us is what we found our fathers doing". What, even if their fathers had knowledge of naught and were not rightly-guided? (al Maai'dah 5:104) Again the cause of the ignorance and disbelief of the kuffaar is that they are blindly following something from other people without looking to the proof. This is proven by the text "...even if their fathers had knowledge of naught and were not rightly-guided..." This means the individual who is desiring valid belief must have personal conviction in the roots of the deen based upon evidence. There can be no tasdeeq [firm belief] when one does not know what they are affirming.
* When it is said to them: Follow what Allah has sent down' They say Nay, we shall follow what we found our fathers following' Even though their fathers did not use their intellects in anything nor were they guided. (al Baqarah 2:170) This ayah mentions that the disbelievers were wrong because they followed that which carried no rational proof. Therefore, the believer reaches his belief with conviction in the heart transmitted by the a'ql agreeing with sound evidence. The a'qeedah is actually consisting of al a'qeedatul a'qleeyah [the rationally proven basis of belief] and 'al a'qeedatun Naqleeyah' [the beliefs based upon text], the second can not be reached by the mind but only through textual evidence from Quran and Sunnah, e.g. The Names of Allah, The Description of Hell and Paradise, the existence of Angels. As for the rationally proven belief, then that is consisting of the proofs for existence of the Creator, the authenticity of the Quran and its inimitability and the rational need for messengers.
* And follow not that of which you have no knowledge. Verily, the hearing and the sight and the heart, of each of those you will be questioned. (al Israa' 17:36 ) This ayah prohibits following something where you have knowledge of the truth of its opposite. The eyes and ears receive the evidence and the heart understands it, thus all of those faculties will be accounted on Yawmil Qiyaamah, a person who rejects evidence that has reached him, will be in trouble.
* "And when Ibraheem said to his father and his tribe 'What are these idols you are addicted to? 'They said 'We said, 'We found our fathers worshipping them'" (al Anbiyaa 21:52 -53) Again we see that blind following in belief lead to shirk.
* Adi bin Haatim said that he heard Nabi (saw) recite the verse "They took their rabbis and their priests to be lords besides Allah and the messiah Ibn Maryam, while they were commanded to worship none but one ilaah, laa ilaha illa huwa. Praise and Glory be to Him from having the partners they associate." (at Tawbah 9:31 ) So I said to him (saw) 'Verily, we did not worship them' to which he (saw) replied, "Did they not make haraam what Allah made halaal, so you then made it haraam. And did they not make halaal what Allah made haraam and you therefore made it halaal?" I said 'Yes' He (saw) said, "That is worshipping them." (AHMAD, TIRMIDHI) So following of scholars against clear evidence is shirk in knowledge and was the mistake of those before us. Note the ayah described these people as mushrikeen and the hadeeth described this type of following as worship of people.
There is No excuse for following dalaalah, that is to oppose the matters of a'qeedah or things known by necessity and established by clear evidence on the basis of 'following', the following ahdeeth prove that:-
* Hudhayfah ibn al Yaman said The people used to ask rasool Allah (saw) about the good, but I used to ask him about the evil for fear that it might overtake me, so I said, O Rasool Allah, we used to be in ignorance (jaahileeyah) and evil (shari) then Allah brought this good to us. So is there any evil after this good? He (saw) said Yes I said And is there any good after that evil?' He (saw) said Yes, but it will be tainted (literally smoke') I asked What will that smoke be?' He (saw) said A people guiding others with other than my guidance, you will approve of some (of their deeds) and disapprove of others. I asked Then is there any evil after that good?' He (saw) said Yes, callers at the gates of Hellfire, whoever responds to their call will be thrown into it. I said O rasool Allah describe them to us.' He (saw) said They will be from our own people and speak our language. What do you order me to do if I should see that?' He (saw) said Cling (talzamu) to the jama'atul Muslimeen and their Imaam. I said And if there is no Jama'ah and no Imaam?' He (saw) said Then keep away from all those sects even if you have to bite upon the root of a tree until death overtakes you in that condition. (BUKHAARI English version vol.4 [no.803] and vol.9 [no.206], MUSLIM ) The proof here is the part "...whoever responds to their call will be thrown into it..." The punishment will not be suspended because of the fact that these deviant calls were in the name of Islam. Today there are many leaders, scholars, sects, groups and organisations that call to the Fire in the name of Islam ..The common excuse of their followers is We follow the scholars'
* Abu Hurayrah reported that Nabi (saw) said He who called to guidance (hudaa), there would be rewards for him like the rewards of those who followed it, without their rewards being diminished in any respect. And he who called misguidance (dalaalah) he shall have to carry the sins of those who committed it, without their sins being diminished in any respect. (MUSLIM ) The proof here is that the burden of sin is not reduced for those following dalaalah, i.e. they can not say 'But we were following shaykh so and so who studied under so and so' Rather, such an excuse is only valid in matters that are open to ijtihaad in the first place.
As for the Islamic belief it must be based upon individual affirmation of something known. You are not a Muslim because your parents are or because your shaykh told you....rather, you are only a Muslim if you have knowledge of the foundations of belief and affirm it with certainty. Certainty of belief [yaqeenul i'maan] is a requirement for every Muslim, if his belief is only based upon taqleed, then he is not a Muslim. Islam is distinguished from false religion because it is based upon proof [burhaan], authoritative evidence [sultaan], clear proofs [bayyinaat] and that results in certainty. Taqleed only leads to zann [conjecture] and shakk [doubt] and the Quran invalidated the belief who took that as their foundation. This why taqleed only applies in matters of fiqh, i.e. matters open to ijtihaad, because ijtihaad is by its nature fallible and based on uncertain evidence, the result of every ijtihaad is dominance over doubt[ghalibatu-zann], i.e. probability but not certainty.
Some quotes of u'lemaa concerning prohibited taqleed, note that most of these quotes do not even mention a'qeedah but concern rules known by necessity, as they are only not a matter of taqleed.:-
* Imaam Maalik [d.179 h] said "Everyone after the prophet (saw) will have his sayings accepted and rejected, not so the prophet (saw)" (IBN A'BDUL BARR 'Jaami' Bayaan al I'lm' [2/91]) and "Truly, I am only a mortal, I make mistakes and I am correct (sometimes). Therefore LOOK INTO MY OPINIONS, all THAT AGREES WITH THE BOOK AND THE SUNNAH, ACCEPT IT, AND ALL THAT DOES NOT AGREE WITH THE BOOK AND THE SUNNAH, IGNORE IT." (IBN A'BDUL BARR 'Jaami' Bayaan al I'lm' [2/32])
* Imaam Abu Haneefah [d.150 h] said "When I say something contradicting the Book of Allah ta'ala or what is narrated from the messenger (saw) then ignore my saying" (AL FULAANI 'Iqaz al Himam' [p.50]) and "It is not permitted for anyone to accept our views if he does not know from where we got them" (IBN A'BIDEEN in his footnotes to 'al Bahr ar Raa'iq' [6/293] IBN A'BDUL BARR 'al Intiqaa' fi Fadaa'il ath Thalaatha al Aa'immah al Fuqahaa' [p.145] IBN AL QAYYIM 'al I'laam al Muwaqqi'een [2/309])
* Imaam ash Shafi'i [d.204 h] said "Legal knowedge is of two types. ONE IS FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC, AND NO SOBER OR MATURE PERSON SHOULD BE IGNORANT OF IT...for example, that the prayers are five, that people owe it to Allah to fast the month of Ramadaan, to make hajj to the House whenever they are able,, and to pay zakah on their wealth, that He (swt) has prohibited usury, zina, murder, theft, khamr, and of that sort which He (swt) has obligated men to comprehend, to perform, to pay in their property and to abstain from that which He (swt) has forbidden them. This type of knowledge MAY BE FOUND TEXTUALLY IN THE BOOK OF ALLAH OR MAY BE FOUND GENERALLY AMONG THE PEOPLE OF ISLAM. The masses relate it from the preceding masses [public] and ASCRIBE IT TO RASOOL ALLAH (SAW), nobody ever questions its ascription or its binding force upon them. It is the kind of knowledge which admits of error neither neither in its narration nor its interpretation, it is not permissible to question it." ('Risaalah') also Imaam ash Shafi'i said "The Muslims are unanimously agreed that if a sunnah of Rasool Allah (saw) is made clear to someone, IT IS NOT PERMITTED FOR HIM TO LEAVE IT FOR THE SAYING OF ANYONE ELSE" (IBN AL QAYYIM 'I'laam al Muwaqi'een' [2/361]) and "If you find in my writings SOMETHING DIFFERENT TO THE SUNNAH OF RASOOL ALLAH (SAW), THEN SPEAK ON THE BASIS OF THE SUNNAH OF RASOOL ALLAH (SAW) AND LEAVE WHAT I HAVE SAID" (IBN A'SAAKEER [15/9/10] KHATEEB 'al Ihtijaaj bi ash-Shafi'i' [8/2] IBN AL QAYYIM 'I'laam al Muwaqi'een' [2/361] NAWAWI 'al Majmoo' [1/63]) and in another narration "...Then follow it and do not look sideways at anyone else's saying" (ABU NU'AYM 'al Hilyatul Awliyaa')
* Ibn al Qayyim [d.751 h] said "There is an obligatory (wajib) taqleed, A FORBIDDEN TAQLEED, and a permitted taqleed... The obligatory taqlid is the taqlid of those who know better than us, AS WHEN A PERSON HAS NOT OBTAINED KNOWLEDGE OF AN EVIDENCE FROM THE QURAN OR THE SUNNAH CONCERNING SOMETHING..." ('A`lam al-muwaqqi`een `an rabb al-`alameen [2:186-187]) and Ibn al Qayyim said "A scholar may err. This is inevitable as he is not protected from error. It is therefore NOT PERMISSIBLE TO ACCEPT EVERYTHING THAT HE SAYS AND RAISE HIS STATEMENTS TO THE STATUS OF ONE WHO IS PROTECTED FROM ERROR. THIS IS WHAT EVERY SCHOLAR ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH CENSURES. THEY FORBID IT AND THEY CENSURE THOSE WHO PRACTISE IT..." ('A`lam al-muwaqqi`een `an rabb al-`alameen [2:192])
* Imaam [Haafiz] Ibn A'bdul Barr [d.463 h], the classical maaliki a'lim and muhaddith said "The ulama are in agreement that it is permissible, for whoever looks into the differing opinions of the Prophet's Companions, to follow the position of whomever he likes among them. The same holds for whoever looks into the positions of the Imams other than the Companions, as long AS LONG AS HE DOES NOT KNOW THAT HE HAS ERRED BY CONTRADICTING THE TEXT OF THE QURA'N OR THE IJMA OF THE U'LEMAA, IN WHICH CASE HE CANNOT FOLLOW THE ABOVE POSITION." (Jaami'Bayaan al I'lm)
* Shaykh Abdul Ghani an Nablusi said "The issues which are agreed upon, without any doubt and by necessity, DO NOT REQUIRE ANY TAQLEED of the four Imaams, like the obligation of salah, fasting, zakah and hajj etc and like the prohibition of adultery and fornication, drinking wine, murder, stealing and usurping. The issues which are debated are when taqleed becomes necessary" ('Khulasatul Tahqeeq fi Hukm at-Taqleed wat-Talfeeq' [p.4])
* Imaam Khateeb al Baghdadi [d.463 h] said "As far as the Islamic rules are concerned, their are two types. The first are those which are known by necessity to be part of the deen of the Prophet (saw) like the five prayers, zakah, fasting in Ramadaan, hajj, the prohibition of adultery, wine etc. TAQLEED IS NOT ALLOWED IN THESE ISSUES since they are such that everyone should know and understand..." ('al Faqeeh wal Muttafaqqihah' [vol.2 p.67])
* Ibn Taymeeyah [d.728 h]says "It is a duty on people to follow Allah and his messenger. These people of authority [oolil amr] the following of whom has been decreed by Allah, are to be followed SUBJECT TO THEIR FOLLOWING ALLAH AND HIS MESSENGER AND NOT AS INDEPENDENT SOURCES OF GUIDANCE." (Majmu' al Fataawa [vol.2 p.461])
* Imaam Ibn Hazm [d.456 h] said "We do not not object to people asking religious verdicts from scholars. What we object to is their taking the statement without any proof to support it, without referring it to any text of the Quran or Sunnah, because this will necessarily lead to the following of mistakes. If during the time of the messenger (saw) there were some who gave incorrect verdicts, after his death, they are more in number and more widespread. Therefore, IT IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST, THAT ONE BE VERY CAUTIOUS CONCERNING GETTING RULINGS FROM ANY SCHOLAR WHO DOES NOT STRENGTHEN HIS RULING BY BASING IT ON THE QURAN, SUNNAH OR IJMA'" ('al Ihkaam fi Usoolul Ahkaam' [vol.6 p.1076])
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As we begin to see the devastating effects of plastic pollution on our environment, scientists are working towards generating more eco-friendly alternatives to petroleum-based materials. Chuanbing Tang from the University of South Carolina is looking to the noble conifer to provide the key to biodegradable, renewable plastics. His research group has been altering the natural resins of firs, pines, and other evergreens through polymerization to create compounds that are more sustainable than fossil fuel-derived plastics.
Evergreen sap is rich in hydrocarbons, and the turpentine and rosins found in the trees are similar in composition to petroleum. Through polymerization, they can be altered chemically to become biodegradable versions of common plastics. While renewable bases for plastics are currently inferior in performance to petroleum, Tang’s laboratory just received the National Science Foundation CAREER award to further investigate and refine the chemistry to make them viable competitors. Together with Perry Wilbon, and Fuxiang Chu of the Chinese Academy of Forestry, Tang published his review of terpenes, terpenoids, and rosin in the January edition of Macromolecular Rapid Communications.
“The aim is to understand how the macromolecular compositions and architectures dictate the properties of the materials we make,” he said. “If we can establish clear structure-property relationships, we will be able to achieve the kinds of results we now get from polymers made from petroleum.”
According to his research, molecules derived from trees are good sources of cycloaliphatic and aromatic structures which are good for polymerization. With rigid molecular structures and a dislike for water, they could become very good candidates for a whole host of new plastics. Coming from biological sources, they are also able to be recognized and broken down by microbes at the end of their life cycle.
+ University of South Carolina
Photos by Wikicommons users Peter coxhead and Jina Lee | <urn:uuid:12b7ed1d-30f1-4e3c-a008-c100c0a98e01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inhabitat.com/scientists-use-pine-sap-to-create-biodegradable-renewable-plastics/conifer-sap/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942621 | 406 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Lorenzo Pollard, 31, is a St. Louis prison inmate who escaped after fighting through more than a dozen guards using homemade nunchucks.
Pollard made the weapon from a bedsheet and and a chair, and used them to battle his way out of the medium security city Workhouse. The daring escape prompted a suspension of Commissioner Gene Stubbefield and a review of past jailbreaks.
“I’m frustrated by it,” Police Capt. Sam Dotson, the city’s operations director, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The mayor’s frustrated by it. These types of failures … cannot happen.”
Pollard made his escape as he was being led by guards to a shower area. As guards called for backup, Pollard climbed to a second tier of jail cells, swinging the nunchucks as a dozen guards tried to subdue him, according to the paper.
He then used the nunchucks to smash through a glass wall and then scaled two razor-wire fences.
Pollard, who was in jail on charges of theft, trespassing, property damage and resisting arrest, escaped despite a swarm of police dogs and a search helicopter.
Unfortunately for him, just a few hours later, he was back in custody after being captured without incident on a city street.
It was the latest in a series of escapes from city lockups, according to the paper.
In July, an inmate escaped the Workhouse by walking through an open gate and jumping the fences. He was captured a day later.
In April, two inmates broke free from the St. Louis Justice Center by crawling through an access panel in the ceiling of the infirmary and climbing down the side of the building with a bedsheet. They were caught later that day.
In 2010, two inmates escaped the Workhouse and were on the loose for more than 12 hours, according to the Post-Dispatch. | <urn:uuid:aa217787-26e1-4ac4-84ec-d7cff42bb080> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weirdcrime.net/2011/09/21/inmate-fights-off-a-dozen-guards-with-homemade-nunchucks-escapes/ | 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 | 0.972426 | 404 | 1.6875 | 2 |
‘The West Chum.: MR. ROBER’T PONT. 13x1 CHAPTER XVIII. THE CHURCH OF ST. CUTHBERT. Iiirtory and Antiquity-Old Views of it Described-First Protestant Incumbeqts-The Old hlanse-Old Communion Cups-Pillaged by Cmmwdi -Ruined by the Siege of 1689, and again in ~g+~-Deaths of Messrs. McVicar and Pitcairn-Early Body-snatchem-Demolition of the Old Church-Erection of the Ncw-Cax of Heart-bud-Old Tombs and Vaults-The Nisbets of Deau-The Old Poor How-Kirkbraehud Road-Lothian Road-Dr. Candlish’s Church-Military Academy-New Caledonian Railway Station. IN the hollow or vale at the end of which the North Loch lay there stands one of the most hideous churches in Edinbutgh, known as the West Kirk, occupying the exact site of the Culdee Church of St. Cuthbert, the parish of which was the largest in Midlothian, and nearly encircled the whole of the city without the walls. Its age was greater than that of any record in Scotland. It was supposed to have been built in the eighth century, and was dedicated to St. Cuthbert, the Bishop of Durham, who died on the 20th of March, 687. In Gordon of Rothiemay‘s bird‘s-eye view it appears a long, narrow building, with one transept or aisle, on the south, a high square tower of three storeys at the south-west corner, and a belfry. The burying-ground is square, with rows of trees to the westward. On the south of the buryingground is a long row of two-storeyed houses, with a gate leading to the present road west of the Castle rock, and another on the north, leading to the pathway which yet exists up the slope to Princes Street, from which point it long was known as the Kirk Loan to Stockbridge. A view taken in 1772 represents it as a curious assorlment of four barn-like masses of building, having a square spire of five storeys in height in the centre, and the western end an open ruinthe western kirk-with a bell hung 011 a wooden frame. Northward lies the hare open expznse, or ridge, whereon the first street of the new town was built. After the Reformation the first incumbent settled here would seem to have been a pious tailor, named William Harlow, who was born in the city about 1500, but fled to England, where he obtained deacon’s orders and became a preacher during the reign of Edward VI. On the death of the, latter, and accession of Mary, he was compelled to seek refuge in Scotland, and in 1556 he began “pub ,licly to exhort in Edinburgh,” for which he was excommunicated by the Catholic authorities, whose days were numbered now; and four years after, when installed at St. Cuthbert‘s, ’ Mr. Harlow attended the meeting of the first General Assembly, held in Edinburgh on the 20th of December, 1560. He died in 1578, but four years before that event Mr. Robert Pont, afterwards ah eminent judge and miscellaneous writer, was ordained to the ministry of St. Cuthbert’s in his thirtieth year, at the time he was, with others, appointed by the Assembly to revise all books that were printed and published. About the saiiie period he drew up the Calendar, and framed the rule to understaqd it, for Arbuthnot and Bassandyne’s famous edition of the Bible. In . 1571 he had been a Lord of Session and Provost of the Trinity College. On Mr. Pont being transferred in 1582, Mr. Nicol Dalgleish came in his place ; but the former, being unable to procure a stipend, returned to his old charge, conjointly with his successor. IVhen James VI. insidiously began his attempts to introduce Episcopacy, Mr. Pont, a zealous defender of Presbyterianism, with two other ministers, actually repaired to the Parliament House, with the design of protesting for the rights of the Church in the face of the Estates; but finding the doors shut against them, they repaired to the City Cross, and when the obnoxious “Black Acts ” were proclaimed, pub. licly denounced them, and then fled to England, followed by most of the clergy in Edinburgh. Meanwhile Nicol Dalgleish, for merely praying for them, was tried for his life, and acquitted, but he was indicted anew for corresponding with the rebels, because he had read a letter which one of the banished ministers had sent to his wife. For this fault sentence of death was passed upon him ; but though it was not executed, by a refinement of cruelty the scaffold on which he expected to die was kept standing for several weeks before the windows of his prison. While Mr. Pont remained a fugitive, William Aird, a stonemason, “ an extraordinary witness, stirred cp by God,” says Calderwood, ‘Land mamed, learned first of his wife to speak English,” was appointed, in the winter of 1584, colleague to Mr. Dalgleish, who, on the return of Mr. Pont in 1585, “ was nominated to the principality of Aberdeen.” Aware of the igqorance of most of their parishioners concerning the doctrines of the Protestant faith, and that many had no faith- whatever, they offered to devote the forenoon of every Thursday to public tzaching, and to this end a meeting was held on Pont’s next colleague was Mr. Aird. | <urn:uuid:354af822-5d0d-4a3a-af20-e673439a3936> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oldandnewedinburgh.co.uk/volume3/page143/single | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979566 | 1,265 | 2.515625 | 3 |
By MIGUEL BUSTILLO, TOM WRIGHT and SHELLY BANJO
Wal-Mart says it followed its play book when it yanked its business from a Bangladesh garment factory after the retailer's inspectors found problems. But the chain's clothing was still being produced there when the factory went up in flames last weekend, leaving at least 112 workers dead.
The retailing giant's experience in Bangladesh underscores the difficulties Western companies face in policing far-flung factories, and highlights gaps critics say make these efforts ineffective. Even when companies find problems at plants, they say, the issues often aren't revealed to the public or to government officials.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s in-house Faded Glory brand clothing was among the more than a dozen Western brands found by activist groups that scoured the factory's charred remains for labels following the fire. Three managers at the factory were detained by Bangladesh authorities Wednesday on suspicion that they had blocked doors before the fire, preventing many workers from escaping.
The world's largest retailer said it had revoked the factory's authorization to make its products months before the fire, but declined to elaborate. It would not name the supplier it said was responsible for giving its business to Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a modern factory set up in 2007 near the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
The parent of the Tazreen Fashions factory, Tuba Group, and its owner, Delwar Hossain, haven't publicly discussed the fire and couldn't be reached for comment.
Mahbub Rahman, who says he is a marketing manager for Tazreen, said in an interview Thursday that his company got the business from another Bangladeshi factory that could not meet its Christmas orders from a Wal-Mart supplier.
Bangladesh has become the world's second-largest clothing exporter, thanks in part to some of the lowest labor costs anywhere: The government sets the minimum wage for entry-level garment workers there at less than $37 a month. By contrast, minimum wages in the leading export nation, China, vary but some provinces have raised them to more than $200, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Fire safety has been a repeated problem at Bangladeshi garment factories, where more than 500 workers have died in fires since 2006, according to estimates compiled by labor groups.
Most large retail chains say they use outside monitors to inspect factories at least once a year and cancel orders if they repeatedly discover problems. The monitors inspect factories retailers have directly contracted to make their goods, as well as factories used by their suppliers.
Photos: Bangladesh Factory Fire
But critics, primarily labor-rights organizations opposed to what they say are sweatshop working conditions, say the monitors insulate the retailers from direct responsibility, because retailers rarely disclose when they find factories to be substandard, often choosing to quietly exit them instead. The groups also argue that by constantly shifting work to factories with slightly lower costs, retailers provide no incentive for factory owners to spend additional on improvements such as fire-safety measures that drive up their expenses.
"They cannot just clean their hands and say they didn't know," said Kalpona Akter of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, an activist group. "It doesn't make any sense, unless they are totally irresponsible about their codes of conduct or their inspection practices."
Third-party factory auditors, who report findings of substandard conditions back to Western companies, said it was unfair to blame them for failing to stop fires in Bangladesh. Asim Kumar Mondal, a Bangladesh-based manager with German auditor Tüv Süd, said assessors visit factories and make recommendations but have no power to ensure owners comply.
Tüv Süd didn't conduct audits of Tazreen Fashions' factory and doesn't currently work on behalf of Wal-Mart in Bangladesh, Mr. Mondal said.
Wal-Mart's system of inspecting factories grades them on a color scheme ranging from green to red. It said most of the audits are done by outside firms, though Wal-Mart has an internal team that conducts surprise audits and checks factories with known problems. Factories with repeated bad grades can be banned from doing business with the company.
Wal-Mart said it is the responsibility of the suppliers to use factories approved by the company, and warns suppliers in an extensive manual that they can be banned from doing business with the retailer if they fail to do so.
The retailer, which works with 100,000 suppliers, said it required them last year to stop using 155 factories; roughly a third were in Bangladesh, and were banned because of concerns about fire safety.
The website of the Tazreen factory's parent company, Tuba Group, contains what appears to be a 2011 inspection letter from Wal-Mart, warning that the factory was in danger of losing orders. Wal-Mart would not confirm the authenticity of the letter.
The company also declined to comment on whether it had notified the Bangladesh government about potential fire safety issues at the factory. Spokesman Kevin Gardner said Wal-Mart has "extensively engaged with the Bangladeshi government and trade organizations in Bangladesh to address fire safety."
Sears Holdings Corp. also said it didn't know its clothing was being made at the Tazreen factory and said it had fired what it said was the supplier responsible, International Intimates Inc. The New York-based supplier didn't respond to requests for comment.
"Our merchandise was being produced at that factory without our approval," Sears said.
After 29 workers died during a fire at a Bangladeshi factory called That's It Sportswear two years ago, PVH Corp., the maker of Izod and Calvin Klein clothing, agreed to a comprehensive fire-safety program with activists that includes releasing inspection results to the public.
Gap Inc., whose clothes had also been made at the site of the 2010 fire, said it plans to conduct its own fire-safety-specific audits of Bangladesh suppliers starting in January and will disclose the results to the Bangladesh government as well as to a United Nations agency.
"The primary thing is to have fire-safety inspections done by someone with expertise that will look beyond an auditor," said Bobbi Silten, Gap's senior vice president of global responsibility. The retailer will make a total amount of up to $20 million in capital available to factories for safety improvements, she said.—Dana Mattioli, Tripti Lahiri and Ann Zimmerman contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
Gap Inc. will make up to $20 million in capital available across its factory base for safety improvements. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the retailer will lend up to $20 million per manufacturer to help factories make improvements. | <urn:uuid:37cd1a96-6fa1-408c-863c-0f79f6f524a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323751104578148463240906892.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974121 | 1,386 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Despite Pope´s apologies for children sexual abuses, victims promise protests
In a most contradictory manner and during his visit to Australia Pope Benedict XXI will apologise for children sexual abuses. Victims do not take this Vatican move as appropriate and promise to hold protests. This is just another sad expression of the Catholic Church reluctance to tackle the issue in an open manner and allow justice to be distributed. Apologising and paying compensation falls short of justice distribution as expected by sexually molested children. Such holy handling of the situation attempts to prevent priest to fall with civil and criminal justice.
Pope to apologise for sex scandal
Pope Benedict XVI has said he will apologise for decades of sexual abuse of children by Australian priests.
As he headed to Australia on the longest foreign trip of his papacy, he said that paedophilia was "incompatible" with being a priest.
Abuse victims have said they will hold protest rallies during his visit.
The Pope is also expected to use the trip to discuss climate change, telling reporters that people must find an ethical way to change their lifestyles.
Climate change will be a theme of a major Catholic youth festival, World Youth Day, which the Pope is heading.
The event is expected to draw some 200,000 young Catholics to Sydney.
But the six-day event has been overshadowed by the launch of an investigation into sexual abuse allegations.
The leader of Australia's Catholics, Cardinal George Pell, has come under criticism for his handling of a 1982 case allegedly involving the sexual abuse of minors by a priest.
"It is essential for the Church to reconcile, to prevent, to help and to see guilt in this problem," Pope Benedict told reporters during his 20-hour flight to Sydney.
"It must be clear... that being a real priest is incompatible with this (sexual abuse) because priests are in the service of our Lord."
During his nine-day trip, the Pope will also meet Aborigine groups, and is likely to repeat an apology made by Pope John Paul to Australia's indigenous people for injustices carried out by Catholic missionaries.
He also told reporters that he wanted to wake up consciences, to make politicians and experts respond to environmental issues.
"We have to face up to this great challenge and find the ethical capacity to change the situation of the environment for the good," said Pope Benedict.
But he made it clear that he had no intention of addressing any specific political or technical questions about climate change.
The 81-year Pope's medical advisers have taken elaborate steps to protect his health during the gruelling 20-hour flight from Italy, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.
A special sleeping compartment has been prepared on the Alitalia plane and the German pontiff will spend three full days resting at a Catholic study centre near Sydney before appearing at the head of a Sydney Harbour flotilla on Thursday.
Pope Benedict will close his trip by presiding over an open-air Mass on 20 July at Sydney's Randwick Racecourse, which is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.
The Pope's visit - his ninth outside Italy - has created controversy with demonstrators vowing to protest against the Church's stand on homosexuality and birth control.
In response, authorities in the state of New South Wales have introduced new laws bringing the threat of heavy fines to anyone causing annoyance to pilgrims.
Civil liberty groups have denounced such sanctions as unnecessary and repugnant.
PS: Anonymous comments are not welcome as they promote bias and diminish Citizen Journalism. Just like anonymous sources, they impaired the right to information and distort notions on confidential sources. | <urn:uuid:8d9709f4-dd7e-4628-88e9-75c4f8f5c878> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nowpublic.com/world/despite-pope-s-apologies-children-sexual-abuses-victims-promise-protests | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968543 | 735 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Inspiration from Survivors
Read three inspiring stories from women who have battled cancer and who offer very personal and moving perspectives about the need to support research into women’s cancers:
At a time when most young people are carefree and having fun, Tanya was diagnosed with cancer at age 21 after finding a tiny and hard lump in her breast while she was in the shower. Her cancer story has had multiple chapters, with the disease recurring twice since her first diagnosis.
Tanya turned to the Canadian Cancer Society for support through her cancer journey. Tanya was matched with a trained volunteer who had been through a similar cancer experience, someone who could draw upon her own story to offer Tanya encouragement, compassion and helpful information.
Three lumpectomies and a mastectomy later, Tanya has been cancer-free since 2005. The disease has not stopped her from living an active and fulfilling life. Now a mother to one daughter and a son, Tanya says her cancer experience made her personally stronger, and was the impetus for her to become an entrepreneur, starting up her own company, selling natural health products.
Tanya now volunteers her time with the Canadian Cancer Society, and encourages women to get together for Girls Night In. "It is a great way support an organization which is making a big difference in the lives of cancer patients and their family members," says Tanya.
In 2001, Antonel was looking forward to a future that included marriage and a family. At 31 years old, a diagnosis of both ovarian and uterine cancers came as very unexpected and traumatic news. Her doctors prescribed a hysterectomy amongst other procedures and scheduled a round of exhausting daylong ovarian cancer chemotherapy sessions. Antonel was in shock. Not only was she facing a life-threatening disease, but she also had to mourn the fact that she would never be able to get pregnant and have her own children, something she had always dreamed about.
Throughout her cancer journey, Antonel took it one day at a time and remained positive. She was thankful to have the support of her fiancÚ, family members, friends and colleagues.
Proof that cancer stories can have happy endings, Antonel beat the odds and has been cancer-free since 2002. She married her fiancÚ later that year. In 2005, the couple adopted a beautiful 22-month-old boy. Antonel now not only balances motherhood and work in the social services field, she also makes time to volunteer with the Canadian Cancer Society. She believes that it is important to spread the word to women that they should be aware of any changes in their health and to report them to a doctor. “Girls Night In is a great way to have your friends over, bring awareness to women’s cancers, all while raising funds to support a good cause,” says Antonel.
Everything about Penny’s life changed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35. After a swift diagnosis, Penny underwent a lumpectomy, a lymph node removal procedure and six months of chemotherapy and radiation.
Beyond her own health, the busy mom of three young children worried about the emotional and financial toll the disease was taking on her family. Penny had to stop work while she was in treatment. Her house, once a haven for her children’s friends was isolated. Visitors were limited because treatment had affected Penny’s immune system and she couldn’t chance catching the common cold or flu. Penny didn’t want the disease to stop her from being a parent to her children and she refused to spend a day in bed. On the days when fatigue did catch up with her, she remembers her son and two daughters joining her couch-side to play cards and board games.
Cancer-free since 1995, Penny has been a Canadian Cancer Society volunteer for 10 years and feels rewarded to be able to provide support and encouragement to women who share a similar cancer story.
Due to a family history of breast cancer, the disease is never far from thought. Penny worries for her now grown daughters, whether or not breast cancer will someday change their lives. She hopes that research progress will one day banish these worries. Penny encourages women to support the Girls Night In fundraising initiative. “Funding research will provide us with new information about cancer such as finding other genetic links to breast cancer, so that one day we will be able to limit the impact the disease will have on future generations of women,” says Penny. | <urn:uuid:c31584a8-3bcc-4cce-8e15-816fdbfd99f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://convio.cancer.ca/site/PageNavigator/Ontario/Girls%20Night%20In/IFE_ON_GirlsNightIn_about_stories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980684 | 918 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Professor Neil Turok scoops international prize6 December 2007
A Cambridge professor has won a prestigious international prize for his contributions to science and education.
Neil Turok, Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, and an alumnus of Churchill College, was awarded the prize in recognition of his work in the field of theoretical cosmology and his efforts as an education activist.
Professor Turok is best known for his pioneering work developing and testing fundamental theories of the very early universe through a combination of advanced mathematics and clever observational checks. Several predictions made by his group in the mid-1990's helped to establish today's standard model: their calculations also ruled out a number of competing theoretical ideas.
Recently, using the latest theoretical ideas on the unification of fundamental particles and forces, he has developed an explanation of the big bang itself, not as the beginning of time but rather as a violent event in a pre-existing universe. With Professor Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, he has elaborated this into a 'Cyclic Universe' model, according to which our big bang is only the latest in an endless cosmic cycle. The conventional viewpoint and the cyclic picture are contrasted in their recent popular science book, Endless Universe.
In 2003 Professor Turok founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town, South Africa. The Institute has been widely recognised as a outstanding innovative model for postgraduate education and research, and it is playing a key role in pan-African efforts to develop capacity in science and technology.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) began as a conference in 1984. It has now expanded, with innovations such as downloadable talks from eminent public figures and academics. Their annual conference attracts over 1000 attendees (with a waiting list of 3,500) and features 50 speakers.
The TED prize is awarded annually to three individuals whose work is considered to have extraordinary potential for positive influence on mankind. They each receive $100,000 and the granting of "One Wish to Change the World". The wishes are announced at the award ceremony and often lead to influential collaborative initiatives. Previous winners include former US president Bill Clinton and eminent biologist E.O. Wilson. | <urn:uuid:5a447224-ac55-41ac-a26b-2bc6c5214eb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://damtp.cam.ac.uk/comms/51.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966755 | 445 | 2.203125 | 2 |
An Aspiring Artist's Guide to a Career in CG
Are you an aspiring CG artist who wants to make it in the CG Industry? A highly creative individual who is thinking about transferring your skills to VFX? Our CG Careers Guide offers an extensive insight into the myriad of opportunities available to creative people in the VFX, Animation and Gaming industries. It is designed to help you see through the maze of options available and to make serious decisions about your future career as a CG artist.
The rapid growth of the CG industry over the last few years has led to an increased demand for CG artists across the globe in areas as diverse as TV, Advertising, Film, Gaming and Character Animation. In addition to this, advantageous tax breaks for businesses have led to London becoming a centre of excellence in VFX for film. The way in which we consume ever more sophisticated content is set to drive further growth in this incredibly creative and exciting industry.
Packed with the vital information you need to get started, Escape Studios’ CG Careers Guide covers everything from average salaries to the types of jobs available. So whether you’ve just graduated or are thinking about a whole new career move, this guide is the perfect place to start.
Did you know?
An experienced 3D artist working in a big-name studio can earn over £50,000 a year?
Source: VFXwages.com 2011
The UK has the largest visual effects industry outside of the United States with 600 FX studios employing around 6,900 people.
Source: Skillset, 2010 and Office for National Statistics | <urn:uuid:07d7cdde-4e4d-48cc-8430-90b7254e6a93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.escapestudios.com/CGCareerGuide/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950761 | 323 | 1.585938 | 2 |
State in north-central USA, a Great Plains state, bordered to the north by North Dakota, to the west by Montana and Wyoming, to the south by Nebraska, and to the east by Minnesota and Iowa; area 196,541 sq km/75,885 sq mi; population (2006) 781,900; capital Pierre. South Dakota was formerly known as the Coyote State due to the abundance of coyotes that roam the prairies, but its official nickname is now the Mount Rushmore State because of the famous mountain sculpture, Mount Rushmore, which is the state's biggest tourist attraction. South Dakota is primarily a rural state, bisected by the Missouri River, with rolling hills and flat plains to the east and rocky uplifts to the west. Thousands of buffalo once roamed the prairies and grassland of the state. Tourism is key to the state economy, second only to livestock and grain production in terms of economic importance. Other cities include Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and Aberdeen. The influence of the Sioux tribe, both historically and culturally, is important to South Dakota. Colourful historical figures such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Sitting Bull, and George Custer contribute to South Dakota's legendary Wild West status. South Dakota was admitted to the Union in 1889 as the 40th US state.
South Dakota is the 17th largest state in the USA, and is roughly rectangular, about 610 sq km/380 mi long and 340 sq km/210 mi wide. Big Stone Lake, on the eastern border, is about 300 m/1,000 ft above sea level, and is the state's lowest point. The highest point in the state is Harney Peak (2,209 m/7,242 ft) in the Black Hills.
The state is roughly divided into four geological regions: the Drift Prairie, the Dissected Till Plains, the Great Plains, and the Black Hills.
The Drift Prairie covers most of the eastern part of the state and is characterized by low hills and glacial lakes. Known as the Coteau des Prairies (Prairie Hills) by early French traders, it is bordered by the James River basin on the west and the Minnesota River Valley on the east. The Dissected Till Plains in the southeastern section of the state contain small hills and streams.
The Great Plains cover two-thirds of South Dakota. The land begins to rise from the east and has steep, flat-topped hills called buttes rising up from the plains. Between the White and the Cheyenne rivers, are the Badlands, characterized by deeply eroded clay gullies.
The Black Hills mountain system is an isolated eastern outlier of the Rocky Mountains, covered with heavy forests of pine and spruce. The hills are mineral-rich, with deposits of gold, silver, copper, and lead, and are home to Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse memorial, and Wind Cave and Custer national parks.
The state is drained by the Missouri and Columbia rivers and their branches. Other principal rivers include the James and the Big Sioux to the east, and the Cheyenne, the Belle Fourche, the Moreau, the Grand River, and the White River to the west.
South Dakota has a continental climate. Summers are hot, sunny, and often cloudless, but winter can be very cold, with blizzards sweeping across the plains and hillsides. The average annual rainfall is low, declining from east to west.
Animals indigenous to the area include antelope, deer, elk, beaver, bobcat, and porcupine in the Black Hills, and coyotes, jackrabbits, and prairie dogs around the rest of the state. Bald and golden eagles can also be found in the Badlands and Missouri Valley regions. Bison can be seen in Custer State Park.
Black Hills National Forest in western South Dakota contains rugged rock formations, canyons, grassland parks, streams, deep lakes, and caves. The Sioux American Indians believe the mountains to have physical and spiritual regenerative powers. Geological formations in the Black Hills region include large outcrops of granite and mica schist.
Badlands National Park, located in southwestern South Dakota, is the world's richest Oligocene epoch fossil bed, between 23 and 35 million years old. The evolution of mammal species such as the horse, sheep, rhinoceros, and pig are studied here amid the eroded buttes, spires, and grasslands of the area. The black-footed ferret, formerly the most endangered land mammal in North America, has been reintroduced to the Badlands Wilderness area.
Wind Cave National Park features one of the world's longest and most complex caves, and almost 115 sq km/44 sq mi of mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest. Jewel Cave National Monument in Custer is one of the longest surveyed caves in the world.
The Corn Palace, an arena and exhibition space, was established in Mitchell in 1892 to demonstrate the fertility of the South Dakota soil. Murals requiring thousands of bushels of corn, grain, grasses, oats, grass varieties, rye, straw, and wheat are created by artists and mounted each year as a tribute to the agricultural heritage of South Dakota.
The city of Deadwood is where the legendary Wild Bill Hickok was killed in 1876.
Mount Rushmore, the famous huge sculpture of US presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, was carved to memorialize the country's first 150 years of history. From 1927 to 1941, the US sculptor Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 15-20 m-/50-70 ft-high busts of the presidents. At the request of the Indian peoples, a memorial to Crazy Horse is carved in granite near Custer.
The Verendrye Monument commemorates the spot where French-Canadian explorers Louis-Joseph and François La Verendrye in 1743 buried an inscribed lead tablet on a bluff overlooking present-day Fort Pierre and claimed the territory for France.
Around 8.5% of South Dakota's population are American Indian (2006). The remaining population includes Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Dutch, Irish, Germans, Mennonites, Hutterites, Czechs, English, Welsh, and others. South Dakota is still developing a state identity, challenged by a combination of climate, location, and investment.
In South Dakota's early days, residents were entertained by travelling music shows or dramas. The schoolhouse was a social centre in addition to being a source of learning. Several writers brought the state to life in their works, including Norwegian-born Ole E Rölvaag, author of Giants in the Earth (1927). Perhaps best known are Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books, tales of the pioneer period on the Midwestern frontier. Her novel Little Town on the Prairie (1941) details her life in De Smet, now home of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society. Native-born artist Harvey Dunn was famous for depicting pioneer life, while Yankton Sioux Oscar Howe incorporated into his artworks the motifs and images of his native culture. Traditional Indian crafts generate significant income, particularly in tourist areas.
The State Historical Society has overall operating responsibility for local museums such as Robinson Museum in Pierre, W H Over Museum in Vermillion, Agricultural Heritage Museum in Brookings, and Smith-Zimmerman State Museum in Madison. The South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center is located in Rapid City, and the prehistoric Indian village, with its Boehnen Memorial Museum, is located in Mitchell.
Notable among the summer theatres is the Black Hills Playhouse, which has operated in Custer State Park since 1946, and the Black Hills Passion Play, performed every summer at Spearfish since 1939. The musical arts are represented by a number of symphony orchestras. Ethnic festivals include Nordland Fest, Czech Days, and numerous American Indian powwows.
South Dakota's institutes of higher education include Augustana College at Sioux Falls; Northern State College at Aberdeen; the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology situated in Rapid City; South Dakota State University at Brookings; and the University of South Dakota located in Vermillion, which is home to the Shrine to Music Museum.
South Dakota's state constitution The state is governed under its 1889 constitution, which has undergone numerous amendments.
Structure of state government The state legislature is bicameral (two chamber), consisting of a Senate with 35 senators and a House of Representatives, with 70 members, all elected for two-year terms from 35 legislative districts. The legislature meets each year in January for a 30-day session.
The state sends one representative and two senators to the US Congress, and has three electoral votes in presidential elections. The Republican party dominates state politics and South Dakota has not favoured a Democratic party US presidential nominee since 1964.
A governor, elected to a four-year term and allowed to serve no more than two terms in a row, heads the executive branch. Other elected officials to the executive branch include a lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state auditor, attorney general, treasurer, and heads of the public utilities commission, and school and public lands commissions.
The state constitution provides for a centralized court structure known as the unified judicial system. It consists of a Supreme Court, circuit courts of general jurisdiction, and magistrate courts of limited original jurisdiction. The Supreme Court, the state's highest court, consists of a chief justice and four associate justices who are appointed to the office from five appointment districts by the governor.
At the local level, South Dakota is broken down into 66 counties, over 300 towns and cities, and over a thousand townships. Special districts are designated areas for conservation and irrigation concerns.
The Sioux reservations elect their own tribal council that governs the affairs of their people and represents them at a national level.
Since the end of the fur-trade era, agriculture, tourism, mining, and food manufacturing have become the mainstays of South Dakota's economy. Large cattle and sheep ranches occupy two-thirds of the land, providing the state's major revenue source. In the eastern region, livestock and livestock products are the primary sources of income. Like many nearby states, South Dakota's chief cash crops are corn, soybeans, oats, barley sorghum, and wheat. The state is a leading producer of flaxseed, sunflower seed, hay, and rye.
Meat packing and food processing are the chief manufacturing industries, though the state is diversifying into electronics, particularly in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, and has a thriving durable goods industry. Mining continues to be important to South Dakota, which is the nation's second leading gold producer. The town of Lead in the Black Hills is the foremost gold-mining centre in the country. Other minerals excavated include beryllium, bentonite, granite, silver, and uranium.
Dams at Oahe, Big Bend, Fort Randall, and Gavins Point on the Missouri River are major sources of hydroelectric power, most of which is exported to consumers outside the state. Tourism and related services provide a steady stream of income for the state, most of which is derived from Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills area.
Indigenous people South Dakota is home to the Sioux, Arikara, and Mandan, among other indigenous peoples. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the area were the Sioux and Chippewa tribes. Prior to the influx of pioneers, the Chippewa had pushed the Sioux towards the plains. By the late 18th century, the aggressive Sioux tribe had driven out the Arikara from the region.
Fur trade French-Canadians Louis-Joseph and François La Verendrye first explored the territory in 1743 and claimed it for France. Under the Treaty of Paris, 1763, South Dakota, then part of the Louisiana Territory, came into the possession of Spain, but reverted to France in 1800. Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the USA as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the region 1804-06. They met with the Teton Sioux in the Pierre area, visited three Arikara villages near Mobridge, and noted the plentiful beaver population, which ushered in an era of intense fur trapping. British and US fur companies pioneered the settlement of the region, dotting riverbanks with their outposts and trading stations. Trappers used the Missouri to export furs back to St Louis, then the hub of the US fur trade. The first US colonial settlement was at Fort Pierre, founded in 1817 and the oldest continuously occupied white settlement in South Dakota.
Early settlement By 1856, two companies were established at Sioux Falls and by 1859, outposts at Vermillion, Yankton, and Bon Homme were thriving. In 1858, Yankton Sioux signed a treaty ceding most of eastern South Dakota to the USA, opening up farmland for settlement. A provisional government was established, but not recognized by the national government. In 1861 the Dakota Territory was established between the Big Sioux and Missouri rivers and included present-day states South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and most of Wyoming. In 1872, the Dakota Southern Railroad opened between Vermillion and Sioux City, Iowa.
Conflict The late 19th century was marked by conflict between the American Indian tribes and white settlers. In the early 1870s, a gold rush pulled more non-natives into the western Dakota Territory. Federal treaties protecting the rights of the native tribes were ignored. A military expedition led by George Custer in 1874 confirmed rumours of gold in the Black Hills and brought thousands of bounty hunters to the area. The Sioux declared war on the white intruders and defeated Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. In 1877, a treaty was signed giving the Black Hills to the USA and returning Indians to their reservations.
Statehood The ‘Great Dakota Boom’ occurred between 1878 and 1887, when the state's population swelled from 80,000 to 325,000. By 1883, the Dakota Territory had been reduced to what is now North and South Dakota. The growth of the population in the north led to the territorial capital being shifted from Yankton to Bismarck. Southern residents called to split the territory at the 46th parallel, though the north and Congress opposed the idea. Constitutional conventions were held in 1883, and then again in 1885 when the state of Dakota was established. In 1889, Congress approved dual statehood based on a division south of the 46th parallel, thus accepting both the states of North and South Dakota into the union at the same time.
The same year, the Great Sioux Agreement created six reservations for Teton and Yankton Sioux, opening up more than 35,000 sq km/14,000 sq mi of land to white immigrants. Between 1889 and 1897, severe drought hit the area. Coupled with a depressed national economy in the early and mid-1890s, the period became known as the ‘Great Dakota Bust’, discouraging newcomers from settling there. By 1890, the Sioux were on the brink of starvation, fenced in by boundaries imposed by the US government. Non-Indian settlers felt threatened and demanded protection from the US Army, culminating in the massacre of hundreds of American Indians at Wounded Knee, considered the final conquest of the Sioux.
Railroads By the turn of the 20th century, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St Paul Railroad had reached Evarts, which became a major shipping terminal for cattle from western South Dakota. By 1907, two rail links to Rapid City from eastern points were completed, making it the state centre for trade and commerce. Mining and cattle-raising became important to the area once the railway made it possible to export goods across state lines.
Post-war South Dakota South Dakota was hard hit by the Great Depression, when drought and dust severely damaged agricultural productivity. New Deal programmes such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided many interim jobs. The state also contributed to the World War II effort, sending military units to Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. The battleship USS South Dakota, launched in 1941, became one of the most decorated US ships of the war.
In 1952 a major flood on the Missouri River inundated Pierre and caused damage throughout South Dakota. The severity of the flood sparked dam construction that eventually contributed to electric power production, recreation, flood control, navigation, irrigation, public water supplies, and fish and wildlife development in the state.
The plight of the American Indians was brought to national attention when a group of militant American Indians occupied a courthouse at Wounded Knee in 1973, resulting in a gun battle with federal marshals.
Contemporary South Dakota The state faced severe economic pressure in the 1980s when the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and the Milwaukee pulled investment out of the area and drought hit the state again. In 1989, gambling was introduced in Deadwood to encourage economic development. The state shifted its economic focus towards service, finance, and trade industries in the 1990s, which resulted in significant economic growth and a further shift from rural to urban living. Tourism continues to be one of the state's main sources of income.
sport Billy Mills (1938-), athlete
the arts L Frank Baum (1856-1919), writer; Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), children's novelist and pioneer; Ole E Rölvaag (1876-1931), novelist; Korczak Ziolkowski (1908-1992), sculptor of the Crazy Horse mountain carving; Oscar Howe (1915-1983), painter; Jess Thomas (1927-1993), tenor singer; Tom Brokaw (1940-), television journalist
economics Theodore Schultz (1902-1992), Nobel Prize-winning agricultural economist
politics and law Sitting Bull (c. 1834-1890), Sioux chief; Crazy Horse (1849-1877), Sioux chief; Hubert H Humphrey (1911-1978), vice president of the USA; George McGovern (1922-), politician; Tom Daschle (1947-), US senator.
We're sorry this article wasn't helpful. Tell us how we can improve. | <urn:uuid:81fe455e-c3f5-473a-86fc-808fe53f9f6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.credoreference.com/topic/south_dakota | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948744 | 3,799 | 3.203125 | 3 |
The first harmonic is the fundamental...
If you mean the second harmonic or first overtone then you mean an octave.
The usual analog way of adding an octave is to rectify the signal -- which adds much more than just the first overtone but that plus filtering it about all you can do in analog.
There are other options but -- as I understand things -- none are simple.
Here some code that rectifies (take the absolute value), removes the DC offset and expands back to full range.
- Code: Select all
out = 2 * abs(in) - 1;
A lowpass will remove some
of the other overtones this will add.
Yeap, I was talking about the second harmonic, Sometime I'm stuck with the musician theory where the second acoustic harmonic is the first musical one. Big Sorry!
I'm not afraid (yet) to enter into complicated low level coding, after all, I'm doing this for as a "final project" in my place of study; so I'm already prepare to take the hard path, It's just that somethings are managed in a different way in SW, so It's very possible that I will be posting a lot of stuff here
I will take a look of your code and tried. Thanks!
martinvicanek wrote:Hey distante,
to get the amplitude of a signal you would use an envelope follower, which is basically a rectifier followed by a lowpass. Look at the stock module, there is a codeblock inside which you can examine.
Frequency or pitch extraction is a bit more tricky. If your signal is single-pitched with a dominant fundamental, then the zero crossing method is most efficient. Search for "zero crossing" on the forum, Trog has posted a ready-to-use module. There are alternatives based on autocorrelation, where you compare the original signal with a delayed version. If you can find a delay time where the signal essentially folds back on itself, that will give you the (inverse) frequency. These methods are more CPU demanding than zero crossing however they may perform better on signals with rich spectral content.
Hope that helps!
In the end I want to run a real time vst (as in insert in a DAW) with this "harmonic generator" in a channel with some musical content , so I supposed that the delay stuff isn't the best option (I need to read it first). I will look for zero crossing and mess with the stock module thanks!
I hope what I want to do is possible with SW, If not I will need to change my project request | <urn:uuid:1e2093d8-b4fa-4f7e-932c-9e815503fb30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.synthmaker.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=85184 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933456 | 545 | 1.960938 | 2 |
|Red Velvet Cupcakes|
So, what's the big deal with Red Velvet Cake? Just about every American blog I've ever read all mentions Red Velvet Cake. My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to do this recipe from here which is Australian so has ingredients and measurements that we're used to.
It was a lovely, light, moist cake but just basically a chocolate cake but coloured red. I'm not sure that my kids need any more artificial ingredients in their diet so I probably won't make it again. The cream cheese icing was an unusal, but nice, topping. Something I usually only save for Carrot Cake. Wikipedia says:
"James Beard's 1972 reference American Cookery describes three red velvet cakes varying in the amounts of shortening and butter. All use red food coloring, but the reaction of acidic vinegar and buttermilk tends to better reveal the red anthocyanin in the cocoa. Before more alkaline "Dutch Processed" cocoa was widely available, the red color would have been more pronounced. This natural tinting may have been the source for the name "Red Velvet" as well as "Devil's Food" and similar names for chocolate cakes. While foods were rationed during World War II, bakers used boiled beets to enhance the color of their cakes. Boiled grated beets or beet baby food are found in some red velvet cake recipes, where they also serve to retain moisture.
In Canada the cake was a well-known dessert in the restaurants and bakeries of the Eaton's department store chain in the 1940s and 1950s. Promoted as an exclusive Eaton's recipe, with employees who knew the recipe sworn to silence, many mistakenly believed the cake to be the invention of the department store matriarch, Lady Eaton.
A resurgence in the popularity of this cake is partly attributed to the 1989 film Steel Magnolias in which the groom's cake (a southern tradition) is a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo." | <urn:uuid:b8d1f376-376a-4b98-b5a0-158399706f86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://domesblissity.blogspot.com/2011/02/red-velvet-cake-finally.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9695 | 413 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Rural Wit and Wisdom: Farming
The common sense, wit and wisdom of a farmer comes from everyday tasks such as milking cows, plowing and tilling a field. Discover the dignity and poetry of heartland people with this compilation of Rural Wit and Wisdom.
“Rural Wit and Wisdom” by Jerry Apps is a compilation of sayings and advice from farmers in the heartland. This collection of Old-Timer wisdom tells the story of heartland people who work their farms, give back to their communities and appreciate the little things in the same way they have for generations.
Courtesy Fulcrum Publishing
Family farms once dominated the heartland. Now those homesteads have given way to smaller farming operations, mostly organic, but the time-honored values remain the same. Rural Wit and Wisdom (Fulcrum Publishing, 2012) by Jerry Apps is the compilation of all the advice, sayings and poetry of heartland people from the family farm days to today. These timeless sayings capture the common sense and poetry of the hard-working farmer. This excerpt is taken from Chapter 1, “Farming.”
Farmers are the heart and soul of this country. In the settlement years of the heartland, more people worked as farmers than any other occupation. As the years passed, farmers began leaving the land; now, less than 2 percent of the American workforce farms.
The values and beliefs held by farmers who settled the region, and the children and grandchildren who followed them on the land, forged the basic foundation for today’s heartland people. Some modern-day folks claim farmers and farm life are historic relics, replaced by high-tech, modern-day agriculturists who farm thousands of acres, milk thousands of cows, fatten thousands of beef cattle in feedlots, and raise thousands of hogs and poultry in confined operations. Those who say this are likely not aware of the much smaller farming operations, many of them organic, that are rapidly growing in number in this country and in many ways resembling the family farmers who worked the soil during pioneer days. Family farmers are a special people. Famed Tuskegee educator Booker T. Washington wrote in 1895, “No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” That advice still holds.
Here is a sprinkling of farm wisdom:
• A farmer recently won the lottery. When asked what he was going to do with the money, he replied, “I’ll keep farming until the money runs out.”
• Anyone can farm, but not everyone is a farmer.
• In the business of farming, it’s not so important who gets there first as who gets there at all.
• An old horse, an old dog, and an old farmer have much in common: they are slow but wise.
• If you must sing, do it when you’re after the cows. Cows don’t care if you can’t carry a tune.
• Look down when walking in a cow pasture.
• Attention to detail makes all the difference, whether it’s plowing a field, building a fence, or teaching a calf to drink out of a pail.
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| Next >> | <urn:uuid:99fb8f0c-7dfb-4c6d-be0d-ce9e55d64aa6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grit.com/community/farming-rural-wit-and-wisdom-ze0z1205zsch.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95523 | 691 | 2.78125 | 3 |
By Jim Pendleton - Mr MortgageTM
Pre qualified letter. Vs
Pre approval letter.: What is the difference to you?
Which One is right, What Should You Ask For and what
should it say?
When you look into the fast moving world of real estate transactions, both purchasers and professionals
sometimes use the words “pre
qualified” and “pre approval” interchangeably. By using the wrong word in place of the correct
word, you may find yourself in a very sticky situation. Comparing here between pre qualified letter. to a
pre approval letter. in
detail. Here is the total explanation for you: The problem is, they mean two totally different things.
Now let’s look at how things go when you view things which sometimes work out. Here you are the potential
buyer of a home, ready to make an offer on a house. Now this is when your realtor tells you that you need to get a
“pre qualified” letter. from your lender to submit with the contract. You receive the pre qualified letter.
and give it to your realtor. The letter. is then submitted with the contract and accepted by the seller. Great
news! Or is it? The contract states that you must close within 30 days and you could not be more excited. Now,
let’s fast-forward to day 28. Your lender calls you to let you know that your loan was declined.
You may be when you view things which sometimes wondering how could something like that happen, you ask? You
were pre-qualified! Well, this is one of those times when you must understand what the definition of “is” is.
There are significant differences between being pre qualified letter. and being pre approval letter.. Knowing what
they are beforehand can determine whether you actually close on the transaction or not.
There are many cases that the home seller only found out several weeks later that the homebuyer couldn’t
get the mortgage loan. When this happens, you not only have to let the buyer back off, but also have to refund the
earnest money to the homebuyer. Remember when you are issued pre qualified letter. or pre qual does not
mean the homebuyer can always get a loan. A pre approval letter. from a lender does qualify at a much greater
rate of success. So you need to understand this is the case most of the time, home sellers accepted offers without
asking the question if the homebuyer is qualified with a mortgage lender.
So you are now armed with the pre approval letter. that can help you find the home you are qualified to buy
taking into consideration of a satisfactory review, the credit underwriting is completed. Remember that in today's
times a pre qualified letter. is not enough in today’s market, you need to be approval by a real lender.
When you are serious about getting the house you want, you must understand the difference between these two terms.
If you are considering asking for a pre qualified letter., be sure to stress that you just want a letter. stating
that you are pre qualified for a loan, and that the pre qualified is subject to further review and due diligence,
which a direct lender like us, can do for you.
Let us do this new aspect, which is very important to have that “pre
approval” when you submit the contract. That way you can submit your offer with confidence, knowing that the loan
is ready to go as soon as you get the contract and the appraisal. The process usually takes a little more time, but
that is where a little planning comes in. Give yourself time, so you get started just a few weeks
before you plan to go house hunting, this will save an enormous amount of time, pressure, and anxiety on
everybody’s part when you do find that “home of your dreams”, and not loose your hope.
All 50 States | <urn:uuid:bcdee162-47f5-4148-a1bc-9a979750e902> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prequalifiedvspreapproved.com/pre-qualified-letter-vs-pre-approval-letter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959255 | 833 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Tower Bridge, England
Even if you are in Florence for one semester, you may travel in Europe at least 5 out of the 12 or 13 weeks of your study abroad period. Some of these travel weekends will likely be in Italy, with an organized group or a school field trip where transport and accommodation are already arranged for you.
However, if you want to visit such places as London, Dublin, Paris and Barcelona, and other cities that are not part of your program or local tour providers' offerings, you are going to need to organize your own travel.
One of the best deals for students, and a fun way to explore Europe, is by staying in hostels. Compared to hotels, hostels are great for meeting new people and usually have a bar or common space where you can mingle with the other guests. New hostels are being built all the time, and some of them are just as nice as hotels, yet they cost a fraction of the price of a hotel room.
Hardcore backpackers usually do not pre-book hostel stays because they have one precious thing that students abroad do not: time. Rather than waste time searching when you get to your destination, book a hostel as soon as you have booked your train or flights. Better yet, do some research so that you can arrive prepared for what the hostel does (or does not) provide, know exactly where it is located, and spend your time exploring your destination.
Finding youth hostels is easy-a quick Google search for ‘hostel in Paris' brings up three major hostel booking sites (www.hostels.com, www.hostelbookers.com and www.hostelworld.com)-but choosing a hostel and preparing for a stay takes a bit more savvy. Below are some quick tips that should get you on your way to becoming an expert hosteler.
Know What You Are
LOOKING FOR IN A HOSTEL
Location, location, location. Being centrally located is always preferable but it is even more important if you are traveling alone or with just one other person. Common rooms and the chance to meet other young people aside, you won't want to be stuck in the hostel all evening, but you may not want to wander too far away, especially if public transit is not a viable late-night option.
Check customer reviews. Find out what those who have stayed in the hostel have to say about the experience: Is the hostel clean? Is the staff friendly and helpful? Were other travelers happy with their experience? Was the location good?
Hostel booking sites offer ratings based on customer reviews, and comments help you choose the best place to stay. If you are still not sure, use a Google search to ‘review hostel X' to see what people have written online before you book. Another source of information is travel books, such as Let's Go or Lonely Planet, the guide books most commonly used by young travelers.
Be clear about what you are getting. Check the details: Are sheets and towels provided? Is there a curfew or lock-out? What time do you have to check out? Is secure luggage storage provided? Does the hostel accept credit cards? These questions and other particulars should be answered in the list of services on the hostel booking portal.
Girls only! If you do not want to share quarters with male travelers, look for hostels with single-sex rooms. Many women prefer hostels with private bathrooms so they don't have to walk out to the hallway to shared bathrooms.
BE A SAVVY TRAVELER
Take only the necessities. If you have only three days to see Paris, do you truly need your laptop? (My thought: if you have enough time to use your laptop, then you are not spending enough time exploring your destination. If you absolutely must check e-mail or make a quick Facebook update, most hostels have Internet access.) One thing you should be sure to take is a padlock so that if you must use lockers, your belongings will be safe while you're out sight-seeing.
Be in the know before you go. Check the weather forecast online so you know what to pack. Don't forget your plane tickets, passport and a copy of your passport (just in case!). Check what currency is in use in your destination and make sure you have some cash to exchange or an ATM card. And make sure that your map includes the area where your hostel is located. | <urn:uuid:e3105470-c80f-4d3d-b7df-a894876dce84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=5350&browse-by=Florence-forstudents | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947451 | 924 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Meaning: old Norse 'fearful'
Location(s): Blue Mountains, Erebor, Moria
Dates: III 2774 - 2994
Parents: Gróin (father)
Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, and Gloin were their names; and very soon two purple hoods, a grey hood, a brown hood, and a white hood were hanging on the pegs, and off they marched with their broad hands stuck in their gold and silver belts to join the others.
-An Unexpected Party, The Hobbit
Dwarves can make a fire almost anywhere out of almost anything, wind or no wind; but they could not do it that night, not even Oin and Gloin, who were specially good at it.
-Roast Mutton, The Hobbit
Gandalf, too, was lying down after doing his part in setting the fire going, since Oin and Gloin had lost their tinder-boxes.
-Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire, The Hobbit
'It is grim reading,' he said. 'I fear their end was cruel. Listen! We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall. Frár and Lóni and Náli fell there. Then there are four lines smeared so that I can only read went 5 days ago. The last lines run the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin. [...]
-The Bridge of Khazad-dûm, The Fellowship of the Ring
Kitt of Lindon 10.31.04. | <urn:uuid:73ac7d08-79f9-42d9-9a5b-5e004ddf1273> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henneth-annun.net/resources/bios_view.cfm?SCID=218 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967991 | 348 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Over at the community pages of Spore, the long-awaited (at least for me) “Sim-everything”, developers have released an early prototype, probably used to develop the space-phase, since it deals with gravitational interaction of particles.
Usually these prototypes are never seen by the public, but we thought some of the more intrepid players out there might enjoy playing around with a few of our early Spore prototypes. Keep in mind these are not tested, supported or even easily explained.
I have tested this prototype, and it’s really not player friendly. However, since I started making video games, I’ve manipulated countless prototypes or small “code toys” quickly hacked together to prove a certain point or to test an idea. These objects end up being stronger references to the team than every document you will ever be able to write, and yet they are systematically forgotten after the game has shipped.
Some weeks ago, I attended Ralph Baer’s talk at Paris GDC. One of his main concerns was that the video game industry had no memory at all. We’re so distracted by the speed sequels follow each other and new consoles come out that we have no time to look back. Design documents are either left to rot in some old backup drive in the archives of some company or jealously guarded by designers afraid of people stealing their magic or whatever.
Releasing an early prototype like the Spore team just did not only requires a lot of guts, it is also a way of making History available to everyone. Along the same lines, I would be delighted to buy printed version of my favorite games’s design documents for studying and collecting.
Okay, so maybe I’m a game design freak, but I think it’s very important to have some record of the development process of the game, which ideas were left out, which drastic decisions were taken, etc. Such documents provide a wealth of knowledge for the aspiring or confirmed designer, and yet they are kept hidden in the basement like deformed children.
I believe the entire video game industry would benefit from a simple legal deposit scheme. Shipped a game? send a copy of your design document(s) to a competent organism. Once online, you can specify whether you want the document to be public or just let it wait out until no-one owns the rights anymore. I see nothing but benefits from this approach: better games by avoiding common mistakes, putting an end to constantly reinventing the wheel, but most of all, this method might actually advance the form of the design document, making it a tool useful to everyone instead of just an afterthought.
I don’t want to sound alarmist, but I would like to finish this rant on a warning to every game designer out there: “Share all the documents you can now, you might regret it in 20 years”.
That was Ralph Baer talking about the documents to the Brown Box. If it happened to him, it WILL happend to us if we don’t do something about it. | <urn:uuid:36cc40cf-c1ea-4277-a3e4-965bb5aa8482> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bauger.net/2008/07/making-history-spore-devs-release-early-prototype/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963573 | 637 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The global economy appears to be headed over cliff this year. The emerging world is experiencing a significant economic slow down, the Eurozone will probably break apart in the next few months, and the United States faces sharp austerity measures at the end of the year. There are enough bearish developments here to make the original Mayan calendar look prescient after all. So should we despair? Is the global economy fated to collapse in 2012?
No, says Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari of Citigroup. Though the outlook is dire, they argue there is much more the Fed, the ECB, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England could do not only to prevent another global economic collapse this year, but also to spur global aggregate demand above its anemic levels as seen below:
Source: OECD Statistics
So what does Buiter and Rahbari recommend? Via FT Alphaville, here are their recommendations:
(i) reducing rates, first by lowering them all the way to zero (UK and euro area), then by eliminating the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates (all four currency areas)
(ii) carrying out more imaginative forms of quantitative easing (QE) & credit easing (CE), in all four currency areas, by focusing on outright purchases of and/or loans secured against less liquid and higher credit risk securities, subject to a sovereign guarantee (joint and several in the euro area) for all such risky central bank exposures
(iii) engaging in helicopter money drops (all four currency areas): a combined fiscal monetary stimulus
The authors say the best of these options is (ii) and (iii). These are radical proposals that would require both monetary and fiscal collaboration, but right now radical solutions are exactly what the world needs. The global economy needs a jarring slap to the face to awaken it from its heightened risk-averse stupor. These proposals would most likely do it, but they lack an endgame. How much imaginative QE and helicopter drop money should be done? This is an important question, because without an endgame to drive market expectations, these measures will be less effective and have the potential to unmoor long-run inflation expectations. And, as Kelly Evan notes, monetary authorities are loathe to simply try something without some guiding objective.
Enter a nominal GDP (NGDP) level target. It would provide an explicit endgame for the policymakers as they implemented these imaginative QE and helicopter drops. This would not only keep inflation expectations anchored, but would create the incentives for investors across the globe to do much of the heavy lifting required to restore robust global aggregate demand growth. For example, imagine that monetary authorities in the United States, Europe, United Kingdom, and Japan simultaneously announced they were going to engage in as much imaginative QE and helicopter drops necessary to restore NGDP to some pre-crisis trend. How do you think markets would respond to these announcements? It is highly likely that the mother-of-all portfolio adjustments would take place, with investors across the glove moving into riskier, higher-yielding assets in anticipation of higher aggregate nominal spending. This would raise asset prices, lower risk premiums, and create a self-sustaining recovery. It really is not that hard.
[S]overeign central banks have the means to defeat any depression thrown at them by launching mass purchases of assets outside the banking system, working through the classic Hawtrey-Cassel quantity of money mechanism until nominal GDP is restored to its trend line.
I hope policymakers prove him wrong.The problem is not scientific. A world slump is preventable if leaders act with enough panache. The hindrance is that the Euro Tower still haunted by Hayekians, and most G10 citizens – and Telegraph readers from my painful experience – view such notions as Weimar debauchery, or plain Devil worship. Economists cannot command a democratic consent for monetary stimulus any more easily today than in 1932. | <urn:uuid:a810487c-418d-4791-8875-8aa553a62672> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/2012/05/it-is-never-too-late-global-economic.html?showComment=1337198561079 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948371 | 806 | 1.960938 | 2 |
As Gas Prices Spike, More See Economic News as Bad
Source: Pew Research Center
Concern about prices –especially gas prices – appears to be a key factor in the more negative perceptions. Nine-in-ten (90%) say they are hearing mostly bad news about gas prices, up from an already high 77% in February. About six-in-ten (62%) say they are hearing mostly bad news about food and consumer prices in general. That’s up from 49% one month ago. | <urn:uuid:faff4173-1889-4930-b0dd-9739ed5a3c38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.fuelclinic.com/2011/03/13/as-gas-prices-spike-more-see-economic-news-as-bad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928724 | 104 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Central America Wearies under Dengue Onslaught
Por Néfer Muñoz
The tropical epidemic has been merciless in the region, and is revealing the vulnerability of the poorest sectors of the population.
SAN JOSE, (Tierramérica).-
More than 3,400 people have been infected and eight have died from dengue in El Salvador, and 6,500 cases and nine dead have been reported in Honduras, as the two countries' governments have been forced to declare a state of emergency.
There are hundreds of people infected in the rest of the Central American countries as well. Hospitals in many cities have been overrun in recent weeks with people complaining of high fever, dehydration and rashes, the classic symptoms of dengue, a disease that in its worst form can cause deathly internal hemorrhaging.
The true scope of the epidemic is likely to be much greater, as some experts calculate that for every case of dengue detected five more go unreported.
Dengue proliferates as a result of poverty, overcrowding, and the lack of hygiene, potable water and sanitation, as well as inadequate treatment of garbage and solid waste, experts told Tierramérica.
"Dengue is not exclusive to just one country. It is attacking all Central America and many other countries in Latin America," El Salvador's Health Minister José Francisco López said in a conversation with Tierramérica.
The Salvadoran authorities launched a house-by-house campaign in June to wipe out potential breeding sites of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the dengue virus.
The insect reproduces in stagnant water, whether it is in open containers, puddles, or discarded tires. The epidemic has worsened with the onset of Central America's rainy season -- May to November -- as the precipitation benefits the reproduction of the mosquito.
"This is an urban disease because the mosquito that transmits it is concentrated in urban areas," Costa Rican microbiologist and expert in epidemics, Teresita Solano, told Tierramérica.
The vulnerability of the isthmus arises in part from the deficient distribution of potable water in many cities, where the lack of reliable services prompts thousands of families to store water in their homes.
And their storage methods are not always appropriate. In many cases, tanks of water are left open, allowing mosquitoes to lay their eggs and rubbish to collect in the water supply.
Other factors favoring the propagation of any epidemic outbreak are overcrowding and the high population density.
El Salvador, with six million inhabitants living in 21,000 square km, is the most densely populated country in Central America and one of the highest densities found in Latin America.
On average, El Salvador has more than 250 people per square km, but in some parts of the capital, there are 3,000 to 9,000 people per square km.
Another factors hampering dengue prevention efforts is the great number of indigenous dialects in the region, making it difficult to get information out about the disease, added Solano, head of the epidemic monitoring unit at Costa Rica's Ministry of Health.
According to a study by the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, in El Salvador, the epidemic is hitting "the poorest and the neglected" the hardest.
Although the vast majority of the respondents to a survey conducted by the Francisco Gavidia University in El Salvador stated that they are aware of the disease, 53 percent admitted that they do nothing to prevent contagion.
"Dengue is a very dangerous disease, but it can be overcome if it is detected on time and the patient is given adequate medical attention," Solano said.
There is still no vaccine or cure for dengue, but its effects can be combated if the infected person maintains complete rest, ongoing hydration and takes acetaminophen.
The virus manifest in Central America has been found to be of the four known varieties, or serotypes: dengue 1, 2, 3 and 4. In general, they cause the classic form of dengue, which includes fever, rashes, weakness, joint pain and headache.
The real danger arises when a person is infected by the different serotypes in succession. It is then that hemorrhagic dengue can appear, causing internal bleeding that can lead to death.
Central America is fertile ground for infections diseases because of the overall lack of adequate waste collection systems and the loose rules of hygiene.
"There is a clear link between poor health and poverty," says Delmin Cury, an expert from the Dominican Republic who serves as an adviser on contagious diseases to the Pan-American Health Organization in Honduras.
Cury told Tierramérica that the solution to dengue requires concerted action by numerous sectors of society to resolve problems related to sanitation, potable water supplies and garbage collection.
The abatement of the dengue epidemic will only be possible if the population participates in these efforts, he said.
* Néfer Muñoz is an IPS correspondent. | <urn:uuid:5f4aa9fd-32ae-4447-bb33-69ae408fedd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tierramerica.info/print.php?lang=eng&idnews=2375 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940327 | 1,045 | 2.59375 | 3 |
In this prepcast, we’ll discuss how to handle the reading passage questions on the SAT exam. You might be surprised, but these questions are less about comprehension than knowing what to look for.
How to Approach SAT Reading Passage Questions (transcript)
Hi I’m Karl Schellscheidt, Welcome to ePrep. I want to talk to you for a couple of minutes about the passage questions; the passage based questions in the critical reading section. I think its human nature for kids going into that section to think I need to read this passage and I need to understand it really well so that when I get to the questions that are sort of based on the passage, I have an easy time with the questions.
I think the mistake that a lot of kids make is this however; they try to remember too much. They start reading and they start trying to memorize every word and every sentence because you never know they might be asking me a question on this sentence or I want to read it really carefully. And what happens if you approach it like that is at the end you’ll know like nothing. So, don’t try to memorize the words, don’t try to memorize every sentence or the way they phrase things.
What you want to do is you want to approach it like this: Read with the notion of trying to get images in your head trying to get a little movie to play. So if the passage is talking about dolphin intelligence you should picture the dolphins in the water; the little tricks they do that display their intelligence. Or if it’s about a young girl going to the market with her mother picture the young girl in the market with her mother and the exchange between the mother and the merchants.
By the time you finish reading what you really want is either a little movie in your head or images of what the passage was all about. That’s a much better frame of mind to be in; it’s a much better knowledge going into the questions. So what you want to do is you don’t want to try to memorize every word and every phrase. You want to just get images from it. You want to get a little moving picture in your head and that will make the difference. The questions will be a lot easier if you kind of have a mental picture of what the essay was all about. And if you need specific information you’ll know where to go to find it. And hopefully that will help you maximize your score.
Copyright 2006 — All Rights Reserved, ePrep, Inc. | <urn:uuid:d1c00d12-7cd3-43f1-b524-8ba1f59cacd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.eprep.com/2006/11/15/how-to-approach-sat-reading-passage-questions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957476 | 533 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Brass bands flourished in the United States throughout the last half of the nineteenth century and were popular in both the North and South during the Civil War. In July 1861, cornetist Gustavus W. Ingals was commissioned to organize selected New Hampshire and Massachusetts musicians to become the band of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. The band became one of the finest such ensembles and is now best remembered as the “Port Royal Band” because of an extensive duty tour at Port Royal Island, South Carolina. Its instruments consisted mostly of saxhorns—cornets and tubas—and they played largely from “part books,” like the ones displayed here, designed for individual instruments. It is believed that the band played during the Federal flag-raising ceremony at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865. | <urn:uuid:1dae8c0d-d26c-4ef4-8393-34689a804ae3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myloc.gov/Exhibitions/civil-war-in-america/november-1863-april-1865/ExhibitObjects/Hoisting-the-US-Flag-at-Fort-Sumter.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97744 | 166 | 3.234375 | 3 |
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Is this life all there is? Is it true that when we die, that's it - no more us? Or do we live on after death, continuing to experience things in new realms? Do we have some sort of immaterial "soul" which is actually the origin of our minds and consciousness now? Does this "soul" continue on after our deaths, migrating to some sort of heaven or higher dimension?All difficult questions, to be sure. And although it is not true that all atheists and all theists will answer the same way, it is a fact that most atheists and most theists will come down on opposite sides of the matter. Most atheists - at least in the West - don't believe in any sort of souls or afterlife. Most theists, including those involved in more modern "New Age" beliefs, believe in some sort of soul and afterlife.
If you wanted to learn more about the subject, just about everything you'd find would come entirely from theistic sources. Look in any bookstore or library and pretty much every book or magazine addressing the question of souls and an afterlife will be telling you that you do have a soul, that there is an afterlife, and that you should conduct your life with those two things in mind.But what about skeptical sources? Isn't there anything out there for people interested in a more critical review of the claims and evidence? Unfortunately, there isn't much - the market for skeptical treatments of religious and paranormal claims just isn't that big, probably because people generally don't like to have their favorite ideas criticized. And, without a doubt, the claim you don't really die will rank as one of people's all-time favorites.
There are, however, a very few books that are worth looking at for general skeptical looks at claims about souls, an afterlife, and Near Death Experiences. I'll take a look at information from two of them, each approaching the topic from different angles.The first book is Dying to Live, by Susan Blackmore. This book doesn't specifically address the existence of souls or an afterlife, but instead focuses on one very important thing: Near Death Experiences. These are important because they are cited as perhaps the best, most solid evidence for the existence of an afterlife by all types of believers. If this evidence is not as good as assumed, then the case for an afterlife is seriously weakened.
The second book is Are Souls Real? by Jerome W. Elbert, Ph.D. Elbert, a physicist and former researcher at the University of Utah, tackles the larger issues regarding the existence of souls and an afterlife. He explores recent scientific work on the nature of thinking, memories and consciousness in order to see if there is indeed any place for an immaterial "soul" at all. After all, if we don't need a soul to explain anything, then the case for one is once again weakened.Susan Blackmore should serve as picture-perfect example of what it means to be skeptical of supernatural and paranormal claims. As a student, she started out believing in the validity of all sorts of paranormal concepts - ESP, telepathy, astral planes, life after death... the works. But once she started to seriously investigate them, she found that the evidence wasn't what she assumed.
She devised her own experiments, and failed to find anything. She studied other groups, and failed to find anything. She visited haunted houses and even had herself "regressed" to search for past lives. She failed to find anything. She visited other experimenters, and only found experimental errors. In the end, she was accused of being a "psi-inhibitory experimenter," which means having the power of abolishing paranormal effects.All of this was documented in her book In Search of the Light: Science & The Paranormal, which covers a large amount of ground dealing with paranormal claims and what she discovered in her journey from believer to skeptic. According to her, "True skepticism has nothing to do with disbelief. It is about taking people's claims seriously and trying to understand them."
In her book Dying to Live, this is exactly what she does, focusing specifically on the claims that there exist experiences of an afterlife. Blackmore argues that Near Death Experiences (NDEs) cannot be explained in terms of either a real afterlife or through hallucinations. What this means is that in her exploration, she avoids being dismissive of either approach. Instead, she compares their predictions to NDE reports and experimental evidence.Blackmore does, however, have her own preferred description of what is going on and she shares it over the course of her book. She believes that the experiences can be explained in terms of unusual brain activity and (mis)interpretation of experiences.
Despite what some NDE supporters will claim, we must keep in mind that these experiences vary with the individual, the culture, and even the specific circumstances that the person was in. Another important fact to keep in mind is that experiences like those reported can be set off in a number of ways - a person doesn't even need to be near death to have them.
With these facts firmly in mind, Blackmore investigates the reports of NDEs and examines whether or not both those and similar experiences in other situations are better explained by the common supernaturalistic claims or by more prosaic, naturalistic events.There are four main arguments used to justify the hypothesis that NDEs are the result of an experience of an afterlife. They are:
The "consistency argument" is that the reported experiences are consistent around the world and through time. Although there are similarities in experiences reported in other cultures and in the past, we do not find invariance. Instead, we do find real differences in other cultures and in varying people.
The "paranormal argument" is that these experiences involve strange paranormal events which cannot be explained by any materialistic method. Thus, NDEs must involve some other dimension. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find independent corroboration for such claims.The "transformation argument" is that people's lives have been transformed in significant ways. This is presumed not to be possible if the experiences were not real - therefore, the experiences must be of a genuine afterlife. This, too, is fallacious - all that is required is for the individual to sincerely believe in what happened to them in order for them to change.
There are many alternatives to the supernatural/afterlife hypothesis offered by NDE advocates. On the point of consistency, we must remember that all of the people in question are humans with human brains - and so it is not unreasonable to realize that similar brains will produce similar experiences.Blackmore describes a variety of events which can produce the experiences reported: lack of oxygen to the brain, the release of endorphins, seizures in the limbic system and temporal lobe, the breakdown in the model of the "self" giving a "timeless" quality to the experiences, etc. With each claim about what a person experiences, there are simpler biological explanations which are superior to claims of an afterlife.
Jerome W. Elbert comes at the question of an afterlife from a different perspective. Instead of examining people's claims of having experienced such a thing, he examines the claim that there exists a soul which experiences such a thing.Elbert begins by examining the ancient origins of the soul concept, both in Christian and pagan belief systems. Actually, he spends quite a lot of time reviewing and criticizing religious doctrines in general and doctrines relating to souls in particular.
The discussion about the different types of "souls" that people have believed in is quite interesting - it helps remind us that the sorts of beliefs common today are not at all what people have always believed. The critiques of Christianity and the Bible may seem out of place but, as he points out, belief in the Bible is a source for many people's belief in a soul. If that trust is misplaced, then belief in a soul may also be in error.A more interesting part of his book is when he explains how the advance of science has changed our fundamental understanding of the brain and consciousness. These new understandings, he argues, have to impact traditional ideas about souls.
Everything in modern neuroscience points to the idea that consciousness arises from the operations of our physical brain. Although we cannot claim to fully understand it yet, this is not the same as actually having evidence that something outside our brains, much less something supernatural, causes our consciousness. No such evidence exists.As a matter of fact, people arguing the opposite have a tremendous job before them. Their position requires arguing that the nervous system does not operate in the same way it looks and, further, that it does not operate according to the laws of physics. Because of such difficulties, the models offered by such advocates fail to accomplish the task they were designed for.
Another interesting facet to Elbert's argument is that quite a few contemporary dilemmas actually have a lot to do with whether or not we posit the existence of a soul. Thus, his arguments are relevant for the questions of free will and even the debate over abortion. Elbert rejects the idea that we have free will in the traditional sense, but his arguments are too complex to reproduce here. They are, at any rate, interesting and should be taken seriously in light of his arguments regarding souls.So, is there an afterlife of any sort? Do we have a soul that transcends this earthly existence? Absolute answers may never be available - but all sound evidence suggests that those questions should be an answered with a "No."
Elbert's book makes a very sound case against traditional beliefs in the idea that we humans having something called a "soul" that produces our consciousness and lives on after our bodies have died. Blackmore's books does an excellent job fairly reviewing the arguments and evidence offered in favor of the idea that people who have died and were later revived experienced an "afterlife," concluding that the case of believers is not well supported.In the end, we do not have a rational and reasonable basis for the belief either in souls or in the afterlife. People will nevertheless attempt to convince you otherwise, and these two books may help you better understand and address their arguments.
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Add your comment | <urn:uuid:b7ce788d-dcc7-40c7-af22-b9ba88533fc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ciao.co.uk/Do_you_believe_in_life_after_death__Review_5540543 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964093 | 2,152 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) supports student health and achievement by ensuring that all DCPS students receive nutritious meals and acquire the resources to make healthy choices. We believe in providing appetizing school meals made from fresh, locally produced ingredients, and we strive to engage the entire D.C. community in implementing programs that encourage healthy decision-making and promote sustainable practices.
Our Vision for School Food
The DCPS Office of Food and Nutrition Services believes in serving students whole, primarily unprocessed, high-quality, natural foods which are prepared and presented in an appetizing manner.
We believe it is important to cultivate a natural palate at an early age.
We believe in the value of eating seasonally and in purchasing food from local growers to ensure peak freshness and to support the local economy.
We believe that eating is critical to academic success and that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
We believe that all students should have access to school meals and should be given food choice.
We believe that nutrition education and adult role modeling are fundamental to school food change.
We believe everyone deserves to be heard. Please contact us at email@example.com with questions, feedback and comments. | <urn:uuid:7de25bb8-256b-424b-a7d5-5c6d3a7521b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cfsa.dc.gov/DCPS/Beyond+the+Classroom/Food+Services | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950521 | 252 | 2.046875 | 2 |
At last the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is trying to tackle the problems that have been generated through a lack of consumer knowledge, particularly amongst the 18-40 age group, especially relating to savings, student loans, and debt matters.
According to an FSA spokeman, “Today’s 18-40 year olds are faced with greater challenges than were faced by their parents…the cost of not having the necessary skills to make sound financial decisions is becoming increasingly significant.”
Plans are to provide lessons to secondary school pupils in managing money and students in higher education will have access to debt and financial advice.
According to the FSA report,
- Half a million households are in serious financial difficulty, even in current benign economic conditions
- Most Britons are good at making ends meet but not so good at saving for the future
- Seven out of 10 consumers have no savings in place to see them through a sudden drop in income
- 42% of working age adults do not have a personal or workplace pension, yet 81% recognise that the state pension will not be enough for them to enjoy a comfortable retirement
With the financial pressure firmly on graduates through student loan repayments, lack of high paid graduate jobs, low starting wages for school leavers, high prices for first time buyers trying to get on the housing ladder, and the effective demise of most company contributing pension schemes, the onus has been placed on the young to further spread their already stretched finances to cover the future as well as paying off the past and trying to live in the present.
Consumers (including myself) need access to information, need to be helped to get the best deals, need to use information sites like Motley Fool, comparison sites like Moneynet, check out the products available online from the banks themselves, eg, Barclays. Make sure that you get the best deal. Use the information available, and don’t bury your head in the sand. With all the pressures that are placed upon us, and all the demands for our usually meagre finances, if you are anything like me, you will also need all the help you can get.
No related posts. | <urn:uuid:f9bfecdc-9ef0-4b5f-8d64-4b95f5c004fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cashzilla.co.uk/2006/03/28/fsa-to-tackle-lack-of-financial-knowledge-in-the-uk-about-time-too/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964574 | 441 | 2.328125 | 2 |
According to BBC News, this research survey found that 19 percent of women experience extreme anxiety when they are in a dentist’s waiting room, compared with men who are only 10 percent. The survey was conducted in England, Wales and Ireland, involving more than 11,300 people which were interviewed and 6,469 adults which were examined. (more…)
Hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy have a big impact on dental health of pregnant women. Pregnant women often have swollen gums that bleed easily. Problems with bad teeth can also affect the fetus.
“Changes in hormones due to pregnancy may lead to some changes in the condition of the mouth. One of them is the problem of the gums,” said Dr. Homa Amini in the publication of research results published in the General Dentistry journal. (more…)Recent search: dental check up for pregnant women
Did you know that female gets bigger bad impact of smoking than male? It is not only undermine the health, smoking also makes the beauty fades and aging faster.
Here are four effect of smoking for your beauty. (more…)
Sometimes we do not realize that the food and drinks we consume can affect your dental health. Coffee, tea, cola, red wine, and other colored drinks, actually responsible for tooth discoloration.
In addition, cigarettes and drugs that we consume could adversely affect the teeth. In fact, the white teeth can support the appearance. It’s just that we often ignore it. (more…)
Everyone out there at some point in time, will experience the pain of a toothache. Toothaches are very excruciating, some of the worst pain you will ever feel in your life. (more…) | <urn:uuid:4277c81f-11e9-4223-add0-1fc54ec6f908> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medicmagic.net/tag/dental-care | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97153 | 351 | 2.078125 | 2 |
The Emerging Practice of Global Environmental Law
Santa Clara Law School
December 20, 2011
Transnational Environmental Law, 2012
Vermont Law School Research Paper No. 06-12
Since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, ecological pressures on our planet have grown more acute. Yet, modern environmental law has also continued to evolve and spread within international as well as among national legal systems. With the paths of international and national environmental law becoming increasingly intertwined over the years, international environmental legal norms and principles are now penetrating deeper into national legal systems and environmental treaties are increasingly incorporating or referencing national legal norms and practices. The shifting legal landscape is also changing contemporary environmental law practice, creating greater needs for domestic environmental lawyers to be informed by international law and vice versa. This essay describes how domestic environmental law practice is increasingly informed by international legal norms, while the effective practice of international environmental law more and more requires enhanced awareness and even understanding of national environmental regulatory and governance systems. It illustrates these trends with the historical role and work of US EPA’s Office of General Counsel.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 15
Keywords: global environmental law, environmental law practice, legal convergence
JEL Classification: K32, K33, K41, Q20, Q28Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: December 22, 2011 ; Last revised: March 15, 2012
© 2013 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This page was processed by apollo2 in 0.562 seconds | <urn:uuid:cb79ca98-9b03-40ed-8830-829e8b4f3fb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1975653 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902128 | 305 | 2.09375 | 2 |
“The Hidden Gallery (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #2)” by Maryrose Wood
Genre: Children’s Fiction, Mystery, Historical Fiction
Other books: The Mysterious Howling
Summary from Goodreads:
Of especially naughty children it is sometimes said, “They must have been raised by wolves.”
The Incorrigible children actually were.
Thanks to the efforts of Miss Penelope Lumley, their plucky governess, Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia are much more like children than wolf pups now. They are accustomed to wearing clothes. They hardly ever howl at the moon. And for the most part, they resist the urge to chase squirrels up trees.
Despite Penelope’s civilizing influence, the Incorrigibles still managed to ruin Lady Constance’s Christmas ball, nearly destroying the grand house. So while Ashton Place is being restored, Penelope, the Ashtons, and the children take up residence in London. Penelope is thrilled, as London offers so many opportunities to further the education of her unique students. But the city presents challenges, too, in the form of the palace guards’ bearskin hats, which drive the children wild—not to mention the abundance of pigeons the Incorrigibles love to hunt. As they explore London, however, they discover more about themselves as clues about the children’s—and Penelope’s—mysterious past crop up in the most unexpected ways. . . .
I really enjoyed the first book so I was quite excited to pick up the next installment. It was a nice mix of the first book as well as a whole new story. I loved the appropriate amount of mystery and humor. The mysteries were all intriguing. There were many mysteries going on but it didn’t feel overwhelming. There is still the big mystery (where the children came from) that was never solved. There were some new developments and I have my suspicions of where things are going to go. There’s the title’s sake mystery (which kind of randomly popped up towards the end). Then of course there were many other small mysteries going on.
I still liked the humor. It’s very silly but very enjoyable. What can I say, I like little side comments throughout stories. I don’t know if there were more comments or tangent in this book compared to book one but it almost felt like it. There were definitely a few sections where the narrator got off on a random tangent and rambled for a while. I was a bit annoyed. I don’t mind a quick comment of a sentence or two but when the tangents last for a whole page or longer it’s a bit much (especially when they happen frequently).
The new story was fun. We took the characters out to a whole new city! What could be more fun than exploring London with the children? I loved that the children have developed and matured since the last book. They certainly have lost much of their wildness (except when small animals are involved). Alexander and Beowulf are especially impressive. I’d imagine it’s hard enough to get young boys (8-12) to act like proper young gentlemen let alone boys who were raised by wolves!
The bottom line? Yet another fun book. I’ll definitely pick up book three in the future! | <urn:uuid:25949cc7-8092-40a3-9259-74e7bca5b296> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecheapreader.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/book-review-the-hidden-gallery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972716 | 717 | 1.59375 | 2 |
It’s velvety. it’s dense. it’s rich with butter and eggs. Pound cake has been a baker’s staple since colonial times, when making it meant merely combining and baking a pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs (hence, its name).
Centuries later, that’s essentially the recipe we have here, with a few tweaks: The ingredient amounts are reduced by half to fit today’s standard loaf pans; vanilla is added to complement the cake’s sweet, buttery flavor; and superfine sugar is used because it ensures better volume in the batter.
Despite these adjustments, the attributes of this cake are still the same: It’s moist, flavorful, and dense (like the original, it uses no leavening) and has the signature dome and center crack (caused by steam release during baking) of all good pound cakes. It’s delicious—and clearly a cake with staying power.
Need to Know
Prepare your pan Use a light-colored 8-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 2-3/4-inch loaf pan (one that isn’t nonstick). Dark finishes often produce overbrowned results, and any other size pan will affect the shape, baking time, and texture of this cake. Butter the pan thoroughly, taking care to reach well into the corners and seams and all the way up the sides. After greasing, line the bottom of the pan with parchment. An easy way to cut it to size: Trace the bottom of the pan onto the parchment and then cut out the rectangle.
Use slightly firm butter If your butter is too warm or too cold, the batter won’t aerate properly. Let the butter sit at room temperature as you gather your other ingredients. Before using, press it firmly with your thumb; if your thumb meets some resistance and leaves a slight indentation, the butter’s ready to use.
Beat well, but don’t overmix This pound cake doesn’t call for leavening, so it’s essential to properly combine the butter and sugar. Beating the butter and then adding the sugar a little at a time will aerate the batter, making it fluffy and ensuring that the cake will rise. But when adding the dry ingredients to the batter, don’t overmix, or your cake will be tough.
Avoid the center When testing the cake for doneness, insert the tester alongside the center crack, not into it. The center crack will often appear moist, even though the rest of the cake is perfectly baked. If the tester comes out clean, remove the cake from the oven. The moist area may still remain, but don’t worry: The cake is done. | <urn:uuid:b443d7cb-b233-429c-acc0-f8bef93645dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.finecooking.com/articles/how-to-make-pound-cake.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911929 | 584 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Educational expenditure statistics
From Statistics Explained
- Data from September 2012. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.
Expenditure on education may help foster economic growth, enhance productivity, contribute to people's personal and social development, and help reduce social inequalities. The proportion of total financial resources devoted to education is one of the key choices made by governments in each country of the European Union (EU). In a similar vein, enterprises, students and their families also make decisions on the financial resources that they will set aside for education.
Main statistical findings
Public expenditure on education in the EU-27 in 2009 was equivalent to 5.4 % of GDP, while the expenditure of both public and private sources of funds on educational institutions amounted to 6.2 % of GDP (see Table 1).
The highest public spending on education relative to GDP was observed in Denmark (8.7 % of GDP), while Cyprus (8.0 %), Sweden (7.3 %), Finland (6.8 %), Belgium (6.6 %) and Ireland (6.5 %) also recorded relatively high proportions. Most Member States reported that public expenditure on education accounted for between 4 % and 6 % of their GDP (note that the data for Luxembourg excludes the tertiary education sector). Between 2004 and 2009 the combined public and private expenditure on education as a share of GDP rose by 1.9 percentage points in Ireland, 1.6 percentage points in Malta and by 1.5 percentage points in the United Kingdom; the only Member States to record a decrease in their relative expenditure were Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland, all down by either 0.1 or 0.2 percentage points. It should be noted that changes in GDP (growth or decline) can mask significant increases or decreases made in terms of education spending.
Declining birth rates in many countries will result in reduced school age populations, which will have an effect on ratios such as the average expenditure per pupil (given that expenditure is held constant). Annual expenditure on public and private educational institutions shows that an average of PPS 6 504 was spent per pupil/student in 2009 in the EU-27; this marked an increase of 18.5 % when compared with 2004. The expenditure on public and private educational institutions per pupil was almost four times as high in Denmark (the highest average among the Member States in 2009) as in Romania (the lowest average).
Data sources and availability
The standards for international statistics on education are set by three international organisations:
- the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics (UIS);
- the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD);
- Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
The main source of data is a joint UNESCO/OECD/Eurostat (UOE) questionnaire on education systems and this is the basis for the core components of the Eurostat database on education statistics.
Indicators on education expenditure cover schools, universities and other public and private institutions involved in delivering or supporting educational services. Expenditure on institutions is not limited to that made on instructional services, but also includes public and private expenditure on ancillary services for students and families, where these services are provided through educational institutions. At the tertiary level, spending on research and development can also be significant and is included, to the extent that the research is performed by educational institutions.
Total public expenditure on education includes direct public funding for educational institutions and transfers to households and enterprises. Generally, the public sector funds education either by bearing directly the current and capital expenses of educational institutions (direct expenditure for educational institutions) or by supporting students and their families with scholarships and public loans as well as by transferring public subsidies for educational activities to private enterprises or non-profit organisations (transfers to private households and enterprises). Both types of transactions are reported as total public expenditure on education.
Expenditure on educational institutions from private sources comprises: school fees; materials (such as textbooks and teaching equipment); transport to school (if organised by the school); meals (if provided by the school); boarding fees, and; expenditure by employers on initial vocational training.
Expenditure per pupil/student in public and private institutions measures how much central, regional and local government, private households, religious institutions and enterprises spend per pupil/student. It includes expenditure for personnel, as well as other current and capital expenditure. Public schools/institutions are defined as those which are directly or indirectly administered by a public education authority. Private schools/institutions are directly or indirectly administered by a non-governmental organisation (such as a church, trade union, a private business concern or another body).
Education accounts for a significant proportion of public expenditure in all of the EU Member States – the most important budget item being expenditure on staff. The cost of teaching increases significantly as a child moves through the education system, with expenditure per pupil/student considerably higher in universities than in primary schools. Although tertiary education costs more per head, the highest proportion of total education spending is devoted to secondary education systems, as these teach a larger share of the total number of pupils/students.
There is an ongoing debate in many EU Member States as to how to increase or maintain funding for education, improve efficiency and promote equity – a challenge that has become harder in the context of the financial and economic crisis and, in particular, increased levels of public debt. The debate is not purely about the levels and source of finance, but also concerns proposals for reforms of education policies and systems and raises questions as to the development of labour force skills for the future, for the benefit of individuals and society. Possible approaches to funding include tuition fees, administrative or examination charges, balanced by the introduction of income-contingent grants or loans to try to stimulate enrolment rates in higher education, in particular among the less well-off members of society. Another potential fundraising source is partnerships between business and higher educational establishments.
Further Eurostat information
- Key data on education in Europe - 2012 Edition
- 14 % of the funding of education institutions in the EU in 2008 comes from private sources - Statistics in focus 50/2011
- Indicators on education expenditure for 2007 - Data in focus 38/2010
- Key Data on Education in Europe - 2009 edition
- Indicators on education finance (t_educ_finance)
- Total public expenditure on education (tps00158)
- Private expenditure on education as % of GDP (tps00068)
- Public expenditure on education (tsdsc510)
- Annual expenditure on public and private educational institutions per pupil/student (tps00067)
- Annual expenditure on public and private educational institutions compared to GDP per capita (tps00069)
- Education (educ)
- Indicators on education finance (educ_finance)
- Expenditure on education in current prices (educ_fiabs)
- Expenditure on education in constant prices (educ_fiexpc)
- Expenditure on education as % of GDP or public expenditure (educ_figdp)
- Expenditure on public educational institutions (educ_fipubin)
- Expenditure on public and private educational institutions (educ_fitotin)
- Financial aid to students (educ_fiaid)
- Funding of education (educ_fifunds)
- Indicators on education finance (educ_finance)
Methodology / Metadata
- Education (ESMS metadata file - educ_esms)
Source data for tables and graphs (MS Excel)
- A guide to educational expenditure statistics
- UOE data collection on education systems – Volume 1 – Manual - Concepts, definitions and classifications
- European Commission - Directorate-General for Education and Culture
- OECD statistics on educational expenditure by nature and resource category
- OECD statistics on educational expenditure by funding source and transaction type
- United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) | <urn:uuid:889af9c8-34c3-4f4d-879f-02be0a50e88a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Educational_expenditure_statistics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944276 | 1,636 | 3.03125 | 3 |
CORRECTION APPENDED. See below.
In 2006, do-gooding is very much en vogue. We live in an era of
self-congratulation, and a happy byproduct of this time is that taking
part in organized acts of kindness is a must for every up-and-comer.
Yes, lending a hand is hip, but the world of charitable giving is very much in trouble.
For all their publicity stunts and feel-good lines, many of today’s powerhouse nonprofits are extremely inefficient. They commit the majority of their resources to pulling in potential donors through razzle-dazzle, so that there is little left in the way of resources for their actual causes. Inevitably, every organization has overhead costs, but a staggering number of charities today are falling out of control in this respect.
At one time, the American Cancer Society spent only 26 percent of its national multibillion-dollar budget on actual medical research, allotting the other three-fourths to “operating expenses.” In 2005, the Phoenix New Times reported that the Arizona branch of the organization spent a gasp-inducing 95 percent on overhead costs, leaving cancer victims “only the crumbs.” At the Arizona branch, the nonprofit spends 22 times as much on paying employees, maintaining the offices, and keeping the coffee machine running than on the cancer victims they are supposedly aiming to save.
A peer organization of the American Cancer Society, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, is practically efficient by comparison. Still, the foundation, which organizes the annual Breast Cancer 3-Day walking events nationally, can only manage to put forward 13 cents to its cause for every dollar it raises. Those 3-Day t-shirts must be high quality cotton. [See correction below.]
Of course, inefficiency is hardly limited to cancer-fighting organizations. The Greenpeace Fund—widely known for its environmental and conservation goals—is among the least efficient of environmental charities. It commits upwards of 82 percent of its fundraising to overhead costs. Costly tree-hugging. [See correction below.]
Several groups assess and rate nonprofits’ efficiency, equipping donors with the tools to pick their charities. Charity Navigator, one such group, ranks charities based on a five-star rating scale of efficiency and publishes data on the breakdown of nonprofits’ organizational spending. Charity Navigator bestows only one star upon the American Cancer Society, while the marginally more efficient Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation wins three stars. The popular March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation wins a two-star efficiency rating for spending 82 cents of every dollar it raises on overhead costs. [See correction below.]
The flaw of contemporary philanthropy, however, is bigger than just the existence of corrupt and inefficient nonprofit organizations. The underlying problem is the people that make these bloated charities possible—it is the proponents of these charities, after all, who are letting the organizations get away with sleaze. Americans, for all their supposed generosity, are not discerning enough when it comes to giving. They pour money into organizations like the American Cancer Society and the March of Dimes, because these organizations appeal to people’s publicity sensitivities. Too many worthy and efficient nonprofits are pushed aside by massive money-eating charities because donors prefer to go to galas than to actually do good.
Traditionally, the reasons to contribute to the health of society were fairly banal: general compassion for others; feeling good about yourself as you lie in bed at night pondering your life; political gains; the occasional tax deduction.
But now, the charity culture has taken on new form. In the new fundraising world, the strategy is making amusements. Charitable organizations attract philanthropists through “fun” incentives. Nonprofits organize events throughout the year that are booked as good times: the American Cancer Society puts on the Relay for Life event, and the March of Dimes Foundation organizes its famed annual walk to save premature babies— with its measly 18 cents per dollar raised.
Few people ask whether their money is being used wisely, but these events are wildly successful: Americans from a wide variety of demographics and socioeconomic networks turn up in droves. People are attracted to organizations like the American Cancer Society because they are glamorous and glitzy. The nonprofits pull in donors with promises of celebrity appearances and festive awareness-raising parties.
Although this trend of glamorous charity seems fantastic for the world of nonprofits, or at least innocuous, it is actually calamitous, because insincere philanthropy enables quasi-fraudulent inefficient charities.
Proponents of the charitable giving culture must seek reform within the shoddy nonprofits ruling the charity roosts. When giving money, donors should make use of resources like Charity Navigator to discern between which nonprofits use funding efficiently and which don’t. Only when this happens will the nearly-fraudulent charities of America feel the pressure to clean up their acts.
And until this sort of reform occurs, donors to some charities might as well run their dollar bills through paper shredders.
Lucy M. Caldwell ’09, a Crimson editor, lives in Wigglesworth Hall.
The May 15, 2006 op-ed, “Corrupt Charities,” incorrectly stated the percentage of donations to several charities that goes towards the people and programs that the charities exist to serve. According to Charity Navigator, a non-profit organization that reviews charitable groups, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation spends 76.2 percent of money on its causes, not 13 percent. The Greenpeace Fund spends 78.8 percent on its causes, not 18 percent. The March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation spends
75.1 percent, not 18 percent. Charity Navigator does, however, rate the efficiency of Greenpeace and March of Dimes as deserving only two stars, which signifies that it “needs improvement.” The Komen Foundation received a three-star “good” rating.
These significant mistakes occurred because the writer did not correctly read the information on the organizations listed on Charity Navigator’s website. Though Crimson policy is that all pieces must be fact-checked by an editor, the editor of this piece also misread the numbers.
The Crimson will investigate how the writer, the editor of the piece, and two proofers missed the factual inaccuracies, and will move to ensure that existing fact-checking policies are strictly followed so that similar errors will not happen in the future. | <urn:uuid:e7bcce8d-14e1-437a-9955-6aba2bcd6e2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/5/15/corrupt-charities-pstrongcorrection-appended-see-belowstrongp/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942233 | 1,348 | 1.984375 | 2 |