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By Chris Barrett
PBN Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE – A Rhode Island School of Design student saved the R.I. Department of Transportation $2 million by suggesting it reuse the piers from the old Interstate 195 bridge for the new pedestrian bridge taking its place.
R.I. Department of Transportation spokesman Charles St. Martin said saving the granite piers will save the department in demolition costs and expenses associated with constructing a new foundation.
“It’s a way of not spending that money,” he said.
The bridge over the Providence River will ultimately connect two waterfront parks. The new bridge will also provide a link between the Financial District and the Fox Point neighborhood without the need to walk north toward South Water Street or use the Point Street Bridge to the south. Construction is expected to start in late 2011 or early 2012.
“That’s a really important link for pedestrians and it’s something that we’re really excited to do,” St. Martin said.
St. Martin said the DOT ultimately also hopes to design a traffic pattern that will allow bikers coming off the East Bay Bike Path at India Point Park to cross the India Point Park Bridge spanning I-195, travel city streets to the new bridge and cross it into the city.
The new bridge is the last of two pedestrian bridges associated with the Iway project, the other being the bridge at India Point. St. Martin said while bridgework on the project remains in the form of new ramps, the pedestrian bridge is the last nonramp related bridge of the project. DOT’s rough estimates show it could cost about $2 million, Martin said. The bridge is being designed by Exeter-based William D. Warner Architect Architects and Planners, which also led the design of the arch bridge carrying I-195 over the Providence River. | <urn:uuid:4f8c3792-e704-48fb-a872-292d43b4455a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pbn.com/RISD-student-saves-DOT-2-million,49190 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936704 | 382 | 1.726563 | 2 |
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Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb Persian: تنب بزرگ و تنب کوچک , Tonb-e Bozorg and Tonb-e Kuchak, Arabic: طنب الكبرى و طنب الصغرى , Tunb el-Kubra and Tunb el-Sughra; are two small islands in the eastern Persian Gulf, close to the Strait of Hormuz. They lie at 26°15′N 55°16′E / 26.25°N 55.267°E and 26°14′N 55°08′E / 26.233°N 55.133°E respectively, some 12 kilometers from each other and 20 kilometers south of the Iranian island of Qeshm. The islands are administered by Iran as part of its province of Hormozgan, but are also claimed by UAE as a territory of the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah. Greater Tunb has a surface of 10.3 km². It is known for its red soil. There are conflicting descriptions about its population: While some sources state there are between a few dozen and a few hundred inhabitants, others describe the island as having no native civilian population. There is reported to be an Iranian garrison and naval station, a fish storage facility and a red-soil mine. Lesser Tunb has a surface of 2 km² and is uninhabited with the exception of a small airfield, harbor, and entrenched Iranian military unit. (via Freebase) | <urn:uuid:6f92035a-5a06-4fdb-aa7c-925b9566a17e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.linktv.org/topics/greater-and-lesser-tunbs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934206 | 373 | 2.21875 | 2 |
TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s economic recovery continued to outpace the national average in December, although there was some fluctuation in the local numbers.
The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity released its December employment report Friday. Florida’s statewide unemployment rate decreased to 8 percent, its lowest level since November 2008, and was closing in on the national jobless rate of 7.8 percent.
In the past year, Florida’s unemployment rate has dropped 1.9 percent while the national rate has dropped 0.7 percent.
“Florida continues experiencing growth in a number of economic indicators, including increases in housing starts, median home prices, online job ads, job placements and migration into the state,” Rebecca Rust, chief economist for the Department of Economic Opportunity, said in an email. “Florida’s long-term trends show a steady and modest economic recovery. Florida’s unemployment rate has shown significant improvement, declining from the recession high of 11.4 percent to the current 8 percent.”
Okaloosa County’s unemployment rate dropped in December. However, Walton and Santa Rosa counties increased slightly.
Okaloosa’s jobless rate dropped from 5.9 percent in November, 2012, to 5.8 percent last month. It had had the third lowest unemployment rate in Florida for December.
Walton County’s unemployment rate increased to 5.7 percent in December, which still was the second lowest rate in the state behind Monroe County at 4.5 percent. Walton County’s unemployment rate was 5.5 percent in November.
Santa Rosa County’s jobless rate increased from 7.1 percent in November to 7.2 percent in December. It tied with Nassau and Hardee counties for the 19th lowest in the state.
“You’re going to see this through 2014,” said local economist David Goetsch. “You’re not going to see major changes. We’re going to see this tepid — a little bit up, little bit back — kind of unpredictable (changes), but you’re not going to see any big numbers. The economy is improving, but it just isn’t improving strong enough to show any major numbers.”
Although Goetsch expects the numbers to stay fairly consistent in the coming months, there are factors that could change that. On Thursday, the Secretary of the Air Force implemented a civilian hiring freeze, which will affect Okaloosa more than most other counties in the state.
Contact Daily News Business Editor Dusty Ricketts at 850-315-4448 or email@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @DustyRnwfdn. | <urn:uuid:b03fbc19-4d64-4b69-b4fc-8ff613068859> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crestviewbulletin.com/news/business/december-jobless-numbers-mixed-in-northwest-florida-1.82274 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939229 | 572 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The 35,000-square-foot Colonial Revival house of George Eastman took three years to build and was completed in 1905 at a cost of $300,000. The estate originally included a stable, garage, barn, five greenhouses, and many vegetable and flower gardens on eight and one-half acres. The house has thirty-seven rooms, thirteen baths, and nine fireplaces.
Today the house is home to the International Museum of Photography and Film which resides behind the original home which is kept as a memorial to the man who created modern photography through his company, Kodak.
I have visited other homes and museums of millionaires from the 19th and 20th century before. Unlike the others, George Eastman never married so his home was more like a bachelor pad. As an avid big game hunter, he used lots of animal trophies, furs and even feet of antelopes and elephants for ashtrays and trash cans in his house. His library features a desk topped with a rhinoceros hide.
In 1928, on George Eastman’s second African safari, he returned with an elephant trophy. Research has showed that Eastman’s taxidermists were so impressed with the animal’s great size they made a mold of it to cast a copy for their showroom. In 1989 the mold was used again to create the fiberglass replica now on display in the conservatory during a $1.7 million dollar restoration of the house.
The elephant George Eastman had taken only had one tusk and was described as “rogue”. He had the tusk removed, mounted separately and displayed on the floor below the trophy. Two wooden tusks were made for the mounted head as replacements. The original ivory tusk has long since disappeared and another is on display (seen in the photo above). George Eastman also supported financially the first wildlife film photographers in Africa which brought back the wonders of the continent which was full of mysteries to Western civilization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Floor to ceiling book shelves are found on every wall in Eastman’s library except where the window and fireplace are. This is one of the smaller rooms in the house and George had more shelves built in the living room to be able to hold his entire collection of books.
I planned my visit to the George Eastman House a few weeks ago so it was a coincidence a couple of days before I took these photos Kodak, the company George Eastman founded back in 1888, declared bankruptcy. It is my hope, Kodak can emerge from it and again take its place as one of the most innovative technology companies in the world as it had become when George was at the helm. | <urn:uuid:0e9ed7ea-9858-4ecd-9543-13ec23a27837> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://viewsinfinitum.com/2012/01/23/view-213-george-eastman-house/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981616 | 561 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is characterized by the infiltration of the central nervous system (CNS) by immune cells.
A particular type of immune cell, Tc17, has been found in MS lesions in humans, but it is unclear what role these cells play in disease pathogenesis. In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Magdalena Huber at the University of Marburg in Germany used a mouse model of MS to determine the role of Tc17 cells.
They found that Tc17 cells help Th17 immune cells to invade the CNS by secreting the protein IL-17. Without Tc17 cells, the Th17 cells did not accumulate in the CNS, preventing the development of MS.
This study demonstrates that Tc17 cells help initiate MS by allowing immune cells to reach the CNS and suggests that therapies targeting Tc17 cells might be helpful in treating early MS.
TITLE: IL-17A secretion by CD8+ T cells supports Th17-mediated autoimmune encephalomyelitis | <urn:uuid:72321990-09d5-4400-bc35-cabbee98a2e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencecodex.com/researchers_identify_immune_cells_that_contribute_to_the_development_of_multiple_sclerosis-104484 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925194 | 210 | 3.125 | 3 |
“How much does a video cost?” is a question we hear a lot, of course. But it’s an open ended question. Kind of like “How much does a house cost?” or “How much does a car cost?” We need a little more information. What kind of house? What type of car? Think about making a movie. Most feature films are about two hours long. But one can cost a couple million to make, another, like the movie Avatar, can cost several hundred million. Why is one film 100 times more expensive? It is all about what it took to create that two or so hours of film. The same is true in video. After all, we are shooting like film. | <urn:uuid:a6012366-dc2c-4e86-a2cf-5f2644987545> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cinematixhd.com/video-pricing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973142 | 155 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Allmyapps has grown a lot since we last covered them. They had 100,000 users back in April, but recently hit 2.5 million. But with the news that Miscrosoft will develop its own Windows Apps store, they will have to “pivot”, as they say. Thus they are repositioning as a “Personal App Manager” to go beyond the Windows world. What does that mean?
Well, there are many app stores and and no centralised way to backup, install and sync. Allmyapps now plans to automatically detect and saves all the apps you use, be they desktop, web or mobile, to provide you with a central hub to manage software across all your devices.
You can already do this with its 15,000 Windows PC applications but now they plan to building synchronicity between PCs and your Android apps and devices, in the same way that Dropbox allows users to share, synchronize and save files on multiple devices.
Thibauld Favre, co-founder estimates that by 2015 over 300 million people will own at least three different devices, each installing more than 200 apps a year. That seems highly probable.
This is a startup to watch in 2012. | <urn:uuid:54ef9d0d-b550-4892-8aa0-d178c5e915a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jetlib.com/news/tag/repositioning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959397 | 252 | 1.695313 | 2 |
How to get to Kiribati
There are only 3 ways to fly to Tarawa, the main atoll of Kiribati: from Fiji on Air Pacific, from Nauru on Air Nauru, and from Majuro (in the Marshall Islands) on Air Nauru. So from LA (or Sydney, or Auckland), you could fly to Fiji, and then take the Air Pacific flight to Tarawa (Tuesdays and Thursdays). In 1996, Air Nauru recommenced operations with a new Boeing 737. It flies the route: Brisbane - Honiara - Nauru - Tarawa - Majuro and back. This is done all at once in each direction, so just the one plane takes you from Brisbane to Tarawa, but with 2 short stops in between.Getting to Majuro to go on to Kiribati (Tarawa) is extremely expensive. There are flights to Majuro s from Honolulu, so one way to get to Kiribati is to fly first to Honolulu, then to Majuro, and then to Kiribati.In summary, getting to Kiribati is not easy or cheap. But it is worth it, if you ask me ! | <urn:uuid:83c5146e-bc3a-4f9c-8b39-1370834650ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Australia_and_Oceania/Kiribati/Transportation-Kiribati-TG-C-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921115 | 246 | 1.75 | 2 |
This collaboration between Columbia College, the School of General Studies, and Columbia Business School offers undergraduate students access to the ideas and expertise of the Business School’s world-renowned thought leaders through a series of elective courses.
These courses, designed by Columbia Business School faculty members specifically for undergraduates, build upon the strong liberal arts foundation of Columbia’s undergraduate curriculum. Students learn how finance is directly connected to the fundamental principles of economics, that marketing utilizes concepts from psychology, how management depends upon principles developed in psychology and sociology, and more. Students have the opportunity to broaden their business education beyond the classroom by participating in co-curricular activities with the Business School, including a faculty lecture series, industry panels, informal mentoring and networking activities with MBA students and alumni, and opportunities to work on research with Columbia Business School faculty members.
This curricular and co-curricular programming capitalizes on Columbia Business School’s ability to connect academic theory with real-world practice, which provides students the opportunity to sharpen their leadership skills, hone an entrepreneurial mindset, and strengthen their ability to innovate. | <urn:uuid:9cb04aa6-d8f5-480d-8e5b-ff3470a5ff4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www7.gsb.columbia.edu/undergraduate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947168 | 225 | 1.664063 | 2 |
At times it seems we are close, very close, to the events and people not only of the Civil War, but of the earliest period in this country's history. Not necessarily through blood, politics, cultural backwash, or personal connections, but through the trans-historical human lifespan. We are closer in time than appearances might allow.
We would know this better if we history readers didn't suffer a time distorion effect brought on by our reading. Call it "periodization." We become period-conscious, unlike those friends and neighbors who read less history.
For example, scouring some archives last year, I was a little bit surprised and confused to read the letters columns in various newspapers after General George B. McClellan (USA) died and his obituaries ran (1885). You see, some letters to the editor were by Mexican War vets remembering McClellan in the Mexican War and it was very confusing for a history reader like me to think that Mexican War veterans could cross the divide from one period to the next (Civil War) and then to yet another (Gilded Age). And at the end of that crossing, they remembered McClellan exclusively in his Mexican War context.
Disorienting. But Mexican War veterans were living well into the 20th Century.
The feeling of awe at how close we are in time struck me again last night in reviewing a note on the career of the Rebel George Rutledge McClellan. The note appeared in A Fighter from Way Back: The Mexican War Diary of Lt. Daniel Harvey Hill, 4th Artillery, USA. (Hill mentioned the obscure George R. in his diaries but not the more famous George B.)
I thought of the time spent with my mother's father, a gold mine of first-hand history. When he was six, before the 20th century began dealing him its history cards directly, he experienced it vicariously through newspaper reading. He even began a scrapbook of news clippings featuring those Russo-Japanese incidents that led to war. That reading and clipping started in 1904, the year George R. McClellan died.
So, my grandfather and George R. were connected in time. Col. McClellan had figured in the removal of the Cherokees in 1838; he fought in the Mexican War (as a USV); and he was even a cavalry commander in the Civil War (CSA). His death overlapped my grandfather's birth by six years. This instrument of Jackson, Polk, and Davis was hardly one person away from someone I was quite close to. Someone who could have clipped his obit for a child's scrapbook.
The feeling you get from these associations is odd, very special, and a limited byproduct of history reading. It might even be fair compensation for the time distortion we suffer through periodization. | <urn:uuid:0f4da0ca-0787-42d6-89a0-90906b0629ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cwbn.blogspot.com/2004/02/at-times-it-seems-we-are-close-very.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 | 0.979368 | 584 | 2.4375 | 2 |
- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Houston is a city in Texas County, Missouri, United States. The population was 2,081 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Texas County. | <urn:uuid:7c6da839-0caf-48a7-9f0b-583ce6087b64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Houston%2C_Texas%2C_Missouri%2C_United_States | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915311 | 67 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Black History Month Talib Kweli: Black History Month Should Be Expanded
Talib Kweli: Black History Month Should Be Expanded
By Yannique Benitez
Posted Jan 26th 2011 3:50PM
Rapper Talib Kweli made a mark on hip-hop music with his debut album, "Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star," in 1998.
The conscious Brooklyn rapper also collaborated with hip-hop artists Hi-Tek and Kanye West to create hits like the "The Blast" and "Get By." Since then, Kweli's created a website, "Year of The Blacksmith," and released his latest CD, "Gutter Rainbows," on Jan 25th.
Here Kweli talks Black History Month and what it means to him.Black Voices: What was the most pivotal moment in history that impacted you and why?
Talib Kweli: In my own experience, it was seeing Stevie Wonder perform at the White House as a child in the early 1980s. It was extremely moving, and I was fortunate to have my mother take me to see him in person.
BV: Do you celebrate black history?
TK: Yes, but I think it should be incorporated into general history. I believe in the importance of Carter G. Woodson's idea, but I don't do anything particularly special for the month. As an African American, I think it should be a part of everyday life. This country was built on the backs of African Americans and this history is the world's history.
BV: Did you celebrate black history as a youth? How?
TK: Yes, I did with my parents, but in school I don't think it's done in a genuine way. For example, my wife is from Texas, where racism is rampant, and celebrating Black History Month in school did give her a sense of pride but made her feel slightly embarrassed.
BV: Do you think black history month is important?
TK: Yes, we definitely need it, but it could be done in a better way instead of one month. I think that the celebration of African American's contributions should be incorporated in to the school system as early as possible and not just in a superficial way, giving kids information about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
BV: What do you hope your children take away from black history month and your career as a musician?
TK: I hope my children can develop a sense of pride in who they are and be proud of me. I know that if my parents weren't as educated and Afrocentric, I wouldn't be the same person. I wouldn't even have the ethnic name Talib Kweli. I want my children to know that in this world they can always dream up a job if it doesn't already exist.
BV: Who are some icons and contemporary hip-hop artists you admire?
TK: I really admire Nina Simone and John Coltrane for their contributions to music, and I'm definitely not a hip-hop snob. I admire any artist who's made the effort to make a song and put out good music.
Tags: Carter G. Woodson, CarterG.Woodson, Gutter Rainbows, GutterRainbows, Hi-Tek, John Coltrane, JohnColtrane, Kanye West, KanyeWest, Martin L. King Jr., MartinL.KingJr., MLK, Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star, MosDefAndTalibKweliAreBlackStar, Nina Simone, NinaSimone, Rosa Parks, RosaParks, Talib Kweli, TalibKweli
Add a Comment | <urn:uuid:6cf1201d-0b17-4f1f-aef8-c52fada5dbf1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://black-history.blackvoices.com/2011/01/26/talib-kweli-on-black-history-month/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959854 | 765 | 1.90625 | 2 |
NEW YORK, NY.- Mary Boone Gallery
is showing at its Fifth Avenue location an exhibition of sculptural neon works by Keith Sonnier.
Referencing Sonniers investigations at the beginning of his career(the late 1960s) where he employed cloth, neon light, screening, and visible electrical circuitry, the Oldowan Series is a group of wall works that combine sexually charged and psychologically loaded fabrics like gauze and satin with steel armatures. Enduring natural materials such as wood and stone play off of the evanescent quality of neon light.
Oldowan is a term applied to the earliest manufactured stone tools in Africa, first used by George Leakey to describe finds at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The titles of individual works in Sonniers series Omo, Faya, Fora, Tulu come from the designations of various Paleolithic riverbed sites.
Also on view are works from Sonniers Chandelier Series. This body of work originated when Sonnier began renovating his Victorian-era house on Long Island, which had no ceiling fixtures. Sonnier designed a series of chandeliers to be used in the home, and later expanded the concept to produce larger works for public spaces.
The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, is on view through 6 February 2010. | <urn:uuid:bd843c3c-9f9a-4548-b465-181bf543d4ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=35916&int_modo=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948099 | 272 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Social Media and Romance
By Health Day
..but continued to follow your former lover on Facebook?
With more than 900 million members worldwide on Facebook...it's pretty easy to do. But it's not good for you.
Researchers in the United Kingdom assessed the impact of continued Facebook "creeping"...following but not contacting the person or their friends directly.
In the group of 464 online survey participants, Facebook surveillance was associated with greater current distress over the
breakup, more negative feelings, sexual desire, and longing for the ex-partner as well as lower personal growth.
Those who remained Facebook friends with the ex-partner reported less negative feelings, sexual desire, and longing for the former partner, but lower personal
Growth compared to those who did not remain Facebook
So the advice? Move on for your own mental health.
I'm Dr. Cindy Haines of HealthDay TV, with the news doctors are reading health news for healthier living. | <urn:uuid:6418b3d8-a99e-499b-9397-8b3e2168bcfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbbjtv.com/news/health/?feed=bim&id=171260081 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940551 | 201 | 1.648438 | 2 |
|Noah Webster's Dictionary|
1. (imp. & p. p.) of Slash.
2. (a.) Marked or cut with a slash or slashes; deeply gashed; especially, having long, narrow openings, as a sleeve or other part of a garment, to show rich lining or under vesture.
3. (a.) Divided into many narrow parts or segments by sharp incisions; laciniate.
Slashed (2 Occurrences)
1 Kings 18:28 They cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. (See NIV)
Jeremiah 48:37 For every head is bald, and every beard clipped: on all the hands are cuttings, and on the waist sackcloth. (See NIV) | <urn:uuid:6fdcc4a3-3f30-4995-96e5-389e7f65a465> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://refbible.com/s/slashed.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925201 | 175 | 2.921875 | 3 |
|© © UNICEF/NYHQ2009-1246/Giacomo Pirozzi|
|Children, holding plates and spoons, queue for lunch at Ambohitsimelo Public Primary School in Madagascar's Itasy Region.|
Tefal has pledged its support to UNICEF’s Madagascar program, thereby forming an international partnership to promote and improve nutrition among the most disadvantaged communities in Madagascar.
Madagascar is among the 36 countries of the world that have the lowest indicators of nutrition. In addition, half of Malagasy children under the age of five suffer from stunted growth. UNICEF is making every effort, with support from Tefal, to enhance the knowledge and capacities of parents and caregivers of children. The goal of the program supported by Tefal is to promote the best practices of nutrition and health through community networks.
“Thanks to the support of Tefal this year, children in 11 districts of Madagascar will benefit from improved nutrition and have a better chance of growing up healthier and reaching their full potential,” said Nichole Brown, Chief of Corporate and Foundation Fundraising at UNICEF International.
The principle of the partnership is simple: For every Tefal nonstick pan purchased across the world, Tefal donates one Euro to UNICEF. A donation of one Euro is the cost of a daily recommended portion of ready-to-use therapeutic food for a severely malnourished child.
Worldwide Tefal has committed to donate 500,000 Euros to UNICEF’s work in more than 20 countries and in 2011-2012 will focus on supporting UNICEF nutrition programs reaching children affected by HIV/AIDS.
Tefal website [link opens in new window] | <urn:uuid:6a229745-ecdb-4ea2-bd81-80c3a867f3aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unicef.org/corporate_partners/index_25174.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928343 | 363 | 2.484375 | 2 |
How to Read Between the LinesOctober 29, 2009
I was commissioned to write something for the Daily Telegraph on communicating smartly at work. It is printed here - hope that you like it
I get a very small mention in the Brighton and Hove Argus!!October 21, 2009
and when I said small….I meant small…
More PowerPoint and Presentation SkillsOctober 21, 2009
I had a very enjoyable day today with the lovely people at Chichester Diocesan Family Support Work doing the second day of our Presentation Skills course. As promised I’m adding my PowerPoint Slides - presentation-skills-day-two1.
The step-by-step guide to beginning a PowerPoint presentation from scratch seemed to go well too and I’ll upload this here. using-powerpoint
I always find running Presentation Skills courses very emotional. I really enjoy watching people really come out of their shells and start sharing their expertise and their personality. One participant was really interested in the quote by Marianne Williamson which is often wrongly attributed to Nelson Mandela which reflects this wonderful flowering which people experience when they build confidence in public speaking- here is the quote in full.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Negotiating and Influencing SkillsOctober 17, 2009
I ran an Introduction to Negotiating Skills course this week at East Sussex County Council. The group was great and worked hard throughout the day. I promised to let them have the PowerPoint slides for the day, so here they are negskillswithtemplate
The day was very active and full of exercises and chances to reflect on matters which directly affected the group on the workplace. However, as one participant pointed out, it was a little light on theory.
To make up for this, I’m posting some links here which I hope will help.
As I mentioned my Observations, Requirement and Requests model was based on Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communications model of which more of here.
The NLP rapport skills tips are well described here. A pretty thorough description of objectives-setting in negotiations can be found here, although you’ll note that we used different terms to denote what the author calls “most favoured position” and “limit”
Hope that helps! | <urn:uuid:648c98db-7e08-408d-a510-903d9401cce0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.workplace-dynamics.co.uk/2009/10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967857 | 646 | 1.609375 | 2 |
CMTX is a subtype of CMT, a genetic, neurological disorder that causes damage to the peripheral nerves — tracts of nerve cell fibers that connect the brain and spinal cord to muscles and sensory organs.
CMTX has many of the same symptoms of CMT1 and CMT2, including muscle weakness and atrophy, and changes in sensation, mostly in the feet, lower legs, hands and forearms.
CMTX is caused by mutations in the gene for connexin 32, which normally codes for a protein located in myelin, the insulating sheath that surrounds nerve fibers.
CMTX has its onset in childhood or adolescence, and progression is generally slow.
CMT research is focused on exploring the effects of defects in genes related to the peripheral nervous system and devising strategies to combat these effects. | <urn:uuid:f289c552-33d9-445f-b6c6-bbb6381eaa08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mda.org/disease/charcot-marie-tooth/cmtx?page=1 | 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 | 0.957553 | 171 | 3.25 | 3 |
I’m sure everybody here knows what it means to play a game of dominoes. Nobody exactly agrees on the rules, of course, about things like whether you put the double six sideways at the beginning of the game or not, and whether you judge who comes second by the combined number of dots on the remaining pieces. But every single person in the whole wide world who has ever played a game of dominoes agrees on one single thing: there comes a point in every game when you lose interest in the regular rules and start to make a long snake by lining every piece up on its end about an inch apart and then watching them topple over. And YouTube gives us the proof: because there you will find thousands of people have deemed their efforts of lining up and then toppling over myriad upon countless myriad of dominoes in ever more elaborate cascades are worthy of viewing by the whole world.
Think about that cascade of dominoes for a moment. And think about its metaphorical power. On July 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was shot by a Serbian assassin in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary prepared for war with Serbia. Russia prepared to defend Serbia against Austria-Hungary. Germany prepared to defend Austria-Hungary against Russia. France prepared to defend Russia against Germany. Germany prepared to attack France through Belgium. Britain prepared to defend Belgium against Germany. The Turks rallied behind Germany. Japan rallied behind Britain. Within a month, all were at war. The first domino fell; and the rest came tumbling down. Four years later, 15 million people were dead.
Think about Rwanda. Before the Belgians came, the minority Tutsi had ruled over the majority Hutu. The colonial Belgians exacerbated the tensions between the peoples, and by the time they left, the Tutsis held almost all the political and economic power, while the Hutus were mostly landless and poor. In 1962 the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and instituted a Hutu republic. In 1990 Tutsis invaded from Uganda and started a civil war. In 1994 the Hutus assassinated their own president and initiated a genocide of Tutsis, killing 800,000 in 100 days. Years later the refugee Tutsis, now in north-eastern Congo, initiated a civil war in the Congo. Again, one domino fell, and then another, and another. And there seems no end to it, even today.
Holy Week tells a story of falling dominoes. One after another disciples, crowd, Pharisees, Romans, Sadducees, scribes, criminals, bystanders, pilgrims all fall down one after another. It’s a domino story. It’s a fall story. It’s a kind of multi-dimensional, violent re-enactment of the story of Adam and Eve. A mixture of temptation, short-sightedness, fear, panic, forgetfulness, stupidity, and rebellion leave practically every character sprawled on the ground like fallen dominoes.
Except one. That’s what we see in Holy Week. We see God, in human form, insert two hands into that cascade of falling dominoes, and say, “Stop.” The dominoes have been falling so fast for so long and so violently that those two hands that get in the way get overwhelmed, get crushed, get obliterated. They get nailed. Because they are divine hands, they have the power to stop even a rampaging torrent of plummeting dominoes. But because they are human hands, they hurt like hell. That’s what happens in the cross. The divinity of humankind says “Stop.” And the humanity of God gets crushed. | <urn:uuid:2c89c98d-b069-444d-a71f-738dd6b334da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://geographyofgrace.com/author/dwilson/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948388 | 783 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Hubble sees multiple star generations in a globular cluster
Hubble’s observations of the massive globular cluster NGC 2808 provide evidence for three generations of stars that formed early in its life. This is a major upset for conventional theories that propose a single period of star birth.
Globular clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars held together tightly by gravity. They are among the earliest settlers of the Milky Way, born during our Galaxy’s formation. NGC 2808 has two to three times more mass than a typical globular cluster. Of the about 150 known globular clusters in our Milky Way, it is one of the largest, containing more than 1 million stars
“The generally accepted view is that all of its stars originated at the same time and place, from the same material and have co-evolved for billions of years,” said team member Luigi Bedin of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany.
“This is the cornerstone on which much of the study of stellar populations has been built. So we were very surprised to find several distinct populations of stars in NGC 2808."
The analysed data provides evidence that the cluster gave rise to three generations early in its life. Several distinct populations of stars were found, born within 200 million years- very early in the life of the 12.5 thousand million year old cluster.
“We had never imagined that anything like this could happen,” said Giampaolo Piotto of the University of Padua in Italy, leader of the team that made the discovery.
Such a finding, so close to home has deep cosmological implications. "We need to solve the puzzle to understand how stars formed in distant galaxies in our early Universe," Piotto explained.
“One assumption is that the amount of helium increases with each generation of stars.” said team member Ivan King of the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. “With each stellar generation appearing slightly bluer, the colour of the stellar populations indicates that the amount of helium increases in each generation. Perhaps massive star clusters like NGC 2808 hold onto enough gas to ignite a rapid succession of stars.”
Star birth would be driven by shock waves from supernovae and stellar wind from red giants, which compress the gas and makes new stars, King explained. The gas would be increasingly enriched in helium from previous generations of stars more massive than the Sun.
Astronomers generally believed that globular clusters produce only one generation of stars. This is because the energy radiating from the first batch would clear out most of the residual gas needed to make more stars. But NGC 2808, being more massive than a typical cluster, may have had sufficient gravity to hold onto enough gas. This gas may then have been enriched by helium from the first stars.
Another possible explanation for the multiple stellar populations is that NGC 2808 may only be masquerading as a globular cluster. The stellar grouping may have been a dwarf galaxy that was stripped of most of its material due to gravitational capture by the Milky Way.
Omega Centauri, the first globular cluster found by Piotto’s group containing multiple generations of stars, is suspected to be the remnant core of a dwarf galaxy, Bedin said.
Although the astronomers have looked into only two globular clusters for multiple stellar populations, they say this may be a typical occurrence in other massive clusters.
“No one is suggesting that previous work on other clusters is no longer valid,” said King, “but this discovery shows that the study of stellar populations in globular clusters has now taken a new turn.”
The team plans to use ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to make spectroscopic observations of the chemical abundances in NGC 2808, which may offer further evidence that the stars were born at different times and yield clues to how they formed. They will also use Hubble to hunt for multiple generations of stars in about 10 more massive globular clusters.
Notes for editors:
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA.
These results have been accepted for publication in the paper "A Triple Main Sequence in the Globular Cluster NGC 2808" by Piotto et al. on 20 May 2007 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
For more information:
Giampaolo Piotto, Department of Astronomy, University of Padua
Email: giampaolo.piotto @ unipd.it
Luigi Bedin, ESO, Garching, Germany
Email: lbedin @ eso.org
Lars Lindberg Christensen, Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany
Ray Villard, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Email: villard @ stsci.edu | <urn:uuid:1850d619-8849-4dea-a43d-8d20edb908a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Hubble_sees_multiple_star_generations_in_a_globular_cluster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94447 | 990 | 3.5 | 4 |
A new buzz-phrase emerged at the last global AIDS Conference in 2010: “treatment as prevention”. Studies proved that if HIV positive people were treated earlier, they would be far less infectious and transmission rates would drastically drop. Have countries ramped up testing and timely treatment? And how are they faring with the stubborn social and fiscal barriers to an effective AIDS response?
From July 22 to 27, more than 20,000 activists and researchers from across the globe will assemble in Washington for AIDS 2012, the world’s biggest HIV Conference. A Caribbean delegation of more than 300 is expected to participate. They include representatives from civil society, government and development agencies working on the region’s epidemic.
Dr. Marcus Day, Director of the Caribbean Drug and Alcohol Research Institute and a member of the Conference Coordinating Committee, laments that the region hasn’t really begun to respond to the latest scientific evidence.
“We’re failing in the application of treatment as prevention,” he said. “Now is the time. This is a game changer… we are so close to controlling the epidemic.” So where is the Caribbean? And what will we say to the world next week?
Today we can reduce the chances that an HIV positive mother would pass on the virus to her child to almost zero. The region-wide Elimination Initiative led by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), aims to increase coverage of antenatal care, skilled attendance at birth and routine testing for HIV to 95 percent, while lowering transmission rates to below two percent.
“We are sitting on a success,” said Dr. Ernest Massiah, Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) Caribbean Regional Support Team. “Most of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) countries are close to reaching elimination targets and it shows that the Caribbean region can achieve results in the HIV response.”
Between 2001 and 2009 an estimated US1.6billion was spent on the Caribbean’s HIV response. By 2010, 64 percent of AIDS spending in the region came from international donors. But like the global economy, the donor landscape has changed dramatically since then. Most World Bank funding for the region’s AIDS response came to an end that year. Criteria for financing from the Global Fund have become more restrictive and therefore biased against any but the world’s poorest countries. Barbados, Cuba and St. Lucia are moderately reliant on foreign sources for antiretroviral treatment. In Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, however, all or almost all financing for ART comes from international sources.
“Panic time has passed a long time ago,” said Dr. Ingrid Cox Pierre, the Pan Caribbean Partnership on HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) strategy and resourcing officer. “We have passed that time to think about what we are going to do next in terms of persons living with HIV who have already started treatment. You can’t tell them they have to pay or stop their treatment because you cannot afford to do it anymore.”
For Massiah it means doing more with less money. He stresses that the issue is just as relevant for societies like T&T that are financing their HIV response themselves.
“We need prevention interventions that are evidence-based, cost effective and sustainable if we’re ever going to lower the cost of HIV treatment and care and spend that money on other things like education or development. We can no longer resist putting the focus where it matters—men who have sex with men (MSM), sex workers and youth. Sinking money into generic, general population prevention efforts,” Massiah asserted, “is the definition of unsustainable”.
But that’s precisely what most Caribbean countries are doing. The region’s adult HIV prevalence is one percent. But HIV rates are far higher among certain populations. Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica are all among the ten countries with the world’s highest rates of HIV among MSM. HIV prevalence for female sex workers ranges from 4.8 percent in the Dominican Republic to 24 percent in Suriname.
However, resources devoted to HIV prevention, treatment and care for vulnerable and marginalised populations do not reflect their HIV risk. For example in Trinidad and Tobago from 2004 to 2010 less than five percent of the money spent on prevention was allocated to programmes for MSM, sex workers, drug-users and prisoners.
“We have made progress,” Massiah said. “But we have a challenge still with equality that makes it difficult for MSM, transgender persons and sex workers to get treated.”
“There has been increasing inclusion of these groups in national strategic plans on HIV. But unless this is accompanied by budget allocations, it is meaningless,” noted Louise Tillotson, technical and policy coordinator at Caribbean Vulnerable Communities and El Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral (CVC/COIN).
The burning question for the Caribbean at AIDS2012 is whether governments will respond to the reality of their epidemics.
Captions (Credit: UNAIDS Caribbean):
Dr. Marcus Day, Director of the Caribbean Drug and Alcohol Research Institute
Dr. Ernest Massiah, Director of the UNAIDS Caribbean Regional Support Team
Dr. Ingrid Cox Pierre, the PANCAP strategy and resourcing officer | <urn:uuid:146c6cb3-b5b3-4fd1-81b5-9b3830c39713> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unaidscaribbean.org/node/273 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934292 | 1,184 | 2.625 | 3 |
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Made with great labor and diligence.
- Apt to labor or to pitch and roll, as a ship in a heavy sea.
- adj. Alternative form of laboursome.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Made with, or requiring, great labor, pains, or diligence.
- adj. (Naut.) Likely or inclined to roll or pitch, as a ship in a heavy sea; having a tendency to labor.
“I myself remember my grossly overweight days in the mid 90's, when climbing a modest hill was laborsome.”
“When Monroe was alive, living was little more laborsome than drawing on bank accounts, abstract and distant.”
“Helen could barely get her breath and she panted as if she had just climbed a laborsome hill.”
“Then it slowed on a level, and again it halted for a few moments, and once more in motion it began a laborsome climb.”
“There were tangled thickets of wild plum-trees and other thorny growths that made passage extremely laborsome.”
“The ride there was laborsome and it took time, but Neale scarcely noted either fact.”
“It was laborsome to trudge up and down in soft snow.”
“My calling may be laborsome to both myself and this faithful beast, but then a day of settling is at hand, that will reward me for all my outgoings and incomings," said Birch, putting his foot in the stirrup, and preparing to mount.”
“With players moving constantly, it gets laborsome.”
“I've changed the tools that I use to draw as well, there's just so much that you learn by actually attempting something this intense and laborsome that you'll just never learn from a book, and I really need to pick a professional's brain someday to polish myself even more.”
‘laborsome’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
Looking for tweets for laborsome. | <urn:uuid:1db680d4-34d9-4543-bbf5-f8fbc8138ecf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/laborsome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970976 | 459 | 2.296875 | 2 |
The college years mark an important period of personal and psychological growth that can be stressful for students. On occasion students may experience difficulty coping. As a TTU faculty or staff member you may be faced with students whose behavior ranges from the mildlly distressed to clearly disruptive. You may even encounter a student who is threatening or dangerous to him/herself or others.
In many cases you will be able to respond effectively to the student's needs. However, there will be times when you will want to refer the student to someone else for assistance. The Students in Distress online guide is designed to help you recognize signs of concern and to provide information to assist you in determining how to respond to the student and situation.
The guide includes links to additional information for working with distressed/distrubed, disruptive, or dangerous students. Should you need additional help, the Counseling Center staff is available to respond and for consultation regarding ways in which you might help the student or make an appropriate referral. | <urn:uuid:ea48d8cf-185d-46b4-bfde-6c9a81daa64b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tntech.edu/counsel/facultyinfo/print/?tmpl=component | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954734 | 199 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Top 10: Ocean Rivalries
Generally speaking, animals in the natural world are very wary of attacking anything that might cause them harm. To do so would potentially cause them major injuries, reducing their chances of successfully catching prey. It is an effective survival mechanism, honed over centuries of evolution, so that apex predators avoid one another and other animals that could be dangerous to them. Now and again, though, two closely matched creatures will stumble across each other. Sometimes, either through desperation or stupidity, this will result in a titanic struggle, a spectacular encounter that may end up with one or sometimes both animals sustaining life-threatening injuries.
This list will explore some of these encounters, looking at 10 ocean rivalries in which the protagonists might have an almighty tussle. Some of the outcomes on this list may appear obvious; but don’t be too sure -- some of the apparent underdogs put up a real fight when faced with death. | <urn:uuid:31731605-d7c9-4006-aaa1-3d7c22fd9397> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.askmen.com/top_10/entertainment/top-10-ocean-rivalries.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944727 | 195 | 2.25 | 2 |
In both a national and global context where the rates of domestic violence against women are consistently soaring (according to the United Nations Population Fund Report, more 55 percent of women living in India face violence within the home), awareness campaigns and messages which seek to address this particular manifestation of gender-based violence are incredibly pertinent. Calling on women to recognise that they are not alone in what they experience, and highlighting the ways in which this violence manifests itself and affects other facets of a woman’s life are key components of such outreach.
"Suffocation is the worst kind of abuse"
"It always starts with the little nicks and cuts"
"Respect the space you really deserve"
"How much longer will you adjust?"
These taglines, part of a far-reaching poster campaign, seem to fit the bill. Or they would, if violence against women were their subject. In fact, they’re being used to sell bras. | <urn:uuid:67e09bdb-43c0-4f5a-8a85-31a15ae084c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bitchmagazine.org/tag/amant%c3%a9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955156 | 194 | 1.804688 | 2 |
This post may contain referral links. Here’s my full disclosure policy
This has to be one of my favorite projects we’ve made. It was fun to make, tied in great with our study on spiders, and makes a perfect night light when we are done! Here is how we made it!
First, set-up! Blow up a balloon and hang it so that you can work around it. We hung ours from our kitchen table ceiling fan. Pour out a LARGE bottle of blue into a dish. Cut 30 or so 12” (give or take) strips of yarn. We used tan, but it would work with white, tan, black, or any colored for a creative spider web!
Dip the yarn in the glue to completely coat. Use fingers and glide across yarn to push off any extra glue. (Note: Little hands will love this, but it can get a little messy. Our easily wiped off our table, but you could lay down newspaper to make clean-up easier if you like)
Wrap glue dipped strings around the balloon. Make sure to cover parts of the entire balloon (bottom too) and overlap the yarn.
This is what your spider web should look like at this point. Allow it to fully dry (ours was dry by the next day). Then use a toothpick and pop the balloon. Our kids were amazed at how the web stayed intact and the balloon easily came out through the web.
Now take the web outside and spray with glow-in-the-dark paint (we bought ours here) Hang and allow to dry. This will happen quickly, within 1-2 hours tops.
I used my handy dandy glue gun to attach spiders to our web. (Note: Glue guns are hot and I do not let my children help with this part.)
Here is a close-up of what our web looks like in the daytime. Now for my favorite part . . . .
This is what the web looks like at night! Cool, right?!?!? It just needs a couple hours of daylight to recharge and it will continue glowing in the dark. Not only was it a fun project for our Spider unit, but it continues to be great fun for my kids as a night light.
As always, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to comment if you liked this post =-) Thanks! | <urn:uuid:09e5b2d2-2217-4887-b31d-9a7ed20e9038> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.123homeschool4me.com/2012/09/glow-in-dark-spider-web.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953025 | 487 | 2.0625 | 2 |
The different window systems supported by IDL have many features in common. This section describes those features. See the individual descriptions of each system later in this chapter for additional information about each one.
IDL utilizes the window system by creating and using one or more largely independent windows, each of which can be used for the display of graphics and/or images. One color map table is shared among all these windows. Multiple windows can be active simultaneously. Windows are referenced using their index which is a non-negative integer.
"Dithering" or halftoning techniques are used to display images with multiple shades of gray on monochrome displays-displays that can only display white or black. This topic is discussed in Image Display On Monochrome Devices.
Graphic and image output is always directed to the current window. When a window system is selected as the current IDL graphics device, the index number of the current window is found in the
The WINDOW procedure creates a new window with a given index. If a window already exists with the same index, it is first deleted. The size, position, title, and number of colors, may also be specified. If you access the display before creating the first window, IDL automatically creates a window with an index number of 0 and with the default attributes.
One of the features that distinguishes various window systems is how they handle the issue of backing store. When part of a window that was previously not visible is exposed, there are two basic approaches that a window system can take. Some keep track of the current contents of all windows and automatically repair any damage to their visible regions (retained windows). This saved information is known as the backing store. Others simply report the damage to the program that created the window and leave repairing the visible region to the program (non-retained windows).
No backing store.
Request the server or window system to perform backing store.
Make IDL perform backing store.
There are convincing arguments for and against both approaches. It is generally more convenient for IDL if the window system handles this problem automatically, but this often comes at a performance penalty. The actual cost of retained windows varies between systems and depends partially on the application.
The X Window system does not by default keep track of window contents. Therefore, when a window on the display is obscured by another window, the contents of its obscured portion is lost. Re-exposing the window causes the X server to fill the missing data with the default background color for that window, and request the application to redraw the missing data. Applications can request a backing store for their windows, but servers are not required to provide it. Many X servers do not provide backing store, and even those that do cannot necessarily provide it for all requesting windows. Therefore, requesting backing store from the server might help, but there is no certainty.
The IDL window system drivers allow you to control the issue of backing store using the RETAIN keyword to the DEVICE and WINDOW procedures. Using it with DEVICE allows you to set the default action for all windows, while using it with WINDOW lets you override the default for the new window. The possible values for this keyword are summarized under Backing Store, and are described below:
If the type of backing store to use is not explicitly specified using the RETAIN keyword, IDL assumes option 1 and requests the window system to keep a backing store.
On some systems, when backing store is provided by the window system (RETAIN=1), reading data from a window using TVRD may cause unexpected results. For example, data may be improperly read from the window even when the image displayed on screen is correct. Having IDL provide the backing store (RETAIN=2) ensures that the window contents will be read properly. These types of problems are described in more detail in the documentation for TVRD. See Unexpected Results Using TVRD with X Windows.
Images are automatically dithered when sent to some monochrome devices. Dithering is a technique which increases the number of apparent brightness levels at the expense of spatial resolution. Images with 256 gray levels are displayed on a display with only two colors, black and white, using halftoning techniques. PostScript handles dithering directly. IDL supports dithering for other devices if their DEVICE procedures accept the FLOYD, ORDERED, or THRESHOLD keywords. | <urn:uuid:5f729ddb-4434-4f3b-bf50-7a0c6b6b0776> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.physics.nyu.edu/grierlab/idl_html_help/devices5.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901864 | 905 | 2.296875 | 2 |
THE BLACK ACACIA.
Acacia melanoxylon The black acacia, called at home in Australian woods, the "blackwood-tree," for its black heart-wood, is a familiar street and shade tree in California. In narrow parkings it is likely to surprise the planter by outgrowing in a few years the space allotted to it, and upheaving both cement walk and curb, by the irresistible force of its thick roots. It is one of the large timber acacias, and even in the cool climate of England reaches fifty feet.
In suitable situations in California it grows much higher, and its compact conical head of dense evergreen foliage, gives abundant shade at all seasons. The flowers are white or cream-colored, lightening the yellow-green of the new shoots and the dull, opaque of the older leaves, with abundant clusters in earliest spring. The succeeding
fruits are curling thin pods that hang in brownish sheaves, giving the tree a rusty look. Each seed is rimmed with a frill of terra cotta hue that serves as a wing for its flight, when detached by the wind. The roots send up suckers and the seeds are quick to grow. So any one can have black acacias with little trouble or expense. Its shedding of leaves and pods makes much litter, however, a trait sometimes overlooked which seriously diminishes its de sirability as a street and shade tree. | <urn:uuid:44f996b7-dfb2-4561-9a3c-7d806a296593> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gluedideas.com/Trees-worth-knowing-1922/The-Black-Acacia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959908 | 295 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Kipps (1941 film)
|Directed by||Carol Reed|
|Produced by||Edward Black|
|Written by||H. G. Wells (novel)
Frank Launder (uncredited)
|Release date(s)||28 June 1941|
|Running time||111 minutes (UK)|
Kipps, also known as The Remarkable Mr. Kipps, is a British 1941 comedy-drama film adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel of the same name, directed by Carol Reed. Michael Redgrave stars as a draper's assistant who inherits a large fortune.
The day before the fourteen-year-old Kipps leaves to begin a seven-year apprenticeship in a draper's shop, he asks his friend's sister, Ann Pornick, to be his girl. She gladly agrees.
Kipps goes to work for Mr. Shalford (Lloyd Pearson). Years pass and Kipps grows up into an unremarkable young man. One day, he attends a free lecture on self-improvement presented by Chester Coote (Max Adrian) and decides to take a course. Coote, disdaining Kipps' lower class origins, steers the young man away from the literature class he wants to take to a woodworking class taught by Helen Walshingham (Diana Wynyard), a member of the local gentry. Kipps is soon smitten with his lovely teacher, but she is mindful of his social inferiority and ignores him.
One night, actor and playwright Chitterlow (Arthur Riscoe), riding a bicycle, collides with Kipps and tears his trousers. He takes Kipps back to his lodgings to repair his clothes. They get drunk together, while Chitterlow tells Kipps about his latest play, a comedy involving a beetle. By coincidence, one of Chitterlow's characters is also called Kipps, a name the writer got from a newspaper advertisement.
When Kipps shows up for work late, he is sacked for breaking one of Mr. Shalford's strict rules of conduct. Then, Chitterlow tells Kipps that the advertisement was about him. It turns out Kipps has inherited a large house and a fortune (£26,000) from a grandfather he had never met.
Chitterlow talks Kipps into investing £300 in his new play for a half share. At the bank, they run into Mr. Coote. Coote suggests Kipps employ new solicitor Ronnie Walshingham (Michael Wilding) to look after his fortune. When Kipps finds out the man is Helen's brother, he becomes interested.
Soon, Coote and the Walshinghams have maneuvered the naive Kipps into an engagement with Helen (though no encouragement is required), but he cannot handle her attempts at his self-improvement. Then, Kipps meets Ann, now a parlour maid, on her day off. His feelings for her resurface and he kisses her. Later, when he and the Walshinghams attend a party, Kipps is mortified to find the front door opened by Ann. During the gathering, Ann overhears the news of his engagement to Helen and rushes away. Kipps finds her and tells her he loves her. They sneak away to get married.
The newlyweds clash over Kipps' insistence on maintaining his lofty social position. Then, Kipps receives a request to go to Ronnie Walshingham's office. Dreading a breach-of-promise suit, Kipps is surprised to meet Helen, rather than Ronnie. She has terrible news for him. Ronnie has lost all Kipps' money and fled. The good-natured man reassures Helen that he will not set the police on her brother.
Just when all seems blackest, Chitterlow shows up in the middle of the night and informs Kipps that his play is a great success, and Kipps has a half-share in the profits. It is enough for Kipps to set up a bookshop and live comfortably with Ann and their baby son.
- Philip Frost as Kipps as a boy
- Michael Redgrave as Kipps as a man
- Diana Wynyard as Helen Walshingham
- Diana Calderwood as Ann Pornick as a girl
- Phyllis Calvert as Ann Pornick as a woman
- Arthur Riscoe as Chitterlow
- Max Adrian as Chester Coote
- Helen Haye as Mrs. Walshingham
- Betty Jardine as Doris
- Michael Wilding as Ronnie Walshingham
- Lloyd Pearson as Shalford
- Edward Rigby as Buggins, an older Shalford employee | <urn:uuid:530e492a-d01b-4083-8667-bd68c5e04539> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipps_(1941_film) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967286 | 1,022 | 2.09375 | 2 |
The Department of Defense announced today that Dr. Alvin H.
Bernstein, director of the George C. Marshall European Center for
Security Studies, is leaving the Marshall Center to ac-accept a
position at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Bernstein has been director the of the Marshall Center since
June 1, 1993.
Deputy Secretary of Defense John P. White, said, "I want to
thank Al Bernstein for the key role he played in establishing the
Marshall Center. The Center is instrumental in helping to
educate military officers and civilians from the former Soviet
Union and Warsaw Pact countries in the value of democracy and the
mechanics of running a military under civilian control."
The Department also announced that Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John P.
Otjen is being appointed as American deputy director of the
Marshall Center. Gen. Otjen served in the US Army for more than
31 years, retiring from active duty in 1995. His last active
duty assignment was Commanding General, First United States Army,
Ft. George G. Meade, Md. A second deputy director is provided by
the German government.
The George C. Marshall Center was established in 1993 to
respond to the new security challenges that emerged at the end of
the Cold War, specifically, to promote stability in Europe by
helping the nations of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union
to develop democratic institutions. The Marshall Center's
mission is to foster the development of defense institutions and
security structures compatible with democratic processes and
An interim director for the Marshall Center will be named
shortly. The Department of Defense will form a search committee
to nominate candidates for a replacement for Dr. Bernstein. | <urn:uuid:31a75000-0b1b-42b0-b86e-333c993b3f3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defense.gov/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=1070 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931611 | 364 | 1.8125 | 2 |
I made this activity book for Lara's birthday. It's made out of old clothes and some Freecycled fabric, and has pages of clothes-fastener activities with facing pages featuring poems about the fasteners. The pages are each stuffed with two layers of felt I had around the house. I cropped the poems (which I wrote) out the pictures, but I am transcribing them under each page. I'm so happy with how it came out! Good thing too, because it took fo-e-vah to make. Why is everything I do so laborious? I think I must just be a very laborious person. Anyway:
“Buttons are delightful doodads,”
Says a fishwife who reviews shads.
“They will last through any new fads,”
States a pair of kangaroo lads
To their neighbor, Marilou Gladds.
Adds famed button expert Clay Kee:
“If you snub them when you wakey,
Then you’re making a mistakey,
Coming to eat breakfast nakey!”
There are two sides to a zipper,
Each side full of little teeth –
As you pull the slider upward,
They’re connecting underneath!
These small teeth are not for chewing
(That your own teeth do with ease) –
These teeth keep you warm and toasty,
Even in a frosty breeze!
The word “snap”:
It can be a beatnik clap,
Or a fish biting a scrap,
Or some sudden colder weather that requires a shoulder wrap,
Or a cookie made of ginger that can break in a mishap,
Or an angry little yap,
A quick photo of a chap,
Or a football hiked behind from beneath the center’s lap
Or a task so that is so easy it’s like taking a short nap!
Old MacDonald had a farm (E-I-E-I-O!)
And on his farm he worked quite hard (E-I-E-I-O!)
He herded his sheep, and he milked his cows,
Tended chickens, walked his dog,
Every night went for a jog!
Old MacDonald one fine day (E-I-E-I-O!)
Didn’t buckle his overalls all the way (E-I-E-I-O!)
How his animals laughed when his pants fell down
Cows said MOO-ha! Pigs said OINK-ha!
And his doggie barked a WOOF-WOOF-ha-ha!
They sent a new dress to the Duchess of Veldt,
A dress that was loose and too baggy, she felt.
To make it fit better and make her seem svelte,
The shrewd Duchess cinched up her waist with a belt!
A man and his dog were out walking one day
Through a field of dry grass that looked kind of like hay.
Then later he petted his doggie’s soft fur
Where a grass seed was stuck, a seed known as a burr.
He looked at the seed – it was covered in hooks
That held tight to the dog hair’s looped crannies and nooks.
Inspired, he made hook and loop strips to use
As buckles (called Velcro) for everyone’s shoes.
The silky curls and swirls in Lara’s hair
Are golden, hazel, auburn – scarcely brown –
When loose, they gleam in ribbons in midair,
Twisting themselves into a copper crown
Of knots and tangles that a comb despair;
It’s better in the wind to clip them down. | <urn:uuid:8327762c-7f29-4848-8f3e-438f4c52d11f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fortytworoads.blogspot.com/2007/10/close-your-clothes.html?showComment=1251032384135 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967215 | 810 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Carolina Journal News Reports
RALEIGH — The Scholastic Assessment Test has been a fixture in college admissions since the 1920s. The 2005 revision of the test eliminated the familiar analogies from the verbal section and increased the difficulty of reading selections and math problems to reflect heightened college entrance expectations.
The most significant change, though, was a new section to test writing skills, including a timed essay. Two years after the change, colleges in North Carolina are still divided on how to use the new writing scores, and many still expect their own essays from applicants.
An evolving standard
The SAT was developed in 1926 as a way to make college entrance exams more equitable nationwide. The College Board, which publishes the SAT, has updated the test several times as high school curricula and college requirements changed. The addition of a writing component had been in the works since the early 1990s, but implementation was delayed until technology was available to transmit the hundreds of thousands of handwritten essays to graders around the country.
Duke University was initially concerned whether the longer test might have an effect on student scores. The writing section lengthened the duration of the test from 150 minutes to well over three hours, and the typical Saturday morning SAT administration now lasts nearly four hours.
“There was not much research in the fatigue factor,” said Anne Sjostrom, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Duke University. “We wanted to be sensitive to that possibility.”
However, since the new section replaced a separate College Board writing test that Duke also required, Sjostrom said they did adopt the new scores quickly.
“We use it in much the same way that we used the SAT II subject test for writing,” she said. “There’s not a mathematical formula we plug into to determine whether a student is admitted to Duke. I don’t know of a case where that or any other score is the determining factor.”
Other colleges aren’t convinced yet. Heidi Fletcher, director of admissions at Meredith College, said the college is still collecting data from the new SAT. “We’re presently not using it for admissions decisions but we’re doing a lot of tracking on how freshmen do on English 111,” she said. “I love having some information on the writing skills of the students — if it’s accurate.”
Roger Jones, director of admissions for Belmont Abbey College, said “We’re taking a wait and see attitude. This is the first year it is has come into consideration at all.” Belmont Abbey only uses the score for “borderline cases,” he said, for applications that are designated for an admissions review committee.
Elon University, on the other hand, fully incorporated the SAT writing score into its admissions process this year. “Three years ago, when it was first announced, we said that we’d take two years and not use it for admissions or scholarship consideration. That’s exactly what we have done,” said Elon’s dean of admissions, Greg Zaiser. “What we tried to do was establish where students score who perform on the acceptable level for Elon admission.”
State schools are sending mixed signals. N.C. State’s website says, “NC State and all other public universities in North Carolina require scores for the writing section of the SAT or ACT” but counselors are telling students they are not using the scores for admissions.
The University of North Carolina goes further, saying UNC “will review writing scores and, in some cases, may choose to review the actual essay.” However, “At this point, we are not using the writing score for admissions decisions,” said Jennifer Cox Bell, an assistant admissions counselor. Does she foresee a change in policy? “I do not,” she said.
The SAT is still not enough
While schools place different emphases on the new SAT score, many still have their own essay requirements. UNC requires a separate essay, as does Duke. Many colleges have adopted the “Common Application” form, which was pioneered by Ivy League schools. This streamlines much of the process and includes another essay section as well.
Zaiser said the SAT’s writing test provides a different perspective than the application essay alone.
“It gives students an opportunity to show what they can do on a timed essay. On the personal essay, they can proofread it and make revisions,” he said. “By and large, we find that students who perform well at Elon also did well on the writing portion.”
Sjostrom said student GPAs at Duke correlate more closely with the strength of their high school curriculum, teachers’ recommendations, and factors other than test scores.
“It verifies that a holistic admissions process makes sense,” she said.
Hal Young is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal. | <urn:uuid:d5256622-fa5b-4708-832c-c653f84c4ce3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=4363 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962477 | 1,037 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Dylan, the 6 year old brother of one of the girls has been diagnosed with Adrenoleukodystrophy and is in need of a bone marrow transplant. Fortunately, they found a donor match, but the special treatment that is to be administered out of state is still going to cost the family a lot of money. They have set up an account to help with those bills through the Children's Organ Transplant Association and we are trying to raise funds to cover the expenses. If you are able to donate, please go to the button on the right margin of this page to do so.
If you are not able to donate, please assist us in praying. There is also a local bone marrow registry and blood drive set up on Dylan's behalf. If you can attend that, please do. If you are not local, please donate blood in your own community and participate in the bone marrow registry as you could save numerous lives. Bloggers, feel free to put this advertisement for fundraising on your blog too, together we can save Dylan's life.
HOW CAN YOU HELP SOMEONE LIKE DYLAN?
Like many 6-year-old boys Dylan loves playing soccer and baseball. He also enjoys school and even spent an entire summer reviewing math flashcards for fun. When he began having trouble in school his parents thought he may be having difficulty hearing, so they took him to the doctor.
An MRI revealed that Dylan suffered from a rare genetic disorder called Adrenoleukodystrophy and his best shot at a cure is to have a bone marrow transplant.
You can help other patient’s just like Dylan by joining the National Bone Marrow Registry and getting on the Big Red Bus on January 27th at Lockmar Elementary School.
Learn more about joining the National Bone Marrow Registry HERE.
BLOOD & BONE MARROW DRIVE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2012, 10AM-4PM
or Christopher (321) 537-4051 | <urn:uuid:d783ee58-e055-4de2-a490-364f17e17dc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://msaunderson.blogspot.com/2012/01/team-dylan.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96097 | 406 | 1.71875 | 2 |
DFG fellow develops an animal model for the disease
Cystic fibrosis, also known as mucoviscidosis, is one of the most common genetic diseases with a fatal outcome in western Europe. The disease is caused by a defective gene that affects the salt and fluid composition of respiratory tract secretions. As a result, they become highly viscous. The viscous mucous then clumps in the smaller lung passages. Previously, it was not understood how the defective gene causes these changes. Studies of animal models with the same genetic defect, e.g., mice, frequently result in an improved understanding of the origins of a disease. This had not been possible for cystic fibrosis because the equivalent genetic defect did not cause lung disease in mice.
Marcus Mall, a medical researcher, genetically modified mice to generate the typical symptoms of cystic fibrosis. As a result, he was able to demonstrate for the first time the long suspected relationship between the genetic defect, salt transport to the respiratory tract surface and the genesis of the lung disease in a living organism. The origin of the disease and, possibly, types of therapy for humans can also be studied with these genetically modified mice.
To study the effect of the defective "cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator" gene (CFTR), Mall's group focussed on certain ion channels. These channels transport sodium ions through the cell membrane and thus regulate the fluid content of the cells. The altered fluid content of the mucous film that "lubricates" the respiratory tract causes clumping of the mucous so that natural removal of dust and bacteria from the respiratory tract is no longer possible. Mice, whose sodium ion channels had been altered, became ill with the lung inflammation typical of cystic fibrosis. The researchers demonstrated with a high degree of probability the direct link between the ion transport disorder and cystic fibrosis.
The genetically modified mice will be used by the researchers for further studies. The mice can be used to test how the illness originates, what other factors are involved and which medications or therapies may help. However, it remains unclear if all results are transferable to humans due to the difference in lung structure between mice and humans.
Marcus Mall was funded with a DFG Research Fellowship in 2000 and is presently employed at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His current research results are published in the May edition of the journal "Nature Medicine".
Source: Eurekalert & othersLast reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
-- Thomas Szasz | <urn:uuid:bd353942-30d8-4c83-96b7-59d04d8dce00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2004-04/df-tcf042604.html | 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 | 0.947928 | 569 | 3.234375 | 3 |
To the Editor,
Last month, July 4th marked 44 years since the landmark Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was signed into federal law -- yet Americans are still distrustful of government.
A recent Pew Research Center poll showed that only 22 percent of Americans surveyed say they can trust government in Washington "almost always or most of the time" -- among the lowest ratings in the half-century since pollsters have been asking the question.
FOIA established our right to access government records and to know what our government is doing -- both its successes and failures. Exercising our right to know gives us -- the public -- power. It allows us to contribute to our government and hold government accountable. From food and transportation safety to the use and disposal of chemicals, FOIA has enabled the public to ensure the health of our democracy and our own wellbeing.
FOIA (and related state and local laws) are only as good as we demand that they be.
For decades, members of the League of Women Voters have acted as government watchdogs at the federal, state and local levels -- observing government meetings, conducting document audits and empowering citizens, but more work needs to be done.
The key to a healthy, open and trusted government is public participation.
On this 44th year anniversary of FOIA, exercise your right to know by seeking records, attending a government meeting or checking out government Web sites.
It is not hard to do with everything on the Internet!
Ann K. Newton for the
Board of Directors,
of Women Voters | <urn:uuid:e4e8359b-034f-4b03-9860-f9bb2a1ca883> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bannergraphic.com/story/1654191.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950899 | 314 | 2.21875 | 2 |
chromatic writes "Larry Wall's State of the Onion 11 address is now online. Every year, he describes the state of Perl and its community through metaphor and analogy. This year, Larry explored the history of scripting languages, from their dimly-lit beginnings to their glorious future. Along the way, he also describes several of the design principles invoked in the design of Perl 6. 'When I was a RSTS programmer on a PDP-11, I certainly treated BASIC as a scripting language, at least in terms of rapid prototyping and process control. I'm sure it warped my brain forever. Perl's statement modifiers are straight out of BASIC/PLUS. It even had some cute sigils on the ends of its variables to distinguish string and integer from floating point. But you could do extreme programming. In fact, I had a college buddy I did pair programming with. We took a compiler writing class together and studied all that fancy stuff from the dragon book.'" | <urn:uuid:2815b9d9-e8ae-4ada-8ef1-d1b565012aed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://developers.slashdot.org/story/07/12/07/1511240/state-of-the-onion-11/funny-comments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968826 | 199 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Wildlife Photography by John and Barbara Adamski
John & Barbara Adamski have years of experience photographing wildlife and wilderness landscapes. Their wildlife photographs make exquisite gifts for for any nature lover. Please browse the galleries below. Instructions for making a secure purchase of any of the beautiful wildlife photos you select are included in each gallery.
“Getting Along With Bears”
Courtesy Life in the Finger Lakes Magazine
Written by John Adamski
GETTING ALONG WITH BEARS
For a couple of wildlife photographers, peering out the window one spring morning to see a mother bear and two cubs in the backyard seemed too good to be true. My wife, Barbara, and I have photographed animals and birds in the valleys of Yellowstone, canyons of Utah, marshlands of Florida, and woods of Quebec. Our images range from deer, elk, moose, bison, bighorn sheep, coyotes, and foxes, to birds that include pelicans, ospreys, turkeys, and loons. And we have photographed bears – though never before in the backyard – and never before in Livingston County.
Our relationship with black bears began in 1996, not long after we moved to the town of Ossian, in southernmost Livingston County. In order to photograph the diversity of wild birds, we strategically located a number of bird feeders in the backyard and placed tripod-mounted telephoto cameras in several windows. Through continuous year-round feeding, we were able to film migratory songbirds during spring and summer, and the local residents – in their various phases of plumage – throughout the year. The feeders attracted the traditional moochers as well: red, gray, and flying squirrels, chipmunks, and the occasional raccoon. It wasn’t until we found the bird feeders in shambles and the tree limbs from which they hung – snapped off, that we realized that a much larger guest had come to dinner.
The evidence indicated bear damage and a call to the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) served to confirm that. Effective wildlife management and the fact that New York State is now 70% forested – it was once 70% agricultural – have provided ideal ingredients for the return of black bears. Although black bears have always inhabited the Adirondacks and Catskills, Southern Tier bears are more apt to migrate from the woods of Pennsylvania as that state’s bear population soars. As they do, they are expanding their territories into the woodlands of the southern Finger Lakes region.
Black bear activity is most noticeable in early spring when they emerge from their winter dens. After many months of fasting, finding food is a primary concern. At first they graze like cattle to gently awaken dormant digestive systems. Later they’ll eat anything from honey to road kill. Sunflower seeds – especially the black-oil variety – are high on their list of preferred foods and attract bears to backyard bird feeders. We have had several different bears in the yard and on the deck at least 15 times!
On April 21, 2001, DEC wildlife personnel from Region 8 live-trapped a 6-year old female, or sow, in our backyard. She was sedated, examined, ear-tagged, and fitted with a radio collar. When released a few hours later, she hightailed it and was not seen in the area again. Three weeks later her signal was pinpointed 35-miles away on the opposite side of the Genesee River. On March 13, 2002, after a helicopter search using telemetry, she was located again – in her winter den with two newborn cubs – not very far from where she was initially trapped the year before.
Because of our involvement in the previous year’s capture, DEC officials invited us to attend and witness what proved to be a truly memorable experience. Under the direction of Albany-based black bear specialist, wildlife biologist Lou Berchielli, the sow was once again sedated and examined. When she was trapped the year before, after recently emerging from another den, she weighed 175 pounds. At this examination she tipped the scales at 215 pounds, which is still about 30% less than what she weighed when she entered her den in November. Even so, she appeared substantially larger than she did a little less than a year before. Bears do not eat while denned and survive on stored body fat accumulated beforehand.
Not so with cubs. At birth in early February, they weigh about 9 ounces, which is roughly the size of a chipmunk. When these cubs were examined at an estimated six weeks of age, the female was 6 pounds, four ounces and the male weighed in at 7 pounds even – quite a testimony to the nutrition of mother’s milk. Before denning last fall they will have approached 100 pounds each – a further testimony to being “hungry as a bear”.
Female black bears typically give birth to two cubs every other year, although triplets are not uncommon among older, healthy sows. Females generally weigh between 150 and 300 pounds, depending on age and the time of year. Males, or boars, are somewhat larger and range between 250 and 400 pounds. The New York State record is held by a boar taken by a hunter near Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks – 765 pounds. Boars do not participate in child rearing and have even been known to kill their own cubs. Cubs will stay with their mother, who will fiercely protect them, for about 1½-years. She’ll leave them when she’s ready to breed again.
Wildlife biologist Jim Fodge and wildlife technician Greg Fuerst, working out of the DEC office in Bath, spearhead Region 8’s bear study projects. At any given time they can be monitoring at least a half dozen different bears – some with cubs – based on radio signals and reports from people who see them. Even though they both enjoy seeing the black bear return, the biggest concern they share is the interaction between bears and people. As the bear population expands, so does the potential for bear encounters.
Feeding bears, intentionally or otherwise, invites the risk of property damage or injury and can lead to the necessity of having to destroy a bear. Bird feeders, including hummingbird feeders, as well as pet food, garbage, beehives and barbeque grills top the list of the things that could bring bears into your yard. Jim Fodge is quick to reference the DEC policy on bear feeding: “A fed bear is a dead bear”. He also notes that, “after April 1st, bird feeders become bear feeders and should be taken down if bears are around.”
Getting along with bears requires some forethought and precaution. We’ve had to curtail summertime bird feeding, keep garbage out of sight, and otherwise increase our awareness. Black bears are not generally aggressive, but a sow with cubs can be unpredictable. That thought evokes an eerie feeling, especially when walking to the roadside newspaper tube at five in the morning. End | <urn:uuid:47b28e57-f6a7-4a9b-8b88-f40ed95e5fab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jbadamsgallery.com/article-alongbear.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967988 | 1,468 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Calls to regain some control
Nurses are leaving rural hospitals in alarming numbers as employers stray from core values of the profession, writes Susan Bragg.
Worldwide, nursing is facing a significant challenge in recruiting people into the profession and then retaining them in the workforce. This is especially true for Australian rural areas that are experiencing one of the greatest nursing shortages since settlement. As a registered nurse who had resigned from a rural hospital, I became increasingly alarmed at how many nurses were leaving these hospitals and I became concerned about the efficacy of current retention strategies. It appeared that we could recruit nurses, but not retain them; an exercise that I saw as fruitless. In order to...
Note: your email address will not be displayed | <urn:uuid:e5984d85-3ab9-42bb-9161-c8c18a9edb35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nursingreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=Features&idArticle=23004 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976509 | 147 | 1.617188 | 2 |
People are successful because they have made a clear, unequivocal do or die decision to be successful. People are unsuccessful because they have not made that decision. -- Brian Tracy
There are 270 days left for the World Tourism Organisation's General Assembly that is to be held jointly in Victoria Falls Zimbabwe and Livingstone, Zambia next year.
I was reminded of this event in two ways. First, ZTV is running a daily countdown. Secondly, an ambitious young entrepreneur told me how he is going to make a killing supplying a certain commodity at the event.
I have heard several such stories of making killings at big events before: The 2010 soccer World Cup finals in neighbouring South Africa; the recent Africa Cup of Nations in Angola and many other events which have come and gone. Unfortunately very few of those who plan their big breaks around other people's events succeed.
Decide where you want to go
Every success story starts with a conscious thought in the mind: the future you want to create.
The great entrepreneurs who have built global computer companies, successful banks, big construction companies and revolutionary communication firms, all decided in their minds that it was what they wanted to achieve. Without a great goal, there is no passion, motivation or resilience.
You can decide to work and grow in a bank, or you can decide to build your own bank. The bigger the goal, the more likely that you will achieve something great. Jim Collins noted that few people attained great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
(Good to Great -- Random House Business Books). Do you have a big, hairy and audacious goal? If not, take time to create one, or your future will be just ordinary and boring.
Plan how you will get there
Every successful achievement needs a plan of execution. Planning is not just for new entrepreneurs who need to get investors or financiers.
Those definitely need written plans so that potential financiers can see and analyse their new ideas. But growing businesses need to plan even more. When you are running a one-person business, you can usually have the plan in your head, taking the necessary actions as and when you can.
However, as the business grows, you will need to plan together with other people in your business. These are the managers and heads of departments who will help drive your business to the big future that you desire. Most businesses are struggling, not only because the economy is difficult, but because they do not take time out to plan. Many challenges can be overcome if people put their heads together, plan and think of new ideas.
Make a difference in the lives of others
One mistake that some entrepreneurs make is to want to make money first. Truly successful people do the things they love and that make a difference in the lives and work of others. The desire to help others is the mark of the most successful entrepreneurs. Henry Ford decided to make cars that an ordinary person could afford, at a time when cars where only for the extremely rich.
Bill Gates and IBM made personal computers available and affordable to ordinary people, when the focus of IT firms at the time was on systems for big firms. Similarly was Steve Jobs, who wanted to bring joy and entertainment to people though convenient and aesthetically beautiful gadgets like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Building a business centred around your own benefit and profit is a recipe for failure. You can make a quick buck, like some business owners did during the unforgettable economic crisis of the past decade. The majority of those hyperinflation "dealers" have disappeared. Survivors had to change their approach to business.
Phillip Chichoni is a strategic business planning consultant who works with entrepreneurs and growing businesses. | <urn:uuid:3c9e6b31-7343-4ce8-8b8b-765d080303ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201211250402.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968186 | 762 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Adventures In Kitty Sitting | Pets
One of the highlights of my oldest daughter's 8th grade year has been her Social Studies class. A year-long assignment (given by Mr. Smith at Horizon Middle School) has given her a new view and confidence, as she took what she loves and turned it into a community-helping venture.
Mr. Smith's assignment was "Service Learning". Each student has been required to give 8 volunteer hours to a local charity/non-profit, a tri-mester. McKensie loves animals! I suggested she volunteer at a local animal shelter, so she could use that love of caring for animals to help the community.
Since I'm friends with Gail Mackie, Executive Director of SpokAnimal, we went there first. She's been learning what happens at a shelter, the need that is out there and the importance of helping socialize the animals.
During her/our volunteer time (I had to volunteer alongside her, as she is under 16 years old) we learned about "fostering". There are many animals that are too young, underweight or not well enough to be adopted out right away.
SpokAnimal needs local people to help take them in, and give them the special care they need until the critters are ready for permanent homes.
To foster, you have to pass a background check, a walk-through of your home by someone from Animal Control (Marilyn did ours. She was so great.. and patient with us!). They need to make sure you have a safe place for the animals, and that, if you have pets of your own, that they are updated on their vaccinations and can handle being around other animals.
We passed, and a couple of days later, got our first litter of kittens. We are having the pleasure of caring for 5 little ones. I'll be updating you right here on our adventures (and we're already having some, already!). | <urn:uuid:81d05335-29a4-4f94-aa8d-e7b01645ea68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://southhill.kxly.com/news/pets/83027-adventures-kitty-sitting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975096 | 401 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Egypt’s Islamist President, Mohamed Morsi, is trying to quell criticism of his recent power grab by assuring his people that the absolute powers he granted himself are only temporary. Somehow, I don’t think they should be reassured:
UK TELEGRAPH: As at least one teenage protester was killed in clashes at a Muslim Brotherhood headquarters building in the northern of the country, and police continued to fight battles with protesters around Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday, Mr Morsi issued a statement stressing that the power seizure was only “temporary” and calling for political dialogue.
He also agreed to meet Egypt’s judges on Monday to negotiate a solution to the crisis. “The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of those measures, which are not intended to concentrate power,” the statement said.
“The presidency stresses its firm commitment to engage all political forces in the inclusive democratic dialogue to reach a common ground.”
Mr Morsi outraged opponents on Thursday, less than 24 hours after winning international praise for negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, by announcing that henceforth all his decisions would be beyond legal challenge.
He also unilaterally cancelled legal challenges to the committee drawing up a new constitution as well as to the upper house of parliament, both of which are dominated by his Muslim Brotherhood backers.
With no lower house of parliament until the new constitution is formed, this decree gave him stronger powers than those of his overthrown predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. . . . Read More | <urn:uuid:74a3be4a-b4c8-4bd6-ac55-fd4d875c5403> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freedomslighthouse.net/2012/11/26/egypts-islamist-president-tries-to-reassure-nation-his-power-grab-is-only-temporary-112512/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972174 | 308 | 1.5 | 2 |
The Washington Post has been running a series of articles on the fading American middle class. These articles are enlightening. However they are not all surprising. The reality is the American middle class is an endangered species. America is quickly dividing into a society of haves and have nots. This trend probably does not bode well for the United States. If it continues it may actually hasten the sort of liberalism anathema to many so enamored with our current corporate-ocracy.
Is “corporate-ocracy” too strong a word? I don’t think so. I would argue strongly that a government by and for the corporation has supplanted our republican government. There are exceptions. But the safeguards put in place during more liberal times that restrained corporations so they act in the public’s interest have frayed to the point where they are becoming hard to see. If anyone doubts that special interests are firmly in control of our government they need only watch the recent 60 Minutes interview with outgoing South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings. He laid it all out: money buys influence and as a result the public interest gets short shrift.
“Communications, defense, you got them all – farms, agriculture people and everything else like that … They get their piece of the pie. That’s our problem. Today, you can’t find the real interests of the country.”
It would be tempting to blame the decline of the middle class entirely on American corporations. And certainly they share a lot of the blame. For the last thirty years corporate America has worked hard to marginalize labor unions. They are now at the point where they hardly exist anymore. Even when they exist unions are increasingly impotent. Corporations have options now they didn’t have before, such as the ability to quickly outsource jobs to countries where pesky labor laws don’t exist. And Congress has aided and abetted this process. It has made it easier for a company with pension plans to change them so that workers receive less in the way of pensions. The better companies throw newer workers into 401-K plans instead of defined benefit plans. Some of them convert all their workers to 401-K plans. Others have used legal shenanigans to raid pension funds to prop up their share prices. And if the corporate pension fund goes bankrupt, it’s not a problem for shareholders. The costs are foisted on the taxpayer, that is the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. Increasingly, if companies offer health insurance benefits at all then workers are asked to pay larger shares of premiums and higher deductibles.
The result is that marginal cost of living raises are more than eaten up by increased costs for health insurance. This cascades into a decline of the standard of living for middle class people. Increasingly these costs have the effect of dumping people out of the middle class. A labor force that is increasingly disposable exacerbates the situation. Careers long thought secure are now often easily outsourced. Workers that used to be able to get benefits are often now employed as temporary employees or as contractors, if their work is not outsourced to some foreign country.
It is hard for many of us, particularly younger workers, to grasp the magnitude of the change that has occurred over the last 30-40 years. Consider this: in the 1960s a single breadwinner could support the middle class lifestyle for a family. For example a bus driver could afford to buy his own house and car, keep the wife at home and send the kids to college. He usually didn’t need a second job. What’s the situation today? To live a middle class lifestyle a family requires at least two wage earners. The bus driver is likely living in an apartment somewhere, and is probably working another job. His wife is pulling a couple jobs too. It’s increasingly unlikely his family has health insurance. They are precariously holding on to their middle class existence. One lost job or one huge medical bill and their lifestyle is blown away.
The Washington Post talks about the $17 an hour job as typical middle class wages. I laughed when I saw this number. Exactly who can afford a middle class existence on $17 an hour? It can’t be done in my neighborhood, that’s for sure, unless the spouse is also earning $17 an hour. And those kind of wages likely mean they are living in an apartment, or perhaps a modest town home, not some single family house with a two car garage.
And what sorts of jobs are paying this kind of money? I can think of some. Clerks perhaps, mechanics and plumbers. Many of these jobs are also the most vulnerable to outsourcing. What does one do when they lose that $17 an hour job that has been outsourced or made obsolete? It’s possible but unlikely that they will find another job at this wage rate. Instead, as the Post documents, they are working two jobs somewhere to maintain the same income level. But if they had benefits before it’s unlikely they have much in the way of benefits now.
Working two jobs instead of one they live an increasingly precarious and exhausting life. The smartest ones may have anticipated their obsolescence and went back to school. But as many computer programmers found out in the last few years there is no guarantee that the money invested in a new career will ever pay off. In our modern world the uncertainty of maintaining any job is much higher.
And so the middle class slowly disappears. Manufacturing moves overseas. Machines handle more farm jobs. Computer repair people find they aren’t needed because machines can be replaced for less money than it takes to fix them. The winners are those who are born into money or can simultaneously be savvy, intelligent, multitask and have connections. To sustain the middle class lifestyle it is no longer sufficient to have a trade. You must continually reinvent yourself. You must be a shrewd businessman. You must do your market research. You must find a particular niche. You must network ruthlessly. In short this new Darwinism requires a combination of skills never needed before. Not all can cope with the complexity and demands of such changes. So they fall through the cracks. They spend their days as cashiers at Wal-Marts and their nights at a second job, and their weekends at a third job.
And who is benefiting? Perhaps by shopping at Wal-Mart in their few off hours they are saving a few bucks. Clearly stockholders are benefiting. Their share prices are increasing. But where is this wealth really coming from? In effect we have decided that in America that we will transfer wealth by screwing the hard working earnest American laborer tighter and tighter. The money will largely go to those who had wealth to begin with, making them increasingly wealthy. And that’s how the middle class disappears, slowly, until one day it is gone entirely. By that time it will seem natural and we’ll all smile and say we are happy because we believe in the Republican Party, and the Republicans are good.
How long can this go on? I would hope not much longer, or the character of the country that I grew up in will be changed irretrievably. I often feel like our future will look a lot like Brazil’s. It seems that the stranglehold by the corporation on our democracy is virtually complete. But perhaps the corporation has pressed its advantage too far. Perhaps like Howard Beale the American worker will no longer play the patsy and demand a government of, by and for the people again.
But this seems naive. Apparently we are a nation of sheep. We’ve bought into the whole corporate bullshit and we’ve wrapped it around God and the American flag. We can’t tell them apart anymore. Why are the people who are getting screwed the worst pushing for their own obsolescence and poverty?
There is a solution to this madness. It’s called electing people who represent your interests, and not the special interests. It remains to be seen if Karl Rove can keep sufficient numbers of Americans ignorant of what we are in effect doing to ourselves. | <urn:uuid:66f78de5-5b3c-4f69-9a67-3472992f8047> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.occams-razor.info/2004/12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972152 | 1,675 | 1.679688 | 2 |
It isn’t often that you hear of girls with a love for cars. That’s normally reserved for the male species who love to talk cars and get their hands dirty while fine tuning or fixing their rides. It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, to hear of 14-year-old Kathryn whose dream is to complete work on a car that she’s dreamt of getting for her 16th birthday. At a time when most kids are pestering their parents to buy them a car, Kathryn is happy working to build one.
It all started when the teenager asked her parents if she could use her savings from babysitting jobs to buy herself a Pontiac Fiero which she would work on for her 16th birthday. Mind you, Kathryn made the offer to her parents when she was just 12 years old. Understandably, her parents were a little surprised to hear their baby girl talking about cars, especially one that she wanted for her 16th birthday. Needless to say, Kathryn presented a strong argument, saying that she would pay for the tuning and be directly involved in the restoration process.
Following her parents’ consent, Kathryn purchased an old Fiero and has been restoring it for the past two years. The once beat-up Pontiac now sports a trendy black and yellow-themed body. The young owner has come a long way from spray painting and sanding to heavier work like welding, sand blasting and upholstery. It’s safe to say that she could give the guys some stiff competition in the world of automobile knowledge.
Just to give you an idea of how keen she is about learning the ways of cars, Kathryn wanted a manual transmission for her car so she could learn how to drive a stick. The teen has made quite a name for herself in automobile forums, with many wishing their kids would turn out to be just as dedicated to cars as she is. | <urn:uuid:c5073c0d-85a0-4c76-a449-40ee5b690760> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.automotto.com/14-year-old-girl-undertakes-restoration-pontiac-fiero-16th-birthday.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983847 | 390 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The countdown to Chinese New Year has begun. Feb. 18 marks the beginning of the year of the fire boar, which brings with it a clash of the fire and water elements. How does this affect you? And how can you arrange your home in a feng shui style, to make the most of what the year has to offer?
Before learning about the year of the boar, it is important to establish some basic feng shui principles. Feng shui is the practice of
creating a pleasant living environment within your home or workspace. It promotes the right balance of yin and yang energy, while incorporating the five elements in our cosmic universe: fire, earth,metal, water and wood.
Chi is vital energy which is always changing. Everything is alive and connected with chi.“Feng Shui is about managing
the change of this energy from year to year,” says Dolly Sidhu, who co-owns the World of Feng Shui boutique in Vaughan, Ontario with partner Dee Johl.
There are 12 astrological signs in the Chinese zodiac: the rat,ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake,horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog
and boar. All of the signs are affected by the fire boar this year, each in its own way. Overall, though, the year of the fire boar
brings good luck in the wealth department, but also the possibility of serious illness, hostility or violence. Feng shui principles
can be used to help maximize wealth and minimize illness and other negative energies.
Maximizing wealth “2007 is the year when fortunes can be made, wealth can be created, and some pretty outstanding
achievements can be attained,” says Ms. Sidhu. To maximize your wealth, try to incorporate a water feature in the southeast
sector of your home, and couple that with plants. Water signifies wealth and growth. The southeast sector governs wealth, and
it has very good energy this year. The southeast sector has a wood element, as well, and water strengthens the wood element.
Plants also signify growth.
Minimizing illness “This year, we are more prone to disease. Everyone will be affected somehow. We have to make sure we
have something to protect ourselves from the strength of the illness energy,” Ms. Sidhu says.
Metal is the cardinal protective element against illness this year. Everyone benefits from wearing gold jewellery and gold-fashioned symbols to overcome the illness energy. In terms of decor, try to incorporate metallic items into the physical centre of your home, which is usually the front staircase or foyer. A metallic glass frame ortable is a good choice. Or consider
putting up metallic wind chimes.
One traditional feng shui item is a gourd made of brass, calleda wu lou. Feng shui experts usually recommend placing this item
near the bedside to absorb the illness energy and curb disease. However, because illness will besuch a prominent concern this
year, experts recommend placing the wu lou somewhere in the centre of the home. “Another item that we recommend is a painting
called the Mandala of Medicine Buddha. It symbolically represents different herbs and medicines for healing,” says Ms. Johl.
Minimizing hostility The hostile energy brought by the year ofthe fire boar will affect the patriarch of the family. “The hostility
star is in the northwest sector of the Chinese astrological chart this year. It will bring problems,with plenty of misunderstandings that escalate quickly into serious differences. The northwest sector is also the home of the patriarch of the family, which will cause the father or husband to be less tolerant and more bad tempered,” Ms. Sidhu says.
In other years, the recommendation was to use a red item, which symbolized fire, to suppress hostile energy. However, fire cannot be used in the northwest sector because it will burnaway the father’s good luck (a phenomenon referred to as “fire at heaven’s gate”). So, feng shui experts recommend using what’s called a ksiddigarbah star. Made of metal, the star can stand alone
and is easy to place in the northwest corner of the home. The points of the star symbolize the tips of a flame.
Minimizing violence Violent energy is hitting the north sector this year. “We have to watch out for people cheating or betraying
us, which often results in loss or physical danger. [People who live in] homes facing north have to be extra careful because they
are vulnerable to violent energy this year,” Ms. Sidhu says.
One remedy for this problem is to place a double-horned rhinoceros statue, or two single horned ones, on the floor beside
the door, looking out. The rhinoceros is like a protective guard, and it helps to suppress violent energy. If you want to kill two
birds with one stone, make it a blue-coloured rhino. The colour blue represents the north, which governs the career. So a blue
rhino not only suppresses violence, it also enhances the career. | <urn:uuid:91af82ee-9046-4e7f-8187-62c96682e214> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wofs.com/index.php/images/stories/templates/components/com_kunena/template/pearlwhite/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=394:maximize-2007s-year-of-the-pig&catid=44:feng-shui-canada&Itemid=65 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935058 | 1,096 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Information for Parents
Adjusting to the many changes that come with starting college can be a stressful experience for students as well as the influential adults in their lives. The challenges a new student will face and his or her eventual success in negotiating those challenges are unique to each individual. General life experience, which can vary greatly from person to person, plays a major role in how these challenges are viewed and ultimately how they are dealt with.
Because of the endless number of factors involved it is impossible to create a ‘To Do’ list that will ensure an ideal outcome for every situation. Instead, we provide the following information to help address some common questions you may have and to suggest some ways you may be able to support a student who is adjusting to college life.
Keep In Touch, But Not Too Much
It is common for new college students to miss the comforts of home, especially during the first 4–6 weeks of their first semester. It is equally common for parents to miss children who have recently gone off to college. Finding the balance between “keeping in touch” and “too much” can be tricky. While it may be tempting to pick up the phone and call every time something happens, your son or daughter may benefit from some time left to “live and learn." Some families find it helpful to establish a designated weekly time for calling and catching up.
As is the case within the classroom, practicing the skills one hopes to retain outside of the classroom can have a significant effect on the actual retention of those skills. Instead of telling a student how to handle a situation or worse yet, actually handling the situation for them, support them as they work through the problem on their own. Encourage them to think about the situation, to come up with a list of possible approaches and to seek assistance from the appropriate professional staff members. When in doubt, housing staff is always available to help!
Communication Is Key
When a resident is struggling with a particular situation, in many instances it is because they have fallen out of communication with one or more individuals central to the issue. By identifying the persons involved with the issue one can often determine where the communication has broken down. Depending on the situation, a faculty member, an academic advisor, a roommate or a member of housing staff may be the person who can help. In any case, housing staff is available for assistance at any time.
Parent Contact With STI Housing Staff
It is not uncommon for parents to contact housing staff to gather general information and, on occasion, assist a son or daughter with an issue he or she is dealing with. We encourage open communication on all levels and we also want to respect our residents as adults and treat them as such. Accordingly, all official communications that come from housing staff are done so directly with our residents. If it is the wish of a resident to include a parent while working through an issue, housing staff asks that the resident complete a Release of Information form available in Student Services. While communication with parents is ultimately the resident's choice, housing staff recognizes the important role parents play in the educational process and therefore we always encourage students to keep parents informed of important issues they are dealing with.
Coming to Visit
One of the best ways to show interest in the college experience your son or daughter is having is to visit them. When planning a visit, be sure to let them know you are coming. Because we do not have single-occupancy apartments, there will always be roommates who may appreciate knowing in advance when visitors are coming to the apartment.
STI Emergency Alert System
Southeast Tech utilizes email and telecommunication technologies to quickly communicate emergency information with students. While the system has been used primarily for weather-related class cancellations to this point, it can also be used in the event of any other emergency situation which affects the campus. Southeast Tech email addresses are the only email addresses used for this system, but students do have the ability to control the phone numbers at which they will receive emergency notices. Students can change/add phone numbers by contacting Student Services. Learn more about the STI Alert System. | <urn:uuid:f51828f0-6ad4-47ce-ad72-029a20fe62e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southeasttech.edu/transferstudents/stihousing/parents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962724 | 837 | 2.25 | 2 |
In my time as a research assistant for the Information Wanted Database, I have encountered hundreds of advertisements for missing persons that offer a tantalizing but frustratingly brief snapshot of a potentially compelling back story. The searchable online database contains information taken from “Missing Friends”, a popular column that ran in the Boston Pilot between 1831 and 1921, most commonly used by Irish immigrants to make contact with lost loved ones. Several of the lives described in these advertisements stick in my mind. Among the most memorable are tales of elopement, victims of mental illness, inheritance disputes, or runaway children. I often find it frustrating, however, that as our evidence comes from a missing person’s column, we never discover how these stories ended. While one advertisement can provide a lot of information, the final piece in the story is always missing. Frustratingly, we will probably never find out if our seekers found who they were looking for, if families were reunited, or if jilted husbands ever tracked down their absconding wives.
Every so often, however, there are exceptions to this pattern, usually because there is more than one advertisement for the same missing person or people. It is probably for this reason that the Cantwell family from County Kilkenny remain among the most resilient figures in my mental store of missing friends. Members of the Cantwell family placed four adverts in The Pilot between June, 1864 and April, 1865, which, taken together, offer more pieces of the puzzle than is the case with the vast majority of postings.
In 1846, Nicholas and Margaret Cantwell left their home in Ballyouskill, Co. Kilkenny, with their four sons Michael, Thomas, John, and Patrick (an infant at the time) and sailed from Waterford to Quebec to begin a new life somewhere in North America. The posting does not indicate whether the family left as a result of the Famine, but given the date and their place of origin, it is likely that this was the case. Nicholas and Margaret left one son, Martin, behind in Ireland, placing him in the care of his paternal aunt Bridget and her husband Robert Broderick who lived in a neighboring parish near the town of Freshford.
Eighteen years later, Martin followed his family across the Atlantic, arriving in Quebec on May 4, 1864. Sadly, he received news soon after landing that his mother had passed away. This appears to have been the last bit of information Martin received about his family and there is no suggestion that he had any idea where they might have been living at this stage. So, at the end of June, Martin placed an advert in the “Missing Friends” column seeking the remaining members of his family – his father and four brothers.
Three months later, on September 24, a second advertisement appeared indicating that Martin’s first appeal was (partially) successful – he had been reunited with his father Nicholas and his brother John. By this time, the pair were living together in Cincinnati, but since moving to the United States, the family had undergone a second separation. At some point, three of the brothers, Michael, Thomas, and Patrick, had left their parents and struck out on their own. According to the advert, Nicholas and John last heard from the three brothers in 1860, at which time they were living together in Steven’s Point, Portage County, Michigan. They also believed that the trio were still together and living in either Wisconsin or Michigan. That the three reunited Cantwells placed this second advert, followed by two more in January and April 1865, indicates their determination to find the missing three brothers and reunite entire the family. Unfortunately this is the point at which the Information Wanted column’s account of the Cantwell family ends, and, as with almost every other set of seekers and sought, the last piece of the story is missing. Barring further, fruitful research, we may never find out if the two halves of the Cantwell family ever reconnected.
Perhaps because we’ve been treated to more steps in this story than are typically revealed, the many unknowns are even more maddening. But one aspect of this family’s experience does appear to be clear. Despite eighteen years of separation, the Cantwell family’s bond remained strong enough to compel Martin to seek his father and brothers almost immediately after landing in North America. We might wonder why or how Martin lost touch with them to begin with, or why Michael, Thomas, and Patrick failed to contact their father for five years. Certainly the circumstances of migration, difficulties involved in communication in the mid-nineteenth century, and perhaps events of the U.S. Civil War may have forced this family into involuntary separation. Still, it appears that portions of the family were able to stick together. Perhaps they always imagined that somewhere down the road, the entire Cantwell clan would find each other again.
- Gráinne McEvoy, Research Assistant for the Information Wanted Database and doctoral candidate in History at Boston College | <urn:uuid:4a627229-0850-446d-8c05-09985c8f347a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://johnjburnslibrary.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/information-wanted-missing-persons-and-missing-pieces/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978675 | 1,035 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Clean Energy Fuels Taps into Landfill Biomethane
Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has signed a 15-year agreement through its subsidiary, Dallas Clean Energy, LLC, for the sale of renewable biomethane produced at the McCommas Bluff landfill in Dallas.
Beginning this month, the biomethane will be sold at fixed prices that increase in 2010 and 2011 and then remain fixed over the remainder of the agreement. The price for the "green" gas was not disclosed but represents a significant premium to the prevailing price for conventional natural gas.
The agreement calls for the sale of up to 4,500 MMBtus per day of biomethane from April 2009 through September 2010 and between 5,000–6,000 MMBtus per day of biomethane through March 2024. The actual volumes sold will depend on the gas recovery rates from the landfill and successful expansion of the gas processing facilities.
Shell Energy North America will act as the purchaser and supply the biomethane to the end-user—a utility that will use the biomethane in power generation to help meet applicable Renewable Portfolio Standards. Atmos Energy Corporation will provide intrastate transportation services from the gas processing plant.
"This gas sale agreement validates selling renewable biomethane as a valuable, low-carbon fuel. It provides Clean Energy with a sound, long-term revenue stream and also supports expansion of the plant’s production capacity for additional gas sales, including potential use as vehicle fuel," said Andrew J. Littlefair, Clean Energy president and chief executive officer "Many of our largest customers are showing interest in biomethane for their fleet vehicles as it is one of the best alternative fuels to meet new Low Carbon Fuel Standards coming in California and other states."
"We will retain the carbon credits related to the biomethane production and will pursue sales of those credits in the future," noted Littlefair.
The interstate "green" gas sale agreement is believed to be one of the largest such interstate sales of biomethane completed in the United States.
Clean Energy acquired a 70 percent ownership interest in Dallas Clean Energy in August 2008. The McCommas Bluff landfill gas operation owned by Dallas Clean Energy is one of the largest landfill gas operations in the United States. The landfill, owned by the city of Dallas, opened in 1975 and is scheduled to close in 2042. It is estimated that pipeline quality methane gas will continue to be produced for approximately 30 years after the landfill closes. | <urn:uuid:2aa811e3-e981-49b5-85f0-7c3b27694aa8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eponline.com/articles/2009/04/13/clean-energy-fuels-taps-into-landfill-biomethane.aspx?admgarea=ht.sustainability.wastetoenergy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943102 | 521 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Wild Card winner: LeapPad Explorer
Not ready to hand over your iPad - or yikes, buy one? Our 2011 Golden Apple Wild Card winner - nominated by our staff - may be the next best thing for your early reader.
By GreatSchools Staff
Appeals to ages: 3-9
What it teaches: early reading skills such as letter and word recognition and storytelling; early math skills like simple addition, groupings, and patterns; as well as emotional and social skills
This nicely diminutive, kid-focused touchscreen tablet with more than 100 games and activities seems to do it all: Teach early math, reading, logic, and even emotional and social skills — all under the guise of games, puzzles, and other smart forms of play. (It's also designed to withstand a youngster's inevitable wear and tear that would quickly do in a grown-up’s tablet, like an iPad.)
We were thrilled that stories can be personalized with a child's photos, artwork, writing, and voice recording. Said one mom tester: "My child loved that it spoke his name." Plus, she added, "It's well designed, easy to handle and maneuver for young kids. My 4-year-old son and even his baby sister learned and laughed a lot from it."
Bottom line: A smart, high-tech learning toy that will keep young kids busy learning — from A to Z and 1,2,3.
Where to buy it: LeapPad
Check out last year’s winner: FlashMaster | <urn:uuid:ecb9dd1c-dcb4-4200-b184-bffd24f460ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greatschools.org/great-gifts/golden-apple-awards/4977-Golden-Apple-2011-Editors-Choice-Leap-Pad.gs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964866 | 316 | 1.796875 | 2 |
As the saying goes “the devil’s in the details”.
When, writers of historical fiction, put words to paper, they bear the responsibility to transpose their readers to the time period their story relates to. This doesn’t mean telling them it’s 1776 – it means transporting them to 1776, making them feel it, live it, and be a part of it – having them jump up and march along with the fyfe and drum.
If only done on the macro level, the characters are superficial and transparent. The reader doesn’t feel authenticity and sees through the ruse. To lift the characters off the pages and bring them into the minds and hearts of the reader, the writer must work on the micro level—down in the trenches – with the details. And, here he must tread carefully, for it can easily be overdone. Too many details are overpowering and will bog a story down quicker than a hippo wallowing in molasses. Inserting a few carefully selected details, in a natural way, so as not recognizable as being inserted, will unconsciously, allow the reader to live them. This is where the writer’s art comes in to play, weaving the facts and substance of the era into the spirit and essence of the story, putting the reader into the story’s setting as witness to the action.
For every word of detail the writer puts to paper, a hundred words were researched, reviewed and revised. Each sentence represents hours of background investigation, study and learning about the times, people, environment and cultures of the era.
If a writer’s passion is the blood flowing through his veins – then research is the muscle that forms his flesh.
During the writing of ‘Journeys across Niagara’ (formerly ‘Bridges – a Tale of Niagara’), I traveled down many roads of research. Not so much for the main story line of Kevin and his friends living in Niagara Falls during the ‘60s, (having lived that era myself – I was my own research), but for the historical stories embedded in the novel. Encompassing four actual events, covering over 200 years of history in the Niagara Region, and crossing lines of culture, nations and habitat, each story required separate journeys of research and investigation. The stories are separated by many decades, in a rapidly developing part of the New World, undergoing major political, societal and cultural change. The world of the English drummer boy and the Iroquois brave in 1763 was a different world from the world of slavery and abolition found in Lizzie’s story of 1859. Conversely, The Hermit of Niagara lived on top of Niagara Falls in 1831, while the only instance of Niagara Falls stopping was in 1848, a mere 17 years apart, yet significant changes had occurred in the Niagara Frontier, due to the advent of the Erie Canal and the introduction of the railroads along with a spreading population, radically affecting the culture of the people. (See “Was there a Hermit of Niagara?” post on the right hand side.)
Research is the mantra of the historical fiction writer. It is hard work and takes considerable time but it’s as crucial to success as the reentry heat shields are to the space shuttle. I often wonder how earlier writers researched their subjects and eras. (hmm, could be a story there in the making.)
“To where do we go?” the writers asked. They went to the libraries and to building personal acquisitions of books and writings. Yes, long, hard, tedious work, not to mention, costly but worth the effort and cost.
Today, all that’s changed, writers have the advantage of the internet. Call up any subject or key word and information is immediately at your fingertips. Images, words, histories, background, essays and opinions—lots of opinions. This is a huge advantage for the modern writer, but I also see a snare lying in wait for us. As wide and as deep as the internet is, it only coughs up what someone has put in it. And those things are repeated – over and over. The internet fools us into thinking we can click on any subject and then, magically and instantly, we are ‘well informed’ and ‘all knowing’ about that subject. It has the potential to ‘Wikipedia’ an entire population, on a global scale, with a ‘one-click’ mentality, regarding any particular subject.
That’s one scary thought! The same, singular knowledge and information is put out and repeated to all who punch in a keyword or subject and most inquiries stop at that level. Much of this information has already been filtered and is steeped in ‘opinions’, before we ‘surf’ through it, filtering and discarding along the way. We, too easily, fail to genuinely dive into the heart of the matter, as true research demands. With enough repetitions and enough people reading the same things without rebuttal and opposing views and insights, we begin forming a global community of keyboard punchers who think along the same lines. And we then put our faith in it – “I read it on the internet, so it must be true.” There is a great risk of an unconscious ‘dumbing down’ of the entire world concerning any given subject of history – like-minded regurgitating with like-minded. Understandings about people and events can easily become condensed down to a singular ‘common’ or ‘general’ opinion, and we all know, there is nothing ‘common’ or ‘general’ concerning people. People are unique, diverse and always at emotional states with one another, whether loving or hating one another. And history is nothing more than a reflection of those people and those emotions. And make no mistake about it, we must fully understand and know all the details of history or the past will overtake the future.
Think for a second, what power true censorship would have over this medium. The world’s understanding of history would be revised and reshaped to conform to the political or social designs of those doing the censoring. This isn’t fantasy or paranoia talk, for we know all too well that such things have happened down through history by governments, religions and organizations burning, rewriting and revising history for their own purposes and agendas. It’s not inconceivable or preposterous to think it could happen with the internet and we mustn’t be complacent– for there are governments, around the globe, imposing censorship and monitoring the internet as I write.
True research goes beyond the internet and dives into the heart, fiber and cellular DNA of the matter. We, as writers, owe it to our readers and to those who went before us, to embrace research with both arms wide open, welcoming the joy of bringing history to life.
“To where do we go?” the writers ask. We go to the libraries and to building personal acquisitions of books and writings. Yes, long, hard, tedious work, not to mention costly but worth the effort and cost.
Gee – I guess not all that much has changed after all.
Until Next Time:
Embrace Life’s Bridges – For they Define Who You Are | <urn:uuid:78318e74-d188-4197-825a-12d1fade76ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dklevick.wordpress.com/tag/technology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953879 | 1,527 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Into the Wild
In the music of his techno project Gas, Wolfgang Voigt drew on Romantic landscape and classical music as much as technological minimalism
It starts with a dilated fanfare, a canopy of sombre sonorousness that could be the distant lowing of massed alpine horns. It makes you feel like you’re on a mountain path looking down on mist draping the lower slopes. When the bass-drum pulse kicks in, it’s like your heart starting up after being stopped with awe.
This is the titleless and 15-minute-long fifth track of Königsforst (King’s Forest, 1998, named after a wood near Cologne), part of a remarkable tetralogy of techno albums released in the late 1990s under the name Gas by the prolific and critically acclaimed producer Wolfgang Voigt. Today he’s best known as the co-founder of Kompakt, the Cologne-based label that’s contributed more than any other to Germany’s dominance of electronic dance music. Voigt’s decision to reissue the four Gas albums as the de luxe box set Nah und Fern (Near and Far) along with the publication of a book of photographic work, Gas: Loops, which includes a CD of unreleased music, is an intriguing gesture. It’s a statement of belief in the durability of (some) electronic music, at a time when the volume of output and turnover of micro-fads in post-rave music contributes to a sense of, in Voigt’s words, ‘growing ephemerality’. The monumentality of the box set asserts for techno what is a routine claim for rock: this music will stand the test of time.
The core of the Gas series resides in Königsforst and 1997’s Zauberberg (Magic Mountain). Although partly bidden by Voigt’s overt framing of the project – colour-treated cover pictures of sunlight dappling through trees etc., drawn from the photographic stockpile that makes up the accompanying book – the music does irresistibly conjure up mind’s-eye imagery of rugged natural grandeur: the deep forest’s rustling shadows, alpine vistas of altitude and remoteness. Gas is the by-product of a ‘lab project’ that involved putting Austro-German classical music (Richard Wagner, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg), brass bands and the schlocky middle-of-the-road pop known as Schlager under the microscope in order to find a sort of audio-cultural DNA. The Gas sound is spliced together from small samples of classical records, which Voigt has subjected to processes of ‘zoom, loop and alienation’. The music’s provenance is instantly audible from the rainfall-like hiss of old vinyl and the orchestral sonorities of grave cellos and tingling violins. There’s a wonderful irony here that one of the signal triumphs of techno, that most future-fixated genre, is sourced almost entirely from music from the latter decades of the 19th century, when classical music scaled its summit of portentous majesty before swerving into the angst-wracked realm of Serialism.
Interviewed in the late 1990s, Voigt talked of wanting ‘to bring the German forest into the disco’. When the albums first came out, he received some criticism from left-wing German journalists hypersensitive about a shady side to the national cult of the Alps and those large areas of uncultivated woodland known as the Wald (wilderness). And it is true that Germany does have a thing for its mountains and forests. Zauberberg’s title obviously nods to Thomas Mann’s novel of the same name, but ‘Magic Mountain’ also has resonances that run through the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the music of Wagner and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (who described his ideal reader as a hardy soul ‘accustomed to living on mountain tops’). Zauberberg is close to Arnold Fanck’s Der heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain, 1926), one of the most famous ‘mountain films’ (a genre unique to between-the-wars Germany), which starred the young Leni Riefenstahl. Her later, supposedly apolitical, film Tiefland (Lowlands, 1954) was based on an obscure opera that contrasted decadent lowland folk with pure-of-spirit mountain people: an opposition between ‘civilization’ (seen as Franco-Mediterranean) and ‘culture’ (Germano-Nordic) briefly espoused by Mann himself during World War I.
The association between the forest and German national identity can be traced as far back as the Romans’ failure to conquer the Wald-dwelling pagan tribes, and it reverberates on through German Romanticism, the Brothers Grimm and painters such as Caspar David Friedrich and Anselm Kiefer. Although Voigt was tapping into all of this as part of his long-term desire to make a ‘genuinely German form of pop music’, his primary associations were personal: childhood vacations to the Alps and psychedelia-enhanced teenage adventures in the Königsforst, which he describes as both ‘Hansel and Gretel on acid’ and a womb-like ‘spiritual refuge’.
Contrasting the amorphous immensity of Gas with today’s German electronica, you can see a revealing shift in the meaning of ‘minimal’. In the mid-1990s the word was suggestive of austerity and spirituality. Beneath the scene’s rampantly druggy hedonism there was a sense of a reaching out to a transcendent beyond, a vastness conjured through music built to overwhelm. Gas took that impulse and connected it back to the Romantic idea of the Sublime as outside society and essentially barbarian. Contemporary German electronica drifts diffusely in the area between house, techno, trance and the more glitchy-twitchy zones of experimental electronics, and although it’s still confusingly known as ‘minimal’, it has little in common with 1990s’ minimal techno. The latter was based on reduction (Voigt’s ‘high art of leaving out’), taken to the level of sensory deprivation. But today’s minimal is sensuous and relatively busy, to the point of being cluttered with fiddly nuances. It’s designed to reward the close attention of the connoisseur’s ear, attuned to minuscule fluctuations of texture and rhythm but also historically informed enough to appreciate allusions to earlier phases in dance music’s rich tapestry.
Contemporary minimal presents itself as gourmet audio for the discerning aural palate. Alongside its German counterparts such as Get Physical, Kompakt pioneered the art of positioning the record label as a quality brand. Of course, there has long been a cult of particular labels within techno. But what’s changed is how electronic music as a whole situates itself in relation to the mainstream. In the 1990s the subculture saw itself as both a vanguard and an underground; techno rhetoric then was full of appeals to ‘belief’ and paramilitary imagery. And operations such as Basic Channel or Underground Resistance did seem shrouded in mystery in a way that today’s labels, including Kompakt, couldn’t recreate even if they wanted to; digital culture’s over-bright omnipresence of knowledge has chased away the shadows. So the model today is no longer the underground (in opposition to mass culture) but the boutique (a niche market running parallel to mainstream but at a slight elevation).
As I write this however, I realize that I’m reconstituting that dubious binary between culture and civilization: 1990s’ techno representing a cluster of values (heroic pioneers and explorers, the great outdoors) with an unmistakably virile cast, while early 21st-century electronica suggests an equally gender-coded opposite (audio-décor, metrosexuality, Postmodern pastiche). It all seems an aeon ago, the idea of being a soldier for the techno ‘cause’ – irrecoverable, even slightly silly. Gas was arguably the swansong of that impulse. Beneath Voigt’s shimmering clouds of glory there’s often a submerged martial feel to the rhythm, a trudging resoluteness. The sound, perhaps, of an army marching home to disband.
Simon Reynolds is the author of Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture, recently re-released in an updated/expanded 2008 remix.
Nah und Fern is released by Kompakt in May, and the book Gas: Loops is published by Raster-Noton in the same month.
frieze is now accepting letters to the editors for possible publication at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:24d423c2-75c9-4df6-af14-5d1f1f9e3b57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/into_the_wild/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939933 | 1,926 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Chancellor's Parashah Commentary
Exodus 35:1 - 40:38, 12:1-20
March 21, 1998 23 Adar 5758
Ismar Schorsch is the chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary.
The final two readings this week, which close the book of Exodus, tell of the actual construction of the Tabernacle. In a leap year, with its additional month, we would have devoted one Shabbat to each parasha and read for the haftara a selection pertaining to Solomon's construction of the First Temple. In fact, the two haftarot are sequential: I Kings 7:40-50 for Vayakhel and I Kings 7:51-8:21 for Pekuday. Thus the synagogue naturally associated the completion of Moses's mobile sanctuary with the completion of Solomon's permanent Temple in Jerusalem. This year, however, the connection is obscured by Shabbat Parah, which brings with it its own special haftara.
Still, I wish to pursue the comparison. The synagogue joined the two events because it regarded the Temple as the natural culmination of the Tabernacle. At last, God's name would find a permanent dwelling. When David had transferred the Ark of the Lord to his new capital in Jerusalem, he said to his court prophet Nathan: "Here I am dwelling in a house of cedar, while the Ark of the Lord abides in a tent (II Samuel 7:2)!" Yet the disparity in residences would not be eliminated till the reign of Solomon, though the fixtures of holiness remained the same: two cherubim facing each other with wings spread over the Ark of the Lord that held nothing more than the tablets of stone received by Moses at Sinai. In every aspect the continuity between the two institutions was striking.
Nevertheless, the national impact of each sanctuary was different. Moses's Tabernacle served to unite unruly former slaves around a common sacred space; Solomon's Temple failed miserably to preserve the unity and grandeur of David's kingdom. Under Solomon's son Rehoboam, the state forged by his grandfather split into two independent and often warring realms called Israel and Judah, despite the existence of a new political and religious center in the city of Jerusalem. Clearly, bigger is not always better.
What might account for the success of the Tabernacle and the failure of the Temple? Part of the answer, I shall argue, was cost or more precisely the fact that the expenses for the Tabernacle were borne by the people voluntarily and those for the Temple were exacted from the people by force. The biblical evidence suggests that Moses worked with the benefit of a national consensus and Solomon did not. The two sanctuaries did not spring from the same social matrix.
God had originally instructed Moses that materials required for the Tabernacle were to be donated "from every person whose heart so moves him (Exodus 25:2)." This week's parasha goes out of its way to stress that no one held back. Every member of the camp, women as well as men, hastened to contribute of their possessions and expertise. Indeed, they gave so lavishly and selflessly, that the artisans on the project soon turned to Moses in exasperation: "The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks entailed in the work that the Lord has commanded to be done (Exodus 36:5)." Moses ordered the campaign to be ended and the narrative reports approvingly: "So the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done (Exodus 36:6-7)." The point is unmistakable: the building of the Tabernacle was done in a blaze of spontaneous popular support. There was no need for taxation in any form. How different the circumstances attending Solomon's Temple, begun in the fourth year of his reign, exactly 480 years after the exodus from Egypt! What is worth pondering is not that the project was conceived on a scale far grander than the Tabernacle, but that forced labor was required to carry it out. The author of the book of Kings gives us a sober picture of the work force Solomon mobilized to bring cedar and cypress wood from Lebanon and quarried stone from the mountains:
King Solomon imposed forced labor on all Israel; the levy came to 30,000 men. He sent them to the Lebanon in shifts of 10,000 a month; they would spend one month in the Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. Solomon also had 70,000 porters and 80,000 quarriers in the hills, apart from Solomon's 3,300 officials who were in charge of the work and supervised the gangs doing the work (I Kings 5:27-30)."
In addition to this army of unpaid laborers, Solomon had to remit annually to Hiram, the King of Lebanon, for use of his natural resources some "20,000 kors of wheat as provisions for his household and 20,000 baths of beaten oil (I Kings 5:25)." Hence, the construction of the Temple surely affected everyone in Solomon's realm, though without prior consent. The moral foundations of the two sanctuaries thus starkly differed. Unlike the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the Jerusalem Temple rose on a bedrock strewn with coercion, deprivation and impoverishment.
As soon as Solomon died, Rehoboam reaped what his father had sown. At Shechem a disgruntled nation confronted the new king: "Your father made our yoke heavy. Now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke which your father laid on us, and we will serve you (I Kings 12:4)." Rehoboam sought counsel before he responded. He turned first to the elders who had served his father, and they recognized a nation on the verge of rebellion: "If you will be a servant to those people today and serve them, and if you respond to them with kind words they will be your servants always (I Kings 12:7)."
But Rehoboam lacked the "wisdom" of his father and spurned their advice. Instead, he asked the young men with whom he had grown up and got what he wanted to hear, a counsel to hang tough: "Say to them: 'My little finger is thicker than my father's loins. My father imposed a heavy yoke on you, and I will add to your yoke; my father flogged you with whips, but I will flog you with scorpions (I Kings 12:10-11).'"
When Rehoboam delivered that savage message to the nation, it promptly bolted with only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remaining loyal to the House of David. Nor would the break ever be healed. Yet Rehoboam was only the proximate cause for the division. The long term cause was the Temple itself and the human degradation required to create it. Solomon had overreached by ignoring an alternate voice out of the past which urged wedding sanctity to simplicity.
An earthen altar would suffice, according to the book of Exodus (20:21-22) to reach God through sacrifices. And if a stone altar is what you want, them let it be without artifice, untouched by human tools. Had not Saul, the nation's first king, lost title to the throne because he placed offering sacrifices above obeying God's word? The later prophets of Israel and Judah would never tire of telling their discomforted listeners that God sought a society inspired by moral passion and not cultic extravagance.
Shabbat shalom u-mevorach, | <urn:uuid:650efe9d-78a7-48a9-8dad-80b2ca83c390> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jtsa.edu/PreBuilt/ParashahArchives/5758/vayakhelpekudey.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969345 | 1,577 | 2.125 | 2 |
In the preface to the 1976 edition of his seminal Titanic text from 1955, A Night to Remember, the late Walter Lord writes of the then-unabated interest in the great ship and how, in many ways, she has proved unsinkable. Lord’s words could just as easily describe the Titanic fever now gripping the media. On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the disaster, it seems everyone wants to hop on board the ship that refuses to sink.
Perhaps it’s the re-release, in 3-D, no less, of James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic, or the new mini-series by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, or Canada Post’s commemorative stamps, or even the inevitable comparisons to the recent Costa Concordia disaster, but it’s been increasingly difficult not to encounter the Titanic.
Our curiosity about the great ship never seems to diminish. In fact, at a time when many governments were implementing austerity budgets, the city of Belfast secured more than $150-million for its recently opened Titanic museum on the land that once housed the iconic Harland and Wolff shipyards. Governments, apart from vain dictators, do not build museums for passing fads.
We’re experiencing a renaissance of all things Titanic. If her discovery by Robert Ballard in 1985 signalled the first wave of renewed enthusiasm, and Cameron’s movie signalled the second, the latest interest is the third, and possibly largest, wave yet – a tsunami.
While this interest is the direct result of the centenary celebrations, it should be noted that many of the political concerns voiced by groups such as the Occupy movement have natural parallels to the inequalities experienced by steerage passengers and crew. This was a disaster, after all, in which pet dogs had a higher survival rate than males in third class.
Of the hundreds of books about the Titanic, Lord’s A Night to Remember is undoubtedly the best-known and most significant. Based on interviews with 63 survivors, the book rekindled interest in the ship in the mid-1950s and inspired a critically acclaimed 1958 docudrama starring Kenneth More. To both historians and readers, this was the gateway book to a lifelong fascination with the ship, her passengers and her crew.
Lord’s accessible prose captured the major themes evoked in many Titanic works: the inequalities of class, the limits of technology and progress, greed, sacrifice and love. He demonstrated an acute eye for detail, along with a strong sense of character and drama, qualities that made the book a natural for the screen. The book is simply a chronicle of the events leading up to and during that fateful night of April 14-15, 1912, though a chronicle with a storyteller’s sensitivity. Almost 60 years on, it remains as engaging as ever.
While dozens and dozens of collections investigate the tragedy through non-fiction prose, quite often accompanied by photographs, menus, comparative graphs and other ephemera, the disaster has inspired other forms, including Broadway musicals, dramas, children’s stories and poetry. Canada’s E.J. Pratt and Thomas Hardy (yes, that Thomas Hardy) both offered memorable poetic takes on the ship. There have also been some questionable books – inviting readers to re-enact the last dinners aboard the ship, and cookbooks filled with White Star Line recipes.
While the highest-profile Titanic books have been non-fiction, a notable exception is Beryl Bainbridge’s Every Man for Himself, short-listed for the 1996 Booker Prize. The novel takes place onboard the ship in the days leading up to her sinking. Bainbridge weaves the events and details of the doomed maiden voyage into a seamless narrative so painstakingly researched and considered that it’s difficult to notice just how much factual information she brings to the text.
Her protagonists are fictional, though she has them interact with characters modelled after actual Titanic passengers and crew. Thus, Bainbridge allows us to speculate on what it would have been like for high-society types such as Benjamin Guggenheim, John Jacob Astor and the unsinkable Molly Brown in the decadent world of first-class travel. Part comedy of manners, part historical drama, Bainbridge’s take on the Titanic saga is a well-crafted addition to the Titanic canon.
In Titanic: The Canadian Story, Alan Hustak offers Canadians and, indeed, everyone else, a better understanding of the tragedy’s Canadian roots and shoots. It goes much deeper than our icy waters prolonging the iceberg’s life or wireless operators in Newfoundland (then its own country).
Far too many Canadians do not know the extent to which the country plays a part in the tragedy, from the Halifax-based ships chartered by the White Star Line to retrieve bodies, to the Mayflower Curling Club used as an impromptu morgue, to Canadians being the third most numerous group aboard the ship. Hustak’s book documents many of the Canadians overlooked by U.S. and British publishers.
For instance, going down with the ship was Charles Melville Hays, president of the Grand Truck Railway, who had been in England securing financing for a cross-country railway running from Montreal through to the port in Prince Rupert, B.C.. This would have changed the landscape of Canada significantly.
Theories abound as to why so many folks share an ongoing fascination for the tragedy and its many stories, especially those connected with the Greek concept of hubris, the seeming maiden-voyage punishment for the White Star Line declaring its luxurious ship unsinkable. But it would be especially interesting to study how whether the obsession follows class lines. Just as it’s difficult to find lottery-ticket outlets in affluent areas, does the One Percent keep up with Titanic lore?
And in this new wave of enthusiasm, how many cookbooks and re-enactment parties and centenary cruises does it take before our fascination becomes fetishistic? Perhaps imitation is the highest form of flattery, but what if it’s not? At what point do we cease to honour the Titanic’s memory? What if the night itself is forgotten?
Billeh Nickerson is the author of Impact: The Titanic Poems and chairs the Department of Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. | <urn:uuid:42294e7e-d3fd-4993-b30e-19fae6dc3661> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/the-unsinkable-metaphor-our-obsession-with-the-titanic/article4099864/?from=4101130 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952659 | 1,312 | 2.5 | 2 |
Allahabad Bank was founded in 1865
Sifting through the listed 100-year-old companies to pinpoint the ones still going strong, Business Today came across quite a few banks that have been around for just as long and more or less in their present identity. (That excluded State Bank of India, or SBI, the biggest, which in its present form can at best go back to 1921, and Imperial Bank.)
Who was Mahatma Gandhi's banker? Or, Jawaharlal Nehru's, Lal Bahadur Shastri's or Indira Gandhi's? The honour in all four cases goes to the 117-year-old Punjab National Bank, or PNB. The Jallianwala Bagh Committee was also one of its eminent clients. Founded in 1895 in Lahore - now in Pakistan - as an offshoot of the swadeshi movement, PNB was the first to be launched with Indian capital - owned, operated and managed by Indians. Freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai was closely associated with the management of PNB in its early years.
Punjab National Bank, founded in 1895
Among other founders were Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia, Lala Harkishen Lal, Lala Lalchand, Kali Prosanna Roy, E.C. Jessawala, Prabhu Dayal, Bakshi Jaishi Ram and Lala Dholan Dass.
PNB has had its share of trauma, from the banking industry crisis of 1913 to 1917 - when as many as 87 Indian banks folded up - and the severe depression of the 1930s, to the tumult of the freedom movement and Partition. Shortly before the Partition riots broke out, PNB relocated its headquarters to Delhi.
|Events that shaped the 100-year-old banks|
1850: The Union Bank was the only banking company to receive legislative sanction
1865: Banking companies fl ourish due to cotton boom, but a crash later wiped out many companies
1913: Unchecked expansion of banks leads to a crisis; 87 banks failed between 1913 and 1917
1935: Establishment of RBI with powers to regulate currencies and money supply
1949: Banking Companies Act passed to provide a more satisfactory defi nition to a banking concern
1960: Sweeping powers to RBI to order moratorium on banks
1963: Fresh statutory provisions were added to diffuse the control and restrict the hold of business houses over banking firms
1969: Fourteen major banks nationalised
1980: Six more banks nationalised
1993: RBI permits setting up of new banks in the private sector; the birth of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank
PNB can truly say it has been there and done that: way back in 1939, it made its first acquisition: the Bhagwan Dass Bank. It has made eight acquisitions in all, some dictated to it by the government, which took over the bank following the nationalisation of banks in 1969. "Whenever opportunity has arisen, we have been there," says K.R. Kamath, PNB's Chairman and Managing Director, or CMD, today.
Kamath came to PNB from Allahabad Bank, the oldest bank in the country. He was initially amazed by PNB's culture of systems and processes. He learnt, for instance, that the bank had a well thought-out risk management system in place. It had appointed an external auditor in the very second year of its existence, at a time when the concept of auditing did not exist. "A strong culture of corporate governance was imbibed in the early stages of the bank," says Kamath. "Even today our risk management systems are among the best in public sector banks."
Kamath says he has no worries about PNB's future. It is among the best performing banks in India. "We will maintain our position and reach out to customers," he says modestly. As the second-ranked bank after SBI by size of total business - rival ICICI Bank says it is bigger - PNB also has one of the highest net interest margins among Indian banks.
Central Bank of India, Founded in 1911
If PNB was set up in a burst of swadeshi pride, Bank of Baroda, or BoB, was the initiative of an enlightened ruler, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda, who ascended the throne in 1881. At the time, rulers of most princely states were busy amassing personal wealth. But Sayajirao initiated steps towards setting up a sugar factory, a cotton mill and a tile manufacturing unit in his kingdom. He also realised trade and commerce could not flourish without a financing agency.
Thus, in 1884, was born the Baroda Pedhi Company. But Sayajirao soon realised it was undercapitalised and functioned more like a moneylending agency. But Baroda's business climate was by now attracting banks from other states. The Bank of Bombay rushed in with an offer to set up a branch. The Maharaja, however, was put off by the proposed riders: Baroda state would have to put in an interest-free deposit of Rs 3 lakh and transfer its treasury to the branch.
Another Bombay-based bank, Indian Specie, made a slightly better offer and nearly won the Maharaja over. But credit deposit fears ruled even then: what if Indian Specie sucked out Baroda's money and lent it to businesses in Bombay?
Bank of India, Canara Bank and Corporation Bank, founded in 1906
Sayajirao visited Europe and the United States frequently, and during one such visit in 1906 to the US, he met one Ralph C. Whiteneck, whose ideas impressed him. The Maharaja invited Whiteneck to join his government as an economic advisor. Whiteneck drafted a 25-page report on the basis of which BoB
came into existence, with a paid up capital of Rs 10 lakh. Apart from the Maharaja himself and Whiteneck, others who played key roles in setting up BoB were Sampatrao Gaekwad, Vithaldas Thackersey, Tulsidas Kilachand and N.M. Chokshi.
By 1913, it had four branches outside Baroda, including two in British India, at Ahmedabad and Surat. It admirably weathered both the banking crisis of 1913 and the Great Depression of 1929. Anil Kumar Khandelwal, who joined the bank in 1971 as a probationary officer and retired as its CMD in 2008, says: "By 1947, the bank was big enough to be among the country's top five banks."
BoB was also a pioneer in moving overseas: it took its first step abroad in 1953, with a branch in Mombasa, Kenya, then a hub of Indian enterprise. Eight years later, it landed in Fiji. Today, it has a footprint in 26 countries, with branches abroad accounting for nearly a quarter of its revenues. Khandelwal himself opened a record 11 such branches in a single year in 2007. He recalls how a Fiji minister corrected him when he referred to BoB as a foreign bank. "You are very much a part of us. You are more local than foreign," the minister said.
Bank of Baroda's founder: Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III
"We are seen as a local bank in many of the east African countries, where we have been present for more than 60 years," says M.D. Mallya, BoB's current CMD. In 1969, when the government nationalised over a dozen banks, including BoB, it had the largest number of foreign branches after SBI. In the mid-1980s, it was quick to find growth in mass banking, merchant banking, housing finance, credit cards and mutual funds.
Three years after the Harshad Mehta scam, when the capital market was depressed, BoB pulled off another coup. It floated a Rs 850-crore public issue that was oversubscribed. However, the real growth has come in the first decade of the current century. The total business has jumped from Rs 1.25 trillion (one trillion equals 100,000) in 2004/05 to Rs 5.45 trillion in 2010/11. Says Mallya: "The entire edifice of the corporation rests on governance. That is a unique feature in Bank of Baroda's history." | <urn:uuid:91306906-8e02-492d-9a50-7b1d32d30f78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/indian-banks-that-have-completed-100-years/1/16461.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977337 | 1,745 | 2.875 | 3 |
While giving social media 1×1 coaching sessions at Assosciation for Women in Technology’s 2009 Women’s Business Conference, I found myself telling someone that I’d never met a mean person on Twitter.
It got me to thinking this morning (in the shower, of course): are there really no trolls on Twitter? So, later in the morning when I remembered it, I asked my twitter friends if that was really the case, or was I just lucky?
Sounds like I’ve just been lucky. Not only did many tweet back to tell me they are out there, with a quick search I found them documented on Flickr, reported to GetSatisfaction.com and escalated to Twitter executives.
So why have I, and apparently at least one other person, not run into them? Maybe because of the very opt-in nature of Twitter. If you don’t like what someone has to say, you simply don’t follow them. If they try to talk to you via @ replies, you can just ignore them or block them if they get rude. You can choose exactly whose tweets you wish to receive on your phone, if any. And, you can choose whether or not you want to receive e-mails whenever someone signs up to follow you or direct messages you. Heck, you can even chose who gets to direct message you because it is limted to who you follow.
If you are trying to track a topic on Twitter, I can see where spam, trolls and general noise could quickly mess up the signal, though. Jon points this out as a problem with hashtags because Twitter hashtags are completely open, so anybody can post on them. It was evident today, too, as Skittles tried to experiment with turning their web site home page into a Twitter search results page. Since I’m rarely trying to follow a trendy topic, that’s probably a reason I haven’t noticed it so much. Even when I’m enjoying the Oscars or some other television event with one eye on Twitter, just watching the tweets of the peanut gallery I already follow is more than enough.
Some folks are very big on following back everyone who follows them. While I want to be as friendly as the next person on Twitter, I just couldn’t go that far. I’m not there just to pile up numbers, so I’ve been selective about who I follow (although the selection process is not set in stone or always that rigorous).
The point I’m trying to make is that the power is really in your hands. I have probably tempted fate by bringing up the troll topic. I hope not to be besieged by mean-spirited people who take this as an invitation to crawl out from under their bridges; but, if they come, I’ll just ignore or block.
And, I’ll continue to tell folks how I’ve met some of the nicest people around on Twitter.Tweet | <urn:uuid:d7caff42-b86b-4c89-a59b-6b920076b250> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://laurapthomas.x.iabc.com/2009/03/02/tempting-fate-and-twitter-trolls/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96318 | 619 | 1.5 | 2 |
By Keiana Smith-McDowell, NAMI Communications Intern
|(Photo: The U.S. Army - Flickr)|
Recommendations on strategies to improve the mental and substance abuse treatment for veterans, service members and their families were discussed with the Interagency Task Force on Military and Veterans Mental Health in a meeting this February.
The meeting was the result of an executive order President Obama signed in August 2012 urging the federal government to outline a plan of action to better assist veterans and their families especially after deployment.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 2 million service men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a press release by the Department of Defense, 26 potential suicides occurred among active-duty soldiers in the Army in July 2012. Seventy-one potential non active duty (National Army Guard and Army Reserve) were reported for the year 2012 as well.
In the past 12 years, roughly 18 to 22 Veterans died from suicide each day. These alarming numbers pressed President Obama to step in and take action.
Jean Moore, Manager of Military and Veterans Policy and Support at NAMI attended the meeting.
“I welcomed the opportunity to meet with the White House Task Force. Gathering information from those on the ground is always important when developing national strategies,” Moore said.
Moore added, “With respect to the President's executive order, however, it would have been nice to have received a briefing on accomplishments to date.”
Key elements outlined to promote coalition building as well as service member’s transition into civilian life include and are not limited to:
President Obama pressed that the mission of member agencies working alongside the task force is to labor collaboratively on these strategies and also create inventory of mental health and substance abuse programs and activities to inform this work.
NAMI is also working diligently to expand education and offer support to mental illness involving veterans and service members. NAMI plans to redevelop the existing Web-based veteran and military resource center to include relevant and interactive information, reaching out and partnering with agencies like the Defense Centers of Excellence and Veterans Affairs who have a wealth of information to share, and promoting NAMI's signature program while advocating from within for more veteran targeted programs.
“Collaboration is key,” said Moore. “We want to work to increase the collaboration amongst other stakeholders to help meet the mental health needs of veterans and military.”
In the executive order, President Obama presented the task force a timeline of 180 days to send recommendations. On Feb. 2, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs sent out a news release announcing they had made significant progress in providing mental health care services. In compliance with President Obama's orders, as of Jan. 29 the VA has hired 1,058 mental health clinical providers as well as 223 administrative support staff members.
The executive order calls for 1,600 metal health clinical providers and 300 administrative members to be hired by June 30, 2013.
The VA has also hired more staff to assist with the Veterans Crisis Line as made specific in the executive order.
Moore believes the first step is working to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.
“Fear is immobilizing. Many of the barriers associated with the lack of access to mental health care are due to a lack of understanding. Forward movement requires more people to demonstrate care, respect and empathy for the 1 percent of people who fight for our liberties and freedom,” said Moore. | <urn:uuid:14f68936-6984-4b96-bb59-b0f6d0cb91a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Whats_New43&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=152021 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964108 | 709 | 2.125 | 2 |
How do you really feel about Facebook? Do you trust it? Would you give it your money? Is it fun? Is it safe? These are just a few of the questions asked in a recent AP-CNBC poll and the answers they got. . . well. . . they weren’t exactly surprising. But hey, we love data here so let’s take a look!
Who is on Facebook?
Facebook is a keeper for most of the US. 56% of all Americans have a Facebook page. 3 in 10 use it everyday with younger users visiting more often.
Those who don’t have a page, 35% say they have no interest or they have better things to do with their time. 22% stay away because they think it’s bad or not right for their age group.
- About 8 in 10 Facebook users surveyed say they hardly ever (26%) or never (57%) click on online advertising or sponsored content when using the site.
- Most (54%) say they would not feel safe purchasing goods and services on Facebook. Among the site’s most frequent users, half say they would not feel safe making purchases through the site.
- 59% of Facebook users do not trust the site with their personal information and have little or no faith in the company to protect their privacy. A slight minority (13%) trust the company completely or a lot.
- Just 18% of Americans have deep confidence in Zuckerberg’s ability to run a large publicly traded company like Facebook, another 40% say they are “somewhat confident.”
- About a third of the public (36%) has a favorable impression of the Facebook founder, while 14 percent hold an unfavorable opinion and 20 percent say they’ve never heard of him or don’t know how they feel.
- The Social Network filmgoers have a more favorable impression of Zuckerberg than others (51% favorable compared to 31% among those who have not seen it).
Facebook vs The World
Facebook as a whole scores a net positive favorability rating, with 51% holding favorable impressions of the company compared to 23% who have an unfavorable impression.
- 27% of those surveyed have a favorable impression of Twitter. 4% said they never heard of it.
- 71% favor Google
- 17% of those polled have a neutral opinion of Facebook
And my favorite stat:
- 2% have never heard of Facebook.
Need more information? CNBC has put together a whole Facebook-lolapalooza site with everything you ever wanted to know about the social media giant, its founder and its prospects for the future. Let’s just say that as of right now, everything’s coming up dollar signs for Zuckerberg and the gang. | <urn:uuid:a50600ae-59a1-4417-8ff1-38ecccc9dc8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/05/cnbc-details-how-americans-really-feel-about-facebook.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944785 | 573 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Seems unlikely, but that won’t stop some folks from trying.
As lawmakers look at whether the Texas Lottery Commission is operating effectively, influential Baptists are suggesting that the lottery shouldn’t merely be tweaked. They want it abolished.
“Ask the pertinent questions. Has the lottery fulfilled its promise? My answer would be ‘no,’” said Suzii Paynter, director of the Baptist Christian Life Commission.
The group contends that the lottery was sold to Texans 20 years ago as a “voluntary, nonregressive” way to raise money but instead preys on the poor and caters to impulse purchases of scratch-off tickets. Attempts to attract higher-income players with $50 scratch-off tickets haven’t worked, they say.
They question whether the lottery has provided a revenue increase for public education or simply replaced other revenue sources.
While there may be bills next session proposing to do away with the lottery, Rep. Dennis Bonnen, the Angleton Republican who leads the sunset commission, warned in a recent public hearing that eliminating the lottery isn’t an option for the panel.
“It’s our job to make sure agencies are doing their jobs effectively with what they’ve been tasked to do,” he said. “Don’t expect that we’re going to put a poison pill in the sunset bill to end the lottery.”
After prize money, retail commissions and other expenses, about $1 billion a year from the lottery goes into a public education fund. Ticket sales in fiscal year 2011 totaled $3.8 billion, most of it coming from scratch-off tickets.
This year, lottery sales are 10 percent ahead of last year and are on track to surpass $4 billion for the year, executive director Gary Grief told legislators this month. Among top-grossing lotteries in the nation, Texas ranks fourth behind New York, Massachusetts and Florida.
I found this story via Believe it Or Not, which adds some more information.
Amid the recent Mega Millions lotto hype, Texas Baptists’ theologian-in-chief Jim Denison discussed the potential for lottery winnings to destroy lives. He warned Christians that playing the lotto can push them to seek happiness through money instead of through Christ.
Texas Baptists also opposes the expansion of legalized gambling through casinos and other gaming venues.
Paynter pointed out that two of the states highest-selling lottery ticket locations are Fiesta stores in Houston, and Rep. Garnet Coleman’s district spends $44 million on the lottery a year, more than others in the state despite being a lower-income area.
Coleman has supported the examination of the lottery system, with his own district spending more on the lotto than middle and high-income areas of Houston.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,” Coleman told the Austin-American Statesmen in 2010. “It’s true and it’s real. I see who plays, and it’s not who folks think. It’s not entertainment.”
I largely agree with the Baptist Christian Life Commission that the Lottery has not fulfilled its promise, and I think there’s merit to their pursuit. The Lottery does generate some money for education, but it does so in just about the least efficient and most regressive way possible. We absolutely should do a better job providing for public education and we should do it in a way that doesn’t hurt lower income folks. But let’s be honest, that ain’t gonna happen. I’d bet on gambling being expanded before I’d bet on the Lottery being even scaled back, which is not to say that the former is a good bet.
One more piece to the puzzle: I recently came across this article in Wired about how it’s possible to get an edge in playing scratch-off games, which are the Texas Lottery’s bestsellers. Note that as of the story’s publication in January of 2011, the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries was unaware of this potential security hole, and that there’s a woman in Texas who’s managed to win over $1 million on four separate occasions, three of them coming from scratch-off games. The implication of all this is that there’s a possibility that scratch-off games are an even worse proposition for the average player than they’re supposed to be. Read the story and see why. | <urn:uuid:9c30b890-e085-473b-bbf9-d03da6604e2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://offthekuff.com/wp/?p=44759 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949241 | 963 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Virtually all human activity occurs within a community. And all communities are connected through history, culture, the economy or the environment. Only through a shared understanding of community roles can we reduce conflict and improve quality of life for people everywhere.
We are unique in Canada for our exceptional commitment to social and communal relevance at the local, national and global levels. Guelph faculty and staff share an institutional commitment to social responsibility and enrich their teaching by studying how individuals and societies interact
Featured Story: Reduce, reuse, rock on
Guelph Guitar Project tunes into local culture
By Johnny Roberts
Documenting history can sometimes involve remanufacturing nature — or, in other words, putting the pieces back together again. But what if those pieces are what some would call garbage? A University of Guelph researcher has discovered that by collecting unwanted materials and combining them with valued objects, something beautiful, educational, meaningful and even musical can be created.
Integrative biology professor Doug Larson spent more than 1,000 hours collecting discarded materials in and around the Guelph area for what’s become known as the Guelph Guitar Project. It’s an initiative designed to spread knowledge of culture and to help us see ourselves reflected in just about anything.
Larson is visiting elementary and secondary schools in Guelph to share with them the stories behind the instrument’s construction. “This guitar invites stories to be told that would otherwise be lost.”
He says this is important not only for music but also for explaining culture, history and research — something that resonates even more given that a lot of the guitar’s 3,500 pieces (many of which he calls “cultural artifacts”) had been discarded.
Among the instrument’s many pieces are:
* a nail from the University’s first gymnasium (placed in the headstock of the guitar);
* part of an 1877 advertisement for Sleeman Breweries (headstock);
* the plastron (stomach plate) of a wood turtle once studied by professor emeritus Ron Brooks of the Department of Integrative Biology (pickguard);
* a leather desk blotter from the Ontario Agricultural College (guitar strap);
* a regimental belt buckle from the 11th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery (guitar strap); and
* leftover fabric from Biltmore hats (guitar strap).
The guitar body contains various wooden materials, including pieces of the Priory, the first building constructed in Guelph, and part of a tree that was planted on the University’s Johnston Green in 1880 and was killed during a storm in 2007. A large section of American chestnut was donated to the project by integrative biology professor Brian Husband and his graduate student John Gerrath, who have done extensive studies on the tree.
The most recent addition to the guitar is a diamond donated by Greg Buzbuzian, co-owner of Knar Jewellery. The nearly flawless gem, which came from Canada’s first diamond mine, the Ekati Mine, is now part of the guitar’s headstock.
Larson says each piece tells its own tale about the evolution of culture, art history, biology and physics, all of which are related to U of G and the city of Guelph.
“I believe the arts and sciences to be the same thing. They shouldn’t be divided into separate planes of knowledge. Rather, they should be perceived as two equal entities that can be connected to one another.”
Among the many contributors to this project were the University of Guelph through Prof. Steven Liss, associate vice-president (research services); the City of Guelph; and John Sleeman of Sleeman Breweries Ltd. | <urn:uuid:72be0681-dd62-428a-b126-fa8d0d3420ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/learn-about-research/community | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953737 | 786 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Public health officials told National Public Radio that residents in areas devastated by the superstorm face several risks, not the least of which is polluted floodwater.
Water that filled people’s basements and garages could contain a nasty mix of chemicals, pesticides, paint, gasoline and all the other things that people typically store in those areas, said an official with the New Jersey Department of Health.
And in areas where sewage-treatment plants were damaged by flooding or fires, the high water could contain bacteria that might make people sick — especially infants, the elderly and people who are already ill. Symptoms could include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
There’s also the danger of food poisoning from eating food that has remained too long in warm refrigerators after the power went out, said Thomas Frieden, M.D., director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
He told NPR that’s what happened in New York in 2003 after a long blackout. “We saw a significant increase in food-borne illness in the days after.”
Also common after disasters: carbon monoxide poisoning, from failing to set up portable generators in well-ventilated areas.
Plus, once the waters recede, mold could start growing in a lot of damp homes, triggering asthma attacks and breathing problems.
Officials offer these tips for staying safe and healthy if you — or your loved ones — are in a storm-damaged area:
- Avoid unsafe food. Food in the fridge stays cold and safe to eat for only about four to six hours without power. Food in the freezer is okay for 24 to 48 hours. After that, don’t risk it. “If in doubt, throw it out,” the CDC’s Frieden said.
- Protect yourself. Wear boots, gloves and goggles if you need to wade through flooded areas. Try to avoid having the water contact your skin. If it does, wash with soap and clean water as soon as possible.
- Boil tap water for at least a minute if you think water supplies might be contaminated.
- Get rid of soaked items and use dehumidifiers to keep mold from spreading in damp homes once the water has receded.
In other health news:
Nine more cases of meningitis. Reuters reports that nine more cases of deadly fungal meningitis were reported from an outbreak tied to steroid medications shipped by a Massachusetts company, bringing the national total to 377 cases, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.
Despite planning, floods render NYC hospitals powerless. There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York, the Associated Press reports, yet two of the city’s busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power. Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.
Photo: Brian R. Birke via flickr | <urn:uuid:4280b1a9-4911-4f97-995a-06c24541e687> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.aarp.org/2012/11/02/sandys-damage-also-includes-health-dangers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957409 | 623 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Amazingly, German researchers from the Johann Heinrich von Thunen Institute in Braunschweig, have shown that high CO2 levels in the atmosphere lead to wheat crops with less gluten.
This is because CO2 disrupts nitrogen uptake by the plants, and this in turn causes the protein deficiency. See the New Scientist blog for more.
As the New Scientist points out, this rise in CO2 is also a contributing factor in the global rice shortages, so it isn’t good news for coeliacs. (Or for anyone …)
Plus, of course, the fact that there is less gluten doesn’t mean that there is no gluten present – so the future wheat crops won’t be any safer for coeliacs to eat.
The New Scientist suggests that farmers could opt to grow genetically modified wheat varieties capable of producing higher than normal gluten yields. We all know how unpopular that will be round here …
Of course, some people have suggested that we could have genetically modified wheat that contains no gluten. I can’t really see that going down well either, whether with the anti-gm movement, or with those people who are both wheat and gluten intolerant.
So there isn’t good news here – but it is alarming, isn’t it, how widespread the impact of climate change will be? | <urn:uuid:9fd3daa9-f714-4664-8dd3-63c15f06b6bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.free-from.com/blog/will-climate-change-be-good-for-coeliacs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934184 | 281 | 3.265625 | 3 |
When The Truth Is Found To Be Lies
By Gypsy Bob Nielsen
The Truth simply used to be just that; The Truth. There were 16 ounces in a pint, 16 ounces in a pound and the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. We teach our children to tell the Truth. The Truth is the glue that binds our society together; we build on The Truth. Without Truth there is no Trust and without Trust things fall apart and cannot last. Our Civilization is built upon telling The Truth.
When we fail to tell the truth in a Court of Law we are guilty of perjury. Perjury is a crime. When we lie to a spouse we are planting the seeds of mistrust. When we lie to our employer we risk termination of employment. One glaring exception to the rule is when a Politician fails to tell the Truth it is accepted as business as usual. This has to stop.
The Truth is the cornerstone of our decision making process. We create policies and Laws based on what we perceive as Truths. You can’t tailor to Truth to suit your audience. There is no Republican or Democratic Truth there is just the Truth and it is Universal. Whether they are Half Truths, White Lies, Misleading Statements or outright Fabrications they all fall under the Umbrella of LIES.
Attack ads are successful because they shock while obfuscating the truth. They are laced with Half Truths, Misleading Statements and outright Fabrications. We cringe at their content. On the surface they are designed to be plausible while simultaneously providing us with easy, superficial answers. We blindly accept ostensibly while inside knowing they are less than truthful. Frankly, most folks don’t have the time to investigate and unearth the Truth. We are too busy trying to make ends meet and keep our heads above water. Generally speaking Political Campaigns have come down to the candidate who can hurl the most BS at the wall and have it stick wins. What’s lost in the process are the Issues and the Truth. Occasionally some egregious offense results in a retraction that is a blurb printed in a micro font located somewhere in obscurity. What would happen if those who paid for such ads were held accountable?
Establish a not for profit Fact Verification Organization with the power to levy fines for false or misleading content on Individuals or Organizations that sponsor the ads. Make the perpetrators pay 5 times the ads cost to run plus have them produce a retraction ad that will run as many times as the false or misleading ad appeared in the media it originally aired.
Imagine a Campaign based on Facts, Issues and The Truth. | <urn:uuid:fb8f06c7-55fd-4a4d-a61b-959078d659d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gatheringofthevibes.com/forum/topic/12588-when-the-truth-is-found-to-be-lies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955092 | 535 | 1.945313 | 2 |
One of Apple's Chinese suppliers, Pegatron, has been accused of polluting the environment with toxic water and gas.
The company, responding to environmental complaints, has replaced older equipment and said it would subject the machines to regular maintenance, according to DigiTimes and AppleInsider. Apple was named in the complaints asked to remedy the situation, but didn't do so until the report was about to go public, reports said.
Apple publishes an annual report of its suppliers, the latest called the Apple Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report, saying:
Apple is committed to driving the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply base. We require that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made.
So, if we are to believe Apple, they would work quickly and tirelessly not to have their suppliers be gross polluters, right? Well, according to Apple's own report, more than half of its suppliers didn't handle or store hazardous chemicals correctly and half operated without necessary government permits, the Guardian reported. The National Resources Defense Council called on Apple earlier this month to rectify environmental problems.
The reality is that making iPhones and iPads causes a lot of pollution, but if Apple is going to tell the world its suppliers are "environmentally responsible," the company should at least enforce those standards. | <urn:uuid:0dfac941-feb5-4dbb-abbc-d315763a786a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcsandiego.com/blogs/press-here/Apple-Supplier-Facing-Pollution-Problems-in-China-132548693.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968421 | 278 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Voting on strict party lines, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved a bill on Wednesday to revamp the nation’s health care system, as Democrats said that the legislation held the promise of more universal health coverage and more effective and affordable medical care while Republicans argued that the measure was unaffordable and would lead not to better care but to the denial of it.
The committee vote was 13 to 10.
The acting committee chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, had made clear from the start that his panel would bend little when it came to the top priorities of Senate Democrats and the Obama administration, including on a provision to create a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers that Republicans insisted was a deal-breaker.
In the end however, Republicans held their ranks. In his closing statement, Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming said that Republicans had been forced to offer more than 100 amendments to the bill because Democrats had largely shut them out of the drafting process. And he said that the $1 trillion, 10-year cost of the measure would simply drive the nation further into debt, while denying many Americans the choices for health care providers that they now enjoy.
Mr. Enzi, with a hint of sarcasm, noted that the bill’s title was the “Affordable Health Choices Act.”
“With its trillion-dollar price tag,” Mr. Enzi said, “this bill is anything but affordable.”
Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, thanked Mr. Dodd and other committee members in a quickly issued statement that commended the bill’s passage and urged for bipartisanship going forward.
“It is a cause that can and should unite us all as Americans,” he said in a statement issued from Hyannis Port, Mass., where he is battling brain cancer. “As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled.”
Both Republicans and Democrats acknowledged that the health committee bill was just part of what will eventually be a single Senate measure once the Finance Committee completes work on its version of the legislation.
The Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, has been making the one real effort to develop a bipartisan bill, and though negotiations with Republicans seem to have stumbled in recent days, committee members say they remain optimistic of a deal.
After a meeting of Finance Committee Democrats on Wednesday morning, the senators emerged to say that, despite pressure from the White House, they would not be bound by deadlines, including the president’s insistence that bills be completed before the summer break.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the majority leadership, said the efforts to broker a bipartisan deal with Republicans remained on track and Democrats had no intention at this point of pushing health care legislation on their own.
At a news conference after the health committee vote, Mr. Enzi, who is also a member of the Finance Committee, said he remained “hopeful” of a deal in the Finance Committee but that he was worried about how the health and finance committee bills would be joined.
Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said that negotiators continued to discuss some of the most controversial issues including a compromise on the government-run insurance plan that would instead use nonprofit health cooperatives to provide the desire competition with for-profit insurers.
Mr. Conrad said negotiators had made some progress on the contentious question of how to pay for the bill, but had no choice but to continue a time-consuming “iterative” process, waiting for various proposals to be evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office for cost estimates.
In addition to widespread Republican resistance to the government insurance plan, Democrats are also contending with apprehension within their own ranks. Centrist lawmakers including Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Lousiana and Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent, have all expressed reservations about the idea.
To avoid the hard-nosed budgetary tactic known as reconciliation–in which Democrats could pass a health measure with a simple majority vote–the Democrats would need 60 Senate votes to advance the health care bill. To get that, they must either ensure unanimity in their own party or win over Republicans to make up any gap. And so far, even the most centrist Republicans, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, have shown no inclination to break with their Republican colleagues on the health care measure.
The health committee bill, like the House version of the health care legislation unveiled on Tuesday, requires Americans to obtain health insurance and would provide subsidies to the poor to help them to do so. And it similarly requires most employers to provide health coverage to their employees or to pay a fee to the government instead.
It would establish stringent federal rules for health insurance, now regulated mainly by the states. Insurers could not deny coverage to people because of their medical history or health status, nor could they charge higher premiums because of a person’s claims experience or sex. Additionally, insurers could not establish lifetime or annual limits on the dollar value of benefits for any person. And they could not charge more than minimal co-payments for preventive services.
The bill, again like the one introduced by House Democrats, would establish a new government insurance plan, which would compete with private insurers. The secretary of health and human services would set premiums to cover costs of the new public plan, and she would pay for services at rates to be negotiated with doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.
People could compare insurance polices and buy coverage through new entities known as insurance exchanges, or gateways, in each state. The government would offer financial assistance, on a sliding scale, to people with incomes up to four times the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four) to help them afford the premiums.
Robert Pear contributed reporting. | <urn:uuid:71d8a427-2f8e-40df-8c4a-da739f6aba6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/senate-committee-approves-health-care-bill/?hp&apage=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970004 | 1,257 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Interactive radio talk-shows are the most popular platforms for political debate in Uganda. Twaweza partner TRAC FM builds on the success of these shows and involves citizens in high frequency monitoring of public services, such as reporting on teacher absenteeism, availability of text books, drug stock outs, waiting time at clinics, teacher payments, election proceedings, functionality of water points, potholes etc. TRAC FM combines Radio, Mobile, Print, graphic design and online media to create a new and popular approach to public monitoring of service delivery.
Together with local media partners, TRAC FM identifies pressing and popular inconveniences, often related to public services. The user-friendly TRAC FM software is used by radio presenters to hold surveys during their talk-show to which listeners can react via SMS (free of charge). During these popular radio debates, listeners are presented with a specific question which allows them to report on a failing public service, give their opinion on pressing public matters or elect worst or best service provider within a certain sector. Incoming text messages are collected by TRAC and instantly processed and visualized in an innovative way. The visualization is relayed to the FM stations where the radio talk-show host interprets, presents and feeds the data back into the public online debate. The data gathered during the radio-polls are processed into attractive infographics (Graphs, Maps and other visualization) and used in background stories in Print Media. With the support of Twaweza, TRAC FM was able to develop its ideas, design and test the software, with May 2011 as the set date to go live in partnership with Nation Media Group.
- TRAC FM Anti-corruption Campaign | 629.38 KB
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Last week, schools and districts received their annual performance reports from the state Department of Education for the 2010-2011 school year.
The reports include information about districts and individual schools such as student enrollment, ISTEP standardized test passage rates, graduation and attendance rates and the number of students suspended or expelled in a year.
Most of the new information in the reports pertains to area high schools, particularly graduation rates, end-of-course assessment passage rates and attendance.
Districts have already begun publishing the results in the paper, as required by law. The reports are printed in the legal ad sections of the paper. This year's deadline for publishing is Feb. 29.
Below are some highlights of the reports of each area district. Charter schools were also included, but currently no charter schools serve high school students.
Fort Wayne Community Schools
FWCS sent out a news release on Monday about its district-wide 88 percent graduation rate. This is the fourth consecutive year the district has seen a graduation rate higher than the state average which this year is slightly less than 86 percent.
"We have made significant investments in our high schools over the last several years… We continue to strive to ensure that we educate all students to high standards so that they not only graduate from high school, but that they graduate ready to be successful in their next stage in life,” Superintendent Wendy Robinson said in the news release.
Two of the district's high schools, Snider and Northrop, achieved a graduation rate above 90 percent. South Side High School was the only high school with a graduation rate that was lower than in 2010, falling about two percentage points.
At every district high school, the percentage of student pursuing college increased along with the percentage of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses and tests. FWCS percentage of instruction delivered through vocational programs also increased from 2.5 percent to 3.9.
East Allen County Schools
The district's enrollment has continued to decline, with this year's enrollment dropping faster than the last three years combined, falling from 10,088 in 2010 to 9,448 in 2011.
The board decided to close Harding High School after the 2010-2011 school year because of looming state sanctions, the result of low standardized test scores. The school's principal Kent Hoffman was also removed mid-year after a state visit reporting he was doing little to improve the school.
According to its report the school actually took steps back in its efforts to improve academically.
The number of students with more than 10 unexcused absences doubled, and the number of dropouts rose from 47 to 60. Graduation and attendance rates fell along with the percentage of students pursuing a college education.
The percentage of students passing end-of-course assessments, the high school version of ISTEP, also fell from 70 percent to 63.
On the opposite side of achievement, New Haven High School improved in nearly every area, raising the percentage of students passing the ECA and achieving a graduation rate higher than the state average. Woodlan also increased its percentage of graduate passing the ECA and achieved almost a 92 percent graduation rate, up from 87 percent.
Leo surpasses the state average in every category except its percentage of graduate pursuing a college education which fell from 89 percent to 76. The school also achieved 100 percent of graduates passing the ECA.
Northwest Allen County Schools
What sets NACS' report apart from other district reports in the county is its percentage of students in its gifted and talented programs. At 26 percent of students receiving enrichment programming, NACS had the highest percentage in the county with the next closest district, Southwest Allen County Schools, at 11 percent.
Despite cuts to balance its budget, NACS has continued its strong enrichment programs. Assistant Superintendent Gloria Shamanoff said the district operates its program differently than districts like SACS. NACS offers a pull out program instead of a self-contained classroom, which could explain the difference in numbers, she said.
But NACS has made differentiation, altering homework or class work based on a student's abilities, a priority whether a student needs more challenging work or remediation. Differentiation assistance is available for teachers in grades K-12.
Carroll High School, the district's only high school, achieved 99 percent of graduates passing the ECA and of 10th graders that took the test, 87 percent of them passed both the English and math portions, up from 78 percent in 2010.
Southwest Allen County Schools
Nearly 50 percent of 11th and 12th grade students take Advanced Placement courses at Homestead High School, the highest percentage of all public high schools in the county.
The number of student receiving free- and reduced-price lunches has also been growing, rising from 12 percent in 2009 to 15 percent in 2011; however that percentage still pales in comparison to the 70 percent in FWCS.
Imagine MASTer Academy
Student discipline at the school in 2011 appeared on the rise from annual performance reports. The number of students suspended jumped from 74 to 115. In 2010 just one student was expelled from the school, but 14 were reported expelled in 2011. Only two suspensions and expulsions were reported to be drug, weapon or alcohol related.
Imagine Schools on Broadway
A similar discipline profile could be seen at the other Imagine school in Fort Wayne. At Broadway in 2011, 106 students were reported suspended and with just 421 students enrolled, that's about one-quarter of the student population.
The school also has a high number of limited English proficiency students at 11.2 percent.
Timothy L. Johnson Academy
The school's average class size has steadily increased from 20 students per class in 2009 to 25 students in 2011. The school has not expelled in student in 3 years, but suspended 17 students in 2011, up from 13 in 2010. | <urn:uuid:76c3eb91-6720-49c9-a739-58c3724904ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120202/NEWS/120209934/1005 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973063 | 1,195 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP)
LVC is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs to offer the following business degrees: Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Bachelor of Science in Health Care Management, and Bachelor of Arts in Economics, as well as associate degrees in accounting and business administration. ACBSP was founded in 1988 to fulfill a specialized accreditation need that acknowledged and emphasized quality teaching and learning outcomes.
National Association of Schools of Music (NASM)
NASM, founded in 1924, is an organization of schools, conservatories, colleges, and universities that establishes national standards for undergraduate and graduate degrees and other credentials.
Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE)
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American Chemical Society (ACS)
ACS is a congressionally chartered independent membership organization, which represents professionals at all degree levels and in all fields of chemistry and sciences that involve chemistry. | <urn:uuid:2d9d7e87-4ada-4e52-8273-a667c72f24d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lvc.edu/assessment/accreditation-bodies.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939411 | 259 | 1.5 | 2 |
A professor of political science and Dean of the Honors College at the University of Vermont, Taylor approaches the subject indirectly, beginning with the Greeks, who invented democracy, but not the kind the founders or the Progressives had in mind. What he admires is a certain communitarian strain that emerges from his reading of Plato's Crito and Sophocles' Antigone. According to Taylor, both Crito and Ismene, the sister of Antigone, exhibit a moral realism that respects the equal dignity of citizens who disagree with them and does not demand of citizens a level of knowledge beyond their reach. By contrast, Socrates and Antigone are both prone to hard-hearted justice and, what's worse, self-righteousness.
With this lesson in mind, Taylor turns to Tocqueville, who in Democracy in America had famously observed that what Americans need is not humility but more pride. Taylor, however, sees pride as leading to the arrogance and self-righteousness that poison democratic politics, turning moderate citizens away from the public realm. With Reinhold Niebuhr, Taylor calls for more humility, which, he argues, will lead citizens to respect one another and to recognize that their opponents are as morally good and as morally compromised as they. Alas, Taylor doesn't seem able to heed his own advice. He accuses James Q. Wilson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Robert Bork, and Allan Bloom of making their case against the decadence of liberal elites "with varying degrees of hysteria," a criticism that, when directed against the mild-mannered Himmelfarb or the judicious Wilson, makes Taylor sound shrill and intolerant. And although he offers Amy Guttmann and Stephen Macedo as their "liberal" counterparts, no such condemnation accompanies his discussion of their work, even when Macedo unapologetically attacks religious conservatives and hopes for the "extinction" of their communities.
At their best, Taylor argues, the Progressives displayed a becoming modesty, a willingness to tolerate their political opponents that is very much in need in our day. But if their thought is to be useful again, the Left must first learn to avoid two "pernicious ideas" that continue to haunt the "democratic imagination." The first of these speaks to Taylor's long-standing environmentalism, reinforced by his postmodernism: the Left must steer clear of a politics modeled on modern science. He is especially good at uncovering the left-wing Social Darwinism that runs through Progressivism. Conservative Social Darwinists like William Graham Sumner counseled society to accept the workings of nature, confident that "the survival of the fittest" would ultimately benefit humankind. But his left-wing counterparts urged men to apply their intelligence to the conquest of natureto harness its brute forces for the human good. In A Preface to Politics, for instance, Walter Lippmann cast science as the "twin brother of democracy," undermining traditional religious and political authority but forging new communities that would improve the world. Although there are many good reasons to resist the marriage of science and politics, Taylor focuses on the unintended consequences of such a policy for the environment. In passing, he also criticizes this vision's flatness, assuming as it does that the human longing for eternity is simply a throwback to a more superstitious age that has now been overcome by modern science.
If Lippmann can be faulted for his arrogance, Herbert Croly gives voice to the second pernicious error: a utopian hope that all conflicts between individual interest and the social good can finally be overcome. Like Lippmann, Croly criticized the founders, and Jefferson especially, for assuming that the public good would automatically result from individuals pursuing their self-interest. But whereas Lippmann looked to modern science, Croly emphasized the political need to overcome self-interest, indeed to cultivate disinterestedness in the population as a whole. As Taylor notes, this disinterestedness takes on a religious character; it becomes an essential element in the new "religion of human brotherhood."
Later progressives, including Richard Hofstadter, Charles Forcey, Eric Goldman, and more recently, Rogers Smith, balked at Croly's call for disinterested citizenshipto the point that Hofstadter warned against the individual's almost fascistic surrender to the good of the nation. (Croly did say the kind of socialism he supported was national socialism.) Taylor takes a different tack. Based on his reading of Croly's Progressive Democracy, he argues that Croly actually held two conflicting views of citizenship. While he sometimes suggested that citizens can overcome their self-interest and work in a disinterested manner for the public good, at other times Croly took a more expansive view of self-interest, implying that our true interests coincide with the good of the whole. And while this second interpretation may sound more benign (indeed almost Jeffersonian!), Taylor still finds it "alarming" because it is too heroic and does not take into account the conflicts of interests at the heart of democratic politics. In short, "the greatest excesses of Croly's theory were not found in his faith in social science," but rather in
his millennial and humanistic Christianity, his view that democracy was just another way of speaking about the achievement of a holy (yet worldly) community that prevented him from thinking of democratic politics as an imperfect but honorable middle ground, where both sacrifice and self-interest must be found.
Most surprising, however, in a book that wishes to redeem Progressivism, is Taylor's criticism of its high priest, John Dewey. Of course, Taylor praises Dewey for eschewing outmoded absolute truths and for taking a pragmatic view of knowledge. Drawing on evolutionary biology, Dewey argued that all knowledge is subject to revision in the light of experience. But unlike Lippmann, who saw intelligence as a kind of mastery, Dewey believed that science is democratic and provides us with the model for democratic citizenship. Science frees men and women from their childish faith in a supernatural god, providing them instead with a "common faith" that helps them to solve the problems they face in this world. And unlike Croly, who saw the nation as the highest stage of human development, Dewey's philosophy was truly cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, "an arrogant utopianism haunts even this most humane and pragmatic of American philosophers" because Dewey exempted his own perspective from the criticisms he leveled at others, and did not altogether escape the desire for mastery that characterizes the modern scientific project. In short, Lippman, Croly, and Dewey all fell prey to what Taylor calls the "Emersonian legacy." Rejecting the idea of original sin as an impediment to self-actualization, they failed to recognize that there are limits to human perfectibility, limits set by history, human nature, and (in Taylor's view, especially) non-human nature.
To anyone outside the liberal fold these might seem devastating criticisms, but in the second half of the book, Taylor is at pains to show that not all Progressives suffered from the "Emersonian legacy." In her work at Hull House, Jane Addams displayed a becoming humility: she refused to demonize her opponents and as a rule avoided "moral arrogance." As a pacifist, she opposed World War I, but allowed Hull House to be used as an army draft registration center. Nevertheless, the Progressive pathology occasionally crept into the soul of even this humble reformer. As Taylor ruefully notes, Addams fell back on evolution to explain why humans would eventually become pacifists.
Taylor looks favorably, too, on the historian Carl Becker, who in his early writings seemed to despair that the past could teach us anything; after the Great War and in the midst of the Depression, his generation had lost all faith in moral certainty, human decency, and even progress itself. But as World War II approached, he found reasons to feel less alienated from the past, and more hopeful about liberal democracy. Not about the Constitution, of course; that was outdated and had to go. But he did have second thoughts about the Declaration. Nothing so radical as affirming the truth of natural rights, which he dismissed as a "cosmological temple," but he did come to see that the "values" of the Declaration could be restated and updated. Taylor regards Becker's doubts about the truth's knowability, or even its desirability, as a kind of "moral honesty" that did not prevent him from defending his political preferences on pragmatic grounds. Still, at times, Becker, like Dewey, had a tendency to equate progress with power, and to assume that scientific mastery of the world would provide meaning to life.
The book's hero is Aldo Leopold, who graduated from the Yale School of Forestry in 1909, and provides the link to "modern environmentalism, the most active and successful of contemporary progressive political movements." Leopold's Sand County Almanac, published posthumously in 1948, epitomizes for Taylor progressivism at its best: love of nature and humility towards it, contempt for the "modern dogma" of "comfort at any cost," appreciation of beauty, and a sense of high adventure. Instead of appealing to modern science, Leopold looked back to America's cultural inheritance, and especially to the biblical notion of stewardship. Unlike the Communist Scott Nearing (the book's villain), Leopold respected private property, and tried to inculcate in landowners the virtues and sensibility to live in harmony with nature. In a suggestive passage, Taylor allows that America's cultural inheritance may be too ambiguous and that perhaps religion or morality built on classical teleology would better foster the kind of humility Leopold sought. But this was the road not taken. Even Leopold succumbed, occasionally, to the temptations of modern science. Taylor laments that today Leopold is best known for his essay "The Land Ethic," which rests on the scientific image of land as a "biotic mechanism."
That each of the Progressives Taylor discusses at least flirts with modern science cannot be dismissed as a mere aberration, although Taylor pleads exactly that. What he misses is that the pragmatic, progressive politics he favors has been wedded to modern science from the start. As John Dewey pointed out in his essay "The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy," written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species, evolutionary biology rendered the whole notion of fixed truths obsolete. Truth was now understood as a process, and pragmatism as a philosophy sought to build on that insight, reconceiving the world on the model of biological naturalism. Taylor is certainly right that such a worldview is unlikely to satisfy the deepest human longings. But his mixture of romantic environmentalism and postmodern pragmatism, based on a pious exhortation to "democratic doubt," is hardly the answer to our prayers. | <urn:uuid:fbea3e94-9ec4-41dc-bda9-c891f2b2c199> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.859/article_detail.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964333 | 2,249 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Google Earth Files
These files are for use with Google Earth and have been zipped for ease of download. You need to have Google Earth installed to view these files.
Lesser Prairie Chicken
Zipped file - contains both OLEPCSPT model out put and "where wind energy could go and have little or no effect on LEPC".
The "Where wind energy could go and have little or no effect on LEPC" file includes both OWPI Neural Network and DOE/NREL based outputs. The layers can be toggled on and off using the Google Earth toolbar. | <urn:uuid:dd0de6d8-c4ad-4c1d-aee6-547d2827cb81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/spatial_planning/lepcdevelopmentplanninggoogle.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939271 | 120 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Kids Super Pack will equip you with all the tools you need to teach your kids important lessons, especially how to handle money. This special bundle includes Financial Peace Junior and all 6 of Dave's illustrated kids' books.
With the Kids Super Pack, your kids will learn:
Financial Peace Junior is the power of Financial Peace University tailored for children ages 3-12. It is a hands-on way to teach children the value of earning money. Recommended for kids ages 3-12.
Transform their futures with these colorful and entertaining books. From working and saving to giving and spending, these wonderful stories will teach real life 'stuff,' and the stories are so fun your children won't even know they're learning!
The Super Red Racer
Junior really, really wants an awesome new bike, but he doesn't have the money to buy it. So, what does he do? He goes to work to earn the money! Join him on his adventure to learn the rewards of hard work.
Careless at the Carnival
Junior and his friends learn the hard way how it's not wise – or fun – to spend all their money all at once. This book teaches children a valuable lesson in budgeting their money and spending it wisely.
The Big Birthday Surprise
Come learn what his big birthday surprise is and how Junior learns a lesson about giving to others on his special day. This book teaches children about the many ways to give to others, not only with their money but also with their time.
My Fantastic Fieldtrip
Hop on the school bus with Junior and his class as they take an exciting fieldtrip to learn about money from their favorite cartoon character, Dollar Bill! This book teaches children the benefits of planning ahead for big expenses and unexpected emergencies.
A Special Thank You
When you were a kid, did you daydream about finding a bunch of money and imagine all the things you could buy with it? What would you have done if the money you found actually belonged to someone else? This story teaches your child the value of doing what is right, even though he may be tempted to do otherwise.
Battle of the Chores
When you were a kid, did you ever borrow money from your brother or sister? Did they make your life miserable until you paid them back? In this book, Junior learns that being in debt to someone is not fun! This story teaches your child the value of working for money and the disadvantages of borrowing money.
Our 3-year-old loves your kids' books! I have over heard him making his Spiderman figures 'save' his other toys telling them 'Don't spend all your money or you will be broke! Amy South Carolina
Downloaded product like ebooks, audio books, etc. will be delivered to you immediately after you complete your order. For more information on delivery for electronic products, click here.
All other product, unless otherwise noted, will be processed and ready to ship within 2 business days (often even faster). The total delivery time depends on the service you chose and where your order is being delivered. You may see multiple shipping options to choose from during checkout. Our default choice will always be the most economical, but not necessarily the fastest.
(Delivery times include 2 additional business days for order processing) | <urn:uuid:8e5d60f3-67a0-444a-8b11-7f2882807671> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.daveramsey.com/store/kids-teens/kids-3-12/Kid's-Super-Pack/prod154.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966709 | 668 | 2.0625 | 2 |
In this video, philosopher and Christain theologian Alvin Plantinga outlines his modal argument, which in my view successfully establishes that he is not identical with his brain or body.
He interprets this to mean that he is something more than physical, and presumably that he has a soul. Physicalism refuted? Nope!
The outline of the argument goes like this (in my words).
- If A and B are the same thing (identical), then whatever is true of A is true of B
- I can conceive of having my body exchanged for another and still being me
- I cannot conceive of having my self exchanged for another self and still being me
- Therefore my body and my self are not identical
The usual response of atheists and physicalists to this argument is that you can't use conceivability to prove anything. One can conceive of all kinds of impossible scenarios which have no bearing on reality. Plantinga is often ridiculed for thinking he has proven anything with only his ability to imagine counter-factual scenarios. See the following video for an example.
For a more nuanced consideration of the problems with the argument which arise from its reliance on conceivability, read Brad Lencioni's blog on the topic.
The trouble is that refutations such as this rely on Plantinga's concept of himself being mistaken, and that it is not possible for Plantinga to exist in a different body.
I don't think that's true.
As I have discussed before, I do not believe that we are identical with our brains or our bodies, but that does not mean that I am a dualist.
Rather, I think that it is a misunderstanding of materialism/physicalism to insist that everything is synonymous with discrete physical entities. This is simply not true, and obviously so. In particular, it is not the case with patterns.
Consider an ocean wave. At any one instant, it is composed of water molecules, but as the wave moves, the water molecules composing it change. Yet we regard it as the same wave the whole time.
Plantinga's argument simply shows that the wave is not identical with the water molecules that compose it. If this is supposed to be a problem for physicalism, then he has a very simplified and misconstrued view of physicalism!
A wave is a pattern the constituent parts of which change over time. The wave's identity is wholly independent of which particular water molecules make it up. We can conceive of this same wave being composed of entirely different water molecules, or even of oil or other substances.
A piece of software is also a pattern which is hosted on a physical substrate - computer hardware. The same program could be run on any computer, so a program is not identical with the computer that runs it.
(In a way, this relates back to my refutation of John Searle's Chinese Room argument. The hardware in the room, namely Searle himself, is not the same thing as the system it supports. It is no surprise that he doesn't understand Chinese because he is not the one doing the understanding!)
Software is to a computer as a mind is to a brain. It is clear to me that Plantinga identifies with his mind rather than his body/brain, and so while his conclusion is correct, it is irrelevant and unsurprising. | <urn:uuid:1957c31b-ee54-4ac7-92af-be8093237f19> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://disagreeableme.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/in-defence-of-strong-ai-modal-argument.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972282 | 687 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Goathland as a Contrasting Locality
This Learning Journey is based on a trip on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to the popular village of Goathland, well known as Aidensfield from the TV series 'Heartbeat', and Hogsmeade in 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.'
The children will complete some preparatory work at school before spending a day visiting the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, stopping at Goathland for a walk round the village (about a mile). There, the children will investigate the range of housing and amenities available to the inhabitants, and will be given the opportunity to reflect on the effect the coming of the railway had on what used to be a remote village, and how the series Heartbeat has changed Goathland even more.
There are also opportunities for children to study physical geography and mapwork.
See below for planning document. This is in Word format so that it can be adapted to suit the nature of the class.
KS2 Geography - QCA Unit 13A Contrasting Locality
KS2 History - QCA Unit 12 How did life change in our locality in Victorian Times?
Generic Learning Outcomes:
Knowledge and understanding
- learning about the history of Goathland, and the role of the railway in developing the village
- Learning about how essential services operate in a remote location
- Understanding how tourism has changed the village
Attitudes and values
- Children are encouraged to imagine what life was like before the railway, and then how it has changed since the coming of the railway in 1835, moving on to the opening of the NYMR in 1969 and the filming of Heartbeat in the village.
- Children are encouraged to see the NYMR as an interesting and exciting experience to be repeated
Enjoyment, Inspiration and Creativity
- Children should be able to enjoy themselves on the railway
- Children should be surprised by the differences between their home town/ city and the tiny village
Action, Behaviour, Progression
- This visit can be used as a stepping stone to further investigations into Victorian life, history of transport etc.
- Children should be able to investigate further the role of railways in enabling paople and goods to travel further than they could before | <urn:uuid:f98af69d-f1c6-4647-a92b-ef080aa67824> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mylearning.org/goathland-as-a-contrasting-locality/p-1656/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949988 | 462 | 3.453125 | 3 |
After the Rev. William Gordon’s The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America was printed in England in 1788 and then reprinted in the U.S. of A., Bostonians who had heard the minister read from his manuscript were puzzled. Parts of it seemed to be missing.
One man, writing to a Boston newspaper in 1821-22, recalled hearing Gordon read “three or four pages” about how the 47th Regiment of Foot had tarred and feathered a Billerica farmer named Thomas Ditson, Jr., in March 1775. In the printed version, that episode occupied only “a few lines.” Another correspondent noted a sensitive topic that had dropped out: “I refer here particularly to the subject of negro slavery.” He added that Gordon “was also persuaded to soften his harsh picture of the illustrious Exempt.” I have no idea what that means, but it could refer to the portrayal of such popular figures as John Hancock.
The first writer told the newspaper, in a reminiscence reprinted in Hezekiah Niles’s Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America, of what he’d heard about the book’s publication:
In 1790 I embarked for England, where I was introduced to a relation of Doctor Gordon, of whom I enquired how the Doctor had succeeded in his history? He smiled and said, “It was not Doctor Gordon’s history!”In any event, the history didn’t become a success. People saw its style as stodgy. Gordon was unable to retire on the proceeds, and ended up a poor minister for a poor congregation.
On my requesting an explanation, he hold me, that on the Doctor’s arrival in England, he placed his manuscript in the hands of an intelligent friend, on whom he could depend, who, (after perusing it with care), declared that it was not suited to the meridian of England, consequently would never sell. The style was not agreeable—it was too favourable to the Americans—above all, it was too full of libels against some of the most respectable characters in the British army and navy—and that if he possessed a fortune equal to the duke of Bedford’s, he would not be able to pay the damages that might be recovered against him, as the truth would not be allowed to be produced in evidence.
The doctor had returned to his native country, and expected to enjoy “otium cum dignitate [leisure with dignity].” Overwhelmed with mortification, and almost with despair, he asked the advice of his friend; who recommended him to place the manuscript in the hands of a professional gentleman, that it might be new modelled, and made agreeable to English readers; this was assented to by the doctor, and the history which bears his name was compiled and written from his manuscript, by another hand!
Furthermore, the final text—whoever was responsible for it—destroyed Gordon’s reputation as a historian a century later. In the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1899, Orin Grant Libby showed that large portions of Gordon’s History were copied or closely paraphrased from The Annual Register, a Whiggish review of the events of each previous year co-founded by Edmund Burke. Other passages came from The History of the Revolution in South Carolina (1785), by Dr. David Ramsay (shown above, courtesy of the Smithsonian).
Kids, don’t try this at school! Our standards on plagiarism have become much stricter, especially in the last few years. Authors quoted much more freely in the 18th century. In fact, Ramsay also borrowed from The Annual Register, and when he revised his own book, historian Arthur H. Shaffer noted, he adopted some of Gordon’s rewrites of his prose.
Without Gordon’s original manuscript, it’s impossible to know whether he had copied that material himself or his British editor did. But he certainly signed off on the final text and hoped to make money off it. And the result of its twisted journey to print is that most modern historians consult Gordon’s book for sporadic passages about Revolutionary politics and war in Massachusetts, where he had first-hand knowledge, and ignore the rest as derivative.
(Back in April, the 18th-Century Reading Room ran a passage from Gordon’s book about Gen. Charles Lee.) | <urn:uuid:898bc975-975b-4abf-aded-c2b1fd54fb28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/05/rev-william-gordon-goes-to-press.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982738 | 940 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Google will warn users of potential state-sponsored attacks
Source: Google Google has introduced a new warning system to alert users of its online services to suspected attacks on their accounts by state-sponsored agencies. In a post on the company's Online Security Blog, Google VP of Security Engineering Eric Grosse has revealed that, where such an attack is suspected, a clear warning will now be displayed when a user logs into Google. He does not, however, say what has prompted the company to introduce the warning.
The red warning message is displayed at the top of the browser window and reads, "Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer." A "Protect yourself now" link leads to a web page which explains how users can better protect their private data from unwanted access.
"If you see this warning it does not necessarily mean that your account has been hijacked," writes Grosse, "It just means that we believe you may be a target, of phishing or malware for example, and that you should take immediate steps to secure your account." These steps include creating a more secure password and enabling 2-step verification, as well as keeping operating systems, browsers and plugins up to date.
Grosse does not reveal how Google determines that an attack is the work of state agencies or state-sponsored hackers – "We can’t go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors," but he says that detailed analysis by Google and reports from victims provide clear evidence that states or state-sponsored groups are involved. | <urn:uuid:f5d4ed1a-3885-4e7e-9326-ea975c1070d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Google-will-warn-users-of-potential-state-sponsored-attacks-1611730.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948417 | 320 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Dogs Jumping on People — Do You Have A Dominant Dog?
If you can’t get your dog to stop jumping on people, your real problem may be a dominant dog. These two dog behavior problems are more closely related than most dog owners realize.
Dog Psychology 101
Watch two dogs when they greet each other. They don’t jump all over each other the first time they meet, do they? No, each dog stands still and lets the other one sniff him. This is the doggy equivalent of shaking hands. It’s only after they know each other that they’ll run around and play together.
You should understand that dogs are pack animals, and every pack has its leader. One way the alpha dog asserts his dominance over the other pack members is to jump on them and put his front paws on the other animal’s shoulders. Is this starting to sound familiar?
The other dogs in the pack NEVER jump on the alpha dog. This is a sign that the other dog is challenging the leader for dominance. The leader has to respond to this challenge immediately if he want to stay the leader.
When you allow your dog to jump up on you and put his paws on your shoulders, you’re reinforcing his idea that he’s in charge, not you.
Dog Training Tips For Getting Problem Jumping Under Control
Your dog should know the “Sit” command. Always have him sit before you pet him. You’re the leader, and he should get attention on your terms, not his.
If your dog is already jumping on you, these dog obedience tips can help to get him under control.
- When you see him coming, turn sideways and block him with your hip.
- Don’t give him attention by pushing him down and yelling “NO!” He’ll think you’re playing with him.
- If he does manage to get his paws on you, turn your back to him. Make a point of ignoring him. When all four feet are on the ground, tell him to “sit” and “stay.” When he obeys, praise him. Don’t allow him to move until you release him.
- If your pet is demanding your attention and just won’t quit, squirt him in the face with a spray bottle. Stop giving into his demands.
Being Consistent Leads To A Well-Trained Dog
Consistency is the key when training your dog. If one person in your home thinks this behavior is cute, or is encouraging it, you’ll never get him to stop jumping. Everyone in your household must have the same goal, which is teaching your dog to be a well-mannered member of the family who knows where he fits into his world.
- Training Your Dog: Why Should You Do It? (aaccc.wordpress.com)
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more! | <urn:uuid:b9747c97-bf81-44b3-967c-1928562ba803> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nomorebaddogs.com/dogs-jumping-on-people-do-you-have-a-dominant-dog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969355 | 626 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Colorado Bed and Breakfasts
More About Colorado
The Centennial State inked this moniker as it became part of the United States in the important year 1876. Even though Colorado has over 14,000 mountains, it also has miles and miles rolling planes and high forests. Outdoor activities such as skiing and river rafting on the Colorado River are not all that this state has to offer. Colorado is home to the Boulder International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Mile High Horror Film Festival and many others. Additionally, the foodie scene in Colorado is huge. Well, with this many film festivals and the royalty of Hollywood there for these events, fine food and beverage is a must! Although Southwestern and Rocky Mountain cuisines are wildly popular, the state and in particular Boulder, are home to many top-tier eateries. In 2010 Bon Appétit magazine named Boulder America’s Foodiest Town. And, a little know fact that Boulder is home to more Sommelier Masters than New York and San Francisco. Lastly, every June, Aspen is home to the Food & Wine Classic. So, whether you are an avid outdoorsman, skier, river rafter or out for shopping and fine dining, find your way to Colorado and enjoy rustic, upscale elements at every turn. | <urn:uuid:3eeea102-eeb2-4253-84b2-af17d79b1f50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbonline.com/united-states/colorado/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952718 | 266 | 1.625 | 2 |
The word Sabbat comes from the Greek work "sabatu", which means "to rest".
The Sabbats are representative of the turning of the wheel and each honor different phases in the life cycle of the Goddess and the God.
It is interesting to note that the eight Sabbats now known to modern Western pagans used to number only five: Bealtain, Midsummer, Lughnasadh, Samhain, and Yule.
Some commonly mentioned dates were February 1 (to some February 2), May 1 (Great Sabbat, Walpurgis Night), August 1 (lammas), November 1 (Halloween, commencing on October 30's eve), Easter, and Christmas. Other less frequently mentioned dates were Good Friday, January 1 (day of Jesus' circumcision), June 23 (St. John's Day), December 21 (St. Thomas), and Corpus Christi. and others.
The modern Sabbats that many Wiccans and NeoPagans now follow are: Imbolc (February 2), Ostara (Spring Equinox), Beltane (May 1), Litha (Summer Solstice), Lammas (August 1), Mabon (Autumn Equinox), Samhain (October 31) and Yule (Winter Solstice).
According to the testimonies of benandanti and similar European groups (see below), common dates for gatherings of witches are during the weeks of the Ember days, during the twelve days of Christmas or at Pentecost.
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The Witches Sabbat | <urn:uuid:6e99c2b4-ece5-46eb-bf39-d672dfa144e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://witches.monstrous.com/the_sabbats_calendar.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949557 | 321 | 3.3125 | 3 |
I never read Camus in high school. Perhaps it was too highbrow, or maybe our teachers didn’t realise the importance of existentialism to the teenage mind. We read American classics, which were almost as obscure, things like The Red Badge of Courage, Sister Carrie, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, stalwart examples of 19th century American literature that were meant to communicate something about ourselves to ourselves. We did not read JD Salinger, interestingly enough. Maybe our teachers did not want to loosen that particular nut on the developing American mind. In any event, this was before the ubiquitous school shooting experience and the mediagenic telegraphing of personal pain, when most teenagers, including myself, mercilessly applied their angst and fear secretly and relentlessly to themselves, in the privacy of the bedroom and bathroom and mind. While The Red Badge of Courage gathered dust on the dining room table, we read Judy Blume or Marion Zimmer Bradley, or watched the utopic possibilities unfolding on The Brady Bunch in afternoon reruns.
But Camus has been on my mind lately, specifically his creepy The Stranger. When I did finally read Camus in college, I was struck not only by the great David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars cover art of that particular edition, but by the misunderstanding the text attempts to trace out in understanding what exactly is The Stranger (or the Outsider or the Foreigner, in some translations). Society wants to understand Camus’s protagonist as a stranger to its values and norms, but in that attempt, violently circumscribes him within misapprehension and confusion, which the text implies is indicative of a society that refuses to see itself clearly, and uses the ill-formed concept of the Stranger to define itself in hysteria and denial.
The concept of the Stranger has been important to most human societies, of course. It is the basis for the concept of xenophobia, and reveals quite a lot about human collectives. Some of my experience this past semester speak to the power of the concept of the Stranger in our own professional worlds. For all the talk we make in the profession on universal commonality of goals, purposes, and interests in research and teaching, through our national organizations and journals and newspapers of record and shared discussions of teaching and peer review, most often our professional worlds and expectations are shaped most immediately by the local, by the institutions and human collectives we work for on a daily basis.
There is the truism, of course, of all politics is local. We are trained and inculcated into the profession on almost exclusively local levels even if we might imagine, in a Benedict Anderson sort of way, there is, out there, a larger profession: first our doctoral institution, with all its peculiarities in modes of thought and approach, and then our subsequent experiences at our probationary positions, then through to tenure and beyond, for those of us left with any energy and wanderlust after tenure.
I have been thinking a lot lately of the local, the local culture, the local milieu, as I am circulating this year as The Stranger: an official visitor whose powers and talents are vaguely known, imagined, but not fleshed out, and therefore, remain suspect. My role is a little different from that of a visiting professor, as I am circumlocuted within a specific role and title, within a specific window of time. I am open to the possibilities of learning and growth within this context, of course, but am not terribly interested in assimilation, for institutional assimilation makes no sense in my particular placement. A year from now, I will be back at Cold City U., far away from the honey-dipped precincts of Presitgious Lil' College (PLC). What is curious is that many institutions, however, cannot understand their processes outside of assimilation, not only as a statement of their own value, but as a system of comprehension. In other words, there remains insider and outsider, and no medium in between, for comprehending both individuals and ideas within our institutions.
Since the university is a human concept, this is not terribly surprising, natürlich. And we can think of global corollaries that reflect this dynamic as well. The problem, with the global and local, is the way assimilative strategies, or at the very least they way we typically understand these strategies, inscribe and reinforce notions of identity (institutional, intellectual, social, cultural, or otherwise) that are deeply reactionary. As much as we might like to believe that we as academicians and intellectuals are more enlightened, more open to the possibility of difference, we in fact often also operate as brutal enforcers of the known order, through things like “fit,” or concepts of appropriate or inappropriate methodology. This was certainly the story of my experience at Sadistic College.
I have also been feeling this tension at PLC, especially from students (well, one student in particular, actually) who have strong opinions on what constitutes the purported PLC method, and certain faculty and administrative interlocutors who have urged me to accommodate these conceptual threads into my teaching. On some level, of course, I recognise the necessity of assimilation, of change and flexibility in method. I have, after all, held positions both as tenure-line faculty and adjunct at several universities with rather strong self-conceptions. However, this year, I have felt empowered, through the curiosity of my own placement professionally and emotionally, to also stand up for the talents and seductions of The Stranger, to be confident and safe enough to insist on difference, and all the chaos it implies for academicians.
For ultimately, The Stranger brings, not only in Camus’s pathological example of fear and loathing but also ideally in a rather more humane context, different knowledges and experiences that are valuable. Again, intellectually, most of us understand and honour this in theory, but in reality can practice assimilative coercion in its most vicious forms. The challenge is maintaining calm in the face of the vertigo such confrontations with difference trigger. As I mentioned in a meeting a few weeks ago with an administrator, adaptation to the PLC model is not a useful idea for me.
The shock of the administrator was palpable, and as we talked more, I outlined the professional and institutional parameters for such an utterance, namely time for my own research agenda in a position that was not tenure-line and terminal (and therefore relatively value-free on both sides of the contractual form), but most importantly in the skill set I bring as a stranger to PLC: transitory, temporal, and ultimately fleeting, but useful nonetheless. The shock that would greet my rejection of simplistic adaptation speaks to rudimentary ways of understanding assimilation, in its many guises, as a straightforward adoption of a host society’s norms and values. But this does not occur in such a clear-cut manner, of course. Assimilation is a complicated nexus of values and decisions that as a process is uneven, unique, and specific.
And where the rubber met the road, so to speak, in this particular conversation was in the fact that I have a job already, another placement that is secure and different and awaits me elsewhere, and therefore I was empowered to think and speak freely, as The Stranger from and with another place. As I indicated in this conversation, the point was not that I was unconcerned with the effectiveness of my teaching methodology, but rather that I wanted a recognition of the value of different systems in transitory contexts, as well as some sort of acknowledgment that adaptation and assimilation are also maneuvers of power, but that that power must, ideally, flow both ways. In other words, institutions need to invest and nurture their faculty in consensual ways, but there also must be space in that nurturing for multiple positions vis-à-vis the institution, from temporary to permanent and everything in between, from The Stranger to The Distressingly Familiar. This strikes me as fundamentally pragmatic, but as we know, pragmatism as a methodology gets rather short shrift in our place and time.
I recently read that the Puritan voyagers, one of the socio-cultural roots of American society, called non-Puritans “strangers.” There was something rather instructive in that factoid, something that spoke to the strong bonds we form within collectives, as well as something about the American character that was reflected in the 19th century literature I was forced to read in high school. What seems harder to me, and the potential point for conflict, in the profession and otherwise is where we insist intellectually on those differences but then act in a different manner when we meet them in flesh and blood. | <urn:uuid:77bf0750-e0cc-40ef-98d1-99b48fac1a58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://slavesofacademe.blogspot.com/2007/12/ltranger.html?showComment=1197423480000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965494 | 1,789 | 1.875 | 2 |
RELATIONAL AGENTS GROUPRelational Agents are computer agents designed to form long-term, social-emotional relationships with their users. We are investigating the use of these agents in task domains in which human-agent relationships actually improve task outcomes, such as in coaching, counseling, psychotherapy and healthcare.
An agent that counsels patients on their options for surgical anesthesia.
A portable exercise counselor that can sense your walking behavior.
A hospital bedside patient education system for individuals with low health literacy, focused on pre-discharge medication adherence and self-care counseling.
A physical activity intervention for older adults with low health literacy, deployed in a geriatics clinic and designed to sustain long-term adherence.
A testbed for conducting longitudinal studies in human-computer relationships.
Formalization of concepts and techniques in health behavior counseling to enhance re-usability of health behavior change dialogue systems.
A home-based counseling agent to promote antipsychotic medication adherence, designed for patients with Schizophrenia.
A home-based Virtual Coach that promotes exercise and healthy eating, and automatically incorporates data wirelessly transmitted from pedometers.
A web-based health counselor agent designed for a year-long intervention, promoting physical activity and ultraviolet radiation avoidance to prevent cancer.
A community center-based exercise promotion agent, linguistically and culturally adapted for a population of Spanish-speaking Latino older adults.
Investigation of verbal and nonverbal teaching behaviors that can be used to explain complex health documents to individuals with low health literacy.
A relational agent designed for use in a public space (Boston Museum of Science), featuring biometric user identification.
Investigation of strategies a relational agent can use to calm and comfort users. | <urn:uuid:ae9ce2aa-d630-40b1-b30d-5e697befd7fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://relationalagents.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904419 | 352 | 2.109375 | 2 |
New England Medicare Local
Characteristics of the local area:A challenge in providing health care for the region relates to New England Medicare Local’s widely dispersed and sparse population density. The population density in the New England Medicare Local area is 1.9 people per square kilometre compared to 8.3 for New South Wales. The percentage of population aged 65 years or older is 15.9 per cent, which is higher than the state average of 13.9 per cent. The number of people who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is 8.3 per cent compared to NSW at 2.2 per cent.
The rates of major disease in the New England Medicare Local mirror the state and national averages reasonably closely. The average rates of type 2 diabetes are set to increase due to a number of factors and population characteristics. Smoking rates are considerably higher than both the state and the nation for both males and females. The rate of dangerous levels of alcohol consumption is 7.9 per 100 head of population (NSW 5.7; Australia 5.4). The rates of avoidable and premature deaths are also higher than the state and nation.
New key activities as a Medicare Local:To meet the strategic objectives for a Medicare Local, the New England Medicare Local will undertake a range of activities that will initially include:
- Ensure the continued delivery of a comprehensive range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services.
- Update service directories to reflect current service availability and contact details.
- Expand integrated chronic disease services for conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
- Build on early intervention strategies in mental health and involve allied health providers in a wider range of health services.
- Roll out secure messaging and e-health shared records to practices and specialists with funding from the Hunter New England Local Health District.
- Facilitate and encourage the integration of multidisciplinary health records.
- Assist providers to adopt fully electronic databases.
- Build on the success of the Medical Specialist Outreach Assistance Program.
- Coordinate health promotion activities to inform stakeholders and patients of services within the area.
- Facilitate access to services that were previously unavailable.
- Work with the Local Health District to further assess population health needs and provide seamless in-hospital and out-of-hospital care.
Achievements to date:The New England, North West Slopes and Barwon Divisions of General Practice have delivered primary health care and support services to rural communities, and to the primary health care workforce.
The Divisions of General Practice:
- Integrate chronic disease programs for diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cardiovascular disease, rehabilitation programs, education, promotion of services and support groups.
- Provide a comprehensive range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services within their existing areas through Closing the Gap, Healthy for Life and primary care services involving GPs, Aboriginal Medical Services, allied health professional and community health services.
- Work together to address issues and plan mental health services.
Local partnerships:The New England Medicare Local will further develop its strong relationships with Hunter New England Local Health District; Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations and other Aboriginal organisations and communities; local primary and secondary health clinicians; local health and social welfare organisations; Universities of New England and Newcastle and other tertiary training providers; and local State Government department offices.
Consultation mechanisms and structure:The New England Medicare Local benefits from a longstanding network of consultative mechanisms established by local Divisions of General Practice. Representatives from these organisations will be involved at all levels of the organisation to provide advice, guidance and input into initiatives to improve the health of communities in the region. While some may be represented on the governing body of the Medicare Local, all will be able to have input through community consultation, advisory groups and forums.
Contact details:New England Medicare Local
PO Box 1916
Phone: (02) 6771 1146
Fax: (02) 6771 1170
New England Medicare Local email address
New England Medicare Local website
New England Medicare Local (PDF 242 KB)
The Tobacco Plain Packaging Information Kit provides practical information on the responsibilities and obligations of retailers and other suppliers of tobacco products under the new Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011.
eHealth.gov.au is your gateway to Australia's personally controlled electronic health record system, linking you to information about eHealth records and the system itself. Visit www.ehealth.gov.au
On 20 April 2012, the Prime Minister and Minister Butler unveiled a comprehensive package of reforms to build a better, fairer, more sustainable and more nationally consistent aged care system. | <urn:uuid:397ad4a5-c1d9-40c1-b067-f467ac211678> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.health.gov.au/internet/yourhealth/publishing.nsf/Content/MediLocProfile_NewEngland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906675 | 939 | 2.3125 | 2 |
What is Restore?
In 2005, the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management (BLM) launched the Restore New Mexico initiative with the goal of restoring disturbed lands on a landscape scale through an ambitious partnership approach. What began as a concept has become a widely-successful restoration and reclamation program involving numerous agencies, organizations, ranchers and industry groups.
Landscape restoration in New Mexico has focused on controlling invasive brush species, improving riparian habitat, reducing woodland encroachment, and reclaiming abandoned oil and gas well pads.
In many areas, historic overuse of the land has transformed fragile desert grasslands and open woodlands into virtual wastelands of creosote and mesquite, and diverse streamside vegetation into barren monocultures of salt cedar. These gradual changes have greatly damaged the land’s biological productivity, resulting in less wildlife, degraded water quality and decreased supplies of groundwater.
Our goal is to reduce existing invasive and noxious species and thus allow more desirable vegetative species to flourish. This, in turn, will benefit the watershed by stabilizing soil and ultimately increase forb, grass and favorable shrub production, resulting in increased and improved habitat for a variety of wildlife.
The effort is truly historic, thanks to some significant opportunities that have arisen in the last four years. The BLM is working with state and federal agencies, ranchers and other landowners, conservation groups, local governments and other partners to accomplish big things:
- Creosote and mesquite deserts are being replaced with healthy grasslands that can support significantly greater biodiversity.
- Salt cedar is being removed from streams to restore our state’s iconic cottonwood-willow forests, recreating habitat for fish, birds and a host of other species.
- Overgrown woodlands are being restored to open savannas with abundant grasses and ‘browse species’ that beckon herds of mule deer and elk.
- Surface disturbance from historic oil and gas operations – from the time when there weren’t any requirements for surface reclamation – are being repaired, defragmenting (consolidating) wildlife habitat to benefit prairie chickens, sand dune lizards and other grassland-dependent species.
Restore New Mexico is much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s taking a vision and making it happen on the ground. With more than 1.8 million acres treated, and millions more planned, Restore has become a model for land restoration throughout the country.
Why Restore? Is there something wrong with our landscapes today?
In the early 19th Century, grasslands dominated much of New Mexico. Over the past century, however, grasses have given way to invasive and noxious species like creosote, mesquite, salt cedar and more, the result of overuse, drought and other factors. The left map shows vegetation levels before European settlement; note the overwhelming presence of grasslands across the state. The second map shows current levels of vegetation, in particular the vast expansion of shrub-dominated landscapes.
YELLOW = GRASS DOMINATED
ORANGE = SHRUB DOMINATED
GREEN = TREE DOMINATED | <urn:uuid:10bd8d30-25cb-403b-b161-d7b0def7a238> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/restore_new_mexico/what_is_restore.print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920079 | 653 | 3.3125 | 3 |
“Who was where when?”
I’m sitting at the dining room table in my buddy Ken’s townhouse in Hyde Park, Chicago, Illinois. It’s August, 2009, between my sister’s wedding and GenCon. We’ve just finished setting up For The People, GMT’s card-driven game of the American Civil War. I’m the Union player. And as I’m looking down at the board, that’s what I’m asking myself.
I don’t claim to be an expert on the Civil War. Staring at that map, though, I realize that I have no idea how to even begin to emulate the historical strategy. I’ve got some names — Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Atlanta — and I can see where they are in space, but I have no idea when they are in time. The lines of advance, the critical operations: I have no idea how to get to Appomattox Courthouse. I know that Grant started in the west before he came east, that Sherman marched through Georgia at some point, and that’s about it.
It should come as no surprise that I did not fare very well in the game.1 That was the second event in a few months that reinforced how big the gaps in my knowledge about the geography of the Civil War was. The first was a Final Jeopardy answer on an episode of Teen Jeopardy that I happened to catch. It was something along the lines of “These two states contain the northernmost and southernmost Civil War battlefields maintained by the National Parks Service.” I’d been playing along and rocking the answers, but on this I was utterly lost. Even when the answer was revealed — “What are Pennsylvania and Mississippi?” — I had no idea what the battles were.2
The sudden, embarrassing awareness of those gaps pushed me to finally read the copy of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative that had been sitting on my shelf for years. As it turns out, that question — “Who was where when?” — was the one I most wanted the answer to. As I read, I discovered I needed to put things in space in order to orient them in time. Foote’s maps were good, but I wanted more. On Ken’s recommendation, I picked up a copy of The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War, a monstrous tome3 filled with period maps.4 I even ordered copies of Columbia Games’ Sam Grant and Bobby Lee just so I could place the brigades and divisions on the map and move them around as I read.
Fast forward to the end of February, 2010. I’m at my own dining room table, in Santa Barbara, California. Across from me is my friend David. Between us stretches that same game board. Only this time I look down at the tangle of river crossings and realize why Forts Henry and Donelson are so important. Further down the Mississippi is Island Ten. At the far end are Forts Philip and Jackson, guarding New Orleans from Union ships. Swinging east, there’s Missionary Ridge; I can’t get anywhere close to it now, but I know that unless I can march overland through Alabama instead, it will be a roadblock on my way into the heart of the Confederacy. And in Virginia there’s Harper’s Ferry, Manassas, the Shenandoah Valley — all those spaces where I will never be able to make substantial gains but will have to pour men into in order to keep from losing. Richmond seems almost within reach. Grant is over in Kentucky. If only I could bring him east…
As part of our Fourth Friday Challenge series, Becky asks: “Can you talk about an aspect of the Civil War that you have not covered previously in your blog? Anything you want — the emotional, historical, narrative, geographical, etc.” You can read her thoughts about General Grant over on her blog.
1 That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it was after midnight when we finished anyway.
3 Open, it’s two feet wide and a foot and half tall, and it weighs ten pounds. So when I say it’s monstrous, I’m not just whistling Dixie.
4 His undergraduate major was cartography, so I trust him in the matters even more than normal. | <urn:uuid:25b99050-3f25-4087-96ea-0200a10dfa3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://paultevis.com/blog/2011/3/25/onward-to-richmond.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963183 | 940 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Unsuspecting consumers on the receiving end are hardly aware that they are purchasing contraband, however. They’re merely ordering floral arrangements.
As for the perpetrators, they aren’t drug dealers; they’re galax poachers — and their actions are having a detrimental impact on the Southern Appalachian landscape.
Galax is a small, cool-weather plant with broad, waxy, heart-shaped leaves. It’s prized as a base plant in floral arrangements because the leaves hold their green color for up to several weeks after they’ve been picked.
The larger the leaf, the more desirable it is — which is why a unique type of galax, called tetraploid galax and found only along the Blue Ridge escarpment in the eastern range of the Southern Appalachians, has come under increasing pressure from illegal poachers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that as many as three billion galax leaves are harvested each year from the Southern Appalachians — some taken with a valid permit, but much of it poached illegally.
North Carolina alone accounts for approximately 99 percent of the national galax harvest. Around nine galax dealers in North Carolina dominate the trade, shipping most of what’s harvested here across the country and worldwide, from Japan to Holland.
The Blue Ridge Parkway runs right along the escarpment, making the Parkway a hotspot for galax poachers.
Recent surveys on galax along the Parkway have yielded startling results, said Nora Murdock, an ecologist with the Appalachian Highlands Inventory and Monitoring Network, a federal agency which monitors animal and plant populations on national park land.
Between 80 and 95 percent of the galax patches along the Parkway had been targeted by poachers, according to a general survey her team conducted last year. The team monitors groupings of galax plants, some as large as 20 acres and some as small as a few square feet, for precise quantitive data as well as more general data.
Sometimes the signs of poaching are more discreet, such as a drag mark on the forest floor from a duffle bag full or leaves or a plot of plants with only the larger leaves selectively harvested while the rest, are left intact — this represents a more traditional way of harvesting galax that doesn’t necessarily kill the plant, a more careful approach that allows the picker to return to the same plot year after year.
However, other times the results are more devastating.
Murdock has discovered patches where every plant has been pulled up from the ground along with its root system. The larger leaves are clipped on the spot, and the rest are dropped and left in the woods. This recent trend in harvesting methods is a particular concern because it kills the entire plant.
“We’ve found tens of thousands of roots dropped on top of the ground,” Murdock said. “The scale of it is beyond anything you can imagine.”
The elusive poacher
The poachers are willing to go to great lengths to find these galax patches, skirting cliffs, climbing on all fours through thickets and hiking long distances hauling thousands of leaves. Some of the harvested galax comes from parts of the Parkway so well hidden or difficult to access that Murdock is led to believe the poachers are monitoring and cataloguing the plots as well, perhaps with the use of a global position system.
“They are not just picking it off the side of road,” Murdock said. “They are bushwhacking on hands and knees, climbing cliffs — that says someone is paying a lot of money for this.”
Law enforcement agents have also noted that the poachers’ approach has become much more discreet, with a driver dropping off a crew of pickers on the Parkway and then picking them up at another point further down the road. This coordination eliminates leaving a car parked along the Parkway for long periods — a traditional tip-off for agents.
And the payoff for poachers can be well worth it. While traditional prices for galax were between 1 and 5 cents paid to pickers per leaf, Murdock said she noted a recent jump in wholesale prices leading her to believe pickers may be making more. Prices for galax leaves can also increase in the winter while supply is low and the leaves assume a seasonal purple color.
Several web-based wholesale floral supply companies are selling galax for as high as 80 cents to $1.70 per leaf, depending on the size. And a picker can gather as many as 5,000 leaves per day along the Parkway — bundled in groups of 25 and typically stacked in a spiral pattern inside of duffle bags or boxes — making it one of the more lucrative plants to poach along with wild ginseng roots, which can sell for up to $1,000 per dry pound.
Galax and ginseng are two of the most threatened plant species in the Southern Appalachians due to poaching, according to Tim Francis, district ranger for the Pisgah District of the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 2005, the galax industry in the region was expected to bring as much as $20 million to local harvesters.
Harvesting of galax for use in floral arrangements has been reported since the early 1900s, but Francis said recently the galax harvest has reached a point beyond sustainability. Some experts have attributed this to fewer jobs and higher unemployment. Another factor, however, is the increase in immigrant populations in the region who have taken up galax hunting.
Enforcement of galax poaching can be particularly difficult. For the 10 rangers assigned to the Pisgah District of the parkway — a 165-mile stretch running from Grandfather Mountain to Cherokee — their primary concern is patrolling the scenic roadway itself. From handling car wrecks to catching speeders, backcountry trails and pockets of forest along the Parkway don’t get daily attention.
But, some poachers do get busted. Last year, rangers arrested eight galax poachers on the Parkway. In 2008, more than 60 were arrested in a single year between joint operations with the U.S. Forest Service and the Parkway, including a bust of an organized poaching ring whose leaders were charged with conspiracy and sentenced to jail time.
Yet, despite routine arrests, the risk of jail time and fines of up to $5,000, Francis said efforts may fall short of curtailing the number of ready poachers.
“For every four or five we catch today, there are four or five more the next day,” Francis said.
Controlling the source
Although, picking galax from the Parkway or the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is illegal — given their status of national parks — harvesting galax from the Pisgah or Nantahala national forests is legal during certain times of year with a permit.
That makes enforcement difficult. Someone with a forest service permit could illegally pick from the Parkway, but unless caught in the actual act, they could lie about the leaves’ origin to rangers. Likewise, wholesale galax dealers when presented with a batch of leaves have no way of knowing if they were poached from the Parkway or picked legally.
Picking galax in the national forest does have its restrictions. Harvesting is off-limits for two months of the critical growing season in spring. Only leaves larger than 3 inches in diameter can be picked, thus ensuring the plant survives and keeps growing.
The cheapest permit is $35 and allows pickers to collect up to 100 pounds of leaves but is only good for up to two weeks after being issued.
In fiscal year 2012, the Pisgah Ranger District of the Pisgah National Forest issued 224 galax harvesting permits. In that same year, rangers also apprehended six people for harvesting without a permit.
Several efforts have been made to stop the taking of galax at its source. One deterrent included painting galax leaves within the Parkway boundaries with orange paint to ruin their economic value, but the sheer expanse of the acreage to cover made that approach difficult. The paint also has to be applied anew ever two years or so.
North Carolina State University researchers at their Mountain Horticultural Crops Research & Extension center near Asheville have also attempted to develop a method of growing galax commercially, to relive the pressure on wild plants and create another cash crop option for farmers, but Francis said the results have not been economically viable.
From the day a galax seed is planted in the ground, it can take four years before a harvestable leaf appears on the plant, Murdock said.
With many unsuccessful attempts to slow the illegal harvest, Murdock worried about the options left for those concerned with protecting the mountain galax species, and the future of the plant if a solution weren’t discovered quickly.
“Before we started monitoring, I would have said ‘no’, the poachers couldn’t make it go extinct,” Murdock said, “But from what I’ve seen in last few years … I don’t know now.” | <urn:uuid:70cdc266-87cb-42e5-a9f2-3326decd3a54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smokymountainnews.com/news/item/8894-galax-takes-a-beating-from-blackmarket-trade | 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 | 0.96262 | 1,883 | 2.921875 | 3 |
“Azariah stood up in the midst of the fire and prayed aloud…” Daniel 3:25.
Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of fire. These verses in Daniel, which are part of the Catholic canon of scripture, provide an astonishing example of a faith in the midst of a trial, which is inspired by an encounter with God. It has much to offer us in our Lenten journey.
I have always loved this story of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego (aka Azariah). When presented with demands from unjust laws, they stood up to mighty King Nebuchadnezzar and calmly resolved to resist. They told the king that God could save them if He wished, but if He did not, it would not affect their decision to refuse to worship a false god. The king is angry and offended, so he has them thrown into a fiery furnace. That decision kills some other people, but not our three friends. They were joined in the furnace by what the king described as a “fourth man”. (Country music fans of a certain age may recall the Statler Brothers singing this story, “they didn’t bend, they didn’t bow, they didn’t burn”.)
When you consider this context, the prayer offered by Azariah (Abednego) is really astonishing. He does not call for divine retribution on the Babylonian oppressors, who surely had some serious sins to their account. Instead, Azariah focuses on the faults of his own people and their corporate need for divine mercy. The faults of others (as grievous as they were, indeed) apparently did not seem so important when Azariah encountered the “fourth man” -- a theophany – in the midst of this fiery trial.
Following God makes a lot of sense when you are in the fire and need to get out, but then there is always the question: what are you going to do next, after the crisis? Sometimes deliverance is not sufficiently transformative of our attitude and way of life. The Gospel today provides a severe object lesson about deliverance and the requirement of something from us -- forgiveness. In the parable, the debtor who was forgiven much fails to forgive another debtor – and his own deliverance was therefore withdrawn. Yikes!
As we sit comfortably at a distance, we can wonder what this debtor was thinking and why he was so dense. But if we had been in the midst of that adventure, could we be so sure of ourselves? If we were the debtor who had been mistreated over our small debt, would we be glad that the other fellow was getting his due for bullying us? What about our dignity, which has been offended by this brute? Would we want justice more than mercy?
Sometimes cycles of affliction and injury are hard to stop. We get hurt, then we hurt others, and then they hurt others, etc. But we must stop them. This seems to be a supernatural quest, which is not so easily achieved on our own terms. While we may know that “[love] does not brood over injury” (1 Cor. 13:5), practicing that kind of love is asking quite a lot, when the hurt is real and we do not feel fine at all!
During this Lenten season, how can we find the kind of prayer that arose in Azariah’s heart – and the transforming change in attitude that accompanied it? Perhaps we may find such prayer by spending more time with our Lord than we spend brooding over our injuries and our neighbor’s faults (though indeed they are real and many). May God help us to perform this supernatural work. And I suspect we will be astonished at the results if we try. Thanks be to God. | <urn:uuid:42b16ee4-332f-4a3d-838c-37b71f9cc35e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/030513.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976646 | 787 | 2.25 | 2 |
Concerns about Belgium's economic growth prospects and its banking system, particularly potential contingent liabilities stemming from a bailout of Dexia bank, also contributed to the decision, Moody's said.
"The fragility of the sovereign debt markets (in the euro zone) is increasingly entrenched and unlikely to be reversed in the near future," Moody's said in a statement.
"It translates into heightened potential for funding stress for euro area countries with high public debt burdens and refinancing needs like Belgium," it added.
Belgium's government declined to comment on Moody's decision.
The ratings agency lowered Belgium's local- and foreign-currency government bond ratings to Aa3 from Aa1. The new rating has a negative outlook, which means another downgrade is possible in a couple of years.
Earlier on Friday, rival Fitch Ratings placed Belgium's AA-plus rating on credit watch negative, signaling a downgrade is possible within three months.
Standard & Poor's, which rates the country at AA, also has the rating on watch negative as part of a broader review of 15 euro zone countries. | <urn:uuid:c43cfa4d-7762-4b8a-9414-dee4b9fa3188> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blnz.com/news/2011/12/16/Moodys_cuts_Belgium_ratings_notches_11d8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950925 | 223 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Rocky Mountain Institute
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is an organization in the United States dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the general field of sustainability, with a special focus on profitable innovations for energy and resource efficiency. RMI was established in 1982 and has grown into a broad-based institution with 85 staff and an annual budget of some $13 million. RMI's work is independent and non-adversarial, with a strong emphasis on market-based solutions. The work of RMI has benefited more than 80 Fortune 500 companies in a diverse range of sectors. RMI is headquartered in Snowmass, Colorado, and also maintains offices in Boulder, Colorado.
In 1978, experimental physicist Amory Lovins had published many books, consulted widely, and was active in energy affairs in some fifteen countries as synthesist and lobbyist. Lovins is a main theorist of the soft energy path.
Later in 1979, Lovins married L. Hunter Sheldon, a lawyer, forester, and social scientist. Hunter received her undergraduate degree in sociology and political studies from Pitzer College, and her J.D. from Loyola Marymount's School of Law. In 1982, Amory and Hunter founded Rocky Mountain Institute, based in Colorado. Together with a group of colleagues, the Lovinses fostered efficient resource use and policy development that they believed would promote global security. RMI ultimately grew into an organization with a staff of around fifty. By the mid 1980s, the Lovinses were being featured on major network TV programs, such as 60 Minutes.
At RMI's headquarters the south-facing building complex is so energy-efficient that, even with local -40°F winter temperatures, the building interiors can maintain a comfortable temperature solely from the sunlight admitted plus the body heat of the people who work there. The environment can actually nurture semi-tropical and tropical indoor plants.
The Lovinses described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient liquid-fuel automotive transport, as well as giant centralized electricity-generating facilities, often burning fossil fuels such as coal or petroleum, or harnessing a fission reaction, greatly complicated by electricity wastage and loss. The "soft energy path" which they wholly preferred involves efficient use of energy, diversity of energy production methods (and matched in scale and quality to end uses), and special reliance on "soft technologies" (alternative technology) such as solar, wind, biofuels, and geothermal. According to the Institute, large-scale electricity production facilities had an important place, but it was a place that they were already filling in the middle 1970s; in general, more would not be needed. In a 1989 speech, Amory Lovins introduced the related concept of Negawatt power, in which the creation of a market for trading increased efficiency could supply additional electrical energy to consumers without increasing generation capacity—such as building more power plants.
In recent years, RMI has convened a team of designers and engineers to develop a super-efficient prototype automobile, which they've dubbed the Hypercar.
Electric vehicles
In January 2008, led by John E. Waters, Bright Automotive launched from RMI with the goal of building on the work of a consortium of organizations, including Alcoa, Google.org, Johnson Controls and the Turner Foundation.
The Bright IDEA is a brand-new, 100 miles per US gallon (2.4 L/100 km; 120 mpg-imp) plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) fleet vehicle It has launched Bright eSolutions to consult on engineering, design, powertrain, battery technology and plug-in hybrid conversion technology services. Bright Automotive has announced its first conversion contract: the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) to convert military non-combat vehicle into a parallel PHEV for evaluation, including V2G testing.
Advanced Energy, in partnership with Rocky Mountain Institute has announced a Request for Information (RFI) for Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) specific to charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles (EV).
Books published by RMI include:
- Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs and Security (2005) ISBN 1-84407-194-4 (Available Online in PDF)
- Small is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2003) ISBN 1-881071-07-3
- Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (2000) ISBN 1-85383-763-6
- Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era (2011) ISBN 978-1-60358-371-8. http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire])
RMI co-founder Amory Lovins has received nine honorary doctorates, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood Award, World Technology, and Time Hero for the Planet awards, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, the Nissan, Shingo, Mitchell, and Onassis Prizes, and honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
See also
- E. Kyle Datta
- Negawatt power
- Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle
- Soft energy path
- Soft energy technology
- Lovins Bio
- Breakthrough Design Team p. 4.
- RMI Research and Consulting
- Breakthrough Design Team
- Staff List | <urn:uuid:553a5f9d-3ccb-4d78-8526-87be6df00bcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Institute | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911501 | 1,135 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Our tweeting readers have homed in on what they characterize as a flagrant misuse in this week’s Comment. Steve Coll writes, about the evolution of the two big Party Conventions, that although the procedure by which the Republicans and the Democrats nominate their candidates for President changed, over the years, in ways that rendered the Conventions irrelevant, “the tradition of free political airtime had been established, and admen honed in and fashioned the quadrennial infomercials we now endure.” A million tweeters think it should be “homed in.”
The readers whose sensibilities were most outraged attributed this errant use of “honed in” to George Bush (the First), who spoke of “honing in on the issues” during the Presidential campaign of 1980. They suggested that if The New Yorker was citing Bush as a usage authority then these must indeed be the end times.
To “home in on” means, of course, to “proceed or direct attention toward an objective (science is homing in on the mysterious human process—Sam Glucksberg).” The citation is from Webster’s 9th, first published in 1983, which makes no mention of “hone in.” Webster’s 11th, published in 2003, gives “hone in” its own entry, as an alteration of “home in,” dating from 1965: “to move toward or focus attention on an objective”—and cites not George Bush but George Plimpton (“looking back for the ball honing in”). Plimpton may or may not have erred, but, in any case, he was a literary lion and his use of “hone in” is enshrined in Webster’s.
There are a couple of ways of looking at this. One is prescriptive: “hone in” is an error for “home in.” Another is descriptive: “hone in” is an improvement on “home in,” enjoying the connotations of the verb “to hone” (Web 11)—“to make more acute, intense, or effective (helped her hone her comic timing to perfection—Patricia Bosworth)”; that is to say, to home in sharply. Yet another possibility is that “honed in” was a typographical error for “horned in.” It would fit the context.
For anyone who is determined to find an unambiguous error in this week’s issue, allow me to divert your attention to Tables for Two. A review of a downtown restaurant called Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria refers to the packaged pasta, canned tomatoes, cured sausages, and other comestibles for sale as “artisanal dry goods.” We don’t encounter the “drygoods store” anymore, so it’s possible to forget, if we ever even knew, that “dry goods” meant “textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and notions as distinguished esp. from hardware and groceries” (Web 11 again). One pictures a little lady in gloves and a bonnet clutching her reticule as she descends from a surrey to purchase buttons and thread. Although the groceries for sale at il Buco Alimentari e Vineria include dry (as opposed to fresh) pasta, they do not fit the definition of dry goods. Nor is the chef a haberdasher.
While worrying about homing in on dry goods yesterday, I honed my parking skills. It was a miserable morning. For one thing, I had a twitch in my right lower eyelid. Waiting for the streetsweeper to come by, my fellow-alternate-side parkers and I groaned as a moving van took up two precious parking spots. When the streetsweeper came, a car behind me got on its tail, I horned in behind him, and as we homed in on the curb a car that had been double-parked squeezed in on my left and yet another car shot out of a driveway on my right, achieving a pincer effect. I honked and braked and twitched and fell back in the line of cars, but in the end there was room for all of us, as well as for another driver who came along behind me and asked three times if I could give him two inches. I was not very nice about it. Don’t wedge me in. Having written this in the spirit of atonement, I hope to have cleared the air before the long weekend and the New Year.
Illustration by Laurie Rosenwald. | <urn:uuid:32cf8ba3-0cc2-42ed-b7a5-fc041c5404ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/dont-try-to-hone-in-on-a-copyeditor.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969499 | 996 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Bali PrepCom Opens with Calls for Bolder Commitment to Action
||27 May, BALI , INDONESIAThe fourth and final preparatory
meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development opened today on a note
of urgency, with calls from Summit officials and citizen activists for bolder
commitments that the people of the world would recognize as progress.
"The World Summit on Sustainable Development has not been called to
endorse business as usual," Summit Secretary-General Nitin Desai told the
opening of the preparatory meeting. "It has been called because people
want change. And this Summit must signal a real commitment to change."
Negotiations on the Summit outcome documents quickly got underway, with Summit
officials hopeful that work on a programme to intensify and expand
implementation of sustainable development activities can be completed by the
end of the PrepCom's first week. Discussions on the elements for a political
declaration to be endorsed by the world leaders attending the Summit will be
held during the second week of the PrepCom, when ministers from around the
world will attend."
Desai said he hoped that the implementation programme, when completed, would be
known as the "Bali Commitment for Sustainable Development," and would
serve as a guide for actions that bring measurable results that improve the
symbiotic relationship between people and their environment.
Progress in five strategic areas-water, energy, health, agricultural
productivity, and biodiversity-that had been highlighted by United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was essential, Desai added.
"We should not meet ten years after Johannesburg with the same concerns
and find that we have not been able to retain high level political attention on
what we agreed to in Johannesburg, and that we have not been able to find
resources to implement what we agreed upon in Johannesburg," he said.
The Summit, which will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to
4 September, will be attended by world leaders and representatives of citizen
groups, businesses, and representatives of other important sectors of society,
and presents a major opportunity to forge agreements and actions to tackle
crucial problems arising from poverty, unsustainable consumption and production
and the impact of human society on the environment.
Indonesian Environment Minister Nabiel Makarim, welcoming delegates to the
Bali, said the PrepCom was "an historic opportunity to breathe new life
into sustainable development" where a number of landmark outcomes can be
Yet a strong contingent of non-governmental organizations expressed
disappointment in the text presently under negotiation. Glen Farred of the
South African NGO Coalition said the document resembled a "government
shopping list" and "will not be an action plan that people
desperately want." Remi Parmentier of Greenpeace International warned,
"we are heading toward a crisis."
Some compromise was necessary, according to Preparatory Committee Chairman Emil
Salim, to achieve a consensus, but he added that it was the job of civil
society to lobby delegations to urge them to change their positions. "Look
to the countries who are challenging time-bound initiatives and who don't want
targets. Put pressure on delegates," he exhorted.
The process of dialogue between members of civil society and government has
been a hallmark of the Rio legacy, and discussions between representatives of
major groups and governments began in earnest during the first of six dialogue
sessions between them. The dialogues offer the major groups--farmers, trade
unions, the scientific and academic community, business, youth, women, local
authorities, non-governmental organizations, and indigenous peoples-an
opportunity to directly offer suggestions to government delegations that could
ultimately affect the outcome of the Summit.
A constant concern of many major groups was that government attention was far
too focused, at the moment, on markets and not people. NGO representatives
warned that the major international financial institutions and the World Trade
Organization were the dominant forces in international governance, a fact that
obstructed progress towards implementing sustainable development.
The United States said the multi-stakeholder dialogues were particularly
important, since in the end, "no declaration or plan of action will give
people access to drinking water, halt the spread of AIDS, or ensure access to
primary education." The US said that partnerships among governments,
businesses, NGOs and other stakeholders could deliver concrete results.."
The development of voluntary partnership initiatives has emerged as a third
major outcome of the Johannesburg Summit. The partnerships, it is hoped, will
go beyond what governments can and must do to implement sustainable
While many NGOs have criticized the partnership initiatives as a vehicle for
corporations to promote the privatization of essential government functions,
Desai emphasized that the partnerships were not a substitute for government
responsibilities. He said the partnerships were encouraged to raise the quality
of implementation, and would be geared toward achieving concrete results in the
areas identified by governments in the negotiated agreements.
"I don't know why people think partnerships just involve
corporations," Desai said. "That's not true. Many of the partnership
proposals that we have received do not involve any corporate involvement."
One partnership, he said by way of example, is the Global Reporting Initiative,
which is directed toward setting certain levels of responsibility and
accountability for corporations
Widely diverging national prerogatives have made the negotiations leading up to
Bali challenging, and the talks in Bali are also expected to be difficult.
"Negotiations are not a smooth road," according to PrepCom Chairman
Emil Salim, whose revised text is the basis of negotiations. But noting that
the present approach to development has benefited 20 per cent of the world's
population while the living standards of the other 80 per cent have largely
stagnated, Salim said the value of the Summit outcome documents hinges on
whether "it has the elements of change or is it business as
Copyright © United
Department of Economic and
Comments and suggestions
24 August 2006 | <urn:uuid:f99320fe-cd1f-4f57-8f07-9f9e9a6f0796> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.un.org/jsummit/html/whats_new/feature_story11.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949605 | 1,280 | 1.640625 | 2 |
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Syria ”take every possible step” to protect American diplomats after supporters of President Bashar al-Assad tried to attack the US ambassador.
The attempt to storm an office in Damascus where the ambassador,Robert Ford, had just arrived, came with the UN Security Councildivided over whether to threaten Syria with sanctions.
Opposition figure Hassan Abdelazim, whom the US ambassador had arrived to meet, told AFP that the mob “tried to break down the door of my office, but didn’t succeed” during a siege that lasted two hours.
In Washington, Clinton said the United States has raised the attempted attack on Ford at “the highest levels” in Damascus and demanded that Syria “take every possible step to protect” US diplomats.
Clinton also spoke of an “ongoing campaign of intimidation” against not only US diplomats but those from other countries.
Clinton’s deputy spokesman Mark Toner said the mob tried to attack Ford and other embassy staff while they visited the opposition leader, seriously damaging US vehicles and “pelting” the visitors with tomatoes.
However, he told reporters neither Ford nor other staff were hurt in the attack and all returned safely to the embassy after Syrian security officers finally came to their aid and cleared a path out of the building.
Toner charged that Assad’s regime was behind the incident in what he said amounts to a campaign aimed at intimidating US diplomats as they carry out their duties.
Amid rising US-Syrian tensions, Damascus earlier accused Washington of inciting “armed groups” into violence against its army, which is trying to crush a six-month, pro-democracy movement.
Meanwhile divisions over whether to threaten sanctions against Syria for the government’s deadly crackdown held up UN Security Council discussions on a resolution on the crisis Thursday.
European nations and Russia have proposed rival resolutions on Syria, where more than 2,700 people have died in the past seven months, according to the United Nations.
Britain, France, Germany and Portugal insist that any resolution must include at least the threat of sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad.
“There are still divergences. We want to keep the essential message in the resolution: that is if repression and violence doesn’t stop there will be further measures,” Germany’s UN ambassador Peter Wittig told reporters after the latest talks.
Russia opposes any mention of sanctions in the text. “And we are not the only ones in this position,” said Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN ambassador after the latest talks.
The Europeans had originally drawn up a text which set out firm sanctions against Assad. Russia and China have threatened to use their veto power, as permanent members of the council, against any resolution with punitive measures.
The two sides also disagree over whether violence by protesters should be given the same importance as that by the government. India’s UN envoy Hardeep Singh Puri said there had to be a reference to violence by “extremist elements” in the text.
France was to draw up a new version of the European text for possible talks on Friday.
Angry mobs stormed the US and French embassies in Damascus on July 11 after Ford and the French ambassador visited the central city of Hama, a flashpoint for protests against Assad’s regime.
Ford, the first US ambassador to Syria in more than five years, temporarily took up his post in January, but he is still awaiting Senate confirmation.
The Syrian government meanwhile hardened its tone against the United States.
“Comments by American officials, notably Mark Toner, are striking proof that the United States encourages armed groups to commit violence against the Syrian Arab army,” the foreign ministry in Damascus said.
“The words of the State Department spokesman, describing these terrorist acts as natural, are irresponsible and likely to encourage acts of terrorism and chaos in order to serve foreign goals against the interests of Syrians.
Since mid-March, Syria has been shaken by an unprecedented pro-democracy protest movement that the Assad regime has sought to crush using deadly force.
More than 2,700 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
Raw Story is a progressive news site that focuses on stories often ignored in the mainstream media. While giving coverage to the big stories of the day, we also bring our readers' attention to policy, politics, legal and human rights stories that get ignored in an infotainment culture driven solely by pageviews.
Founded in 2004, Raw Story reaches 5 million unique readers per month and serves more than 19 million pageviews. | <urn:uuid:53613f9c-892a-4308-922e-eb537f83a893> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/30/clinton-outraged-as-syrians-target-us-envoy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959723 | 974 | 1.65625 | 2 |
As the days of summer approach, thoughts turn away from structured routines and toward opportunities for fun. Unfortunately, research continues to indicate that extended learning breaks contribute to diminishing literacy skills such as fluency, vocabulary acquisition, and reading comprehension. The dreaded summer slide! In this column we explore this phenomenon and offer some ways that school and public librarians can work with families to keep kids reading—with audiobooks.
In “Summer Reading Loss” (Reading Teacher, May 2007), Maryann Mraz and Timothy Rasinski wrote: “…the reality of summer reading loss is well documented—and it is more persistent among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who are already at risk for academic failure.” Thankfully, they also state that students who take part in summer reading interventions maintain those skills. In fact, students who participate in public library summer reading programs demonstrate increased achievement in reading skills when they return to school in the fall, according to the conclusions drawn by Carol Fiore and Susan Roman in their article, “Proof Positive” (School Library Journal, Nov. 2010). The Search Institute (www.search-institute.org), a nonprofit organization investigating what young people need to succeed, identifies reading for pleasure as one of the ‘40 Developmental Assets’ necessary for healthy growth. So it’s gratifying to see that when Denise Geier, a curriculum director in Middletown Township, NJ, created summer reading lists for her students (“Sweating Over the Summer Book List.” Library Media Connection, March 2005), she determined the focus should be on “…reading just for the fun of it…” and enlisted help from public librarians for recommendations.
Our own experience closely mirrors Geier’s. We have worked with language arts teachers to produce high-interest, varied, middle school summer reading lists, successfully advocating for titles that had quality audio productions, allowing students to read with their ears or with their eyes. Listening to audiobooks gives a well-documented boost to the very skills lost during the summer months, according to Gene Wolfson’s “Using Audiobooks to Meet the Needs of Adolescent Readers” (American Secondary Education, Spring 2008).
Roger Sutton, in “Remixing Reading” (The Horn Book, March/April 2012; http://tinyurl.com/82pzrvn), states that “books, readers, and reading are always changing, both definitionally and individually, as an original text is transformed across media and its readers become viewers, listeners, players, and co-authors in the experience of story.” Given choices, students can be motivated to listen to an audiobook, read a graphic novel, or see a movie version of a favorite novel, all of which serve to nourish literacy skills.
Our audiobook selections this month focus on middle school students, providing not only listening pleasure but also opportunities to increase reading comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary acquisition. Get kids listening and beat the summer slide!
Aliens on Vacation (The Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast Series). Written by Clete Barrett Smith. Narrated by Joshua Swanson. 6 CD. 7 hrs. Brilliance Audio. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4558-0133-6. $54.97. Gr 5-7
David, aka Scrub, is horrified to squander the summer in tiny, boring Forest Glen, WA, with the grandmother he’s never met. Grandma, who goes by the name Sunshine, runs the Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast, hosting a very bizarre clientele and a secret in which David is soon embroiled. Swanson mines all of the humor and tension of this light summer tale, imbuing both humans and aliens with distinctive voices. He is especially effective with the budding romance between David and Amy, a local girl who shows David that aliens have rights, too.
Standard: Students will compare and contrast different ways of life and understand the factors contributing to individual differences.
The Beasts of Clawstone Castle. Written by Eva Ibbotson. Narrated by Jenny Sterlin. 5 CDs. 6 hrs. Recorded Books. 2007. ISBN 978-1-4281-2183-6. $51.75. Gr 5-8
Madlyn and Rollo, spending their summer holiday in the country with elderly relatives, fall under the spell of the crumbling Clawstone Castle and its legendary Wild White Cattle. When the brother–sister duo enlist the help of some alarming ghosts to attract more paying visitors to the castle, Clawstone’s increasing success prompts local rivals to hatch a dastardly plan. Sterlin’s expressive reading, spot-on pacing, and ability to flawlessly define the different characters enhances this rollicking British mix of fantasy and social commentary.
Standard: Students will explore concepts of role, status, and social standing to evaluate the interactions of individuals and social groups.
Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916. Written by Michael Capuzzo. Narrated by Taylor Mali. 3 CDs. 3:30 hrs. 2010. AudioGo. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4281-2183-6. $39.95. Gr 6-10
In the summer of 1916, the Jersey Shore became a popular place for ocean swimming. Unknown to tourists or the general public, a young great white shark had also taken up residence at the beach. The gruesome attacks will appeal particularly to reluctant male readers, with Mali’s deliberate narration highlighting the anxiety of shore dwellers and visitors. His reporter’s style, increasing speed and volume as tension builds, allows science and sensationalism to combine in creating a rousing summer read.
Standard: Students will investigate and understand the interactions among populations in a biological community.
Dead End in Norvelt. Written and narrated by Jack Gantos. 6 CDs. 7:16 hrs. Macmillan Young Listeners. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4272-1356-3. $29.99. Gr 5-8
“Grounded for life” two weeks into summer vacation of 1962, 12-year-old Jack manages to find adventure in this wild, semi-autobiographical novel. Norvelt, a small, planned community developed during the Great Depression by Eleanor Roosevelt, is dying—literally. Apprenticed to elderly, arthritic neighbor, Ms. Volker, Jack helps create obituaries for the original Norvelt residents who are expiring at an alarming rate, making the boy wonder what is going on. Gantos meshes history and humor with his unvoiced, earnest reading and a bonus interview, telling listeners how he blended fact and fiction to create this 2012 Newbery Medal winner. Steer students to these websites about the real Norvelt, PA, for more information: http://tinyurl.com/NorveltHistoricalMarker and http://tinyurl.com/RecallingOldNorvelt. Standard: Students will identify the causes of the Great Depression, its impact on Americans, and the major features of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Moon Over Manifest. Written by Clare Vanderpool. Narrated by Jenna Lamia, Cassandra Campbell, and Kirby Heyborne. 8 CDs. 8:30 hrs. Listening Library. 2011. ISBN 978-0-3079-6816-6. $40. Gr 5-8
After years of riding the rails, Abilene Tucker’s father suddenly decides she must spend the summer of 1936 with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, a town devastated by drought and the Great Depression. Amidst the heat and dust, Abilene discovers a mystery stretching back to 1918 that includes the town’s coal mining legacy and the boys who went off to fight in World War I. Lamia expertly creates myriad voices for children and adults across Manifest’s decades, with Heyborne and Campbell ably rounding out the supporting cast of this 2011 Newbery Award winner. Standard: Students will evaluate the credibility and perspective of a variety of sources such as biographies, diaries, journals, artifacts, eyewitness interviews, and other primary and secondary source materials.
The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place. Written by E. L. Konigsburg. Narrated by Molly Ringwald. 5 CDs. 5:30 hrs. Listening Library. 2004. ISBN 978-1-4000-8609-2. $45. Gr 6-9
Bullied by fellow campers and a despotic camp director, Margaret Rose Kane is thrilled to spend the summer with her beloved great-uncles while her parents are in Peru. However, trouble is brewing in the uncles’ backyard, where towers they have been creating from found objects are slated for demolition by a city council bent on removing “blight.” To save the towers, Margaret enlists a quirky group of sympathizers to educate the community on the important role of art, especially outsider art. Ringwald’s performance is exhilarating, capturing the precocious teen, her Hungarian uncles, and an eccentric cast of secondary characters. Students can explore the history of outsider art through this article from Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://tinyurl.com/Art-Outsider. Standard: Students will compare and contrast the characteristics of public art.
Shark Wars. Written by E. J. Altbacker. Narrated by Joshua Swanson. 5 CDs. 5:30 hrs. Listening Library. 2011. ISBN 978-0-3079-1687-7. $30. Gr 4-7
Gray, an adolescent reef shark (or so he thinks), is growing so large and behaving so badly that he’s banned from the reef to find his own way in the Big Blue. With his dogfish friend, Barkley, he joins a tough shark clan, or shiver, where he only gets into more trouble. Sharks with human characteristics and references to the “landsharks” who hunt from above are part of the humor in this engaging story, enhanced by Swanson’s fully voiced sharks and excellent pacing and emotional inflection. (Note: There are two sequels—The Battle of Riptide and Into the Abyss.) Students may want to learn about the real characteristics of great white sharks at the Smithsonian website: http://tinyurl.com/c9uhft6. Standard: Students will list the characteristics of ocean dwelling mammals, i.e. specific species of shark.
Small as an Elephant. Written by Jennifer Richard Jacobson. Narrated by William Dufris. 5 CDs. 5 hrs. Brilliance Audio. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4558-0336-1. $49.97. Gr 5-8
Jack wakes up in Acadia National Park to discover that his mother has abandoned him. Wavering between panic, despair, and anger, he tries first to find her, hiding from authorities. When that proves futile, he sets out on a harrowing journey to see Lydia, the only live elephant in Maine. As Jack travels, he slowly reveals his mother’s “spinning episodes” and his fear of being separated from her. Dufris’s raspy voice turns in an emotional performance that demonstrates Jack’s resentment, panic, and pain. Both the Acadia National Park (www.nps.gov/acad) and Elephant Facts (www.elephant-facts.com) websites provide interesting additional information about the central themes of the story. Standard: Students will be able to describe the characteristics of large land mammals (i.e., the elephant) and understand the history and mission of the National Park Service.
|Sharon Grover is the Head of Youth Services at the Hedberg Public Library, Janesville, WI, and chair of ALA’s 2013 Michael L.Printz Committee. Lizette (Liz) Hannegan was an elementary and middle school librarian and the district library supervisor for the Arlington (VA) Public Schools before her retirement and was the 2012 Odyssey Award Chair.| | <urn:uuid:b0ad2836-eadd-4590-bd18-eecfaa092750> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slj.com/2012/06/books-media/collection-development/listen-in-catch-a-wave-get-kids-listening-and-beat-the-summer-wipeout/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901369 | 2,501 | 3.375 | 3 |
In a proposal that is stunning in both its ignorance and arrogance, a South Central Los Angeles politician wants to place a moratorium on the construction of new fast food restaurants in her area.
What is unfortunately not nearly as surprising is how Washington Post reporter Karl Vick let some huge, uh, whoppers go by without challenge when he covered this development.
Citing alarming rates of childhood obesity and a poverty of healthful eating choices, a city councilor is pushing for a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in South-Central Los Angeles.
“Some people will say, ‘Well, people just don’t have to eat it,’ ” said Jan Perry, the Democrat who represents the city’s overwhelmingly African-American and Latino District 9. “But the fact of the matter is, what if you have no other choices?”
The proposed ordinance, which is awaiting a committee hearing, takes a page from boutique communities that turn up their noses at franchises.
It is supported by nutritionists, frustrated residents, and community activists who call restrictive zoning an appropriate response to “food apartheid.”
You would think that there are no grocery stores in South Central offering all manner of nutritional options that often cost less per meal than fast food. Quite the contrary: Web searches on two chains I’m aware of in the area reveal that there are ten Ralph’s or Food4less stores within four miles of the address of the advocacy group whose executive director is quoted in the article, and at least three Vons within a reasonable distance of its zip code. When did eating store-bought food at home become a nonviable option?
Here are some relevant points to chew on: | <urn:uuid:5d4e3598-e5c5-452c-a4ee-aa1cd3d98065> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pjmedia.com/blog/big-brother-doesnt-want-you-eating-burgers-in-la/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957033 | 353 | 1.75 | 2 |
Light Yagami (Or Raito) is an ace student with great aspects who's bored out of his mind. One day he finds the Death Note a notebook held by a shinigami (Death God). with the Death Note in hand, Light decides to create a perfect world. A world without crime or criminals. However when criminals start dropping dead one by one, the authorites send the legendary detective L to track down the killer.
Death Note is a Japanese manga series created by writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrator Takeshi Obata. The series centers on Light Yagami, a high school student who discovers a supernatural notebook, the titular "Death Note", dropped on Earth by a shinigami (death god) named Ryuk. The Death Note grants its user the ability to kill anyone whose face they have seen, by writing the victim's name in the notebook. The story follows Light's attempt to create and rule a world cleansed of evil using the notebook, and the complex conflict between him, his opponents and L.
Death Note was first serialized in 108 chapters by Shueisha in the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2003 to May 2006. The series was also published in tankōbon (paperback) format in Japan starting in May 2004 and ending in October 2006 with a total of twelve volumes. The series was adapted into live-action films released in Japan on June 17, 2006, on November 3, 2006, and on February 2, 2008. The anime series aired in Japan from October 3, 2006, to June 26, 2007. Composed of 37 episodes, the anime was developed by Madhouse and directed by Tetsuro Araki. A light novel based on the series, written by Nisio Isin, was released in Japan. Additionally, various video games have been publisher by Konami for Nintendo DS.
Viz Media licensed the Death Note manga in North America and has published all the twelve volumes from the series as well as the light novel. The episodes from the anime first appeared in North America as downloadable by IGN. Viz later licensed the anime series and was meant to be aired on Bionix, but it was cancelled. The live-actions briefly played in certain North American theaters since 2008. However, none of the video games titles were published in North America. | <urn:uuid:0c228489-f12b-4ede-8cdf-79ef4971449e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crunchyroll.com/library/Death_Note | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977971 | 477 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Tips for Storing Carrots
Unlike a lot of vegetables, where you want to eat them as fresh as possible, storing carrots is actually a good thing to do. Carrots can actually improve in quality with cold storage. As time goes by, more starch is converted into sugar and the carrots become sweeter.
Wash the carrot roots and remove the tops before storing in the refrigerator in a perforated plastic bag (optional).
If your refrigerator space is limited, you can store carrots in a cool location. Store them in a bucket filled with damp sand.
Carrots can be stored for 7 to 9 months (or you could make carrot cake).
If you found this post useful, or if you have any tips for storing carrots, please leave a comment.
Get other food storage tips by signing up for free email updates. | <urn:uuid:d7b03f0a-554d-4dc8-8125-b8deb14d71ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://foodconstrued.com/2011/09/storing-carrots/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92758 | 171 | 2.125 | 2 |
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In the mid sixties, the late Ms. Lewis was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Lexington, and was a key leader in the Kentucky Congress Of Racial Equality. She was a registered nurse by profession who focused on problems of segregation in theatres, education, shopping, trying on clothing and hats before purchase and public transportation. Nonviolent demonstrations and sit-ins were her weapons. Her voice and ability to extemporaneously quote Martin Luther King, William Shakespeare, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and the Bible would inspire and motivate marchers to continue in the fight for freedom. She was a leader of the march and deliberations that integrated her city’s food chain restaurants. She lectured throughout the state on the importance of freedom and responsibility. She participated with the historic Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church activities. She served as council in regard to civil rights issues to mayors, governors and presidents.
16 Photos in Album | <urn:uuid:d6b66daf-055d-4756-9e42-fb9ea9624913> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kchr.ky.gov/hof/halloffame01.htm?pageOrder=1&selectedPic=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967852 | 190 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Threatened ecological communities
Ecological communities are groups of plants and animals that occur together in a particular area. Any given ecological community may be distinguished from others by its set of characteristic species and the area in which it occurs. Ecological communities are complex, so correct diagnosis often requires specialist advice. The places they occur are typically characterised by a set of environmental conditions which define their suitable habitats. For example, the soil types, landforms and climatic conditions of a particular area.
What is a threatened ecological community?
The NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 (TSC Act) defines an ecological community as ‘an assemblage of species occupying a particular area’.
Ecological communities can be listed under the TSC Act as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable, depending on their risk of extinction.
An ecological community may be considered threatened under the Threatened Species Conservation Regulation 2010 for one of three main reasons
- its distribution has been significantly reduced
- its distribution is so restricted the whole community is susceptible to significant threats, or
- the ecological function of the community is undergoing a significant decline
Reductions in distribution are typically related to historical and/or current clearing for development. Distribution may also be restricted through naturally rare environmental conditions that are essential to the community. Declines in the ecological function of a community may result from change in community structure,change in species composition,disruption of ecological processes,invasion and establishment of exotic species,or habitat degradation orfragmentation.
Consequently, many ecological communities have been cleared or degraded to such an extent that only a small amount of their original area resembles or functions in its natural state.
Why identify and manage threatened ecological communities?
By listing an ecological community as threatened, all component species of that community are also protected. This approach enables a more efficient use of limited resources than the single-species approach. It also overcomes bias towards charismatic species, protects both undiscovered species and the biological processes critical to maintaining a healthy environment.
What about degraded sites?
Much of the natural environment in NSW has been modified by human activities, fire and invading weeds and pests. Threatened ecological communities are often highly fragmented and most remnants show evidence of disturbance and degradation to varying degrees. The degree can be influenced by
However, the retained values of such remnants are often highly context-dependent. For example, smaller remnants may be in better condition and display greater resilience to future threats compared to some larger remnants.
A remnant can be part of a threatened ecological community with or without trees. Trees may be present as a canopy with little visible native ground-layer, or characteristic tree species may have been removed, leaving only the ground-layer component of the ecological community.
Degraded areas of native vegetation may still retain considerable conservation value. They may provide habitat critical to the survival of native plants and animals including threatened species. Such areas can often be rehabilitated and contribute to the recovery of the threatened ecological community.
Individual trees may provide an important resource to threatened animals, which are part of the ecological community. For example, large older trees may support a diverse and abundant array of insects and the animals that feed on them. They often have numerous hollows, cracks or fissures that provide shelter and nesting sites. Or they might act as ‘stepping-stones’ for fauna moving between larger, more complex remnants across an otherwise cleared landscape. Standing dead trees also provide critical shelter for fauna. In many landscapes, these important habitat resources are now more common in the form of isolated trees rather than in patches of vegetation.
Search for a threatened ecological community
You can view detailed profiles of each threatened ecological community. Search by keyword or geographic distribution.
Page last updated: 06 August 2012 | <urn:uuid:4489d0c6-1777-41eb-aaed-f3831cf4dd97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/ThreatenedSpecies/hometec.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936973 | 768 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Dáil Éireann - Volume 609 - 08 November, 2005
Written Answers. - Science and Technology.
Mr. Durkan Mr. Durkan
725. Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Education and Science if adequate provision is being made in terms of meeting the educational requirements in the areas of science and technology, with particular reference to the current and likely needs of industry in the future; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33257/05]
Ms Hanafin Ms Hanafin
Ms Hanafin: Science and technology has a key role to play in supporting continued economic progress and development. Ireland is fortunate in the high number of students who have studied science and technology. OECD data for 2003 reveals that Ireland ranks fifth of 31 countries in the number of science graduates per 100,000 employed in the 25 to 34 age group. The downturn experienced in Ireland in the ICT sector, which was part of a worldwide recession, led to a significant decline in applications from students wishing to pursue studies in information technology. In the context of the Government’s continuing policy to address future skills needs, the HEA has sought to assist higher education institutions to develop new courses to better meet the needs of both new students and existing employees in the ICT industry who wish to upskill.
The ICT Ireland undergraduate internship programme is a major initiative launched by the HEA and ICT Ireland, the IBEC body representing the high-tech sector. This is an ICT industry-wide programme which will involve a two-day week placement for undergraduates in third and fourth year of specified ICT degree courses. This initiative is a prime opportunity for industry and the education sector to work together to provide high quality graduates.
Coupled with these initiatives, third level institutions engage with industry representatives at national and regional levels to ensure that short-term and long-term skills needs in science and technology are identified and addressed. The discover science and engineering programme supported by my Department is carrying out important work in raising the profile of science and engineering careers and pointing out the opportunities available to prospective students.
My Department continues to work closely with the expert group on future skills needs on developing national strategies to address the issue of skills needs, manpower estimating and training for enterprise. The group comprises a range of public and private sector enterprise interests, development agency and educational representatives.
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Rediscover Passion For Your Job
Evaluate the situation
Take a good look at how you really feel. What do you hate about your job? Is it your boss, your coworkers or the work itself? Instead of looking for another job right away, evaluate whether or not you can change the situation at your current place of employment. Play office politics and try to mend relationships with your boss or co-workers. If you are bored with your daily job duties, volunteer for new projects or inquire about transferring to a new department.
If you've decided that you want to switch industries altogether, you can get your foot in the door through volunteer work. By volunteering or working part-time on the weekends in your chosen career field, you can decide if you really want to make a career change before actually taking the plunge.
Find a mentor
Reach out to a person who has worked for many years at the company. By finding a mentor within the organization, you may learn more about the culture of the company and find out why others enjoy their work. Even if you don't learn to love your job, the advice and mentoring you receive could prove value at your next position.
Stop being a workaholic
Maybe it's not the actual job you hate, but it's the fact that all you do is work. Scale back a little bit. Find interests and activities you enjoy outside of the office. When the workday ends, let it truly end. Instead of spending your weekends working, get out and meet new people. If you have something to look forward to after hours, your time at work might become a whole lot more bearable. You might find it particularly helpful if you make plans with friends right after work -- that will give you something to look forward to throughout the day.
Network, network, network -- and not just online. Get yourself out there at professional mixers, trade events and other meet-ups. Seek out people in your industry and related fields that are passionate and dedicated. Their passion and love for their own jobs can become contagious. So surround yourself with passionate people, and you may soon find that your rediscover love for you own work again. | <urn:uuid:b01ba742-1092-4225-b208-99b02914ebde> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailydelights.sheknows.com/articles/824419/ways-to-love-your-job-again | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962437 | 444 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Roswell Park Launches Center For Personalized Medicine — Toby’s Jeans Benefit New Research
Today (January 30), Roswell Park officially opened their new Center For Personalized Medicine — the part of Roswell that all the money raised by Toby’s Jeans will go to.
“We now have the ability to do robust, ‘next-generation’ gene sequencing on blood and tissue samples, with tremendous possibilities in terms of what we can learn diagnostically, prognostically, therapeutically,” Candace Johnson, PhD, Deputy Director of Roswell Park said in a press release. “This is the future of medicine — across all diseases, not just in oncology.”
The Center is the region’s first resource for next-generation gene sequencing to meet federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) standards. Its technology will allow for the analysis of each person’s unique genetic code, shedding light on key factors that drive medical care. | <urn:uuid:97b808e6-a20b-4c8e-912c-385e2e73a234> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wyrk.com/roswell-park-launches-center-for-personalized-medicine-tobys-jeans-benefit-new-research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904503 | 209 | 1.710938 | 2 |
By John Soper
Long before I ever dreamed of becoming a pastor (or even of being a Christian), I took a class in public speaking. There I learned “the Communicator’s Formula”: “Tell them what you are going to say, tell them what you want to say and then tell them what you said.” That is good advice indeed, and it has served me well for nearly 40 years.
A few years later, as a student of biblical theology, I was intrigued by a pattern in Scripture sometimes identified as “Prophecy, Fact and Interpretation.” It underscores the reality that all through the progress of revelation, God alerted us through the phenomenon of prophecy to what He was planning to do. He then acted redemptively in salvation history and, finally, explained (after the event) the significance of what He did.
In fact, in a rather simplistic way, one could summarize the whole Bible through this interpretive grid. The Old Testament is full of prophecy and types that tell us in advance about what God is going to do to redeem the world. The Gospels record for us the facts regarding the invasion of human history by the God-man and the sacrifice that He made on our behalf. And finally, the Epistles explain the meaning of the cross and Resurrection and help us to understand both what God did in the person of Jesus and what it means to us who are the objects of His redeeming love.
Jesus used this same approach when He met the disciples on the road to Emmaus on the day of His Resurrection. With His identity hidden, Jesus asked them why they were so downcast. After hearing their explanation of the events surrounding His crucifixion and their own doubts concerning the report of the women regarding His Resurrection, the Master proceeded to open the Scriptures to explain all that they taught about Him.
I have no idea how long it took them to walk to Emmaus (about 8 miles from Jerusalem). We are not told which passages from the Law, the Prophets and the Writings Jesus used. I can, however, make a few educated guesses.
I’m pretty sure He would have started in Genesis, emphasizing the role He had in the Creation of the universe. When he referenced the words of God, “Let us make man in our own image,” He might even have asked, “Whom do you think God was talking to there?”
In retelling the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall, I think He would have taken the time to explain the first promise of a Savior–the serpent will bruise his heel, but he will crush the serpent’s head. (Gen. 3:15) He would then have explained how that was fulfilled on the cross.
He could have chosen a hundred other passages to teach Cleopas and his companion “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah? “That was about me!” The Passover lamb? “It was all about me!” The serpent in the wilderness? “Me again.” The opening words of Psalm 22? “Have you heard anything like that recently?” Isaiah 53? “That’s a description of me.” The fourth man in the fiery furnace? “Me again!”
By the time they arrived in Emmaus, those disciples had learned to read Scripture in a whole new way. The lesson they had learned was this: It’s all about Jesus!
It’s All About Jesus
When I first became acquainted with The Christian and Missionary Alliance, I was perplexed by what I thought to be a lack of doctrinal precision. I wanted to know if this church was Reformed or Wesleyan in its theology and was shocked to discover that it was not distinctly either. I tested the waters with a few other theological “litmus tests” and found that though its commitment to the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ and a few other basic issues was unshakable, The Alliance took no definite position on many secondary issues. The people I met did not want to debate theology. They just wanted to talk about Jesus Christ–our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King.
Thirty-seven years later, I sometimes hear people say that The Christian and Missionary Alliance does not have a theology and that our emphasis upon the Fourfold Gospel of Jesus Christ is too simplistic. Perhaps they are right, but I want to hold on to the Emmaus road lesson: It really is all about Jesus!
What you can do
The prayers of the Alliance family enable our workers to take the whole gospel to the whole world. Pray with the rest of the Alliance family, using our weekly Alliance Prayer Requests.
- Give to the Great Commission Fund (GCF) and partner with Alliance workers, who are engaged in innovative ministries that open doors to share the hope that only Christ offers.
- Give now
Read the rest of the Series on the Fourfold Gospel by Rev. John Soper on the alife magazine website.
- Jesus Christ our Savior
- Jesus Christ our Sanctifier
- Jesus Christ our Healer
- Jesus Christ our Coming King
Read about the Fourfold Gospel, as defined by Alliance founder A. B. Simpson. | <urn:uuid:5f2350be-4aa4-455e-9c3e-c7b5b29adb4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cmalliance.org/news/2012/08/31/its-all-about-jesus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974493 | 1,115 | 1.742188 | 2 |
C-SPAN's StudentCam 2013 - Student Documentary Competition
StudentCam 2013 is C-SPAN’s annual national video documentary competition that encourages students to think seriously about issues that affect our communities and our nation. This year students are asked to create a short (5-8 minute) video documentary on the topic, “Message to the President” - What’s the most important issue the president should consider in 2013?
The links to upload the entry form and video are not available at this time. They will be available November 2012 through January 18, 2013. The finished documentary and completed entry form maybe uploaded beginning November 2012 to the StudentCam website. The contest concludes on midnight (PST) at the end of the day on Friday, January 18, 2013.
Related Tools & Resources
C-SPAN's StudentCam is an annual national video documentary competition that encourages students to think seriously about issues that affect our communities and our nation.
C-SPAN Classroom has launched "Deliberations", a website designed to engage students in classroom deliberations about current issues being debated in Congress.
C-SPAN Classroom provides resources for the 2012 election season.
C-SPAN Classroom round-up of all things economics includes video clips of the current debt ceiling crisis as well as money management and gas prices.
Video clips of various political leaders correlating to their respective section of the U.S. Constitution. | <urn:uuid:b2cd8f8b-578b-45c3-bed8-edb40c81f3ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ciconline.org/Resource/cspans-studentcam-2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954745 | 296 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The Drug Policy Alliance was formed in July 2000 when The Lindesmith Center, an activist drug policy think-tank established in 1994, merged with the Drug Policy Foundation, a membership and grant-making organization established in 1987, to create the world’s leading drug policy reform organization of people who believe the war on drugs is doing more harm than good.
The Lindesmith Center (TLC) was founded in 1994 by Ethan Nadelmann, JD, PhD, a professor of politics at Princeton University, whose writings on drug policy had attracted international attention. The Lindesmith Center -- named after Prof. Alfred Lindesmith, an Indiana University professor who was the first prominent scholar in the U.S. to challenge conventional thinking about drugs, addiction and drug policy -- became the first domestic project of George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). It rapidly emerged as the leading drug policy reform advocacy institute in the United States.
The Drug Policy Foundation (DPF) was founded in 1987 by Arnold S. Trebach, JD, PhD, a professor at American University, and Kevin B. Zeese, an attorney who had directed the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in the early 1980s. They envisioned DPF as “the loyal opposition to the war on drugs” and they introduced a number of initiatives that have defined the drug policy reform movement ever since. These included an annual drug policy reform conference (which shifted to a biennial conference in 2001), a regular publication series and an awards program to recognize achievement in various fields in drug policy reform. DPF was also the first, most significant effort to build up a membership organization around drug policy reform.
On July 1, 2000, the two organizations merged to create the Drug Policy Alliance with the objective of becoming a powerful advocacy organization nationally and internationally. DPA is a 501(c)(3) organization and its partner, Drug Policy Action, is a 501(c)(4) organization. | <urn:uuid:d31f1206-14d1-4761-93e8-8a0c1209c8d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drugpolicy.org/mission-and-vision/history | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961682 | 400 | 1.78125 | 2 |