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Welcome to our website www.chromesville.com!
We are very happy to welcome you on our website chromesville.com. This website is dedicated to the very well known and popular programming language named Delphi. The identifier “Delphi” has multiple meanings. In the first line, Delphi was the name for a Rapid-Application-Development (RAD) IDE for the Object Pascal language. On the second line, Delphi is also an identifier respective a kind of synonym for the programming language behind the Delphi RAD-IDE, Object Pascal.
The language Object Pascal is derived from the well known procedural programming language Pascal. Object Pascal enhances the Pascal language by the object orientated programming paradigm. Furthermore Delphi respective Object Pascal ships with a very useful and mighty library of classes. This library is called VCL, which is an abbreviation to Visual-Component-Library. The VCL contains lots of classes, which enable the developer to solve a lot of common problems within seconds.
For designing pleasing GUIs, Delphi ships a lot of easy drag’n’drop-able GUI-components, which can be filled with live when clicked by a few lines of code. Before the development of desktop applications widely moved to the .NET platform, some coders often used Delphi to develop the graphical interface for the application, but the core-functionality of the application was implemented in C++. The frontend of the application in this case accessed the core-functionality, which was stored in native DLLs, by just loading the library and calling the desired functions.
Initially Delphi was a product of the Borland Company, but in the past decade there were a few owner-changes. In the November of 2006, the Borland Company founded a subsidiary called CodeGear. CodeGear was since then the new owner of the developer-teams and the development-tools, including Delphi. On the 7th Mai of 2008, the IDE-Section was sold to Embarcadero Technologies.
Since that, Delphi is called Embarcadero Delphi instead of Borland Delphi. However, Delphi is still a well popular and nice option, when it comes to the question for a sustainable programming language which offers lots of features and ships with an easy to use and stable programming environment. By a high probability this is the reason to the fact, that the Delphi concept is used in lots of professional software products today. | <urn:uuid:0f92ee59-da08-4145-b0f1-7e5361416fea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chromesville.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948921 | 505 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Inside This Issue - News
FMI eyes changing consumer
May 14th, 2012
DALLAS – The economy and new technology are prompting major changes in the way consumers shop, according to the findings of the Food Marketing Institute’s (FMI’s) 2012 Grocery Shopper Trends research.
The preliminary results of the study, presented at the recent FMI 2012 show in Dallas, identify at least four major and interrelated trends. The first involves changes in shopping habits that have occurred in response to the recent recession and subsequent weak economic recovery.
Consumers responded to the 2007 to 2009 recession by choosing private brands and less expensive food options, making fewer shopping trips and buying fewer items at the grocery store, looking around for deals and generally seeking value in their grocery purchases.
Even consumers not directly affected by the recession exhibited some of the same frugal behaviors, according to the study, conducted by FMI and Booz & Co.
"We’re seeing a new normal emerge," said FMI president and chief executive officer Leslie Sarasin, who presented the preliminary results of the study. "Informed by a lack of confidence in the economy and the residue of the tough times they faced, shopper buying patterns have shifted in the direction of value-seeking behavior and a continued search for the biggest bang for the buck at the checkout stand. And there’s every indication that this shift has staying power."
The research suggests the possibility that an entire generation of consumers will have their shopping habits permanently changed by the recent Great Recession, in the same way that the generation of consumers that grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s were permanently affected by that economic crisis.
"Several years ago about 60% of our shoppers were diving for discounts," Sarasin said. "Now about 80% are. That represents some 19 million more American households that are on the discount safari. And they’re becoming smarter and more systematic in the way they’re doing it."
Another trend is the fact that technology has become a fact of shopping life.
More than half of all shoppers now use technology either before or during their shopping trips. And in many cases they are using the Internet to look for deals, coupons and price comparisons before they visit the store. As technology improves, though, more and more consumers will be able to conduct the same research while they are shopping.
The third trend has to do with the fact that consumers are not just researching their purchases online, but are actually using the Internet to do their shopping. Online shopping is nibbling away at supermarkets’ center-store business, Sarasin said.
"Over half the shoppers surveyed say they’ve made a purchase in an online grocery category. Clearly the majority of online shopping is currently in nongrocery categories such as electronics, books, music, clothing or footwear. But we’d better pay attention or we risk having our company names included with the likes of Circuit City, Borders and Tower Records.
"In 2010 online shopping accounted for $12 billion in sales of consumer packaged goods. By 2014 that number will more than double. As a percentage of total CPG sales — 2% in 2010 — that number is not all that impressive. But it will do nothing but increase as ‘digital natives’ — that’s what we call the first generation wet-nursed on digital technology — form their own households and become shoppers."
The final trend identified by the research involves format innovation. The FMI notes that over the past five years, the grocery industry has added about 150 million square feet of new capacity, but none of that space was added by conventional supermarket operators. Instead, it was added by supercenters, dollar stores, drug stores and other formats. | <urn:uuid:22593dd6-efa5-4a29-92f1-0fedd7c3492a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.massmarketretailers.com/inside-this-issue/news/05-14-2012/fmi-eyes-changing-consumer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965563 | 773 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Tuesday Jun 18, 2013
|The ‘8 Commandments’ for Choosing a Unit Testing Solution|
|Written by TypemockHits : 7516|
|Wednesday, 28 July 2010 01:06|
1. Thou shalt not waste time on the learning curve When choosing a unit testing solution, you will want one that will require minimal time for implementation. It may be worthwhile to time a new developer within your team with the framework to get an accurate idea of how long it takes to get started. For example – how long will it take them to write the first three tests for some class in your system? Is the API clear and simple? Is there a single point of entry in the API? Is there clear guidance on what to do at each step of the way? How often, if at all, do you need to check the docs and tutorials? How easy is it to look for the next step when you're not sure what to do? Some tools offer guidance within the IDE, while some provide extensive help. Some don't do either.
2. Thou shalt not waste time fixing your tests. How resistant to change do you need your tests to be? Different frameworks provide varying levels of change resistance (when production code changes). Change resistance can be measured according to the number of tests needed to modify for a single piece (method) of changed production code. Does the tool support these production changes without affecting the tests? Do the frameworks support recursive fakes? Is it non-strict by default or does it throw exceptions on unexpected interactions by default? How does it handle method overloads (if your production code changes to call a different overload?). How are arguments verified? Are all arguments ignored? Are actual values used for expectations? All these things affect the fragility of your test. The more fragile it is, the less change resistant it is. If your production code changes a lot you will need to take this into account.
3. Thou shalt design your code the way you need it Your project might be a greenfield project (fresh new code) or have a lot of legacy code. Not all isolation frameworks were designed, or have the same support for all (or any) legacy code scenarios. If your unit tests need to be written against legacy code (existing code without tests): See if your production code contains static constructors, internal or private classes that might need to be faked. Does the framework support faking them? Does your code instantiate objects directly all over the place, or does it use a dependency injection framework or factory of some kind that would need to be faked? Make sure the framework you choose supports these scenarios, or that you have the time needed to refactor your code for testing such cases.
4. Thou shall make your test code readable How will your tests look when you use the framework? Test code is still code and needs to be readable. When you jump into it to debug, you need to be able to see at a glance what you’re testing. Are your tests messy? Does the framework cause your tests to be longer than a page? Can you understand the expected behavior of the code under test if the framework is involved? Can your team members understand without a great deal of explanation what you are using the framework for in each test? Can you still write test code according to accepted industry best practices such as AAA (arrange-act-assert) when using this framework? Not all frameworks support the easier-to-understand AAA tests, for example. It is important that the solution you choose guides you in writing tests, (incorporating the best-practices in test writing), which will make the process of unit testing quicker and easier.
5. Thou shall not need to replace tools for the sake of the tool How well would the tool integrate with your current coding environment and ecosystem? Can you use the framework from your various test runners (TestDriven.NET, Resharper, MS Test etc.) or in combination with profiling and code coverage tools? Some frameworks incorporate profiling, and it is important to see that they work effectively with other profilers and runners. Can you run your tests with code coverage or with other profiling technologies? How well does the framework integrate with various versions of Visual Studio? Do you need it to support VS 2005? VS 2008? What .NET versions should it support? Some of the frameworks require .NET 3.5 and up.
6. Thou shall not forsake interaction testing Do you need the ability to verify interactions between objects in your tests? Some frameworks may not have the built in ability to verify interactions, requiring you to provide your own manual flagging mechanisms (hand rolled mocks). For complicated interfaces this can grow cumbersome and result in an un-maintainable piece of code. Can you verify method calls between the code under test and its 3rd party dependencies? For example, that a SharePoint method gets called at the end of a test.
7. Though shall not settle for an incomplete solution A complete solution is not only one that meets all your requirements for the tasks it needs to carry out, but one that provides you with support from the moment you show an interest in seeing a demo until long after the product has been implemented in your system. Ask yourself, what kind of technical support do you require? How fast do you need to get a response to a question if you are not sure how to accomplish a specific task with the tool? How many people are on staff at the vendor who makes the framework and at what hours of the day? Is support provided by a company or an independent individual? A company is often more invested in supporting you than an individual – or they stand to lose money. What is the company's main expertise? Are unit testing and agility at its core business? If so, the support team is more likely to well versed be on these subjects. There is nothing more frustrating for a development project manager who is trying to complete a project on time and in budget then being delayed because the team cannot get the support or answers they need from the solutions experts in real time.
8. Though shall consider the solution’s TCO Often, one of the biggest factors in any development project is the Total Cost of Ownership for the tool. The TCO should consider price, time and effort required to work and implement the tool in your project or organization. Compare the following: Price of tool Time to get started and reach RTM test (readable, trustworthy, maintainable) Time to write tests Time to fix test because of production change (change resistance) Following these 8 commandments can help ensure that the Unit Testing solution you choose will increase the quality of the final product, lower development costs and reduce time to market.
Typemock was conceived in 2004 to help programmers develop code integrity through unit testing. Since the launch of the first version of the Typemock Isolator in 2006, thousands of companies around the world including multinationals Microsoft and Nokia use Typemock tools to make unit testing easy and to upstream the quality processes. The Typemock user population includes developers from a wide range of sectors – such as defence, medicine, and finance – that demand exceptionally high standards of quality and minimum errors.
The only tool that allows total automated unit testing for SharePoint, Isolator supports the easy unit testing of Silverlight, WCF, and all other .NET technologies. Typemock is a privately funded company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. See http://site.Typemock.com.
For more Information: Tal Druyan VP Marketing, Typemock Tel: +972-54-225-1700 - Email: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:7e4c70fd-df4e-4c04-ab60-4529bf840342> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.computeruser.com/69-software/31283-the-8-commandments-for-choosing-a-unit-testing-solution.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919549 | 1,571 | 1.6875 | 2 |
As a web developer, I often assume that my clients know how to get their images to me; however, I know it is confusing with so many different file formats. In this post I will offer some answers and guide you through some of these common problem areas and help further reduce the language barrier between the web developer and the client.
Best Formats for the Web
To start us off, let’s talk about what image formats work best for the web. Almost all images across the Internet are one of the following file formats: .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, or .png. There are advantages and disadvantages to each one of these file formats. One of the well known web development resource sites, SitePoint© has a fantastic article about the differences between .gif, .jpg, and .png file. I highly recommend reading this article as it explains the optimal format to use based on what your image is.
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
If your image has a lot of large areas of the same color, then a GIF file is the best image format to use. A GIF image supports 256 colors. Most simple logos usually end up being a GIF format or a PNG format on the web. GIFs allow for transparency and usually work best when they are placed on elements that have backgrounds that are made of one color. This image format also allows for simple animated images. Animated GIFs were very popular in the 90s but are not used often in modern web development. GIFs can be used for just about any image but work best for anything that isn’t a photograph. They are most effective for simple graphics that don’t have a lot of detail and for graphics that require simple transparency.
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG or JPG)
A JPG is almost exclusively used if your image is a photograph of something or someone. Most digital cameras automatically save images as a JPG. There is no difference between a JPEG and a JPG, JPEG was just shortened down to JPG to make things easier, more uniform and less bloated. The JPG image format supports 16.7 million colors and this is the main reason why it works well for photographs.
Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
PNGs are the newest of the image file formats. They were made to replace GIFs because they have more flexibility and support 16.7 million colors like a JPG. Full transparency is supported with PNGs, meaning that you don’t need to worry about having an element with a solid background color behind it. PNGs are usually a larger file size than both GIFs and JPGs but are very useful for their full transparency support. PNGs are great with gradients and offer very small file sizes in comparison to what a GIF or JPG would be of the same image.
Trust the Experts
I recommend sending your web developer an image in JPG format or PNG format. A web developer can then save the file as the optimal image format for the web. If you have a logo, please try and send us the logo from the creator of the logo. Logos work best if they are transparent. We’d be more than happy to talk to your logo designer for you and get the files we need.
The Best Resolution is the Only Resolution
Next, let’s look into one of the other common problems I’ve encountered with images. I often receive images that have small dimensions and are impossible for me to use. It’s always better to send a large image and have a web developer shrink the image down to what it needs to be. When you start with a small image and try to blow it up you will get a very unclear and pixilated image. I recommend sending the image at no less than 1200 pixels wide (for landscape images) or 1200 pixels tall (for portrait images). The larger the dimensions of the image, the more flexibility we have with editing it and the better the image will look after editing.
Finally, I want to talk about getting your photograph from your computer to your web developer. Saving your photos in a Word document or a PDF is something I highly discourage. It takes a lot more effort to use these images. When you want to send your developer an image, please send them the actual image file (.gif, .jpeg, .jpg, or .png) via email. You may send more than one image at a time but please try to keep the total attached file size below 10MB to ensure that we get it. Feel free to send us multiple emails if you have more images than this. If you have 25 or more images, it would be best to send it to use via CD or a USB Flash Drive.
Images are a great asset to your website. Without them, the World Wide Web would be pretty boring. I hope this article was helpful to you. If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment below. | <urn:uuid:7847a3a4-54be-4e2a-b5b0-1a69b831fd67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.captainjack.com/how-to-prepare-your-images-for-your-web-developer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945412 | 1,020 | 2.375 | 2 |
Hickory (from Powhatan) is a type of tree, comprising the genusCarya (Ancient Greek: κάρυον "nut"). The genus includes 17–19 species of deciduous trees with pinnately compound leaves and big nuts. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (State of Assam), 11 or 12 are from the United States, two to four are from Canada and four are found in Mexico. Hickory flowers are small, yellow-green catkins produced in spring. They are wind-pollinated and self-incompatible. The fruit is a globose or oval nut, 2–5 cm (0.79–2.0 in) long and 1.5–3 cm (0.59–1.2 in) diameter, enclosed in a four-valved husk, which splits open at maturity. The nut shell is thick and bony in most species, and thin in a few, notably C. illinoinensis; it is divided into two halves, which split apart when the seed germinates.
Beaked hickory (Annamocarya sinensis) is a species formerly classified as Carya sinensis, but now adjudged in the monotypic genus Annamocarya. | <urn:uuid:af465ab8-23fc-453b-b639-594cabb7ceb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Hickory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947783 | 271 | 3.421875 | 3 |
It can affect anyone, but it is most devastating to pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and anyone who has a weakened immune system. Brought on when food is contaminated with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes, listeriosis is a life-threatening infection that is considered a significant public health concern.
Want to learn more about this rare but dangerous infection? Read on.
Listeria bacteria are found in wild animals, domesticated animals, water, and soil. Meats, vegetables, and other foods become contaminated if they come in contact with infected manure or soil. Though it can cause severe problems, animals can carry the bacteria without appearing ill, ultimately contaminating foods such as dairy products and meats.
Found in foods such as unpasteurized or raw milk and cheeses, raw meats, fruits, vegetables, processed meats, soft cheeses, and smoked seafood, Listeria bacteria are killed by cooking and pasteurizing. Unfortunately, however, foods such as hot dogs and deli meats may become contaminated after proper cooking, prior to being packaged. Listeria can also survive and multiply in the refrigerator for years in a contaminated factory.
So how do you get listeriosis and are you at risk? Humans get infected when they eat contaminated food. Most frightening is that a pregnant woman who eats contaminated food can cause her baby to be born infected.
Fortunately, healthy adults and children rarely become seriously ill from contaminated food. Pregnant women, unborn babies, newborns, the elderly, and those with weak immune systems are at greatest risk. In fact, pregnant women are 20 times more susceptible than healthy adults to become infected with listeriosis, with approximately one in six listeriosis cases occurring in pregnant women. Additionally, individuals with AIDS are nearly 300 times more likely to contract the infection.
Symptoms of listeriosis vary by age and the individual suffering the infection. For newborns, symptoms may include lethargy, loss of appetite, vomiting, jaundice, rash, shock, breathing difficulty, and increased skull pressure. When present in infants older than five days of age, the infection presents itself as meningitis. Adult symptoms depend on the organ or system infected. Severe infections may cause pneumonia, meningitis (infection in the brain membranes), septicemia (blood infection), or endocarditis (inflammation of the lining of the heart). Initial reactions may include flu-like symptoms, diarrhea, muscle aches, stiff neck, loss of balance, confusion, and convulsions. Mild infections can result in skin lesions, conjunctivitis (pink eye), or abscesses.
If a pregnant woman develops a fever and chills, muscle aches, or a stiff neck, she should see a doctor immediately. With a blood or spinal fluid test, a physician can determine whether the bacteria are present. In these cases, an infection early in pregnancy often lead to miscarriage, and infections later in pregnancy may lead to stillbirth or the death of the newborn.
To treat a listeriosis infection, antibiotics are used. Unfortunately, even with appropriate treatment, some cases of listeriosis are fatal - especially for those at high risk for the infection.
Guidelines for preventing listeriosis are similar to preventing other food-borne illnesses. Thoroughly wash all fruits and vegetables, wash your hands before and after food preparation, and keep a clean kitchen counter and refrigerator. You should also be careful to thoroughly cook poultry and meat, including hot dogs. And store foods safely in the refrigerator and eat leftovers within three to four days. Lastly, avoid drinking raw, unpasteurized milk or eating foods that contain raw milk products.
On top of these suggestions, pregnant women and those with an increased risk should avoid direct contact with animals. They should also steer clear of deli meats, undercooked hotdogs, soft cheeses such as feta or Brie, cold salads found at salad bars, and smoked seafood. | <urn:uuid:8ef481aa-35a0-4c3a-a026-31b7799d9858> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mramericamagazine.com/Article.aspx?article=f1149f6a-8bb5-4d95-abd2-9fab01211160 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945639 | 815 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Come with an undeserved track record of inferiority if this cannot become more wrong. Most of the from the nations around the world nurse practitioners are generally goods associated with neighborhood college educations. In lots of claims, the actual affiliates diploma medical packages may be thorough and still provide a lot more specialized medical encounter when compared with many 4-year college level medical packages. Which means that individuals graduation nursing jobs institution having an affiliates amount within medical will often be much better willing to cope with individual attention than these who may have your ‘superior degree’. This kind of certainly not is designed to disparage T. Ersus. Student nurses whatsoever. In reality, nearly all private hospitals will not likely actually contemplate which you choice to have an management nursing jobs situation until you contain the College diploma. This can be simply supposed to mention that will acquaintances diploma plans could be very aggressive and also comprehensive regardless of frequent misguided beliefs.Needless to say there are many advantages to learning about the neighborhood college stage, no less than for that first couple of many years of the education. One particular advantages that will echoes quantities if you ask me is always that lecturers within vocational schools specialize in educating. They aren’t implementing their particular analysis or perhaps textbooks. They’re generally there with regards to assisting you attain your primary goal, so that you are certainly not a disruption within their hunt for their particular targets.
provide a fantastic stream for college kids that may possibly not have experienced the surface of his or her video game educationally throughout senior high school as well as those who find themselves time for college after having a lengthy deficiency through universities. You may not obtain the significant audience courses around the group college stage in which significant schools tend to be renowned for giving. You additionally will not likely realize that instructors would not have here we are at their particular pupils. There exists a reduced instructor in order to college student proportion within vocational schools to ensure that teachers can have time for you to deal with the requirements of pupils.An additional benefit is the fact that even though you may not necessarily will continue to get the 4 year diploma soon after filling out your town college education you will notice that the getting prospective is really a lot improved upon above people who will not have a minimum of a new two-year college education. Study in addition shows that individuals which finish a two-year amount system in a local community college are more inclined to conclude and have any four-year diploma than others individuals that commence their own educational knowledge at the four-year university or college.
There are many conditions that may be of a neighborhood college education and you need to be aware of these kind of so they don’t turn into a issue in your case. For starters, several educational institutions tend not to acknowledge most of the classes that exist for the group college degree because shift loans. Make certain you determine what is essential for your college that you’re intending to exchange in order to to avoid this specific. You additionally might find that you will be restricted about the programs you are able to get as well as the occasions through which they shall be offered. Just be sure you have your restricted classes far ahead of time so that you can are not having an additional 12 months regarding courses so that you can masteral.
In general, a residential area college education could be just like educational being a college education in the event you get into the method by having an wide open head plus a determination to find out. I think you’ll use this a smaller amount costly choice prior to trying university or college training when possible. | <urn:uuid:058c47e7-db4c-4bf7-ad44-a24eea64750e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ichingmastery.com/tag/rewards | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972599 | 724 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Volunteering in Hertfordshire
What is volunteering?
Volunteering is giving unpaid help to your community, a charity, local clubs or voluntary organisations. This can mean anything from coaching a sports team or helping an elderly neighbour, to more formal roles such as being a school governor or a board member of a charity. It can also mean a team activity for a group of individuals.
People volunteer for a variety of reasons: to improve their skills, experience and employability; as a recreational activity and to meet new people; to offer specialist skills which could be have a significant impact on the effectiveness of voluntary and community; or to give something back and make a difference in their local communities.
You can find out about the volunteering opportunities available in Hertfordshire, by contacting your local Volunteer Centre, by applying on-line using the do-it website, or approaching organisations directly to see what opportunities they offer.
Alternatively you could volunteer by getting involved a local 'timebank'. A timebank is a tool that enables communities to share their skills to support and learn from each other. Members give an hour of their time and in return receive an hour of another timebanker’s time. You can find links to local timebanks under External Links below.
There are also a wide range of local volunteering opportunities available with Hertfordshire County Council, from conservation work, to providing a much needed break for a carer, or supporting your local library. Please use the links under the heading 'Signposts' to find out more. | <urn:uuid:35a70ce0-7b3a-4a39-9821-702d4869b7b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hertsdirect.org/your-community/volsectr/vlntrng/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958988 | 313 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Term Paper Categories
JAIL SUICIDES PREVENTION
|Term Paper Title
||JAIL SUICIDES PREVENTION
|# of Words
|# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)
JAIL SUICIDES PREVENTION
The United States is plagued by a countless number of social dilemmas. Although
not in constant public scrutiny, suicide is a serious problem which has seemed to
have lost importance. When suicide is coupled with arrest and incarceration it
becomes an increasingly complex situation. In fact, research indicates that the jail
suicide rate ranges from 2.5 to 13 times greater than the rate of the general
population (Winkler 1992). Motivation, prediction, and prevention of suicidal
behavior are grossly unclear, which only adds to the already existing complexity.
Many factors involved with arrest and incarceration only serve as a catalyst of
suicidal tendencies. Suicide is the primary cause of death in this country’s jails.
In 1986 there were 401 successful [jail] suicides (Winkler 19992).
There are many general assumptions made in regard to suicide. Most believe
suicide to be caused by mental illness such as major depression or bipolar disorder.
Another belief is that the emotional escalation leading to action takes place over a
long period of time. Such is not the case in jail suicides. Much of the research
shows that ¼ of all [jail] suicides occur within the first twenty four hours of
incarceration, and an overwhelming number of these take place in the first three
hours of isolation which is referred to as the “crisis period” (Hess 1987). The
crisis period is reflective of arrest and incarceration as producing extreme
confusion, fear, and anxiety. The crisis period is also the result of isolation.
Isolation causes an individual to lose all social support systems. Placing an
individual in isolation may be a form of protection, but this gives the individual an
opportunity to concentrate on feelings of hopelessness (Winkler 1992). Hopelessness
can be defined as the presence of despair and negative feelings about the future
(Shneidman 1987).Isolation can also produce a severe threat to those inmates who have
difficulty with coping abilities as this only encourages future deterioration.
Undoubtedly, isolation is often necessary to contain a person, or to prevent injury
to the individual and, or other inmates. Individuals who are experiencing obvious
mental stress should certainly not be held in isolation for obvious reasons.
According to Hess (1983),many facilities have regulations which state,“The
action taken must be responsible under the circumstances and represent a good-faith
judgment that the action was the least restrictive alternative
available.”Regulations such as this not only serve as a guideline for officers, but
as a preventive measure against legal action as a result of isolation. Aside from
these emotional factors of the physical environment which are impetus of suicidal
attempts. Isolation cells more often than not tend to have poor lighting,
ventilation, and the surroundings are extremely noisy (Winkler 1992). The are minor
modifications which can be made to reduce risk. These include removal of bars, sinks,
or any other object which may facilitate a suicide attempt (Kunzman 1992).
There are certain characteristics of the “act” of jail suicide. The major
characteristic which seems to be consistent in almost all cases is that the method
used is hanging. In fact, according to Hess(1983), 96% of the [jail] suicides are
successfully completed in this fashion and the instruments most often used are
clothing, bedding, shoelaces, or belts. This trend is attributed to the fact that
other avenues for suicide are not available. In cases which officers are aware of the
person’s fragile mental state, attempts are made to extinguish the availability of
instruments. This is done by stripping the inmate of clothing, and, or accessories.
All too often the objects and particularly the mental states are overlooked. Since
this does occur, officers now carry the Stephans 9-11 knife which can
effectively cut through sheets, bedding, belts, and other material (Winkler 1992).
Read entire document | <urn:uuid:e28c311f-d332-47a7-beb0-f18cc8b5ca09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digitaltermpapers.com/a6126.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93371 | 896 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Staunton, November 2 – By its systematic attack on federalism within the Russian Federation and its effort to isolate European-oriented people in St. Petersburg and Northwestern Russia from their Baltic neighbors, Moscow is pushing that region onto “the Baltic path,” one that may ultimately lead to the same outcome, according to an Ingermanland activist.
In a 7300-word article on the Ingria.info portal today, Andrey Pugovkin argues that what is currently the Russian northwest has been “part of the cultural and political space of Northern Europe,” despite Moscow’s efforts to subordinate the region to itself and break those ties to the West (www.ingria.info/?biblio&news_action=show_news&news_id=5131).
Moscow’s conquest of European Novgorod and Staraya Ladoga, he points out, was for the residents of this highly literate and diverse population “an historic catastrophe,” the first of several Pugovkin argues the Muscovites with their links to the political system of the Mongol Horde have visited on them.
Prior to 1917, however, Petersburgers succeeded in creating “the type of ‘the Russian European,’ educated in the traditions of Orthodox culture but with an orientation toward the ethnical values and external attributes of the Western way of life.” And precisely because of that, many Russians from elsewhere had such a negative attitude toward that city.
The causes of this “irrational lack of acceptance of Petersburg by people with a paternalistic consciousness and a lumpen psychology” played and continue to play “a fatal role for the city” up to this day that is manifested in everything from vandalism of the city’s monuments to Moscow’s blocking of links between the city and Europe.
A major reason for the unique Europeanness of the city was that at the end of the imperial period, “not less than a fifth of the permanent residents of St. Petersburg consisted of religious and ethnic minorities” and by the presence of “approximately 200,000 foreign citizens,” almost all of whom contributed to a cosmopolitan and tolerant society.
Indeed, Pugovkin notes, except for the actions of small marginal groups and for those supported more or less openly by the representatives of the Moscow powers that be, St. Petersburg “did not know over the course of its entire history up to the 2000s any open inter-religious or inter-national conflicts.”
But that characteristic of the city along with so many others, he writes, was changed by “the events of 1917 and all that followed,” events that were “a catastrophe equivalent in history to that which Rome experienced during the barbarian invastions or Novgorod in the course of the Muscovite conquest.”
The destruction or expulsion of so many historical Petersburgers and their replacement by a lumpen class of people from elsewhere has meant, Pugovkin insists, that “the historical multi-national population of Petersburg and all Ingria can with full justification be considered a repressed ethno-cultural group.”
Despite that, he argues, as the Soviet system softened after the death of Stalin, Leningraders re-asserted themselves as a cultural center and, what is especially important, expanded their historical ties with intellectuals in neighboring nations including the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Finns.
“For residents of Soviet Leningrad,” he writes,, “Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in those times stood for Western Europe, a place in practice inaccessible because of ‘the iron curtain.’” And in 1964, an easing of visa arrangements allowed dramatically more short-term visits between the city and Finland.
In part because of those links and experiences, it was “in Leningrad more than anywhere else where already in the 1970s, the lack of prospects” for the Soviet system “became evident.” And consequently, “it is not surprising thatprecisely here, practically at the same time as in the Baltic region, there appeared the first challenges to the communist regime.
Moreover, Pugovkin continues, it was also precisely in these two places where the regime responded by “openly turning for help to the neo-nazis.”
“The consolidation of democratic forces of the Northern capital took place in close interconnection with the national-liberation movements of the Baltic republics,” with the latter often publishing things for the city that could not be published there and then sending them eastward.
When Soviet forces attacked the Lithuanians in January 1991, “tens of thousands of Leningraders” went into the street to show their solidarity with Lithuanian. And during the same period, “on the barricades in the center of Riga it was possible to see the Russian tri-color that had been raised by a delegation of the Leningrad Peoples Front.”
Representatives of the city allied themselves with the delegates of the peoples fronts of the Baltic republics at congresses of the peoples deputies of the USSR, and when asked in march 1991 if they favored the preservation of the USSR, the city’s voters by more than two to one said that they did not.
These experiences, he suggests, “created the conditions for the search for a regional identity,” one that would be a way out from “provincial complexes and Soviet traditions.” But Moscow was opposed to all steps in that direction, splitting the city and oblast apart and denying the two the possibility of forming a single free economic zone.
Thanks to the leadership of Anatoly Sobchak, the city continued during the 1990s many of the traditions it had recovered along with the Baltic peoples at the end of Soviet times, but “the change of priorities of Russian foreign and domestic policy in the 2000s turned out to be extraordinarily unfavorable for the entire North-West region of Russia.”
And that was true even though after 2000, a large number of Petersburgers took top jobs in Moscow. Having arrived in the Russian capital, they turned on the city, reducing its status through the formation of the North-West Federal District and cutting the resources its people have had for the improvement of their own lives.
At the same time, Moscow’s foreing policy shifts regarding the Baltic countries and other European neighbors had a negative impact on the city. The Russian government “renewed its short-sighted and harmful policy, in the first instance for the Russian-speaking population,” against the Baltic countries, preferring to talk about “russophobia” than to cooperate.
As a result of Russian policies, the Baltic countries “have guaranteed their military security by joining NATO and their economic well-being by becoming members of the European Union.” Instead of adapting, Moscow has re-erected a kind of “iron curtain” against them and transformed “’the window on Europe’ into a [oil] pipeline.”
Moreover, the central Russian powers that be have sought to reduce the ability of the federal subjects to conduct an independent foreign policy, treating that as “’separatism’ and ‘a threat to the integrity of the state,’” a counter-productive approach in a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation.
In the 1990s, federalism prevented a civil war in Russia, but in the last decade, Moscow has made the struggle against it “almost its main domestic political goal,” forgetting, Pugovkin points out, that “an excess of centralization [is] one of the main threats to the integrity of any federal state.”
And he concludes by warning that if Moscow continues on this “deadend” path, then “sooner or later” because of its historical “conditioning,” the people of Ingermanland and St. Petersburg will be driven to move along another road, “the Baltic path” which has consequences Moscow very much does not want to see. | <urn:uuid:2b36b4b8-2c9e-49fa-ae8e-2cfd70d80f65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/11/window-on-eurasia-moscows-attack-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965326 | 1,704 | 2.640625 | 3 |
A new CNN video—Protecting farmers against drought—describes the benefits of ILRI’s Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) scheme in Kenya’s Marsabit District, runtime: 5:44, 11 Jun 2012 (CNN Marketplace Africa).
Some half a year after the drought that devastated large parts of the Horn of Africa broke towards the end of 2011, livestock herders in the drylands of northern Kenya speak out about the horror of that time, and their hopes that a new livestock insurance scheme will protect them against further livestock losses in the next, inevitable, drought.
In a new 6-minute video on CNN’s Marketplace Africa, several herders in Kenya’s Marsabit District tell reporter Nima Elbagir their stories of last year’s drought and how an insurance scheme piloted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and backed by British and US government development departments and the World Bank is offering them hope for protection against the next drought.
WACHO YAYO, FARMER (through translator): The last drought was bad. During the drought time, there wasn’t even any water to drink. There was no food. The animals had nothing to eat. There was only dust blowing. I felt very bad and I was very bitter. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run.
ELBAGIR (voice-over): Fifty-nine-year-old Wacho Yayo lost 10 of his 15 cows. These are the survivors. He can’t afford to replenish his herd, but thanks to livestock insurance that has been set up in this part of Kenya, he should afford to buy four new goats. . . .
Elbagir also interviewed leaders of an insurance company and a humanitarian organization working in the area.
SIMON CLAYTON, CEO, APA INSURANCE: The penetration of insurance in Kenya is only about 3 percent of the population. So the more we can grow and give access to insurance products for those uninsured people, the better it is for them. They can protect their assets, their families and their occupations for the future.
CHALLISS MCDONOUGH, WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME: Microinsurance for agriculture is something that farmers in the rest of the world have had access to for some time, but African farmers, the poorest and smallest . . . African farmers are only really beginning to have access to. And their ability to do that can really help the agricultural sector in Africa grow and become more productive.
What’s important to know, however, though, is that insurance by itself isn’t a magic bullet. It has to be combined with other forms of risk management, including access to credit, savings and other things that help the communities themselves become more resilient and more able to withstand a shock like a drought.’
A total of 650 herders received compensation for the loss of their animals last year. Now there are plans to expand this ILRI project across northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia.
ILRI’s technical partners in this project
Index Insurance Innovation Initiative
Syracuse University (Maxwell School)
University of Wisconsin (BASIS Research Program)
The implementing partners
Equity Insurance Agency
UAP Insurance Limited
Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Kenya
Kenya Meteorological Department
Kenya Ministry of Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands
Kenya Ministry of Livestock
The donor agencies
UK Department for International Development (DFID)
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Read more about ILRI’s Index-based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) project below.
On the Index-Based Livestock Insurance web site
IBLI Blog: Latest news: Livestock insurance – protecting Kenya’s pastoralists from drought, 11 Jun 2012.
On ILRI’s News Blog
Options to enhance resilience in pastoral systems: The case for novel livestock insurance, 22 Feb 2012.
Livestock director and partners launch first-ever index-based livestock insurance payments in Africa, 25 Oct 2011.
Herders in drought-stricken northern Kenya get first livestock insurance payments, 21 Oct 2011.
Watch two ILRI short films on this topic
Short films document first index-based livestock insurance for African herders, 26 Oct 2011.
On this ILRI Clippings Blog
Supporting dryland pastoralism with eco-conservancies, livestock insurance and livestock-based drought interventions, 5 Jun 2012.
Coping with drought: Assessing the impacts of livestock insurance in Kenya, 7 May 2012.
Of cell phones, satellites and livestock insurance in Kenya’s Chalbi Desert, 29 Feb 2012.
Kenyan herders cope with drought by buying livestock insurance, 10 Jan 2010. | <urn:uuid:252439e6-3e3c-4e7a-8f6e-0b1a4e59434f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clippings.ilri.org/2012/06/12/livestock-insurance-for-the-horn-looking-back-in-anger-forward-in-hope-cnn-video/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937785 | 1,010 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Chinese SCADA software vulnerable
ISS Source reports that attackers could remotely exploit two vulnerabilities found in industrial control system software made in China but used worldwide.
The vulnerabilities are in two products from Sunway ForceControl Technology, a Beijing-based company that develops SCADA software for the defense, petrochemical, energy, water and manufacturing industries, said the U.S. Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT).
Sunway’s products mainly see use in China but also in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa, according to ICS-CERT.
The problems could cause a denial of service issue or remote code exploitation in Sunway’s ForceControl 6.1 WebServer and its pNetPower AngelServer products. Dillon Beresford, who works for the security testing company NSS Labs, found the issues.
Sunway issued patches for the vulnerabilities May 20. ICS-CERT said there are no known exploits for the vulnerabilities, but computer security experts generally recommend patching software as soon as possible.
ICS-CERT added it’s unlikely someone could create consistent exploit code for the two vulnerabilities, and an attacker would need to have “intermediate” skills to exploit the problems.
SCADA software has come under increasing attention from security researchers, as the software has often not undergone rigorous security audits despite its use to manage critical infrastructure or manufacturing processes. | <urn:uuid:a8a82f3a-0581-4067-ae4a-1f232a6683ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.controleng.com/search/search-single-display/chinese-scada-software-vulnerable/6ca3f84a8c7f984ae7ac85514b1f536d.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938005 | 290 | 1.882813 | 2 |
When Ruby decides to paint a picture of a tree all her friends beg her to paint them as well. But when Ruby agrees and paints their portraits, each one of her friends: Fiona Fox, Bunny Rabbit, Dan Duck, and Carlos Crow, complains that she has forgotten to include their best feature. However, when Ruby's friends see the finished painting, there is no doubt in their minds, that indeed, Ruby HAS included their best parts! This Level 1 Reader is a wonderful story of the importance of friendships.
Similar authors: Arnold Lobel
Similar books: Ruby's Perfect Day by Susan Hill;
Ruby Bakes a Cake by Susan Hill
Date read: 7/15/2009 | <urn:uuid:f317bc6a-76b2-47db-a4f6-554b1ef76958> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stcharleslibrary.org/ygtrt/default.asp?Category=2&grs=0&gre=9&Page=41 | 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 | 0.950555 | 140 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Would you give radicals at the University of South Dakota an “A” or an “F” for how they treat our military after reading this blog post?
Radicals at the University of South Dakota have disrespected the men and women in uniform with hateful protests.
These radicals erected upside-down American flags in the ground in front of a veterans’ memorial at Old Main of the university on Sunday.
The veterans’ memorial was designed to help students remember those who have sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom.
But a memorial honoring our veterans was enough to anger extremists at the school.
In addition, anarchists at the university erected posters with some dubious “facts” that read: “U.S. Forces have killed more civilians than all ‘terrorist’ actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, now multiply that by 157, that’s how many civilians have been killed because of U.S. Action (over 185,000).”
These are the same radicals who lecture conservatives as being intolerant and “hateful.”
They are the same radicals who kick ROTC off many campuses in America and treat students willing to serve like trash.
For that, Young America’s Foundation gives radicals and extremists at the University of South Dakota an “F!” | <urn:uuid:1368a49e-e0eb-48b3-ac1e-7f228955738b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yaf.org/innerpagewireframe.aspx?pageid=8817&id=3705&blogid=78 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958612 | 275 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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Solid Tumor : Wilms tumor
Wilms tumor is the most common tumor of the kidney, and is seen mainly in young children. There are several stages assigned to these tumors. The stage is determined by how large the tumor is, how far it has spread, and if other tissue has become involved in the disease. The stage of the disease determines the treatment that is given to the patient.
Participants in this research study are also enrolled in another research study known as RENBIO. The RENBIO study evaluates the tumor cells, images of the tumor and its location in the body, and tests to determine the genetic make-up of the tumor. The study provides information that can help better predict the outcome of treating the tumor. Treatments available in this research study are based on the staging and the information gathered from the RENBIO study results.
For the current eligibility status of this clinical study, referring physicians must contact St. Jude Children's Research Hospital at 1-866-2ST-JUDE (1-866-278-5833).
Rachel Brennan, MD
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
262 Danny Thomas Place
Memphis, TN 38105 USA
Voice: 1-888-226-4343 or 901-595-4055
The above information is intended to provide only a basic description about a research protocol that may be currently active at St. Jude. The details made available here may not be the most up-to-date information on protocols used by St. Jude. To receive full details about a protocol and its status and or use at St. Jude, a physician must contact St. Jude directly. | <urn:uuid:2537ffc8-2095-4c4c-869a-4b939f4d8585> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=b6a36370c9cd4110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD&vgnextchannel=9ec7ef9e87018010VgnVCM1000000e2015acRCRD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922579 | 397 | 2.15625 | 2 |
1001 Movies - Le Voyage Dans La Lune
My name is George, and my wife recently gave me the book "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" 5th edition, by Steven Jay Schneider. For almost a year now, I have been acquiring these movies, and organizing them in Movienizer, so at this point have over 1000 movies. Here is a review of the first movie in the book:Le Voyage Dans La Lune
A Trip to the Moon
1902 - 14m Silent BW
Director: George Melies
Writers: Jules Verne
Cast: Victor Andre, Bleuette Bernon
At 14 minutes, this movie is very long compared to most movies at the time, which usually ran for about 2 minutes. It is considered the first Science Fiction movie ever made, and as in all science fiction movies, special effects are a big part of the production. Be prepared for the first dissolves, superimpositions and other tricks that continue to be part of moviemaking today.
The story sees a group of scientists preparing for a journey to the moon, which is depicted as having the face of "The Man in the Moon". The troupe of scientists enter a door in the side of the first movie spaceship, which is a huge bullet, Several lab assistants push the bullet into the barrel of an large gun. The gun is aimed at the moon, and fired. The spaceship travels to the moon, and lands in the right eye of the Man in the Moon.
On the surface of the moon, the travelers encounter a hostile race of beings called the Selenites, who take them to their King. By accident, they discover that they can destroy the Selenites by touching them with an umbrella. They return to earth by falling into the ocean, where they explore until they are rescued and made heroes.
Even though the movie was made in 1902, much can be gained by experiencing the cinematic techiques that Melies used to tell the Jules Verne story. Imagine as you watch, what a fantastic new world was opening up to audiences at that time.
This film can be watched if you have a few minutes on several video sites, including youtube, google video, etc. Here is a link to one of them. Note that this version is accompanied by a narration (obviously not original, since this was silent) that tells more about the story and the movie. Since it was in the public domain, I burned it to dvd and it is now in my Movienizer collection.http://www.archive.org/details/Levoyagedanslalune | <urn:uuid:90b69c91-f503-4f34-a4b2-d743c8e6f879> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.movienizer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8627 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956708 | 541 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Moshe Looks, Ben Goertzel, and Cassio Pennachin
The Novamente AI Engine is briefly reviewed. The overall architecture is unique, drawing on system-theoretic ideas regarding complex mental dynamics and associated emergent patterns. We describe how these are facilitated by a novel knowledge representation which allows diverse cognitive processes to interact effectively. We then elaborate the two primary cognitive algorithms used to construct these processes: probabilistic term logic (PTL), and the Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA). PTL is a highly flexible inference framework, applicable to domains involving uncertain, dynamic data, and autonomous agents in complex environments. BOA is a population-based optimization algorithm which can incorporate prior knowledge. While originally designed to operate on bit strings, our extended version also learns programs and predicates with variable length and tree-like structure, used to represent actions, perceptions, and internal state. We detail some of the specific dynamics and structures we expect to emerge through the interaction of the cognitive processes, outline our approach to training the system through experiential interactive learning, and conclude with a description of some recent results obtained with our partial implementation, including practical work in bioinformatics, natural language processing, and knowledge discovery. | <urn:uuid:40e3202f-6bfb-4201-a3ad-c170b7f8ee81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aaai.org/Library/Symposia/Fall/2004/fs04-01-010.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922946 | 250 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Art quilters tend to stitch outside the box. Traditional squares and patches are not for them. But that doesn't mean that repetition and a sense of order isn't important. In fact, repetition is a key element in design. The concept of using a grid as a design element is classic--that's one of the reasons why patchwork appeals to so many people.
But art quilters are prone to turning "the classics" on their heads. That's what mixed-media artist Debbi Crane did when she created a nine-patch "quilt" of mixed-media collages. Debbi described her process in an article called "Get a Grid! Canvas Wall Art for Collectors of Odds & Ends" in the January/February 2010 issue of our sister publication, Cloth Paper Scissors®.
- Debbi started this project as one 12" x 12" canvas, but soon discovered that if one piece looked good, a series looked even better. So she created a nine-patch wall "quilt" out of canvases, using paint, fabric, paper, and found objects. To make the piece cohesive, Debbi used the grid concept and repetition. Here are some of her tips for how to unify a piece like this:
- Repeat a grid form within a larger grid form to help create a unified whole.
- To keep the squares cohesive, use at least a smidgen of each of your main colors (in this case the deep red, brown, and latte of the painted frames) in each square.
- Repeat design elements (such as circles and stripes) from square to square to make the individual pieces relate to each other. The viewer's eye can easily travel to each part of the work, resting on familiar colors or textures.
To add to the patchwork effect, Debbi incorporated some classic quilting elements, but gave them her own mixed-media twist. For example:
- Debbi treated the entire piece as an enlarged nine-patch quilt block.
- She painted the frame of the center canvas a deep red, as traditional quilters have used red in the center square of a quilt to represent hearth and home.
- She tied the buttons on the lower left square in a similar way as hand-tied quilt patches.
- The center "patch" is a stitched collage in the shape of an Ohio Star.
- Aside from the canvases, all the other materials Debbi incorporated were those she had at hand, like quilters of old.
I think this is such a fun piece in that it not only marries traditional and contemporary quilting arts, but also combines mixed-media and quilting techniques--and helps find a place for all those fabulous found objects we like to collect. | <urn:uuid:ec1c655e-1f1d-47a6-bd66-bf29b4725a05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.quiltingdaily.com/blogs/quilting-daily/archive/2010/02/04/a-unique-twist-on-a-patchwork-quilt.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957195 | 580 | 2.671875 | 3 |
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history of Olympic Games
...between American athletes and British officials. The 400-metre final was nullified by officials who disqualified the apparent winner, American John Carpenter, for deliberately impeding the path of Wyndham Halswelle of Great Britain. A new race was ordered, but the other qualifiers, both American, refused to run. Halswelle then won the gold in the only walkover in Olympic history.
What made you want to look up "Wyndham Halswelle"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:3a697a9d-c590-462f-881c-d8995ae823b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/253083/Wyndham-Halswelle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924189 | 148 | 2.859375 | 3 |
By Daniel Hernandez and Cecilia Sanchez
1:11 PM EST, December 1, 2012
MEXICO CITY -- Enrique Peña Nieto, a telegenic and politically savvy former state governor, was sworn in as president of Mexico on Saturday in a raucous ceremony marked by violent protests that left several people wounded.
One student demonstrator who clashed with police received a head wound and was in critical condition, the Mexican Red Cross said.
The protests reflected discontent among some Mexicans who accuse Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of using bribery and other tricks to win the election. An election tribunal ruled against formal complaints and judged the July 1 election legitimate.
In Saturday’s ceremony in the lower house of congress, Peña Nieto received the red, white and green presidential sash from his predecessor Felipe Calderon, whose six-year term was marked by a military-led war on drug trafficking gangs, ghastly violence and sluggish economic growth. Calderon kissed the sash before handing it over.
“Mexico! Mexico!” people in the audience chanted.
The inauguration marks the return to power of the PRI, which ruled for seven decades until being ousted from the presidency in 2000. Peña Nieto has promised a new and modern PRI that will not resort to its old tactics of corrupt, autocratic rule. Not all Mexicans are convinced.
There were protests inside and out of the heavily guarded San Lazaro Palace that houses the lower chamber of Congress.
One huge black banner hoisted by leftist congressmen declared "Mexico in mourning," alluding to the tens of thousands of people killed during the six-year Calderon administration. Others complained about what they contend was an unfair election and the “imposition” of Peña Nieto.
In the streets outside, students and others repeatedly clashed with police. One group of demonstrators hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at metal barriers erected to block access to the congress. Police fired tear gas and rubber-covered metal bullets. Several injuries were reported.
“We wanted to show Peña Nieto that we are here and we are going to watch him and we will be paying attention to his government,” said university student Francisco Tellez, 21.
The young man in critical condition was identified as a member of a student protest movement that emerged during the election campaign to denounce, among other things, the control of airwaves by a television monopoly that gave favorable coverage to Peña Nieto.
Saturday’s inauguration was a formality. Peña Nieto technically became president at the first minute past midnight Saturday.
Despite the protests, the circumstances surrounding the inauguration were much calmer than the last one six years ago. Calderon had defeated leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by the tiniest of margins and much of the left never accepted the results.
Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:930da27d-58d4-420f-8c91-b2c6685d073b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.herald-mail.com/nationalworld/sns-neito-sworn-in-mexico-president-2012,0,2920654,print.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966994 | 598 | 1.90625 | 2 |
I often wonder why the faculty to imitate an accent (≈ speak phonetically correctly) and to speak a language morphologically / syntactically / semantically / idiomatically /… correctly seem to be so independent – and why the latter has so little impact on people's judgement.
(This case may be a bit different, as anything beyond the phonetics is probably not Bloomberg's anyway.)
In other words, why can you learn to speak a language correctly, except for the phonetics and prosody, and still sound like a fool. Why can learners acquire all the rest of it, grammar, vocabulary, etc... without acquiring the phonetics? Why do phonetics enter in so strongly into our perception of speakers, so that, for example, a person with a relatively slight foreign accent (to my ears) and impeccable grammar will be told sh/e can't speak English at all?
Why am I tolerant of people speaking English in a wide variety of accents, but relatively intolerant of accents of non-Hispanophones trying to speak Spanish? (Well, maybe because I'm a Spanish teacher, duh.) | <urn:uuid:5ca09ad0-32c1-45a6-a798-5821207582a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/2011/09/el-bloombito.html?showComment=1315494302914 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946709 | 232 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Keep an eye on your cholesterol levels at all ages
By Pure Matters
Before you become overwhelmed by the pumpkins and candy corn already overflowing at your local grocery store, it’s important to bring up something even scarier than most Halloween movies–high cholesterol. September is National Cholesterol Education Month and a great excuse to brush up on some information, health tests, and diet reassessments as we gear up for the coming months of candy, turkey, and cookies shaped like little men.
Now you may be saying, “hey, not all cholesterol is bad,” and you’re right, it isn’t. High Density Lipoprotein, also known as HDL, is “good cholesterol,” which is known for taking bad cholesterol out of the blood and keeping it from building up in your arteries. Ideal HDL levels for both men and women is 60 mg/dL and above and has been shown to help lower one’s risk for heart disease. Low levels range around 50 and under for women and 40 and under for men.
Last year, I had a whole host of blood work done as part of a “I’m not getting any younger and should probably start seeing a doctor” sort of thing. When they did my cholesterol tests they found that my HDL levels were high, which was great to hear. But, they also found my LDL, or Low Density Lipoprotein, was high too -- WHAT?!? LDL is the bad cholesterol. It’s called that because it’s a waxy plaque that builds up on the insides of your arteries and slows blood flow to the brain and heart, which can lead to a stroke or heart attack. Basically, LDL sucks.
At the time I was 23 and only two years removed from being a Division I athlete in college. While I admit a few pounds had found their way to my midsection since I’d hung up the spandex and oar, I was still under the delusion that I was years away from having to worry about that kind of stuff. The results were an eye opener and have since planted that little annoying voice in the back of my head that won’t shut up every time I even consider reaching for a peanut butter cup. I bring this up because I think it speaks volumes to the level of awareness people have for what goes on in our bodies. Just because we look “healthy” doesn’t guarantee that our insides are and that goes especially for young people just crossing the double decade line.
Since receiving these results, I’ve been trying to take steps, albeit sometimes little ones, towards undoing some of the damage caused during my years of naïveté. Having a burrito for lunch every day or eating red meat five nights a week isn’t okay any more (not that it ever was), but back then I could burn it all off before my bedtime snack. Now it’s all about healthy choices and compromise. High fiber, low fat foods are essential in reducing LDL and increasing HDL. Things like vegetables, nuts, fish, and whole grains are perfect for this in addition to exercising regularly and not smoking.
At this very moment, more than 102 million Americans age 20 and older have high cholesterol. It’s severely important to get tested now to dictate how you can take action and ensure a better and healthier life down the road. Knowledge is power, and in this case, a life saver.
Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:07ff69df-2df5-4de7-8484-95023de5a123> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickorlando.com/lifestyle/your-health/mens-health/Keep-an-eye-on-your-cholesterol-levels-at-all-ages/-/3927704/16762190/-/format/rsss_2.0/view/print/-/o67f6o/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965162 | 743 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Monday, March 9, 2009
Gold Outperforms Whole Mining Industry
The metals mining industry is preparing itself for a protracted period of low prices as industrial demand for metals has slowed along with the world economy. Prices of copper and aluminum for example are down approximately 60% since last summer.
For several years, booming metals prices were the result of consumption in the developed world and in rapidly industrializing China. But with both undergoing an economic recession, consumption has slowed. Particularly in China, where massive government investment in infrastructure projects pushed commodities prices higher. But this has slowed during the current economic crisis.
The mining companies were hoping that government stimulus packages would prompt a quicker recovery of economic activity that would increase demand for industrial metals, but this looks like a bleak prospect for now and they aren't expecting a rise in commodity prices until late 2010.
But despite the huge drop in industrial metals prices, gold has for the most part retained its high price. It has come down from its peak of over $1000 per troy oz, but will likely rise again soon. Its resilience is due to its status as "real money" and a "safe haven". So even when industrial demand for gold declines, it retains its status as a store of value and a real medium of exchange. And as I expect the current economic situation to get worse and continue for quite some time, I know we will see greater movement of investors into gold.
I personally see low commodities prices as a blessing because it gives me an extended buying opportunity. The fundamentals of commodities in general are very strong, and if you buy now on these lows you have a definite chance to make big gains. But I will also continue buying into the gold market because despite the commodities bull market (which is not over but interrupted), I think the fundamentals of the US economy are so bad that gold's value as a safe haven is still vastly underrecognized. | <urn:uuid:4b346360-1e25-4421-bf2a-3fcbae0c63de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://the-gold-market.blogspot.com/2009/03/gold-outperforms-whole-mining-industry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970157 | 384 | 1.6875 | 2 |
A Handbook for Inherently Safer Design, Second Edition
How far will an ounce of prevention really go? While the answer to that question may never be truly known, Process Plants: A Handbook for Inherently Safer Design, Second Edition takes us several steps closer. The book demonstrates not just the importance of prevention, but the importance of...
Published May 16th 2010 by CRC Press
Review of previous edition:"Trevor Kletz's book makes an invaluable contribution to the systematic, professional and scientific approach to accident investigation". The Chemical Engineer Fully revised and updated, the third edition of Learning from Accidents provides more information on accident...
Published July 17th 2001 by Routledge
Published July 9th 2001 by CRC Press
Identifying and Assessing Process Industry Hazards, Fouth Edition
Published August 31st 1999 by CRC Press
Published June 30th 1996 by CRC Press | <urn:uuid:c8257bb3-c634-456b-af9b-78c8ba86167d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psypress.com/books/search/author/trevor_a_kletz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925226 | 182 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Art adorns Baghdad
ALUMNI | Lt. Col. William “Jaybird” Martin, EG ’89, found a creative way to pass the time while stationed with the Air Force at Baghdad’s Camp Liberty, home to thousands of U.S. forces.
Concrete walls surround most of the buildings in the camp, and Martin says one day he decided “to brighten things up” by painting a mural on one of them. “I painted another, and then another,” he says. “I wanted to create some escapism with a graffiti feel.”
Last summer alone, he painted five such murals, including some portraits of former Air Force leaders, based on old photographs, and a “Greetings from Baghdad” satire of a vacation town postcard. Martin says he used whatever paints he could find in the camp and brushes that his wife sent him. He notes that he couldn’t blend colors because the arid desert air caused his creations to dry almost instantly.
“This is the first time I’ve spent any significant time painting,” he said in an email, describing the process as a good way to clear his mind. “Painting takes me miles away from Baghdad.”
At UD, Martin majored in civil engineering and was an Air Force ROTC cadet. | <urn:uuid:38c17d17-20b4-4323-b414-ae24136a0e01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.udel.edu/udmessenger/vol18no1/stories/alumni_baghdad_murals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972425 | 289 | 1.53125 | 2 |
NASA Issues New Centennial Challenges To Spur Suborbital Rocketry
LAS CRUCES, New Mexico - NASA unveiled today two new Centennial Challenges--both geared to stimulating new reusable suborbital rocketry, as well as help hone technology for exploration of the Moon.
The prizes represent collaboration between NASA and the X Prize Foundation, announced here during Countdown to the X Prize festivities.
NASA's Centennial Challenges were established to conduct prize competitions in support of the Vision for Space Exploration and ongoing NASA programs. The idea is to crate novel and lower-cost solutions to engineering obstacles in civil space and aeronautics from new sources of innovation in industry, academia, and the public.
"Today we are signing a letter formalizing the intent of NASA Centennial Challenges and the X Prize Foundation to work towards a future agreement for two X Prize Competitions," said NASA's Brant Sponberg, Program Manager of Centennial Challenges at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
To date, the Centennial Challenges have offered prize money for various topics, from materials and power systems to astronaut glove technology, as well as new and better ways to use resources on the Moon, Sponberg said.
There is a difference in the newly announced NASA prizes.
"All of NASA's prizes to date are for one-quarter million dollars or less. We expect these two challenges to be considerably larger," Sponberg explained, although he did not specify the dollar-value of the new prizes.
Exact rules and details of each competition will also be announced at a later date.
Two new challenges
The two new NASA Centennial Challenges and their tentative names are:
- Suborbital Payload Challenge : Reusable suborbital rocket launch with a certain size payload able to reach a certain altitude. The X prize was to 100 kilometers but NASA wants these new suborbital rockets to go much higher. If they can reach certain altitudes scientists at NASA would be interested in flying instruments and experiments on these vehicles.
- Suborbital Lunar Landing Analog Challenge : NASA's on the lookout for a reusable suborbital rocket that takes off and lands vertically and reaches a certain speed during flight. Those parameters would demonstrate the basic capabilities and rocket energies necessary to land and launch from the Moon. NASA hopes to broaden the number of engines, landing systems, and suppliers the space agency needs to return to the Moon.
Excitement in the air
In jointly moving forward on the new prizes, Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman of the X Prize Foundation said: It's our goal that these and other prizes create each year here in New Mexico a multi-million dollar cash purse...that will attract teams from around the world and move us faster, higher, and more safely into space."
Also joining in on today's announcement was Astronaut Steve Robinson who flew aboard Discovery on the recent return-to-flight mission.
"There's excitement in the air," Robinson said. "All these folks with so many ideas...this is way the future is," he said.
MORE FROM SPACE.com | <urn:uuid:0bf4b8ba-b38c-4b30-b32b-1bf0eb38a702> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.space.com/1656-nasa-issues-centennial-challenges-spur-suborbital-rocketry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933313 | 632 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The accumulated losses in the current crisis (at $1.11 trillion since August 2007) have been very large, but so have the headline figures for the amount of new capital raised ($900 billion) as can be seen in Figure 1. However, a closer look at the numbers reveals a much less sanguine picture of the state of the banking sector and raises serious questions about governance of the banking sector more generally.
Figure 1. Capital raised and losses, billions USD
Source: Bloomberg WDCI, updated 23 Feb 2009
Three features in particular warrant closer scrutiny. The evidence in Figures 2-4 below is based on data from 21 large banks from the US, the UK, and Europe. Details are in Acharya, Gujral and Shin (2009).1
First, Figure 2 shows that the composition of bank capital has changed, with most of the new capital being raised in the form of debt and hybrid claims such as preferred equity. The issuance of common equity has been rare. In total, these banks issued $1.76 trillion of capital during 2000-2008, but a staggering $1.64 trillion (93.2%) was raised in the form of debt. More than 6.8% of the remaining capital was issued in the form of preferred equity, especially during the crisis period of 3Q 2007 to 4Q 2008, implying that from 2000 to 2008, banks were in fact net buyers of common equity rather than issuers – that is, they were buying back shares to the tune of $24.1 billion.
Figure 2. Annual net capital raised
Net Capital has been defined as Capital raised by Net issuance of common stock + Net issuance of Preferred Stock + Net issuance of Long Term Debt – Dividends paid (Source: Cash Flow Statement (Financing Activities) from Annual statements of Banks, SEC Filings and Bloomberg).
Interestingly, while JPMorgan, the relatively better performer during the crisis, issued four times as much debt as common equity, Citigroup’s debt to equity issuance ratio was thirteen. Although Wells Fargo and Bank of America were also net buyers of common equity, they did not issue too much debt (they grew far less rapidly than Citigroup). HBOS, one of the beleaguered UK bank during the crisis, had a ratio of 29. And, in another salient example, UBS was net buyer of common equity but issued $135 billion of debt. Even with the benefit of hindsight, the relationship between the type of capital issued and the ex post performance of banks is striking.
Second, even as the banking system has suffered the depletion of common equity through losses on the asset portfolio, banks have continued to pay dividends throughout the crisis. Figure 3 shows that bank dividend payouts increased from 0.4% of assets in 2000 to 1.1% of assets in 2007 and were still at 0.7% of assets through the first three quarters of 2008 in spite of the gathering storm. It is perhaps hard to believe, but bank management hardly reduced their dividends in the first fifteen months of the worst crisis since the Great Depression. While the crisis essentially knocked out most of the market value of bank equity from 2007 to 2008, the cumulative dividends of over $400 billion still represent around one-third of the 2007 market capitalisation of $1.3 trillion.
Anecdotal evidence is consistent with a reluctance to cut dividends or even reduce their amount. Lehman Brothers Holdings announced a 13% increase in its dividend and a $100 million share repurchase in January 2008, Citigroup cut its dividend close to zero only in November 2008, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, while recipients of the TARP capital in Fall 2008, cut dividends as late as February and March 2009, respectively, and even as the Federal Reserve is urging banks receiving bailout funds to cut dividends, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have yet to do so. This is to be compared to the fact that 61 members of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index cut their dividends during 2008.2
Figure 3. Cumulative dividends paid and common equity, billions USD
Source: Annual statements of Banks, SEC Filings and Bloomberg
It is also notable in Figure 4 that while the total market value of common equity rose throughout 2000 to 2007, when viewed as proportion of total bank assets, it in fact fell from 6% in 2000 to just over 4% in 2007. The cumulative dividends amounting to over 2% of assets between 2000 and 2007 thus represent a negative capital issuance of a fairly significant magnitude relative to banking sector’s capital base.
Figure 4. Annual dividends paid (Flow) and common equity (Stock) as a percentage of assets
Source: Annual statements of Banks, SEC Filings and Bloomberg
This outflow of dividends has deprived the banking system of common equity capital precisely when it was most needed. The erosion of common equity through dividends points to the breakdown of the priority of debt over equity. Banks that have received public funding support and are in serious risk of failure have continued to pay out dividends. For banks that anticipate losses, dividends were paid to equity holders at the expense of the debt holders (including the taxpayers funding the bailouts). This is a pure transfer in violation of the priority of debt over equity. Such a pattern has arguably been allowed to continue only because of the slow-moving nature of book equity that has allowed banks with dwindling market capitalisations to be deemed safe from a regulatory (book) capital standpoint. In effect, the inertia in bank accounting has enabled substantial transfers in violation of priority of debt over equity.
In particular, we believe that the dwindling pool of common equity has been an important reason for the continued reluctance of banks to extend credit in spite of the large-scale injection of bailout capital. Most of the public injections of bank capital in the US in particular have taken the form of preferred equity rather than common equity. As a consequence, banks’ leverage relative to common equity has increased relentlessly. This has left banks unwilling to take up the slack in intermediation left by the collapse of the securitisation market.
A recent speech by Bill Dudley (2009), the new President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, notes that executives at banks and government-sponsored enterprises told regulators “repeatedly over the past 18 months” that “now is not a good time to raise capital”. He goes on to say:
“This desire to postpone capital raising stems in part to the fact that bank executives often do not want to dilute existing shareholders, which of course include themselves. […] The self-interested thing to do is avoid the dilution and hope for a good state of the world.”
The fear of dilution – since most benefit of new capital injection accrues to creditors – leads incumbent shareholders to under-invest in raising new common equity capital, an agency problem that is a variant of the Myers (1977) debt overhang problem. On a related point, since many of the equity holders are also employees of the bank, the diversion of funds from debt holders (including taxpayers) to equity holders is related to the thorny and politically charged issue of employee compensation in banks. In this sense, payment of dividends to bank shareholders even in the midst of a severe crisis can be seen as a part of the larger debate on compensation issues.
These corporate finance problems pose difficult questions for crisis resolution. While manifestations are many, we view the continued payment of dividends by banks as the quintessential reflection of a failure of governance of banks. In such a world, what good is served by the Anglo-Saxon view on corporate governance that emphasises shareholder value? It has the unintended and adverse consequence of depleting capital even further, deepening insolvency and endangering any swift resolution of failing banks. Some commentators had urged the cutting of dividends as the first step in the resolution of a banking crisis. Although the opportunity has been lost in this crisis, lessons must be learned for the future. Forcing bank management to cut dividends should be the first step in a banking crisis.
1 U.S: JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia Corp. , Citigroup, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs
U.K: Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Barclays Plc., HBOS, Lloyds TSB
Europe: IKB, UBS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Fortis, BNP
2 Some commentators have argued for a stop on bank dividends right around the TARP announcement in the US (see Scharfstein and Stein, October 2008). See also the column by David Wessel in March 2008 (Wessel 2008).
Acharya, Viral V., Irvind Gujral and Hyun Song Shin (2009) Dividends and Bank Capital in the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, Working Paper, www.ssrn.com.
Dudley, William C. (2009) Financial Market Turmoil: The Federal Reserve and the challenges ahead, Remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Conference, New York City
Myers, Stewart C. (1977) Determinants of Corporate Borrowing, Journal of Financial Economics, 5(2), 147-175.
Scharfstein, David S. and Jeremy C. Stein (2008) This Bailout Doesn’t Pay Dividends, The New York Times, 20 October 2008.
Wessel, David (2008) “Brainstorming about Bailouts” Wall Street Journal, 13 March 2008 | <urn:uuid:4bad4fa4-5e6f-4e1d-bdf6-cde895e0c68d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voxeu.org/article/amidst-crisis-banks-are-still-paying-dividends | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953523 | 1,954 | 2.125 | 2 |
How can the international military coalition opposed to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, bring peace to that country without getting caught in a prolonged military conflict?
The US, France and Britain successfully enforced a UN Security Council-approved no-fly zone over Libya to stop Gaddafi's forces from attacking rebels in the east.
But many are wondering if those airstrikes will be enough to deter a defiant Gaddafi and whether international troops are needed to push back Libyan government forces.
Complicating matters is a growing chorus of criticism from a number of nations including Turkey, China and India. Also, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, has called the UN resolution a "medieval call to crusade".
We will be discussing those issues with US congressman Dennis Kucinich who has been critical of Barack Obama's decision to strike Libya; Ali Suleiman Aujali, the former Libyan ambassador to the US, who now represents the Libyan National Transitional Council in Washington, DC; and military strategist Sam Gardiner, a retired American Air Force colonel.
You can join the conversation. Watch the show live on Tuesday, March 22, at 1930GMT. Repeats can be seen on Wednesday at 0430GMT, 0830GMT and 1430GMT. | <urn:uuid:4a15d7f9-bf0e-424e-85ce-d3cac2531526> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rizkhan/2011/03/201132212848346309.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911043 | 251 | 1.851563 | 2 |
I missed this part in the directions and stuck my chopped up cabbage in a stainless steel pot while salting for about half hour to let the water come out. then i transferred it to a glass jar. does the pot lessen its fermentation or bacteria??
what happens when you ferment in a NOT non-reactive bowl??
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I found this link that might be helpful, but I don't think you need to worry because stainless steel is non-reactive. | <urn:uuid:bf06365e-7164-439c-b085-ea02eef33afe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mothering.com/community/t/1360610/what-happens-when-you-ferment-in-a-not-non-reactive-bowl | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940766 | 154 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Embargoed until Noon CONTACT: James Adams (202) 536-7880
July 23, 2012 email@example.com
BAIN IN OUR BACK YARD
Michaels Arts & Crafts, Burlington Coat Factory, Dunkin Donuts, Outback Steaks, ToysRUs
200 PROTEST BAIN CAPITAL BUSINESS & MINIMUM WAGE EMPLOYERS AT SILVER SPRING’S CITY PLACE MALL
Burlington employees say working at Bain Capital’s Burlington means below poverty line earnings
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Led by a drum line, and a caricature of presidential candidate “Pimpin Romney“ more than 200 Washington area residents marched through City Place Mall drumming up support for increasing the federal minimum wage. The Mall march ended at Bain Capitals Burlington Coat Factory where workers called for an increase in the minimum wage. Banner’s reading “ Burlington Minimum Factory , Bain’s Burlington equals minimum wage and the 99% need a raise” were hung from each of the Malls four floor railings. Candidate “Pimpin Romney” delivered a stump speech detailing the Romney Economy and his exploits of workers at Bain Capital. The demonstrators also marched to the City Place Outdoor Fountain where minimum wage workers and Bain workers shared stories of survival when earning minim wage.
“I lived in a shelter for five years while I worked a minimum wage job. I saved for three years and today I all have a room in a house with eight men. I can’t do anything special for my children, at 50 years old I deserve better”, says minimum wage worker Lenard Showell.
Minimum wage workers at many Dunkin Donut franchises don’t get paid sick leave and they are prohibited from accepting tips. Many Michael’s minimum wage workers have their hour’s tied to their store’s weekly profits. Scores of Bain Burlington workers were fired from high wage jobs, and then rehired at or near minimum wage.
The 99% need a raise. Middle class jobs are being replaced minimum wage work. The three year anniversary of the last minimum increase is July 24, in those three years CEO pay has gone up 725 percent, the 99% need a raise.
The minimum raise can’t support area families. At $7.25 an hour the federal minimum wage amounts to $15,080 a year, that’s more than $7000 below the federal poverty line. Maryland and Virginia tie their minimum wage to the federal wage. The District’s minimum wage is $1 dollar higher than the federal minimum.
Several Bain Capital and other minimum wage workers will be available for interviews.
WHAT: Bain / Minimum Wage Protest
WHEN: Monday, July 23, at 12:30 P.M.
WHERE: Inside City Place Mall
ITINERARY: 12:30 – 1:00 PM March from lower level food court to fifth floor the Burlington Coat Factory.
1:00 P.M. – 1:30 March from Ellsworth Avenue to Rally at Outdoor Mall Fountain
Site contact: James Adams – 202.536.7880 | <urn:uuid:10529f9b-05d2-4b1e-a631-c93371600721> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thisisourdc.org/2012/07/25/bain-in-our-back-yard/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903395 | 665 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Seven-year-old Aisha Fisher may not know the alphabet, but it does not stop her writing letters.
When she wanted to know how to spell ''love'', she asked her mother, Lauren Fisher, who reminded her how to form the letters. ''At this point, it's irrelevant that she doesn't know how to write a Q or a G,'' she said.
''When she needs to know those letters, she will ask how to form them.''
Fisher adopts the same teaching method for all of her four daughters aged between three and seven - none of whom go to school.
Instead, they are unschooled, which is a method of home schooling in which a child is free to pursue the things they want to learn without having topics and tasks forced upon them. To be legal in NSW, the method has to be approved by an inspector from the Board of Studies.
Moreover, Fisher and her daughters are full-time travellers and live out of a bus, which she says provides added learning opportunities.
''We engage in life - household chores, long-term projects, outings, visits and down-time - and along the way my girls approach problems with creativity and a quest for answers,'' she said.
More than 50,000 Australian children were home schooled last year, according to a report on ABC Radio National's Background Briefing.
But there are no accurate figures on how many children are unschooled in Australia, according to Beverley Paine, who runs the Unschool Australia website.
Up to 20 per cent of home educated children may be unschooled, she said, while many others are taught using some elements of unschooling methodology.
Paine, who unschooled her three children between 1985 and 2004, said their learning was integrated into everyday life: ''Lessons were generally spontaneous and met the child's immediate learning need.''
Paine, from Yankalilla in South Australia, kept records of her children's progress, but she said ''keeping pace with peers was not as important as the children learning what they needed to learn at any particular point in their development as people''.
Home-schooled children must be registered in NSW and taught in accordance with a syllabus provided by the Board of Studies.
Parents may adopt a teaching method such as unschooling, according to a spokeswoman for the Board of Studies, Julie-Anne Scott. But she said: ''Regardless of philosophy or teaching methodology, the parent must demonstrate that the requirements for registration are met.''
A senior lecturer in Monash University's Faculty of Education, Dr David Zyngier, does not support any form of unschooling because the vast majority of parents are not capable of teaching their children to read, write or be numerate.
''Children on their own without external intervention will never learn to read and write or do mathematics, the three most difficult things that any child will ever learn,'' he said.
''That is why we leave these things to well-educated professionals. That is why we no longer go to witch doctors for medical issues or try and fix our cars, fix faulty electrical systems ourselves.''
Dr Zyngier said there is no robust evidence that unschooled children are capable of the same academic achievement as measured by year 12 results. Unschooling has laudable aims, but Dr Zyngier said ''powerful learning like these approaches need to be offered in all schools to all children''. ''But such learning approaches if taking place outside of the school will only be possible in middle-class families,'' he said.
Samuel Lewis, 13, was taken out of school last year by his parents and unschooled along with his siblings Georgia, 16, and Thomas, 11.
Samuel's mother, Penny Lewis, said unschooling gives her children the opportunity to explore their own interests and learn without the restrictions of a curriculum. Lewis said each of her children learnt differently by watching YouTube and DVDs, experimenting with building projects, computer programming, sewing and cooking.
Physical exercise and leisure activities are also an integral part of her children's unschool day.
''There are no early morning starts in our home,'' she said. ''With two teens and a tween, sleep-ins are welcomed and encouraged.''
However, Samuel has decided to return to high school mainly because he misses his friends.
''My friends miss me, but because it's been a year they have moved on,'' he said. | <urn:uuid:9c14c19e-ff64-4407-9646-4f14ae7bf564> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/1252393/unschooling-truly-in-a-class-of-its-own/?cs=24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976926 | 912 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Oil Demand Growth to Slow in 2008, 2009: OPEC
OPEC on Tuesday cut its forecast for global oil demand growth in 2008 for a fourth time this year and said consumption would slow in 2009, signaling a more comfortable supply and demand balance.
The 13-member group, source of two in every five barrels of oil, also said the need for its oil in 2009 would post the first significant decline since 2002 due to slower world demand and rising supply from non-member countries.
"Market fundamentals have clearly been softening," OPEC said in its Monthly Oil Market for July.
"This trend in fundamentals is expected to continue -- and even gather pace -- into the coming year."
OPEC's outlook adds to evidence that record-high oil prices are slowing demand in the industrialized world and follows other forecasts that a strain on supplies may ease in 2009.
Oil hit a record $147.27 a barrel last week.
Demand will rise by 1.03 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, 70,000 bpd less than the previous forecast, the report by OPEC economists said.
The previous reductions were in June, May and February.
In its first look at 2009 in the monthly report, OPEC said world consumption would rise by 900,000 bpd next year while supply from non-member countries would expand at a faster rate of 940,000 bpd.
China will make the largest contribution to world demand growth in 2009 while consumption in members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is expected to fall, OPEC said.
This year, a drop in demand for fuels such as gasoline in the United States due to high prices and the slowing economy is expected to weigh on consumption, despite growth in China, India and the Middle East.
Oil pared an earlier gain after the report was released but later recovered.
U.S. crude was up $1 a barrel at $146.18 as of 1241 GMT.
OPEC is the latest forecaster to point to easing pressure on the world market next year.
The International Energy Agency, adviser to 27 industrialized countries on energy policy, said last week global demand would rise by 860,000 bpd in 2009, less than the 890,000 bpd this year.
According to OPEC, consumers will need 31.24 million bpd of oil on average from its members next year, down from 31.95 million bpd in 2008.
That will boost the amount of production held in reserve within the group.
"The decline in demand for OPEC crude combined with increasing OPEC capacity should further ease market conditions and likely help moderate prices," OPEC said.
Even so, OPEC said factors such as political tension, which it has blamed for rising prices, could limit the impact.
Consumers such as the United States, by contrast, say current prices reflect a tight market.
OPEC again trimmed its estimate for supply from non-member countries in 2008, citing lower output from Russia, Brazil and Mexico.
It expects production to rise by 580,000 bpd, 110,000 bpd less than previously thought.
Members of OPEC produced 32.3 million bpd in June, the report said, more than demand for its crude and, if sustained, enough to make up for any further shortfall outside the group.
"The year 2009 could see a significant build in inventories, more than enough to offset any downward revisions to non-OPEC supply," OPEC said. | <urn:uuid:3da9f3cd-f5ea-4fb2-89bd-4ae5a1a35a5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/25685363 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963364 | 714 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Practice two different methods to calculate the area of complex shapes. As you work, think about how you are approaching it, what difficulties you are encountering, and how you would communicate your thinking to others.
Students have to calculate the optimal number of bass and carp that a pond can support. They determine and graph information about feeding and breeding areas and solve an algebraic equation to get optimal numbers.
For a given set of data points, the line that minimizes the sum of the squared errors is the least squares line. Find the least squares line that best represents the height and foot length of 17 people in a scatter plot. | <urn:uuid:5a1524dc-8ba4-4474-9f13-9029a945a2e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.learner.org/interactives/?per_page=20&page=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948929 | 127 | 3.8125 | 4 |
TEL AVIV — With less then 24 hours before Israelis cast their ballots, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely expected to win another four-year term as the head of the government.
Questions, however, have begun to emerge over how this term will be different from his previous periods in office.
Current polls suggest that the next Parliament will have a very similar balance of power between Israel’s right- and left-wing groups, with some analysts arguing that Netanyahu has actually weakened his own Likud Party when he merged it with Israel Beiteinu, the party of Russian Jews, last year.
"Netanyahu had thought he would ride into the next Parliament with a huge victory that would define his history as Israeli premier," said one Likud member of Parliament, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on his party’s political dealings. "That is not going to be the case."
He cited a meeting three months ago at Likud headquarters when polls suggested that Netanyahu would win more than 40 of the 120 seats in the chamber.
"There was a lot of talk at that meeting that we could do things that were unheard of, that we would reach over 50 seats,” he said. “It was very heady."
At political events, Netanyahu spoke confidently of bringing lasting peace to Israel by making it a country that no other nation would dare attack. He talked about "strength" and "security" often during his campaign, and they remain words that voters repeat back in equal measures when explaining why they will support the premier again.
But in the months since, Netanyahu has rapidly lost steam in the polls, which currently place him with 33 seats – eight less then Likud and Israel Beiteinu currently hold. Many of those votes have been lost to Naftali Bennett, whose staunchly pro-settler party, Jewish Home, is expected to garner 14 seats, up from the five it currently holds.
Gil Hoffman, a political analyst at the Jerusalem Post, said that Netanyahu would likely have to strike a delicate balance in his coalition.
"The next government Netanyahu will form will have to be moderate because Netanyahu is scared of international pressure,” Hoffman said. “His battles ahead are not just against the ayatollah and Hezbollah, but against (President Barack) Obama, the EU (European Union) and the U.N."
To his left, Netanyahu is likely to place the Yesh Atid Party, led by former Israeli television anchor Yair Lapid. The son of a former Israeli member of Parliament, Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, the younger Lapid has run his campaign by demanding that "special treatment" no longer should be given to Israel’s ultra-orthodox, and that they should be forced to serve in the army and pay taxes identical to those of secular Israelis. He has also demanded that the government immediately revive peace talks with the Palestinians.
On his right, Netanyahu could place a constellation of religious nationalist parties, including the ultra-orthodox Shas movement, or Jewish Home. Neither of which has any ideological points in common with Yesh Atid.
"It could very well be a perfect mess," said a Netanyahu aide, who said the prime minister’s team is still pondering the makeup of the coalition. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, not having been authorized to speak publicly for the prime minister. "It is not what we expected."
The composition of Netanyahu’s coalition could very well be determined by how Israel’s large bloc of undecided voters decides to cast its ballots. Some polls suggest that as many as 15 percent of voters are still unsure, with pollsters saying they are deliberating between Israel’s centrist and left-wing parties.
“It’s not like there is no center or left in Israel. It’s just that we have no one to vote for," said Sara Michaeli, a 28-year-old political science student at Ben-Gurion University in Tel Aviv. "If you aren’t right-wing or a settler, you had this miasma of political groups to choose from who basically stood for nothing."
Earlier this month, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni attempted to form a coalition between her Hatnua Party, the Labor Party and Yesh Atid. The union was supported by many, who said that because the parties had such similar views, it would simplify the choice for voters.
"In the end we couldn’t decide on a power-sharing agreement, so the whole thing fell apart," said a Labor member of Parliament who worked on the deal and on condition of anonymity, not having been authorized to speak publicly. "It was a shame, because it was the one thing that seemed to energize voters."
Dan Ephraim, a student who said he had voted for Labor twice in previous elections, said that the lack of a campaign strategy or stance on issues had convinced him to switch his vote to Netanyahu.
"At least you know what you get with him,” Ephraim said. “And at least he’s not the settlers." | <urn:uuid:ac6f3405-5d26-4bc0-97e8-a42ea1d7459f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/21/180587/netanyahu-expected-to-win-re-election.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984408 | 1,073 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Q. A player’s club is broken when used as a cane or due to leaning on it while teeing a ball or waiting to play.
May the player replace the damaged club prior to the completion of his stipulated round?
A. Yes. As the club was damaged during the normal course of play, it may be replaced during the round in accordance with Rule 4-3. See also Decision 4-3/1 and Decision 4-3/7.
Below you can view videos related to this Rule.
|Carrying 15 clubs|
At the 2001 British Open, final round co-leader Ian Woosnam's frustration bubbled over on the second tee when he discovered he was carrying 15 clubs when only allowed 14.
|RealPlayer||Windows Media Player|
|High Bandwidth||High Bandwidth|
|Low Bandwidth||Low Bandwidth| | <urn:uuid:6ebd51c4-acca-4b9b-a56a-334833bc5973> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usga.org/RulesFAQ/rules_answer.asp?FAQidx=161&Rule=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933113 | 183 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Your survivors benefits from your husband's Social Security work record are waiting for you and will be available to you when you qualify for them in the future.
Since you aren't taking care of a child who would qualify under your husband's work record -- either because the child is younger than 16 or is disabled -- and you are not disabled, the earliest you would qualify for survivors benefits is at age 60. However, survivors benefits that start at age 60 are always reduced by 28.5 percent. You can receive full survivors benefits at your full retirement age as a "survivor," which may be slightly shorter than your regular full retirement age based on your work record. For example, if you were born in 1957, your full retirement age for survivors benefits is 66 and two months, and your regular full retirement age is 66 and six months.
If you remarry after you reach age 60 (age 50 if you are disabled), your remarriage will not affect your eligibility for survivors benefits. One thing that does affect your survivors benefits is whether you will receive a pension based on work not covered by Social Security such as federal civil service, some state or local government employment or work in a foreign country.
If you receive widows or widowers benefits and you will qualify for a retirement benefit that is more than your survivors benefit, then you can switch to your own retirement benefit as early as age 62. This gets pretty complicated, so you should talk to a Social Security representative about your options.
Get more news, money-saving tips and expert advice by signing up for a free Bankrate newsletter.
Ask the adviserTo ask a question of Dr. Don, go to the "Ask the Experts" page and select one of these topics: "Financing a home," "Saving & Investing" or "Money." Read more Dr. Don columns for additional personal finance advice. | <urn:uuid:54be5850-1b88-4bcd-8d36-4fbc9f07f329> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bankrate.com/finance/retirement/social-security-survivors-benefits.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964541 | 381 | 1.585938 | 2 |
May 9, 2013
Call Now! Help Strengthen Regulation of Foreign Labor Recruiters to Prevent Human Trafficking & Forced Labor
Labor recruiters are often complicit or directly involved in the trafficking of workers, exploiting U.S. nonimmigrant visa programs. These recruiters, who operate in a climate of impunity, lure impoverished and desperate foreign workers to the United States, promising jobs described as plentiful and lucrative. They rely on coercive tactics, charging guestworkers exorbitant fees that often force the workers to stay in abusive or exploitative working conditions under debt bondage, forced... | <urn:uuid:a1babefe-25d3-4ddd-8cd0-53d18ba8d6f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.endslaveryandtrafficking.org/get_involved | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920769 | 117 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Mispredicting Our Reactions to Racism
Posted by The Situationist Staff on January 9, 2009
* * *
It’s one thing to hear reports of racial slurs being hurled at individuals or to see such epithets in literature or as graffiti on walls. But how would you react if someone used such language in your presence?
Shocked. Disgusted. Outraged. Even horrified, some might say. However, a Canadian-led study suggests real-life responses to prejudice don’t always reflect how people think they will react.
In the study, which appears in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, undergraduate students at Toronto’s York University took part in experiments which cast them in distinct roles: those observing racist remarks first-hand and others who read about such a scenario or watched it unfold on video.
Students were led into a room and seated in a preselected chair thinking they were waiting for an experiment to begin. They were followed into the room by two males posing as participants: one black and one white.
Shortly after, the black male remarks that he has left his cellphone in the hallway, and on his way out to retrieve it gently bumps the white male’s leg with his foot.
Once the black person has left, the white male who’s part of the experiment makes a remark that is either classified as an extreme racist comment [used the N-word], a moderate racist comment or he says nothing at all. The extreme comment used was “clumsy nigger” and the moderate racist comment was “typical, I hate it when black people do that.”
Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire to rate their feelings in the moment and then asked to select a partner to complete a task.
Those who read about or watched the scenario were asked to predict how someone seeing this happen would feel, and whether they would select the white male or black male as a partner.
This group of observers – dubbed “forecasters” – believed people who heard the slurs would be very upset and more likely to pick the black person over the white person.
But in reality, the racist remarks didn’t affect those who heard them first-hand – called “experiencers” – and they were more likely (63 per cent) to select the white person as their lab partner.
“We definitely were surprised,” said lead author and York psychology professor Kerry Kawakami. “It’s like these nasty racist comments aren’t having an effect.”
“We thought that people would have positive illusions about how they would respond to racism, so that they would predict that they would be much more upset than they were and that they would avoid the white racist more. But we were surprised that it had no impact at all.”
“It didn’t affect them emotionally at all and it didn’t affect their choice of who they wanted to work with at all. Those findings are shocking to everyone in my lab.”
* * *
Kawakami said they are exploring several possibilities as to why individuals would react with such indifference to racist remarks.
One theory is perhaps the nature of the situation was so threatening for participants they simply suppressed all thoughts and emotions. Another is that while people think they’re not prejudiced on a controlled level, on a non-conscious, internal level, they may actually have a lot of negative associations with blacks, she said.
“You’re not going to react negatively towards that person because they’re saying things that you wouldn’t say but that you still might somehow – at least on a non-conscious level – think are true.”
Eliot Smith, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, co-wrote a commentary on the study with Diane Mackie, a psychology professor at University of California, Santa Barbara.
The pair suggest the findings are an example of what is referred to as “a failure of affective forecasting” – people who improperly predict how they would feel and therefore act in imagined or future situations.
Research by Smith and Mackie has explored how emotions affect memberships of social groups that are important to individuals, such as a woman who feels pride if another woman gets a promotion. Smith said it struck them that the new study’s results might be a reflection of that process.
“We definitely found the result very interesting and surprising . . . and we just wanted to put this little twist on it, the idea that sometimes when our emotions do surprise us, it’s a way that we can learn kind of maybe for the first time, what identity we’re in in a particular situation.”
Research also reveals situational cues like things in the environment or that people say can also lead people to switch from one identity to another, he said.
* * *
The study is consistent with decades of psychology research pointing to the same thing: People are really bad at predicting their own actions in socially sensitive situations.
“That point is getting renewed attention as researchers develop more extensive evidence establishing reasons to distrust self-report measures concerning racial attitudes,” said Anthony Greenwald, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, who was not involved with the study.
The racism study harkens back to Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment that began in the early 1960s, in which most people obeyed orders to deliver electric shocks to an innocent person in the next room. Many psychiatrists had predicted that the majority of subjects would stop when the victim protested, but this was not the case.
“The failure of people to confront or do anything about racist comments is pretty widespread in the real world,” said . . . Smith . . . . “People may feel uncomfortable if someone makes a remark like this, but it’s rare they will actually confront them.”
More recent work by Greenwald and colleagues shows that most people — between 75 and 80 percent — have implicit, non-overt prejudices against blacks.
What is responsible for these attitudes? Experts say one culprit is images in television, news and film that portray blacks in a negative light.
“I don’t think what’s in people’s heads is going to change until the environment that places these things in their head has changed,” Greenwald said.
* * *
“It’s important to remind people that just because a black man has been elected as president doesn’t mean racism is no longer a problem or issue in the States,” Kawakami added.
* * *
To learn more about implicit associations, click here. To review previous Situationist posts discussing implicit associations click on the “Implicit Associations” category in the right margin or, for a list of such posts, click here. For a collection of Situationist posts discussing Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, click here.
This entry was posted on January 9, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Abstracts, Choice Myth, Illusions, Implicit Associations, Social Psychology. Tagged: Affective Forecasting, Implicit Associations, racism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. | <urn:uuid:f483f04e-7ce3-4be2-bc15-0c4f89c8419a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/mispredicting-our-reactions-to-racism/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=f35e2c39af | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971495 | 1,541 | 2.296875 | 2 |
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UI lecturer discusses the economic situation in Greece in light of recent parliamentary elections
Many world leaders and economists seemed to be holding their collective breath June 17 as debt-burdened Greece held its second parliamentary election in as many months. Would the Greeks choose the established center-right party that supports international bailout agreements? Or would they choose the upstart leftist party that vowed to tear up the agreements and the austerity measures that went with them? How serious would be the consequences if they did? Political scientist Kostas Kourtikakis, a native of Greece and lecturer at the University of Illinois, is an expert on the European Union and its institutions, as well as on the politics of Greece and the region. Kourtikakis (pronounced kor-tee-KAH-kihs) was interviewed by News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
The center-right New Democracy party won the most seats on Sunday (June 17), but not a majority, and only about 30 percent of the vote. What might it mean for Greece? For the EU?
It means that voters are split on the question of whether austerity and the euro are beneficial for Greece, but for the time being the pro-euro camp seems to be winning. If a coalition government is formed under the leadership of New Democracy, as looks likely right now, the country will continue to abide by the terms of assistance from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. This means that austerity policies will continue.
But the two recent votes have registered a strong opposition to austerity, and therefore I expect that a new Greek government will seek to amend some of those terms and soften austerity policies. Although the EU and the IMF officially oppose any changes in the bailout terms, the new political climate that has emerged after the recent French and the two Greek elections make some changes possible.
Why was this election even necessary?
The first election, which took place on May 6, did not produce a government, which is highly unusual in recent Greek politics. Under Greece’s parliamentary system, one political party or a coalition of parties must assemble a majority of seats in the legislature before they have the right to nominate a prime minister and a cabinet. Since no single party or coalition was able to do that, a new election was called. Things look a lot better this time around. Although no single party has won outright majority in Parliament, the potential for coalition exists.
What has made Greek politics so difficult during this period?
Greek politics has a weak tradition of coalition government. Unlike other countries in Europe, Greek political parties have been very suspicious of each other and have found it difficult to join forces. But from the 1980s until recently this was not a problem because two parties, the center-left PASOK and the center-right New Democracy, alternated in power by securing single-party majorities in Parliament. So, coalitions were not necessary.
The crisis has discredited PASOK and New Democracy, which have seen their voters flee to newer, smaller parties. This fragmentation of the popular vote means that party coalitions are now necessary, but the traditional suspicion among party leaders persists, making the formation of a new government a very tumultuous affair.
As the country has struggled over the past couple years, many have suggested the Greeks have only themselves to blame – for overspending, running up debt, depending on government jobs, not paying taxes. Should we feel any sympathy? Is it right to blame the country as a whole?
Indeed many members of the government and citizens have exploited the Greek state in the worst possible way. But it is important to also keep in mind that many did not. There are many Greeks who work hard, pay their taxes and are frugal about their finances. This seems like a rather simple point, and yet it is a point that many people outside Greece seem to ignore. I am often shocked when I hear oversimplified descriptions of “the Greeks” as lazy tax-evaders who overspend on the easy life.
The big challenge is, in fact, how to empower those citizens who have contributed positively to the society. I have had many conversations with fellow Greeks who are desperate because they feel that their entire life’s work was in vain. The worst is that those citizens don’t feel there is a political force that represents them. “I don’t know who to vote for anymore” is a phrase I hear often.
One additional important point is that Greece’s endemic problems were magnified after the country adopted the euro. The easy credit that accompanied euro membership made a corrupt political system even worse. It is doubtful that the level of Greece’s economic problems would be of this magnitude if it had stayed out of the euro.
The country has been plunging economically under austerity measures, and news reports suggest much of the populace is despondent about the present and future. What hope, if any, do they have of controlling their own situation?
For the last 40 years Greece has been suffering from an irresponsible political elite. Many citizens suspected this even before the crisis, but I believe they – just like the rest of the world – were shocked by the massive extent of corruption and cronyism. Now they have evidence. As a result, they scrutinize their politicians more closely and are much more eager to keep them accountable. Hopefully, this is a trend that will continue. | <urn:uuid:60061ff6-2d12-477a-b6df-2b0dcd0aff32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://illinois.edu/lb/article/391/64427 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975421 | 1,138 | 2.140625 | 2 |
View our latest news below or check out our blog: tenforthemportpirie.blogspot.com
Go green for Port Pirie
- Thursday, 08 September 2011 13:16
GO GREEN FOR PORT PIRIE
Minimise Dust Movement; PLANT! MULCH! WET-DOWN!
It's advisable to keep the garden free of dust and loose soil that can blow around and into the house.
Things you can do....
- Mulch down
- Pine bark can be a good ground cover
- Lay pavers, concrete or gravel around your home
- Plant native ground cover, grass, shrubs, trees
- Hose down paths, roofs, walls and pergolas
- Water your garden
WATER RESTRICTIONS IN PORT PIRIE
- Thursday, 08 September 2011 12:43
As of December 1st 2010 a new 'Water Wise' regime replaced Level 3 water restrictions in South Australia. This is announced in a pdf from Premier Mike Rann and Water Minister Paul Caica. (see link to SA Water website below) The new system means there will no longer be set watering times for using a hand held hose or drip irrigation system and householders will again be able to use sprinklers to water their gardens.
"Gardeners will be able to use sprinklers after 5pm and before 10am on any day. However - this is not a licence to waste water". (refer to link below)
Port Pirie falls in line with the state as the restrictions on water restrictions have relaxed. Port Pirie previously had special exemption to be able to water more frequently.
Watering is permitted at any time by hand (through a hand held hose fitted with a trigger nozzle, from a watering can or bucket) or through a drip feed irrigation system.
Sprinklers can be used on any day after 5pm and before 10am
Washing Cars and Boats
Water can be used to wash motor vehicles or a boat provided the water is applied:
- from a bucket or watering can
- By a high pressure, low volume water cleaner; or
- From a hand held hose fitted with a trigger nozzle
- At a commercial car wash
The hosing down of external paved areas with water is permitted with a hose fitted with a trigger nozzle only;
- To protect Public health
- To ensure the safety of people using the area
- To ensure the health and welfare of animals using the area
- To deal with fire, accident or other emergency
New pools and spas can be filled under a permit from SA Water. Before a permit is issued, SA Water requires proof of purchase of an approved pool cover.
Water can be used for dust suppression and compaction when it is applied from:
- A hand held hose fitted with a trigger nozzle
- Directly from a motor vehicle designed and approved to carry/deposit water
Sports grounds and recreational facilities can be watered under an Irrigation of Public Open Space (IPOS) permit as negotiated with SA Water.
For more information visit www.sawater.com.au or call SA Water on 1800 130 952.
New WATERWISE MEASURES TO REPLACE RESTRICTIONS October 2010 News Release
(3rd pdf down) | <urn:uuid:1359e76b-00b6-4206-afb5-757059dd3355> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thumbsupforlowlevels.com/news?start=12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917321 | 681 | 1.765625 | 2 |
by mr dan
Watch the vlog:
When trying to understand what drives people to accept theological absurdities, non-belivers sometimes come up short of an answer. After all, it does seem pretty difficult to grasp sometimes. Some think the religious are brainwashed, some think they merely stuck with the religion they were born into and never bothered to question it, some think they just get a lot of merriment out of imagining my friends and me burning in Hell for all eternity. While any of these may be true for some, I think for most it has a lot more to do with the id and our desire to be special.
Acceptance is undoubtedly one of our main desires, and though we all know that faith can be divisive within and between societies, there is probably nothing that better fosters the need to be part of an elite group than religion. Like racism, sexism, classism, and a whole boatload of other kinds of chauvinism, religion teaches you that you are automatically better than everyone else just for being a member of that religion. That’s the kind of acceptance and social sustenance that our brains crave.
We all want to be thought of as special. We either want to be cherished as a unique individual, or respected because we belong to an elite organization. But we’re also very lazy, and we’d love to not have to actually do anything and still be important and special.
For instance, a white racist will argue that he or she is the best because he or she is white, and therefore better than everyone else who isn’t white. This kind of chauvinism doesn’t stop at skin color, as people claim that their ethnicity or country of origin – whether Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican, Nigerian, or native-born US citizen – is the best. Sexists, of both the male and female varieties, will claim that their gender is superior. Very seldom do they ever actually give a reason why that is so. When they do, it is far from factual or logical, and usually just a list of rumors and myths. Neither side in these arguments has any relevant statistical data or universal logic to back up these claims, yet they still cling to them. In doing so, they think they eliminate the need to be in any way good or special on their own.
Religion does this too. The idea that believing in Jesus or Muhammed or Vishnu makes one superior to the infidels who reject these figures is almost universal. Yes, believers are governed by rules and guidelines, but I’ve never heard a Christian or Muslim chauvinist argue that they’re going to Heaven because they said the right prayers. They’re going, they believe, because God chose them.
So what about me? Do I get to be special? Well, I kind of would like to think that I am. I mean, I am the president of a regional atheist group (which means they let me hold the gavel). I’m an occasionally-viewed YouTube personality (which means I have a webcam). I’m a regular contributor to a really neat atheist website (which mean they needed content). I play 5 instruments in a rock band (which means I own 5 instruments and have an inferiority complex). And I can do this with my eyebrows. I have no idea what that means, but I think it makes me a little special.
I know that being an atheist doesn’t make me a better person than a believer. I try to behave in ways that make me a good person, but I still wouldn’t say that I’m better than most other people. Okay, I’m totally morally superior to Osama bin Laden…and Rush Limbaugh. But that still wasn’t automatic. I had to work to make that the case. And if I wanted to work in the other direction, I could easily be worse than them. In the absence of a deity, and with the full knowledge that my race, gender, citizenship and ancestry are of no relevance to my worth, I know that I have to make myself into what I want to be, and if I want someone to respect me, I have to give them reasons to.
mr dan is the president of CVA. The views expressed in this posting are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members. | <urn:uuid:6d160bd9-d716-420b-a64d-5abd31336eab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cvatheists.org/blog/?cat=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967978 | 913 | 1.625 | 2 |
[ QUOTE ]
Consistantly HIIT workouts, either produce significant EPOC statistically, but not practically significant, or do not reach significance at all.
In our lab, we have done 3 EPOC studies over the last 3 years. One I was co-investigator on last year and it analyzed the EPOC response to interval training for 30 minutes in females. We worked them so hard that they were near fainting, with one participant actually fainting!
While our results nearly reached statistical significance, they fell short. Further, practically even though 02 consumption was elivated, it literally did not have any practical significance.
We then analyzed the comparison of the interval training to resistance training and found no significant difference between the two in EPOC.
In addition weight training is high intensity training, and would produce similar if not greater effects on EPOC then interval or HIIT training. Therefore, if you weight train already, you are really already incorporating a form of HIIT, at least in terms of the muscle fibers stimulated, temperature changes, and hormonal response, which are what causes HIIT.
[/ QUOTE ]
Is this article somewhere online? It looks very interesting. I would really like to take a look at it if possible [img]/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.
Stian`s training Journal | <urn:uuid:2cb67e81-89f1-487e-bc3b-fbb8fb7b1c5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forums/showpost.php?p=838195&postcount=16 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946781 | 296 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Last week, I had the pleasure of having my first op-ed published in The New York Times, and I was pleased (and a little surprised) when the letters to the editor that were published the next day were overwhelmingly positive.
The op-ed changed a lot during the editing process, evolving from what started as a piece primarily about restrictions on election-related student speech. (For more on that front, see several cases my colleague Will Creeley talked about in greater detail in a recent piece for The Huffington Post.) Switching gears, the editors in particular wanted me to add some discussion of elite colleges.
Thankfully, that wasn’t very hard — my new book, Unlearning Liberty: Censorship and the End of American Debate, has an entire chapter just devoted to censorship at Harvard and Yale. So I chose one fairly recent, very silly case from Yale, which I had previously written about for The Huffington Post.
As you may or may not know, Yale and Harvard have a football rivalry. Every year students and alumni get very excited about what they call “The Game.” And every year, Yale and Harvard students figure out new ways to insult each other. In 2009, Yale freshmen took a highbrow approach, plastering a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 novel This Side of Paradise on that year’s annual “Game” T-shirt: “I think of all Harvard men as sissies,” the T-shirt read. The Yalies added “WE AGREE” underneath.
Just for context’s sake, the full quote reads:
“I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.”
But for Yale, this was a literary reference gone too far. After complaints, Dean Mary Miller pulled the T-shirt, stating, “What purports to be humor by targeting a group through slurs is not acceptable.”
The issue may have ended there. After all, many students are distressingly comfortable with curtailments on their speech. But the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE, where I work) drew attention to what Yale had done, writing the university a letter and asking it to account for its decision to ban an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote. Months later, Yale President Richard Levin expressed “regret” over the incident, stating belatedly that Yale “would not want to give any students the impression that the content of their speech is subject to censorship” by contradicting the university’s powerful and inspiring promises of freedom of speech on campus.
Generally, I think of this case as pretty high on the ridiculousness scale and my editors at The New York Times apparently thought so, as well. I had come to believe that reasonable people would agree that this was a case of an absurd overreaction, but then I saw this student response to my piece in the Yale Daily News by Hannah Schwarz about my article.
Apparently, many at Yale still believe that sissy should be a verboten word. Even Isaac Park, the head of Yale’s chapter of the ACLU, declared it a “slur,” as it “disparages men for not conforming to gender roles.” And again, this is the head of the campus ACLU. Another student is quoted as saying “sissies wasn’t particularly offensive in Fitzgerald’s day; it’s pretty offensive now.” Actually, as I will argue below, I believe it’s the opposite. Then it was an insult that might prompt a man to fight; now it’s an ironic, old-fashioned joke.
The student response brings me back to the harm to public discourse I discuss in detail in Unlearning Liberty. To the students who supported the ban, to the Dean who ordered it, and to the students who still support the banning of a T-shirt with the word “sissy” on it, three very important things don’t matter:
First, the fact that Fitzgerald clearly did not mean it as a homophobic slur in context. The character was saying he didn’t used to be very tough and mature; he is not saying he used to be gay.
Second, in common usage, sissy is not a homophobic slur, and forgive me if I’m just assuming that Stanford kids talk much differently than Yale kids, but anybody using the word “sissy” among people my age and younger is almost always making an ironic joke. It’s an anachronistic insult, and if someone I knew was calling someone else a sissy, they would primarily be making fun of themselves for using such a ridiculously outdated term.
Third, the phrase was not intended as a homophobic slur by the freshman class. As the Yale Daily News reported, the Freshman Class Council president “said the council had thought the Fitzgerald quote simply represented the traditional rivalry between Yale and Harvard,” and were apparently shocked it was interpreted by some students and Miller that way. But, when the rule inches toward “you are automatically guilty anytime you offend somebody,” intentions, context, and actual standard meaning don’t matter very much.
Thankfully, at least one student commentator made the point that even if it was a slur, it should still have been allowed. As student Nate Zelinsky was quoted: “The problem with banning slurs or offensive speech is that any standard is inherently subjective. Who decides what counts as offensive? You? Me? Mary Miller?”
But there’s a more serious side to the story. In her article, Hannah Schwarz writes:
Whereas free speech laws tend to be mostly black and white (the Westboro Baptist Church ruling was 8-1, after all), schools are a different story. An iffier story, a very grey story. Although Tinker v. Des Moines established that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” schools are also supposed to foster tolerant environments.
Of course, I’m a little concerned that Schwarz didn’t know that Tinker is a case dealing with the rights of high school students and wouldn’t apply to a private college like Yale. But what really concerned me was that after a generation of campus speech codes, this quote strikes me as further evidence that somehow the expectation of what campuses are supposed to be like has been turned on its head.
Rather than it being socially accepted that universities should have the maximum tolerance for freedom of speech, the opposite expectation seems to be in place. Universities have succeeded in convincing some students that a campus’ role is primarily to promote a tolerant, comfortable, inoffensive environment. Sometimes this is referred to as a “safe space.”
What I find so troubling about this is that if universities are to be “safe spaces,” they should be safe spaces to engage in thought experimentation, argument, devil’s advocacy, discourse, and genuine candor, even if it is sometimes offensive. Campuses should be an environment safe enough that students can occasionally be wrong about things so they can learn more about the world and talk to people across lines of political, religious, and ideological differences.
I believe that a well-functioning university must be safe for freedom of speech and not so obsessed with any claim of offense. It’s hard “to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable,” as Yale’s own policies exhort students to do, if they must do so while walking on eggshells.
The second, more serious part of this case is that at the very same time it was taking place, a much bigger controversy was going on. That same fall, Yale University intervened in the publication of a book set to be published by Yale University Press called The Cartoons That Shook The World. The book was about the Mohammed cartoons, and the author, Jytte Klausen, had been told that the actual cartoons would be published in the book. This makes sense, as people should actually be able to see what all those people died for in the rioting launched by the images.
But Yale University disagreed and went ahead with preventing a book about the Mohammed cartoons from having any images of the Mohammed cartoons in it whatsoever, even those that had never previously been controversial. The American Association of University Professors, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Federation of Teachers, the College Art Association, the Modern Language Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Education Association, and, of course, FIRE all protested the decision, as did a number of additional groups and university professors, including Eugene, but to no avail.
Indeed, in the very same letter President Levin expressed regret for Yale’s overreaction to the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, he stood by the decision to ban the cartoons. | <urn:uuid:2ebcca90-66ea-453d-a4b3-0f697a00747f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.volokh.com/author/greglukianoff/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969714 | 1,902 | 1.554688 | 2 |
USPS Introduces Internet Service for Government AgenciesThe U.S. Postal Service yesterday introduced an Internet-based service for government agencies designed to secure and authenticate electronic correspondence.
The technology components of the service, called NetPost.Certified, include a smart card, a smart card reader, the USPS' certificate authority, the USPS' electronic postmark, file transport software and cryptographic software.
The service allows government users to obtain a USPS-issued digital certificate stored on a NetPost.Certified smart card. The smart card enables users to send electronic files securely and privately to government computers. Then, the NetPost.Certified service generates an electronic return receipt from the USPS that verifies delivery of each transaction.
The USPS worked with an AT&T team -- including IBM -- to deliver the management, technical and support resources necessary for NetPost.Certified to meet specific government requirements.
"The postal service has for more than 225 years played a pivotal role in enabling faster, more efficient and secure communication between the U.S. government and its citizens," said Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan. "NetPost.Certified was specifically designed to support e-government initiatives by expediting the movement of documents online and ensuring users that those documents sent electronically would be secure and private at all times while in transit."
The Social Security Administration was the first federal agency to sign up for this service. It will use NetPost.Certified for several applications, including obtaining vital statistics records from state governments.
The SSA and the Health Care Financing Administration have worked with the USPS to identify the service requirements for NetPost.Certified, and both agencies have participated in the pilot program to test the service for their respective applications. While the HCFA pilot is in full operation, the SSA is the first agency to implement the production version of the service.
"In Social Security's long-range plan -- specifically our vision for service in the year 2010 -- one of our goals is to create an electronic infrastructure which will enable our customers, anywhere in the world, to securely send us an electronic package of information and for us to reply to them in kind," said SSA deputy commissioner Bill Halter. "With NetPost.Certified, the postal service is providing us with an opportunity to test and integrate technology that will help us toward that goal."
The service, which costs 50 cents per file transmitted, helps federal agencies comply with the Government Paperwork Elimination Act of 1998, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Presidential Memorandum on E-Government.
The USPS is exploring whether to offer this service or a similar service to the private sector for business and personal use. | <urn:uuid:ebde84ef-933f-489e-8bab-ab39fa3df6ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dmnews.com/usps-introduces-internet-service-for-government-agencies/printarticle/70541/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918365 | 548 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Shooting a Panoramic Photograph
On a cold December day, some Library of Congress staff members volunteered to be the subjects of a demonstration of how a panoramic photograph is made.
When shooting a picture, the Cirkut panoramic camera moves in an arc from left to right. The people in the front row are arranged along a corresponding arc, so that in the finished photograph they will seem to be standing in a straight line.
While under the hood, the photographer focuses the picture. Unlike a 35-millimeter camera, a Cirkut camera has no mirror and prism to reverse the image, and the photographer sees the picture upside-down.
The aperture is "stopped down," to allow only the proper amount of light into the camera. The back of the camera is loaded with film, and the gears are wound so that when the picture is taken, the roll of film and the camera move in perfect synch.
Photographer: "…We're just about ready to photograph you, but I first need to explain a little about the camera. This is an antique panoramic camera. It works a little differently from what you're used to because it does not take a snapshot. It takes a timed exposure, so you need to hold very very still. If you move during a timed exposure, you'll turn out a blur…"
The photographer sets the angle of the arc that the camera will travel and releases the wound gear advancing the film and rotating the camera on the tripod. As the camera rotates it photographs one section at a time until it has exposed the entire length of film.
And here is the end result: | <urn:uuid:e0e5d800-fd14-4c48-9c2c-3b2046a02287> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/panoramic_photo/pnshoot.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950806 | 337 | 3.71875 | 4 |
New Horizons at Pluto
Artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft during a planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon. The craft's miniature cameras, radio science experiment, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments would characterize the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and Charon, map their surface compositions and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere in detail. The spacecraft's most prominent design feature is a nearly 8-foot (2.1-meter) dish antenna, through which it would communicate with Earth from as far as 4.7 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) away.
Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) | <urn:uuid:e62a4d61-7cde-4147-acd1-88db8fdf32e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?Category=Spacecraft&IM_ID=546 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91284 | 150 | 3.171875 | 3 |
By Terry Currier
Wireless networking, or Wi-Fi is expanding. Notebooks are coming with wireless connections build-in. Families are buying more than one computer and using wireless routers for networking. According to one survey 52% of households with computers are using wireless to link them. Mostly because it is easier than trying to run Ethernet wire through the walls and ceiling. For me it is fear of my wife catching me drill holes in the wall. Yet surveys have shown over half of the people do not bother setting up any security setting for it. For most it is because it is just to cumbersome. For others they feel there is no need. “There is nothing on it worth stealing.” Finally there are those who do not even know it is available. A friend of mine just brought her son a notebook computer and they setup a wireless network so both could use get Internet connection. When I asked her if it was secure she said “I guess so, why?”
I once saw a demo by Linksys at the Pasadena Computer User Group of how to setup a wireless network. There were so many steps shown I’m sure even after being shown how to do it, people were not going to bother. I think I dozed off myself.
Wi-Fi defense from OTO Software just could not be easier. I put the CD in, ran the install, set it up, and then thought “I wonder if I should look at the instructions.” Actually there is no instructions other than - put in the CD and start the installation. It is just so simple to use, if you have any experience with computers you can probably figure it out. The 802.11b wireless networking signal will typically go out about 100 feet or more with no interference. You know those pesky walls just keep getting in the way and shortening the distance it can go. Well the manufacturers have an answer for that in the new devices that are out. The signal on new 802.11g is suppose to be up to 300 feet. The new 802.11n in prerelease by Belkin and others have a range of up to 400 feet.
I am using the new D-Link DWL-2100AP – Access Point, with the D-Link DWL-G650 Cardbus Adapter. These are the new 802.11g AirPlusXtreemeG.™ Where my Belkin 80.211b access point could get me to the other side of the house, this one pumps up the signal. I took my notebook in my car and even parked across the street I could get a signal.
You may have heard of “war diving.” It is people driving around with laptops and antenna devices looking for unsecured networks. In one test of driving around in Las Vegas they found over 100 open networks in just a few minutes. Some carry GPS units and mark them for upload to websites. Now, pair that up with software such as Network Stumbler. It scans for networks roughly every second and logs all the networks it runs into--including the real SSIDs, the AP's MAC address, the best signal-to-noise ratio encountered, and the time you crossed into the network's space. Most war drives do it for kicks but some have more harmful intentions. It is more than just sharing the bandwidth it will slow your performance.
What people may not understand is that if someone else starts using your network to browse wherever they want on the Internet, it's going to come back to your IP address. In one instance, a Los Angeles man pleaded guilty to distributing pornography spam e-mails. He sent them out using other people's Wi-Fi connections, which he accessed from inside his car. In 2003, a man in Toronto was arrested for downloading child pornography using other people's unsecured wireless networks.
Once Wi-Fi defense is installed it scans your network and presents to you a list of devices (computers) and ask you if they are Friend, Foe, or Unknown. It gives you their IP address, MAC address, Net Name, and manufacturer. From that information you can figure out if they are Friend or Foe to allow them on the network. If Unknown you certainly don’t want them. If someone need tries to piggy-back onto your signal a pop-up window will alert you and ask you if they are Friend, Foe, or Unknown. It worked on both my 802.11g and b cards. If you find in the future you want to change the classification of visitor (you were mistaken, or they just ticked you off) you can edit the visitor or delete them from the list.
Clicking on Wireless Security gives you options for Notification, that will have it tell you when someone new is scanned on the network. The Security tab lets you enable router security. Wi-Fi Defense is truly just a scanning programwhich will tell you when someone is accessing your network, until you enable the router security. I change my setting for my main computer from friend to foe. It only change the color setting but, did not kick it off. If you are using a wireless access point in conjunction with a router (two separate pieces of equipment), make sure you put the address of your access point into the Access Point Address field on the Network tab. Once security is enabled if you need to add new visitors (friends) then you can click on Add Friend To Network wizard.
You can run reports on visitors to see when they came on and how long they were there. Network report shows the MAC address, when they were first there and the amount of time on the network. Visitors will be listed in one of two groups, either Connected or Not Connected. The Vulnerability Report shows a chart of how many hours each day a foe was detected on your network in the time period you select.
At $29.95 it is a good deal, this will help people make their networks more secure. You can download a 14 day trial version.
Winners is a member of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG) is an international, platform-independent, nonprofit corporation (incorporated in Washington, DC) devoted to helping user groups throughout the world. Almost 400 user groups are members of APCUG. http://www.apcug.net/ | <urn:uuid:5daff4f9-2209-4919-bfc3-e0d5013e9da6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.windowsusers.org/wifi_defense.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95944 | 1,302 | 2.015625 | 2 |
The state's newest U.S. senator held a re-enactment of her swearing-in ceremony Saturday at Roxbury Community College in Boston.
Democrat Elizabeth Warren was formally sworn in on Thursday in Washington.
But Warren, the state's first woman senator, decided to hold the mock swearing-in as a way to thank supporters who couldn't trek down to the nation's capital.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan administered the oath of office.
“I was nervous. I’ve never had a Supreme Court Justice administer an oath to me before,” Warren said after the ceremony. “I confess, I lost a little focus.”
Guests and speakers at the ceremony included Gov. Deval Patrick, Lt. Gov. Tim Murray, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, and retired Congressman Barney Frank.
Kagan, the former dean of Harvard Law School where Warren taught, briefly became an issue during the election that propelled Warren into the Senate and ousted former Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who had opposed her nomination to the high court.
Warren said she is anxious to get to work.
“For me, it’s about running this country for people who work hard and play by the rules. Not just those who have Armies of lobbyists,” she said. | <urn:uuid:c24c28a6-bab1-4367-82f4-3273992e76e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcvb.com/news/politics/Sen-Elizabeth-Warren-holds-mock-swearing-in-ceremony/-/9848766/18023532/-/po2c1bz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972025 | 275 | 1.742188 | 2 |
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Posted at 01:04 PM on Thursday, June 14, 2007 by post782
The American Flag represents freedom and has been an enduring symbol of our Nation's ideals since the earliest days of our Nation. Wherever it flies, we are reminded of America's unity and in the great cause of liberty and justice for all.
Two hundred and thirty years ago, the Second Continental Congress officially made the Stars and Stripes the symbol of America. The Founders declared that the 13 stars gracing the original flag represented "a new constellation," just as America embodied new hope and new light for mankind. Today, our flag continues to convey the bold spirit of a proud and determined Nation.
Americans have long flown our flag as a sign of patriotism and gratitude for the blessings of liberty. We also pledge allegiance to the flag as an expression of loyalty to our country and to the belief in the American creed of freedom and justice. By displaying and showing respect for the flag, we honor the ideals upon which our democracy rests and show appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy today. Flying the flag can also be an expression of thanks for the men and women who have served and sacrificed in defense of our freedoms -- from the early patriots of the Continental Army to the courageous Americans in uniform who are defending those freedoms around the world today.
During Flag Day and National Flag Week, we honor Old Glory and reflect on the foundations of our freedom. As citizens of this great Nation, we are proud of our heritage, grateful for our liberty, and confident in our future.
To commemorate the adoption of our flag, the Congress, by joint resolution approved August 3, 1949, as amended (63 Stat. 492), designated June 14 of each year as "Flag Day" and requested that the President issue an annual proclamation calling for its observance and for the display of the flag of the United States on all Federal Government buildings. The Congress also requested, by joint resolution approved June 9, 1966, as amended (80 Stat. 194), that the President issue annually a proclamation designating the week in which June 14 occurs as "National Flag Week" and calling upon all citizens of the United States to display the flag during that week.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim June 14, 2007, as Flag Day and the week beginning June 10, 2007, as National Flag Week. I direct the appropriate officials to display the flag on all Federal Government buildings during that week, and I urge all Americans to observe Flag Day and National Flag Week by flying the Stars and Stripes from their homes and other suitable places. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe with pride and all due ceremony those days from Flag Day through Independence Day, also set aside by the Congress (89 Stat. 211), as a time to honor America, to celebrate our heritage in public gatherings and activities, and to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.
GEORGE W. BUSH | <urn:uuid:05d73a44-8189-4539-b1d3-5ed854930fd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vfwwebcom.org/vt/post782/1018/Flag+Day+and+National+Flag+Week%2C+2007.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934937 | 758 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Spring Checkup - Hair Loss & Aging Skin
Today is the first day of spring and we are almost into the second quarter of the year. We all promised ourselves we would pay more attention to our health and welfare. Some of us have by adding Vitamin D 2,000 to 4,000 I.U.'s and Vitamin K2 as MK7 to our daily regimen. Whether you realize it or not you have reduced your risks to all of the major disease processes including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, autoimmunity and osteoporosis. Now, you have to admit, that was pretty easy.
How we look has a lot to do with how we feel and also vice versa. As we all would like to look good I am going to discuss a few important points about our hair and skin; two parts of our body we are all so aware of.
I never really noticed how many women style their hair with tight curls close to their scalp in order to cover up for what they see as thinning hair. Men don't have that luxury. Hair loss is a part of the aging process, which can be reversed, and more importantly prevented.
Hair loss in young women is more often associated with low levels of hydrochloric acid in our stomachs. In older women it's acid deficiency but often also deficiencies of the hormones: thyroid, progesterone and DHEA.
The Center has one of the few Heidelberg Systems in both North and South Carolina, which measures accurately your stomach's ability to produce acid. This is such a critical piece of our health maintenance that if you have any suspicion of malnutrition you should really undergo testing. (Click here to learn more about the Heidelberg System) When HCL is low in the stomach you cannot breakdown proteins or absorb minerals. Sublimely simple but incredibly important to our health. The best part is this deficiency is correctable and minerals can also be repleted.
Hormone testing is also easily done using a simple saliva panel and blood for testing the thyroid. How you interpret the results of hormone testing is critical because you don't want "NORMAL FOR AGE". You want "OPTIMAL" which is normal for a youthful age.
We discovered, empirically that the Pantothenic acid formula we developed to treat Acne Vulgaris and Acne Rosacea was also a remarkable skin cream. Almost overnight your skin would appear so much younger as a result of the great moisturizing properties of Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid). Acne Rosacea is a very common problem of older people. It is nice to have not only a therapeutic agent for this skin disease but also one that has an anti aging effect.
The message for this alert is that we can both prevent and correct the causes of hair loss and aging skin. If this is a concern for you call (843) 572-1600. Click on one of these links for more information on the discussed products, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2 MK7, Pantothenic acid, hormone panels, thyroid panels, Heidelberg System Analysis. | <urn:uuid:465b3f0b-c5a5-480e-931a-745269052f50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coem.com/programstreatment_Anti-AgingMedicine_AntiAgingSkinCare.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960677 | 638 | 1.75 | 2 |
By Jason Kohn, Contributing Columnist
Modern medicine has brought some amazing technological advances. But at the end of the day, the most powerful medical tool remains the old-fashioned one: expert clinicians with the knowledge to evaluate, monitor and care for patients.
The problem: how do you get medical expertise to all of the places it’s needed? One growing answer: Telemedicine.
Read More »
Tags: broadband, emergency, healthcare, hospitals, robotics, telemedicine, video
By Tine Christensen, Director of US Service Provider Practice, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)
America’s healthcare system has been laid low with a scourge of acute symptoms. Spiraling costs, an epidemic of chronic diseases, and a spike in the senior demographic are all driving a mounting crisis. Throw in a gridlocked U.S. Congress and an unresolved regulatory climate, and a “miracle” cure seems a remote dream.
Lately, however, a healing light has been shining from a surprising source: service providers.
Tags: Cisco, collaboration, follow-up care, health care, healthcare, hospitals, IBSG, insurers, interactions, managed services, medical devices, network, partnerships, patient, preventive care, service providers, technology
To ensure its facilities stay on the cutting edge of healthcare and technology, the federal government plans to purchase 100,000 tablet computing devices for its Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, according to Nextgov.
It’s a move that makes a lot of sense, as Fierce Mobile Healthcare notes in a recent story. Tablets represent the most current technology available, and their presence in a hospital lures medical students to fight for positions, as they perceive the technology as top-of-the-line, according to the article. The devices save hospitals money by preserving funds that would otherwise go towards more expensive PCs or laptops, and they save physicians time by streamlining documentation and administrative procedures, the article said.
There’s one more crucial thing a tablet brings with it to the hospital: telepresence. With telepresence at their fingertips, doctors can remotely follow-up on their patients, yet still see their patients “in person.” They can provide care to chronically ill patients living far from the hospital, review x-rays clearly and precisely, and access continuing education resources.
We’ve had the fortune of seeing the tablet in action at a healthcare facility. Palomar Pomerado Health in Southern California uses Cisco’s Cius tablet to enable physicians to access full patient histories anytime, anywhere. This access speeds the reporting of test results and the delivery of prescriptions and medications. Doctors also use the Cius to support Cisco TelePresence.
While there are security and other mobile device management issues to consider, both Apple- and Android- based applications are beginning to take these barriers into account and fine-tune security on their devices, according to Nextgov. The Cius, for example, built from the ground up with security in mind, has security functions in place at all levels, from the hardware to the network access and from enterprise access to mobile security.
With anytime access to telepresence, patient records, administrative tools, and more, the VA stands to greatly enhance its patient care as it evolves its technology to the tablet. Knowing confidential information remains secure with tablet technology, could your agency or office benefit from having telepresence and expanded network access on the go?
Tags: Cius, healthcare, hospitals, Tablets, TelePresence, VA, Veterans Affairs | <urn:uuid:17d22ad8-27a9-447a-b9e9-5c292c15c85b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.cisco.com/tag/hospitals/?wpmp_switcher=desktop | 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 | 0.932982 | 741 | 2.109375 | 2 |
The Temptations are an American vocal group known for their success with Motown Records during the 1960s and 1970s. Known for their choreography, distinct harmonies, and flashy wardrobe, the group has been said to be as influential to R&B and soul as The Beatles are to pop and rock.
Known to always feature at least five male vocalists and dancers, the group formed in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan under the name The Elgins. Having sold tens of millions of albums, the Temptations are one of the most successful groups in music history. As of 2013[update], the Temptations continue to perform and record for Universal Music Group with its one living original member, Otis Williams, still in its lineup.
The original founding members of the group were Otis Williams, Elbridge "Al" Bryant, Melvin Franklin, Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams. The members were from two former rival vocal groups, the Distants and the Primes respectively. In 1964, Bryant was replaced by David Ruffin. Four years later, Ruffin was replaced by Dennis Edwards. In 1971, the lineup changed again when Kendricks and Paul Williams were replaced by Ricky Owens and Richard Street. The former replacement was soon replaced by Damon Harris. Like its "sister" group, The Supremes, the Temptations' lineup has changed frequently over the years. | <urn:uuid:7f8f42ab-525d-43e2-9fcb-56c2548a2460> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/d8df96ae-8fcf-4997-b3e6-e5d1aaf0f69e | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976455 | 281 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Saturday, December 05, 2009 8:35 PMGreetings,I am a member of lab at Oklahoma State University that works with Microbial Diversity. We work with a program called Arliquien that was devolved to analyze genetic diversity. We are attempting to use it with large data sets, larger then the typical user has used, it should be feasible to run however, the program states that it is input data size limited by the RAM of the computer running it. The best computer we have in a lab has 8GB of DDR2 RAM and when running our dataset, the memory is insufficient to run. The program does not have a cluster implementation version and is coded for Windows (Xp) and requires a GUI interface. What would be the best resource to run the program, do you know of any centers that have 64GB or 128GB shared RAM implementation that will support GUI use perhaps through Windows Server 2008? I am unaware what the final RAM requirement will be for our data set but the smallest one we are running (we have multiple ones, the others are larger) needed more than 8GB, so if these entities do not exist, can you direct me to the one that has the largest shared RAM possible.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 7:51 PMDear Matthew,
Have you had any luck with the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research (OSCER) (http://www.oscer.ou.edu/contact.php) ? They might have some public resources that you could use with your research. Looks like they also have some shared workstations where work can be scheduled.
You might want to try some of the other US based supercomputing centers and see if you can use their resources as an external researcher.
With Best Regards,
SDET II - US High Performance Computing | <urn:uuid:b84bc01c-1c96-4cfe-a837-b2f99f051dae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowshpcacademic/thread/785cad7d-05cc-4af3-ad56-e8693f3dca46 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955136 | 373 | 1.921875 | 2 |
It is hard to me to understand that there really is people stupid enough for that missile -theory, because it has to be the most stupid theory in the history of mankind, and there is no doubt about that. I know I will regret this question, but do you know why that theory is insane? Let me explain:
First of all is what we has seen. There was security cam at the driving gate, which shows us glimpse about the aeroplane, and the great burst of flames while jet fuel ignite. There is lots of talk about hundreds of security cams around the pentagon area, but foil hats has never been able to point out even one of them, so there is only this one piece of video. What we really see in that? It shot frame by every four seconds or something like that, and quality is crappy, but we see pentagon wall, hit and the flames. While you know how tall building is, you are able to measure how tall the flames were, and by that you can estimate how much jet fuel burn in that burst. It is really simple, you need a x gallons of fuel to make fireball wide as xx yards. For example, like fireball like that which video frames proves to be a fact, you need few metric tons of jet fuel. Are you still with me? Have you understand, that there is laws of physic which are ruling in situations like this, and which will force things to fallow each other, because there is no other way. So, if I need to do fireball with the radius of 30 yards, I need some exact amount of jet fuel to do that, because of the laws of physics.
So, what kind of missile hit the pentagon? These foil hat morons say it was a missile, but what kind of missile? There is few hundred types of missiles, but they have one common flaw for situations like this, because most of them are really small. For example, average cruise missile is only 5 meters long, and that is like 15 feet's. These missiles are only ones which can fly like an aeroplane, while other ones are so called ballistic missiles. These you shot from the point a to point b, and they fly in their ballistic path like bullets. Some of these are quite big, like 10 to 15 meters long, meaning about 45ft. There has never been big missiles with wings, not any kind, never and nowhere.
So, what is the point of all this? 757 which eye witnesses see flying and hitting the pentagon is 47 meters long(155ft), and 14 meters high (44ft )from the ground. Cruise missile is 15ft long and 4ft high. How exactly you can mix these two, if you see one? Really? There is thousands of eye witnesses who see the passenger jet, and many of them were able to tell even the company which colours plane have.
Fuck them, who needs the witnesses? There was also 145ft wide path of fallen lamp post in the front of the impact zone, but fuck that too. Who cares, when there is more interest things to ask?
Please explain how this about 15ft long cruise missile is able to carry 8 tons of jet fuel? There is physical evidence which proves that there was about 8 tons of burning jet fuel, so there has to be a way to carry that amount to the place of impact. How that was done? Furthermore, there is bunch of high-res pictures about the pentagon, taken right after the hit, while emergency grew was in it's work. In those pictures we are able to see the impact point, and walls at the sides. There is impact marks which are same as 757 wing span, so what kind of missile we are talking about? It has 145ft wing span, it is able to carry 8 tons of jet fuel, it didn't have any warhead at all. Instead of warhead, it leaves pieces of 757 in the lawn of the pentagon, some pieces of landing gear, motor and shit like that, but there wasn't any explosion what so ever.
You see it in those pictures, there wasn't any flying debris from the building, it all went inwards, like some great force has been pushing towards the building. Outside there were only pieces of the wings etc. which burst in the pieces in the impact. In those photos is lot of interesting things, and that's why foil hats doesn't show them to you. There is pieces of the fuselage clearly visible, pieces of wings, parts of the plane, but not even a smallest sign about the missile. That is a pity, because I really want to see missile like that? 8 tons of fuel, fake wings, carrying plane parts etc. and of course pieces of the passengers which were on flight 77. http://publicintelligence.net/911-pentagon-damage-immediate-aftermath-high-resolution-photos/
Those pictures are exact match with this theory | <urn:uuid:c3388019-b1ff-431e-96b7-12536c86d956> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=403235.msg6194216 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980373 | 1,018 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The authors examined 32 studies published between January 1990 and June 2004. Fifteen compared HRQOL in HCV patients with that of healthy patients. They showed that HCV patients had a diminished HRQOL, most dramatically in social and physical function, general health, and vitality. Nine studies stratified HRQOL by response to treatment measures. They indicated that HRQOL is consistently worse in patients who fail to achieve sustained viral response. Six studies examined HRQOL by neuropsychosocial effects, such as cognitive dysfunction, depression, emotional distress and stigmatization. These studies revealed large HCV-related HRQOL differences. Finally, five studies stratified HRQOL by traditional markers of liver disease. These showed that subtle histological or biochemical changes were not perceived as clinically important by patients, though large differences in HRQOL were found in patients with cirrhosis.
The expert panel concluded that the vitality scale best captured the HRQOL effects relevant to HCV patients. They generated a mean MCID of 4.2 points on the vitality scale. "This value can be used in everyday clinical practice and in clinical trials," the authors suggest. "For example, physicians can measure patient outcomes by administering the 6-item SF vitality scale during office visits. If a patient fails to achieve an increase of 4.2 points over time, then it implies that the ongoing care has failed to perceptively improve the patient's HRQOL. In clinical trials, the MCID can be used as a yardstick to determine whether patients have benefited from the study intervention."
Since the analysis was limited by estimations of MCID based on existing data, the authors suggest that future research directly measure the MCID. Further, they caution, the vitality scale alone may not capture all the key aspects of HRQOL in HCV. | <urn:uuid:30df41ab-844e-4dff-a320-007f09cd3dd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/Hepatitis-C-and-health-related-quality-of-life-67-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948429 | 370 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Tomato spotted wilt virus field meeting June 1, Woodland
In our tomato production area, Tomato spotted wilt virus is showing up. In the past few years, we have seen widespread disease, but generally at low levels (on average, 1 percent or so). The concern is regarding how extensive the incidence will become in 2012.
Event: Tomato spotted wilt virus field meeting
Date: June 1, Friday at 10:30 a.m. for about one hour
- Gene Miyao, Farm Advisor, Yolo, Solano and Sac counties
- Bob Gilbertson, Plant Pathologist. UC Davis
- Ozgur Batuman, post doctoral researcher, UCD
Location: 40150 County Road 25A between Woodland and Davis; NW intersection of CR 25A x State Highway 113.
- Disease identification and detection (field diagnostic kits)
- thrips vector- monitoring
- control programs
- resistant varieties | <urn:uuid:e195c8a6-ed5f-4f7e-9703-6da4c9608837> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westernfarmpress.com/tomato-spotted-wilt-virus-field-meeting-june-1-woodland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90773 | 194 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Texas AgriLife Extension state small-grains specialist Robert Duncan of College Station told a capacity crowd at the biannual Big Country Wheat Conference in Abilene that producers should decide if making grain or forage is their main goal — and even then, not placing their hopes all on one variety.
“And don’t hinge all your wheat production on a single year of data,” Duncan added.
A variety may perform well in one particular place, but not at others. But if a grain variety excels at several locations, it indicates the variety is something to consider.
A prime example in 2009-10 Wheat Variety Trials on Texas Rolling Plains was the Duster variety from Oklahoma State University.
Duncan noted Duster was the overall No. 1 wheat variety in a yield study of eight different locations. What’s more, Duster was the top variety grown in seven of the eight trial locations.
Duster was followed by Billings, also from OSU, and Greer from AgriPro as the top three for all eight locations.
In Abilene alone, Greer averaged 55.5 bushels per acre as the No. 1 yielding wheat there. Billings was close behind with 54.6 bushels.
Duncan pointed out that Jackpot, from AgriPro, averaged 55.7 bushels per acre at Chillicothe, Texas, over three years, demonstrating the importance of looking at several years’ data.
At Vernon, the Fannin variety from AgriPro averaged an impressive 63.9 bushels per acre in 2010.
In Oklahoma, Duster also was No. 1 in 2009-10 trials at four of nine trials. Jackpot was tops at El Reno.
But if winter wheat prices slip back into the doldrums — and especially if cattle prices remain strong — some producers may be looking at winter wheat more for winter forage than grain harvest.
David Drake, Extension agronomist, San Angelo, noted that forage might be wheat, triticale or winter barley.
In the 2009-10 Small Grains Forage Trial, Fannin wheat showed it also could produce forage. Fannin yielded 7,140 pounds per acre in dryland trials at Millersview, Texas, to lead the pack.
Tambar 501 winter barley from Texas A&M University was right behind at 6,995 pounds.
For 2009-10 irrigated trials, the Tambar 501 winter barley was No. 1 in forage at Menard, Texas, with 12,300 pounds per acre.
From that same irrigated trial, RSI 348 beardless triticale was just behind with 12,255 pounds, while coming in close third was AGRFS, another triticale variety, with total forage of 12,037 pounds per acre.
As a hard red winter wheat, TAM 203 came in fourth for overall forage, but was best among the wheat varieties at that irrigated trial with 11,430 pounds.
Extension entomologist Chris Sansone suggested waiting until October to plant winter wheat — into a clean field — to eliminate the bridge for insect pests, such as early generations of aphids, white grubs, Hessian flies and greenbugs. Just a few aphids can spread barley yellow dwarf virus.
“Early planting likely will mean more diseases and insect pests,” Sansone said. “I just can’t see anything gained by planting wheat in September.”
Duster and Coronado wheat varieties seem to have some resistance to the Hessian fly.
Duncan said TAM 111 wheat shows resistance to stripe rust but has some susceptibility to leaf rust.
So far, Fannin and Doans wheat varieties have shown resistance to both stripe rust and leaf rust.
David Holubec, a Melvin, Texas, wheat grower, agrees with Sansone. Holubec said waiting until Oct. 1 to plant winter wheat definitely has lessened his problems with the Hessian fly. He reinforces that by planting resistant varieties.
Paul Minzenmayer, a Runnels County producer, wants both forage and grain. Minzenmayer said he plants wheat for stocker cattle grazing in September, while he waits until October to plant other wheat for grain.
Both Holubec and Minzenmayer said they will plant as much winter wheat for this new 2010-11 season as they did last season.
Minzenmayer plants cotton into wheat stubble, and he emphasized wheat is extremely important as a rotation crop to deal with cotton root rot prevalent in his region.
You can see Texas A&M wheat trials location by location at varietytesting.
tamu.edu/wheat/index.htm, or Oklahoma State variety test results at all locations at www.wheat.okstate.edu.
hardworking wheat: Robert Duncan, Texas AgriLife Extension statewide small-grains specialist, College Station, examines some Fannin wheat near Abilene in 2010. Fannin has demonstrated it can produce both good grain and forage yields, and is resistant to both stripe rust and leaf rust.
GET IT IN: Runnels County, Texas, producer Paul Minzenmayer (left) plants winter wheat in mid-September to provide forage for cattle, but waits until October to plant other wheat fields for grain. David Holubec, a Melvin, Texas, grower, always waits until October to plant winter wheat, which lessens his problems with the Hessian fly.
This article published in the October, 2010 edition of THE FARMER-STOCKMAN
All rights reserved. Copyright Farm Progress Cos. 2010. | <urn:uuid:2336293e-4b5b-4fea-a189-2e0632c481a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://farmprogress.com/kansas-farmer/library.aspx/wheat-triticale-winter-barley-add-list-choices-3/23/644 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950658 | 1,187 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Mold infestation can hurt the happiness and health of your family. Untreated
mold contamination can cause long-lasting neurological damage to your
loved ones as they unknowingly breathe in these dangerous mold spores.
Those with allergy sensitivities and asthma can encounter dangerous
lung and respiratory illnesses once in contact with mold. Still others
may experience symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome after breathing
in mold spores. These dire consequences make mold
removal and mold
remediation is imperative.
Mold is a particularly dangerous foe because of its insidious nature.
After all, you eat mold on cheese and they make sprays for bathroom
mold so how bad could it be? Donít be lulled into a false sense of security;
there is a very fine line between an acceptable amount of mold spores
in the air in your home and a dangerous amount. Understanding how to
test this and what the difference between the two levels is will be
the job of your mold removal contractor. He or she has the right equipment
and understands the subtleties of mold
Once your mold removal
contractor has finished a visual and technical scan of your home
or building using specialized equipment to test the air, he or she will
discuss the findings with you. There are generally three findings that
could be the result of the testing:
- Your mold removal contractor will find acceptable levels of mold in your home and will not suggest any removal.
- Your mold removal contractor will find high levels of mold and will discuss removal procedures and options.
- Your mold removal contractor will find mold encompassing a very large area of your home and will suggest mold remediation.
Mold remediation is the careful, sanitary, and contained method of removing
large areas of mold from a home, building, or other large area. If your
home is found to be free of dangerous levels of airborne mold spores,
congratulations! You and your family now know for sure that your home
is as safe as you want it to be and does not contain a hidden danger in
mold. If your mold removal contractor does find mold and suggests either
mold removal or mold remediation, it is understandable if your first feelings
are not of relief but instead of concern and fear. Allow yourself comfort
in the knowledge that your mold removal contractor is an experienced professional
who understands the process of mold removal and mold remediation and will
use his or her experience to make your home safe. Once your mold
has determined whether mold removal or mold remediation
is right for you, he or she will begin the process. If you are having
mold remediation, you may be asked to leave your home while the mold removal
occurs. Whether you leave or are permitted to stay, certain measures will
be taken to contain the spores and prevent them from moving freely throughout
your home. The process of mold removal is a specialized procedure requiring
professional equipment. Some of the equipment your mold removal contractor
will use includes:
- A polyethylene sheet for containment.
- A shop vacuum for wet vacuuming.
- A scrubbing brush for surface mold removal.
- A steam cleaner for deep layers of mold.
- A HEPA
vacuum to protect against mold spores becoming airborne.
Mold removal and mold remediation are not just specialized arts-they are also highly technical sciences. Allowing your local mold removal contractor to come in and test your home and then to follow up with any necessary mold removal or mold remediation is not just smart, itís the safest option there is. The loss of important family artifacts and expensive furniture is just one side effect of a well-meaning homeownerís attempt to handle his or her own mold removal. The impaired health of the inexperienced homeowner who tries to handle his or her own mold removal as well as the possibility of lingering mold lurking in HVAC systems, under carpets, behind wallpaper and behind drywall, are others.
Donít risk the health and mental well-being of your pets and loved ones. Call your local mold removal contractor and make sure that your home is as safe as it appears on the surface. | <urn:uuid:d2902807-6d7d-450d-acb3-888b897a6de6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moldremediationremoval.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937557 | 864 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Pope's Letter on Reopening the Vatican Library
"The Church of Rome From Its Beginning Is Linked to Books"
| 2007 hits
VATICAN CITY, NOV. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the letter that Benedict XVI sent Thursday to the Vatican archivist and librarian, Cardinal Raffaele Farina, on the occasion of the reopening of the Apostolic Vatican Library.
* * *
To the Venerable Brother
Cardinal Raffaele Farina, S.D.B.
Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church
The reopening of the Vatican Library, after three years of closure for important works, is being celebrated with an exhibition entitled "Know the Vatican Library: A History Open to the Future" and with a congress on the topic "The Apostolic Vatican Library as Place of Research and as Institution at the Service of Scholars." I follow these initiatives with particular interest, not only to confirm my personal closeness to persons dedicated to study at this meritorious institution, but also to continue the age-old and constant care that my predecessors had for it.
One of the two epigraphs affixed by Pope Sixtus V next to the entrance of the Sistine Hall recalls that it was begun ("inchoata") by those Popes who listened to the voice of the Apostle Peter. In this idea of continuity of a 2,000 year history there is a profound truth: the Church of Rome from its beginning is linked to books; at first it was those of the sacred Scriptures, then the theological and those relative to the discipline and governance of the Church. In fact, if the Vatican Library was born in the 15th century, in the heart of humanism, of which it is a splendid manifestation, it is the expression, the "modern" institutional realization of a much older reality, which has always supported the journey of the Church. This historical awareness induces me to underline how the Apostolic Library, like the neighboring Secret Archive, is an integral part of the instruments necessary for the development of the Petrine Ministry and like it is rooted in the exigencies of the governance of the Church. Far from being simply the fruit of the accumulation of a refined bibliophile and of a hobby of collecting many possibilities, the Vatican Library is a precious means -- which the Bishop of Rome cannot and does not intend to give up -- that gives, in the consideration of problems, that look capable of gathering, in a perspective of long duration, the remote roots of situations and their evolution in time.
Eminent place of the historical memory of the universal Church, in which are kept venerable testimonies of the handwritten tradition of the Bible, the Vatican Library is but another reason to be the object of the care and concern of the Popes. From its origins it conserves the unmistakable, truly "catholic," universal openness to everything that humanity has produced in the course of the centuries that is beautiful, good, noble, worthy (cf. Philippians 4:8); the breadth of mind with which in time it gathered the loftiest fruits of human thought and culture, from antiquity to the Medieval age, from the modern era to the 20th century. Nothing of all that is truly human is foreign to the Church, which because of this has always sought, gathered, conserved, with a continuity that few equal, the best results of men of rising above the purely material toward the search, aware or unaware, of the Truth. Not accidental, in the iconographic program of the Sistine Hall, is the ordered succession of the representations of the ecumenical councils and of the great libraries of antiquity on the right and left walls, the images of the inventors of the alphabets in the central pillars all converge toward the figure of Jesus Christ, "celestis doctrinae auctor," alpha and omega, true Book of Life (cf. Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:15; 21:27) to which all human work tends and yearns. The Vatican Library is not therefore a theological library or primarily of a religious character; faithful to its humanistic origins, it is by vocation open to the human; and thus serves culture, understanding with it -- as my venerable predecessor the Servant of God Paul VI said on June 20, 1975, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of that institution -- "human maturation ... growth from within ... exquisitely spiritual acquisition; culture and elevation of the most noble faculty that God the Creator has given man, to make him man, to make him more of a man, to make him similar to himself! Culture and mind, hence; culture and soul; culture and God. Also with this, 'her' institution, the Church proposes again to us these essential and vital binomials, which touch man in his truest dimension, and incline him, almost by an inversion of the law of gravity, towards the lofty, and urge him (...) to surpass himself according to the wonderful Augustinian trajectory of the 'quaerere super se' (cf. St. Augustine, Confessions, X, 6, 9: PL 32, 783). Also with the functioning of 'her' institution, the Church promises herself again today -- as she did five centuries ago -- to serve all men, inscribe this ministry of hers in the vaster picture of that ministry that is so essential to her to make her be Church: Church as community that evangelizes and saves" (Insegnamenti, XIII , p. 655).
This opening to the human does not regard only the past but also looks to the present. In the Vatican Library, all researchers of the truth have always been received with attention and care, without confessional or ideological discrimination; required of them only is the good faith of serious research, unselfish and qualified. In this research the Church and my predecessors have always wished to recognize and value a motive, often, unwittingly, religious, because every partial truth participates in the Supreme Truth of God and every profound and rigorous research, to ascertain it is a path to reach it. The love of letters, historical and philological research, are thus intertwined in God's desire, as I had the occasion to remind on Sept. 12, 2008, in Paris, when meeting with the world of culture at the College des Bernardines and evoking again the great experience of Western monasticism. The objective of monks was and remains that of "'Quaerere Deum' -- setting out in search of God (...) The longing for God, the désir de Dieu, includes amour des lettres, love of the word, exploration of all its dimensions. Because in the biblical word God comes towards us and we towards him, we must learn to penetrate the secret of language, to understand it in its construction and in the manner of its expression. Thus it is through the search for God that the secular sciences take on their importance, sciences which show us the path towards language. Because the search for God required the culture of the word, it was appropriate that the monastery should have a library, pointing out pathways to the word. (...) The monastery serves 'eruditio,' formation and the erudition of man -- a formation with the ultimate objective that man learn to serve God" (Insegnamenti, IV, 2 , p. 272).
The Vatican Library is hence the place in which the loftiest human words are collected and kept, mirror and reflection of the Word, of the Word that illumines every man (John 1:9). I am pleased to conclude recalling the words that the Servant of God Paul VI pronounced on his first visit to the Vatican Library, on June 8, 1964, when he recalled the "ascetic virtues" that the activity in the Vatican Library commits and exacts, immersed in the plurality of languages, of writings and words, but always looking at the Word, and through the provisional, continually drawing closer to the definitive. From this austere and at the same time joyous asceticism of research, in the service of studies themselves and others, the Vatican Library in the course of its history has offered innumerable examples, from Guglielmo Sirleto to Franz Ehrle, from Giovanni Mercati to Eugene Tisserant. May it be able to continue to walk on the path traced by these luminous figures!
With my best wishes and heartfelt gratitude, I impart to you, venerable brothers, to the prefect of the Vatican Library, Monsignor Cesare Pasini, to all the collaborators and researchers my apostolic blessing.
From the Vatican, Nov. 9, 2010
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
[Translation by ZENIT] | <urn:uuid:07e6d7c2-953f-456f-9126-8475858243f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-letter-on-reopening-the-vatican-library | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945166 | 1,814 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Did the long, cold winter leave you feeling just a little bit on edge? If so, then I have just the cure for you. How about some springtime edge-on galaxies to brighten your spirits? During spring, our nighttime sky faces the richest galaxy hunting grounds in our corner of the universe. And a fair number of these galaxies present a nearly edge-on profile from our vantage point here on Earth, providing a unique view. Now a couple of features of edge-on galaxies make them particularly pleasing to view in moderately sized amateur instruments.
The first thing you notice when viewing an edge-on galaxy is, well, it is edge-on (duh!). The best examples look extremely long and narrow. Usually you’ll see a bright central bulge. Often you can see a dark, obscuring dust lane nearly bisecting the brighter outline. Some of the best ones are so thin that they look like a glowing needle superimposed on the dark background sky.
The other thing that’s nice about edge-ons is that more often than not they exhibit a high surface brightness. This is because their light is concentrated into a long, skinny area. By comparison, a face-on spiral of the same brightness and the same diameter will look much dimmer because the light is spread out over a much larger area. This high surface brightness makes the edge-ons good targets when observing under moderately light polluted skies, or when using smaller apertures.
When viewing these, as well as all galaxies, it is important to observe from as dark a sky as you can get to. Even with the relatively high surface brightness of edge-ons, you need as much contrast between the galaxy and the sky background as you can get. The best way to do this is by observing under a dark sky. Also, don’t be afraid to crank up the magnification on these. Their high surface brightness lets them withstand magnification well, and many will not reveal much structure and detail until you “kick it up a notch,” aperture permitting of course.
Enough talk - how about some observing? Here are a few particularly notable springtime edge-on galaxies that I have observed (all using my 13” Dob) and consider to be “must-see”s. I hope that you’ll find observing them enjoyable as well.
NGC 2683 is only magnitude 9.8, but it is fairly long and narrow and so has a high surface brightness making it easy to spot. It appears to me to be nearly exactly edge-on, but I was unable to detect a dust lane. Its core is noticeably brighter but not star-like. Look for it in the constellation Lynx, about 6 degrees nearly due west of that constellation’s alpha star.
M82 (NGC 3034) is half of the famous, spectacular pair M81/M82 in Ursa Major that is a favorite target of amateur scopes. While strictly speaking it is not an edge-on, it’s close enough and shows so much detail that I had to include it here. It is classified as an irregular galaxy - astronomers are not quite sure what’s going on in its tortured-looking interior. Visually, it looks very elongated, and very bright, like an edge-on spiral. But instead of having a small, concentrated core area, much of the middle of the outline is very bright, with a lot of mottled bright and dark areas. There’s also an obvious dark area that crosses the galaxy in the “short” direction just west of center. This galaxy holds magnification well, so don’t be afraid to turn up the power on it. It’s a beauty!
NGC 4026 is the smallest of the group I have described here, but it is worthy of being mentioned. It is only magnitude 10.8, but like most edge-ons, it has a high surface brightness and so withstands high power well. It has a bright, star-like nucleus, and is very needle-like at both ends. I detected a hint of structure in the nucleus at high power. Look for this little gem about three degrees south-southeast of Gamma Ursae Majoris, the bottom left star of the Big Dipper’s bowl.
NGC 4565 is perhaps the finest edge-on galaxy visible to observers in mid-northern latitudes. In larger scopes it’s nothing short of spectacular! This magnitude 9.6 beauty is nearly perfectly edge-on to our line of sight, and in a dark sky the needle-like extensions on each side seem to go on forever. The narrow, dark dust lane extends nearly exactly down the middle from end to end. This showpiece is located just two or three degrees east of the center of the cluster of stars making up “Bernice’s hair” in Coma Berenices. I’m sure you’ll come back to it again and again.
M104 (NGC 4594), also known as the “Sombrero Galaxy,” is not quite edge-on, but it is close to being so. This one will also become one of your favorites, if it hasn’t become one already. It is easily found by sweeping due west about eleven degrees from Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. What distinguishes it from most other galaxies listed here is that it has a very wide central bulge that can be seen extending quite far on either side of its very prominent dust lane. It’s this visual appearance that gives it its common name. At magnitude 8.0, it is also the brightest galaxy on this list.
NGC 4762 I like to call “Son of NGC 4565.” It has a very similar appearance to its namesake, it’s just not as big and bright. It has the same, needle-like appearance, with a central bulge and a bright nucleus. There’s also a hint of a dust lane. It’s in a pretty setting, too, being bordered to the south by an arc of three approximately 12th magnitude stars. NGC 4762 is just over two degrees west and just a smidge north from Epsilon Virginis, making it easy to find.
NGC 5907 is another fine needle-like edge-on, with a bright nucleus. It’s nearly as large as NGC 4565, but not quite as bright. You can find this galaxy in Draco about three degrees south-southwest of Iota Draconis, softly glowing at magnitude 10.3.
If these edge-on galaxies have piqued your interest, then here’s a table with more information on these and some other good edge-ons that I have observed and recommend (you’ll have to wait until fall to see NGCs 891, 7332, and 7339, though):
|NGC #||RA||DEC||CONSTELLATION||MAGNITUDE||DIMENSIONS||SURFACE BRIGHTNESS|
|891||02h22m||42°22’||Andromeda||9.9||13.0 x 2.8||13.7|
|2683||08h52m||33°24’||Lynx||9.8||8.4 x 2.4||12.9|
|3034||09h56m||69°41’||Ursa Major||8.4||12.0 x 5.6||12.8|
|3079||10h02m||55°39’||Ursa Major||10.9||8.0 x 1.5||13.4|
|3115||10h05m||-07°43’||Sextans||8.9||8.1 x 2.8||12.1|
|3432||10h52m||36°35’||Leo Minor||11.2||6.9 x 1.9||13.9|
|3877||11h46m||47°28’||Ursa Major||11.0||5.1 x 1.1||12.7|
|4026||11h59m||50°56’||Ursa Major||10.8||4.6 x 1.2||12.5|
|4111||12h07m||43°03’||Canes Venatici||10.7||4.4 x 0.9||12.1|
|4216||12h16m||13°07’||Virgo||10.0||7.8 x 1.6||12.6|
|4244||12h17m||37°47’||Canes Venatici||10.4||17.0 x 2.2||14.2|
|4256||12h18m||65°53’||Draco||11.9||4.1 x 0.8||13.0|
|4565||12h36m||25°58’||Coma Berenices||9.6||14.0 x 1.8||12.9|
|4594||12h40m||-11°38’||Virgo||8.0||7.1 x 4.4||11.6|
|4631||12h42m||32°31’||Canes Venatici||9.2||15.5 x 3.3||13.3|
|4762||12h53m||11°12’||Virgo||10.3||9.1 x 2.2||13.4|
|5308||13h47m||60°57’||Ursa Major||11.4||2.6 x 0.4||11.3|
|5866||15h06m||55°44’||Draco||9.9||6.6 x 3.2||13.1|
|5907||15h16m||56°18’||Draco||10.3||11.5 x 1.7||13.4|
|7332||22h37m||23°49’||Pegasus||11.1||3.7 x 1.0||12.4|
|7339||22h38m||23°47’||Pegasus||12.2||2.6 x 0.8||12.9| | <urn:uuid:1d8bdea7-8eb6-4fcb-af50-a57e160f34b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2004/dscobel.16.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904697 | 2,244 | 1.570313 | 2 |
New iPad runs 10 degrees hotter than iPad 2 in testing, Apple responds to heat concernsAlex Wagner - Senior News Editor
The new iPad packs several new features that its predecessors didn't, including a Retina display and 4G LTE connectivity. A new report from Tweakers.net shows another way in which the new iPad differs from the iPad 2, though this change isn't something that's been mentioned by Apple. The site has discovered that the new iPad can run about 10 degrees hotter than the iPad 2. It discovered this by running the GLBenchmark for five minutes on both devices and then using an infrared camera to measure the temperatures of both tablets. The new iPad (left) was found to run at about 92.5 degrees Fahrenheit (33.6 degrees Celsius), with the warmest spot being the lower right corner, while the iPad 2 (right) came in at 82.9 degrees Fahrenheit (28.3 degrees Celsius).
Apple this morning responded to the reports of its new iPad becoming warmer than previous models, telling The Loop that the device offers new features like a Retina display and 4G LTE while "operating well within our thermal specifications." The company says that concerned customers can contact AppleCare. Apple's full statement:
“The new iPad delivers a stunning Retina display, A5X chip, support for 4G LTE plus 10 hours of battery life, all while operating well within our thermal specifications. If customers have any concerns they should contact AppleCare.”
Obviously, touching the iPad that's 10 degrees warmer than its predecessor isn't something that's going to send someone to the hospital, but it is noticeable to the touch. As for what may be causing the heat increase, some factors that could contribute to it include the new iPad's high-res display, big battery and its GPU. So far reports of folks experiencing the higher temps seem to be mixed, with some users definitely feeling the warmth while others say that their iPads remain chill while in use. What say you, new iPad owners? Have you noticed your tablet getting a tad warm or does it stay cool to the touch? | <urn:uuid:e1a17335-4ee0-4fbc-b66a-f5d9b02893c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phonedog.com/2012/03/20/new-ipad-runs-10-degrees-hotter-than-ipad-2-in-testing-apple-responds-to-heat-concerns/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946428 | 430 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Meet Taoist-Buddhist Jesus
Thomas Moore talks about the remarkable scrolls that retell the Christian Gospels from a Buddhist/Taoist perspective.
BY: Interview by Laura Sheahen
What are the Jesus Sutras?
They're a group of teachings that go back centuries. A group of Christian monks left Persia to enter China in the year 635, and established a small Christian community inside China. The people at first welcomed them very warmly and were very interested in what they had to say about religion. In fact, the local people called this new religion "the Luminous Religion." The people wrote some of the teachings and stories down, and as they did that, they mixed them with their own Buddhist and Taoist ideas. Some of the writings are very close to the gospel stories.
These documents were kept in a cave because, after a while, these Christians weren't so warmly received. They hid the documents, [which] weren't discovered until 1900. They really haven't been made accessible to us until just recently.
These sutras don't represent a highly developed theology. There's a simplicity about them, a folk quality that represents ordinary people trying to understand what the new teaching is.
Some of the sutras are similar to Christian texts that Westerners would know-there's the story of Jesus, for instance. Other sections seemed much more Taoist. With some, if you were reading them in isolation you wouldn't think they had any connection to Christianity.
When you read the Jesus Sutras, you have to look to find the direct Christian elements. They're there, and they're quite striking. Sometimes they're concealed. For myself, I may be familiar with a certain way in which a Christian story or teaching is worded, and it's worded differently in the sutra. You recognize it, but there's still enough of a difference to make you sit up and say, "Do I know this?"
It makes it fresh. That's one of the key values of the Jesus Sutras. With a slight change in point of view or language, they sound very fresh, and you may consider them in a new light.
For example, there's a part where Jesus talks about karma. That's not something you normally associate with Jesus-you wouldn't, because karma is not a Christian idea. But when it's put in the mouth of Jesus, it makes you think about more familiar words like sin. You think differently.
We're not trying to say thisis
Christian teaching. There's no argument here. But putting the two together makes you think, "I wonder if the Christian teaching might have a deeper understanding if we did associate it with the idea of karma for a moment."
What would happen if Christians were more open to karma?
Their ideas of morality would change slightly. I think this is another key idea in the Jesus Sutras as a whole. A lot of people think of Christianity as a moral religion: what is right and wrong, what not to do, people in authority telling you how to live. The trouble with that is if you follow all these things, you may not really live a moral life. You may be following the rules, but not be deepening your ethical sense as you grow up and live a more complicated life. | <urn:uuid:215c40ae-0065-41ca-8f6f-34d7a3dcddc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2003/07/Meet-Taoist-Buddhist-Jesus.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976627 | 677 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Home | Bus routes | Operational details | Service changes | Operators & Garages | Photo gallery
Little now remains of the once extensive network of "Mobility Bus" routes. These started out in the 1980s to provide an "accessible" service for wheelchair users, and used adapted Leyland Nationals with wheelchair lifts in the centre doorway. Later, minibuses were used, and at one point there were around 100 routes operating, numbered between 851 and 999. Generally they provided one or two journeys per week, meandering for miles around housing estates before reaching some supermarket or town centre and returning a few hours later, although a few routes provided a more intensive operation.
The advent of low floor buses on the regular bus network made many of these routes superfluous, and as routes were converted to low floor operation parallel Mobility routes were withdrawn or scaled back. Now that full low floor operation has been achieved, the Mobility (or, to use the more politically correct term, 900-series) network has reached maturity, with the remaining routes serving areas not covered by the main network, and in many cases serving roads that are not suited to regular bus operation. The focus is thus switched from carrying wheelchairs to providing a service for those who are generally less mobile – indeed, wheelchairs are not often carried now, and the current buses can only carry one each anyway, so this is just as well!
These routes had been covered on dedicated contracts, latterly with two buses (one from Metroline and one from Metrobus) doing different routes of each day of the week, but the scattered nature of the network made this very inefficient. For instance, Metrobus ran a route in North East London from their garage in Orpington, entailing around 50 empty miles per day via the Dartford Tunnel! TfL deferred re-tendering the routes, but after they had been pared back as far as was possible they were put out for tender on an individual basis, with revised timetables designed so that they could be run using buses spare from other routes between the peaks. (Most routes use more buses during peak hours than at other times, owing to higher traffic levels and consequent extended journey times. Buses are also available off a number of school day only routes.)
The 965 was awarded to Transdev London United, whose Tolworth garage the route passes. The original intention was to use the DPS class Dart from route 665, but this proved too large for part of the route, and consequently instead uses a short Dart spare from route K1. Transdev operation began on 2 June 2008, at which time the K1 used DPK class MPDs, but a few weeks later these were replaced by new Enviro200Darts, though the odd DPK may still appear. Running number 329 is spare between the peaks and can thus cover the 965, though it is driven by the driver from route 665 during school terms. SDE3 (YX08 MDY) is seen in Kingston on Monday 3 November.
|Photo © Brian Creasey.|
The 965 is also unique now in that it runs outside the Greater London area, and is therefore registered with the traffic commissioners. It starts in Riverhill, a mobile home park, which is in London, but the only access is via Worcester Park Road, which is in Surrey. It is at this junction that the length problem was encountered, and it takes quite a bit of skill even to get a short Dart round without reversing, but, with only three regular drivers, they should get used to it! The Surrey boundary follows Hogsmill River, the the 965 runs along the south side of this from the Riverhill exit to Tolworth Court before re-entering London. Technically the route is available for use along here, but it is unlikely that anyone would do so.
After passing through Tolworth, the route follows King Charles Road. A regular service was proposed for this road at one time by diverting route 406, but the scheme fell through. King Charles Road is narrow with high levels of car parking, which would make it difficult for buses to pass. It is not too far from the parallel Ewell Road, which the 406 still uses, but there are a number of residential care homes along the road, so the 965 provides a worthwhile service. Buses then proceed via Villiers Avenue, before turning along Portland Road, the final unique stretch of road, where there is a further care home. Finally buses reach Kingston, where they run to a new terminus at Kingston Sainsbury's in Surey Basin. An excellent bus stand was put in here when the store opened a few years ago, but remained unused until the 965 was extended when the current contract started. Even then, it is a pity that such a good stand is only used twice a week, and the bus returns to the garage in between journeys in any case!
The 965 runs on Mondays and Fridays, including bank holidays (other than Christmas). Traditionally the mobility routes did not run on bank holidays, but Kingston Market runs on a Monday, and does not shut down at bank holidays. The other mobility routes all run on different days now; those that run on a Friday do operate on Good Friday, when the main network is running a Saturday (rather than Sunday) service.
Photo Gallery | Bus route list | Operational details | Service changes | Operators & Garages | <urn:uuid:495641e6-6709-4664-af2c-cdeb24a38ed7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.londonbusroutes.net/photos/965.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972604 | 1,112 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Seeing the Moran boats on the upper left side of this foto reminds me that I owe you an answer to Relief Crew 9‘s question, which herinafter, shall be dubbed the “tugsterteaser,” term coined by Jed. Tugster teases maybe but always delivers. Answer comes thanks to Harold Tartell:
“The year of that photo would be early 1962. The M. MORAN (brand new but doesn’t look it) has returned to New York from Pusan, Korea after towing a floating generating plant for the U.S. Navy. She left her builders (Gulfport Shipbuilding in Texas) in Oct. 1961 and made the tow from there directly to Pusan. The MARIE S. MORAN built in 1961 (now TERESA McALLISTER) and sister MARGARET MORAN (now BRIAN A. McALLISTER) were both built in 1961 by Dravo Corp., Wilmington Del. They were on charter to Moran with an option to buy. McAllister took them over with the same agreement later that year, and ended up buying them. They were the first two tugs in McAllister’s fleet single screw with Kort Nozzles.” Thanks Jed and Harold!
So back to more posteriors. After reading the bottom paragraph of this post, decide whether to some the expression should be “negatively posterior”?
L. W. Caddell is a 1990 built 16′ breadth tug working around the Caddell yard.
Christian Reinauer, 2001, 40′ breadth.
Pati R Moran, 2007, 36′
Zachery Reinauer and Thomas J. Brown, 1971 and 28′ and … I don’t know.
Rosemary McAllister, 2008, 36′.
And while we’re looking at sterns, here’s an unexpected detail on Peacemaker, a boathouse behind the fold-down stern. Bowsprite sends along this foto.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except the last one.
And some discoveries lead me to reiterate my creative commons licensing. Fair is fair. More on this later. But please comment on this: what should I do if unauthorized use of my work turns up? What would you do? | <urn:uuid:095f3d53-6c49-4c52-a028-3bbc77b321df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tugster.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/positively-posterior-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934831 | 490 | 1.898438 | 2 |
One of the neatest features supported in the next release of Logos Bible Software is the Biblical People database. It has been included in the alpha releases since the end of June, but I wanted to give everyone a chance to see it.
The example here shows a visualization of all of the biblically-attested relationships of Aaron. The graph shows everyone Aaron is related to and the nature of the relationship. Nodes in the graph are colored by gender, if known, and labeled by relationship. Every relationship is attested to by one or more Bible verses, shown at the left side of the graph. Clicking on a person’s name regenerates the graph with them at the center.
The graphs can be generated for any person in the Bible, and a specialized version of the graph is included in the Passage Guide to show all of the people in the selected passage and their relationships to each other.
Logos Bible Software is more than just an electronic version of a paper library. And it is tools like this that demonstrate how software can help you see and explore the Bible in ways you never could before. | <urn:uuid:89358834-30a5-44d3-826b-d09df311dc2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.logos.com/2005/10/biblical_people/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962136 | 229 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Now, now... I know this is not a recipe but it does involve food and more importantly chocolate!!
This craft covers all of the senses!
SIGHT - Sorting the M&M's by color.
TOUCH - Describing the texture of the M&Ms while sorting.
HEARING - Listening to the M&M's being stirred in the cups.
SMELL - Smelling the M&M colored water while painting.
TASTE - After the craft was over... my mom let the kids munch on a few M&Ms during snack time.
HERE'S WHAT YOU DO:
- Take a one pound bag of M&M's and empty in a bowl. (The amount of M&M's will vary based on the group size.)
- Have your kids sort them by color into individual cups.
- Once sorted, pour enough water to cover the M&M's and begin stirring with paint brushes.
- Once the color of the water has changed you are ready to paint!! | <urn:uuid:ae81dd37-59d4-48cc-bd56-a0cd42c076ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wendyseewendydo.com/2012/02/painting-with-m.html?showComment=1332807279294 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928874 | 218 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Nearly one in four households with seniors 65 years old and older, receive TV programming over-the-air, according to a study released last month from the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS). By way of comparison, the percentage of older Americans relying on over-the-air programming is five percent higher than younger OTA households.
The study also found that of all OTA senior households, only 17 percent own a digital TV.
The new APTS study also found that 41 percent of Americans 65 and older and 55 percent of those younger than 65 have purchased a new television set in the past three years. That suggests that the older viewing population may not be as attuned to recent changes in TV appliance offerings and may not be spending as much time in retail outlets that sell TV sets, the study concluded.
Results are based on about 12,000 telephone interviews concluded in the first quarter of 2007.
For more information, visit: www.apts.org. | <urn:uuid:e8a76840-bcad-4310-8f25-b33599cd0839> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://broadcastengineering.com/print/rf/about-one-quarter-senior-households-receive-ota-tv-programming-says-study | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963778 | 199 | 1.726563 | 2 |
This etude has nothing to do with todays economic or market events. Rather, it is a little acorn for you to bury today and dig up in the future when some partial-equilibrium yahoo on CNBC says that total spending in the economy will get a boost as households refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates. Yes, the folks doing the refinancing will now have more income left over after making their monthly mortgage payment to spend on other things. But what about the ultimate lender who has had his higher-interest security called away from her? She was earning 6% on her loan but now is able to earn only 4% on the same type of loan. All else the same, has not her income gone down by the same amount as the refinancers after-interest disposable income gone up? Yes. Thus, while the refinancer is able to go out to dinner more, the refinancee will be dining out less. You do not have to fall into the trap of partial-equilibrium analysis. Do as Bastiat suggests. Take into account the effects of not only what is seen, but those effects that must be foreseen.
How Do Higher Gasoline Prices Reduce Real GDP Growth?
Another acorn. We often hear that higher gasoline prices will reduce real GDP growth. Why? When I spend more at the pump, the producers of gasoline receive higher revenues. What do they do with these revenues? I would argue that the gasoline producers spend them in one way or another. They may spend the revenues by hiring more geologists in order to find more crude oil. They may increase their dividend to their stockholders. They may repurchase some of their stock in the open market. Thus, so far, what is seen is a redistribution of total income in the economy, not a decline in total income. But what must be foreseen is what a deficiency of gasoline implies for the total production of goods and services in the economy. Just as labor is required to produce goods and services, so too, is energy. If there is a reduction in the supply of crude oil, and hence, gasoline, then not only will the price of these energy products rise, but the reduced supply of these products will imply a reduced ability to produce all manner of goods and services in the economy. Think of a reduction in the supply of crude oil as something akin to a pandemic. If a pandemic were to result in a reduction in the labor force, then not only would wage rates rise, but total output in the economy would fall because of a reduction in the number of people on assembly lines and in offices. Thus, the negative impact on real GDP growth from an increase in crude oil/gasoline prices results from aggregate supplyside effects, not aggregate demand-side effects.
But what if gasoline prices are rising, not because the supply of gasoline is falling, but because the demand for gasoline is rising? What would be the impact on real GDP growth in this case? Its all relative. That is, the demand for gasoline is rising faster than the supply of gasoline. There is a relative deficiency of gasoline. This implies that the growth in real GDP will slow relative to what it would have been had increases in the supply of gasoline kept up with increases in the demand for gasoline.
Paul L. Kasriel, post-April 30, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:3da644e2-ce13-44be-9287-0da5af8b3eb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northerntrust.com/insights-research/market-economic-commentary/weekly-economic-commentary?c=1204/1335213953100_883.xml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968871 | 685 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Article Summary:One of the main benefits of diversity in the workplace is taking advantage of emerging markets thanks to your diverse staff.
Robert, Faheem, Tracee, Kewal, Lois, Hernando, and Dorothy are account executives for a small but rapidly growing company. Their ages range from 23 to 59 years old; two are single, two are married; two have domestic life partners; three are child-free, three are parents; one is gay and one is blind; one is caring for a parent and two children; two are single parents. There are four languages, and six religious faiths represented by this group. This is diversity!
The word, diversity, simply means differences or variety. As used when referring to the American workplace and market, diversity refers to the many differences present among people today that were not recognized in large numbers in the past. In addition to targeting the "mainstream" market, the following suggestions will help you creatively develop a presence within the "emerging marketplace."
It is important to build your knowledge and understanding of different groups, so that you do not rely on biases are stereotypes that exist due to lack of information. Additionally, you don't want to offend people simply because you were not aware of multicultural behaviors. For example, the American "bye-bye" gesture means "come here" to some people from Southeast Asia. Some Koreans can interpret smiling during business transactions as frivolous behavior. Do your homework by conducting research on the Internet, talking to people in the group you which to reach, and getting involved in organizations whose members are representative of the group with whom you wish to do business.
The most effective marketing techniques help you build a lasting relationship with your prospects and clients. This is especially true for emerging markets. The decision makers are interested in knowing whether you are interested in them as people or if you just want their dollars. Developing relationships is a long-term process, and has big pay-offs. Whether you own a motorcoach company, or sell financial services the opportunity for a win-win relationship is limitless. Theses suggestions are targeted to emerging markets, however the concepts work with any market. Start today by selecting at least one of the ideas below and implementing a plan.
- Write articles for trade publications that target the markets you want to reach.
- Buy ad space and use it to write quick tips and techniques.
- Give fun million dollar bills to prospects, network friends etc. with your contact information on the back. (Source www.milliondollars.com)
- Create a postcard size newsletter with fun information and send it to your database quarterly.
- Create ad banners for the athletic websites of HBCU's and their athletic conferences.
- Hire a marketing intern to research segments you wan to reach (ethnic, Gen Xer, Millenials, seniors, etc.) assignment: research and document contact information of special interest groups, media outlets, publications etc.
- Contact Division I - athletic conferences for Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCU's): Mid-eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) 336-275-9961; Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC) 205-251-7573 Sponsor events, hire interns, place ad banners on their websites etc.
- Become a guest lecturer at local educational institutions, libraries, and civic organizations whose student attendees are your target market.
- Offer your own course through community colleges and programs for non-traditional students.
- Send customized (include logo and your contact information) thank you notes to everyone for everything.
- Send unique holiday cards that arrive the day after Thanksgiving. Continue this action every year to develop an identity with the receivers.
- Place your photo on your business card to help prospects remember you. (Source: www.daicolocard.com)
- Sponsor quarterly or yearly "champagne teas", held in an intriguing location to target women for your product or service.
- Sponsor/support athletic and student group events (eg. ethnic sororities and fraternities).
- Join specialized chambers of commerce: African- American, Hispanic, Asian, and women.
- Create an award/list, patterned after the Fortune 500 lists that relate to your product or service. Examples- America's 50 Best Companies for Minorities; Reidsville's Top 10 Most Creative _______. Develop a process for nominations, and selection, including a media event to announce the winner.
- Offer or sponsor a free teleclass to discuss aspects of your product or service, or sponsor a speaker who will reach your target market. (Resource: www.teleclass4u.com)
- Put free information on your website that will draw new market segments, then let everyone know about this service via your business card, voicemail and anything else with your contact information listed.
- Sponsor segments of conferences and conventions held for your target market.
- Buy the desert for one day for meetings held at your convention center if your product is food.
- Supply the centerpieces with your contact information on the bottom.
- Place creative ads, or fun coupons in the conference program.
- Sponsor the music one evening for an event for the Asian, African-American, Hispanic or women's chamber of commerce. Contact your state chamber of commerce for information and listings.
Management guru, Tom Peters says in his book, The Brand You 50, "You are the C.E.O. of your life." Take charge of your personal and business branding through shameless marketing. Have fun while you grow your success!
Lenora Billings-Harris, CSP is an internationally recognized speaker, performance improvement consultant, and author with more than twenty five years experience in the public and private sectors. As a workforce diversity specialist, and performance improvement consultant, Lenora has developed a unique way of presenting sensitive topics in a high-energy, fun-filled, yet thought-provoking way. Her interactive style, and immediately applicable "how to's" have caused clients to invite her back again and again. She works with Fortune 500 companies as well as several professional associations, and non-profit organizations. She also served as an adjunct professor for Arizona State University. Lenora has presented to audiences in South Africa, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Ukraine, and Mexico and Canada. More information on the topic of diversity, Lenora Billings-Harris, and her book The Diversity Advantage: A Guide to Making Diversity Work can be found on her website, www.lenoraspeaks.com. | <urn:uuid:c06afe83-0f6e-472c-9448-13394419471b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sideroad.com/Diversity_in_the_Workplace/benefit-diversity-workplace.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937006 | 1,339 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Camp–parent partnerships reach beyond customer satisfaction; they are at the core of parent–camp loyalty. In most Hispanic communities, the camp-parent partnership becomes a critical alliance that often originates at the camp and is based on the mutual fulfillment of needs. This is especially true for nonprofit camps serving underprivileged minority clienteles where partnerships are crucial for the mere existence of the camp.
In our quest for customer satisfaction, we fulfill campers' needs by providing a fun, secure, and nurturing environment. We also fulfill parents' needs by reassuring them about safety concerns, providing growth opportunities and skills development for their children, and making sure that our parents know that we are constantly making efforts to understand their culture and adjusting our approaches and philosophy to meet their needs. Parents and campers fulfill our camps' needs by providing important feedback, return business, word-of-mouth advertising, and by providing the camp with a prominent position in their communities which can translate into greater funding potential for us.
Loyalty is more. It is the direct result of strong relationships that go beyond partnerships — and although it is mutual, it usually originates with the camper and subsequently includes the parent. Loyalty is the parent's conviction that our camp has made the commitment to go the step beyond fulfilling needs to embrace his or her child and the family's culture as part of our camp's community. More often than not, the camp director is at the forefront of this delicate and important task. He or she acts as moderator between campers, parents, higher echelons of the organization, and finally the board of trustees.
An Eighty-Year History
The Union League Boys and Girls Clubs (ULBGC) Camp is a nonprofit agency camp. Located in southeastern Wisconsin, it serves campers from three different ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago: Pilsen, West Town, and Humboldt Park. For over eighty years, the camp, which is owned and operated by the Union League Boys and Girls Clubs, has been providing services to underprivileged children. As a beacon of outdoor programs in our communities, the camp has created many important partnerships — especially with the parents in the communities that it serves.
Of the 512 campers that attend camp each summer, about 97 percent are children who belong to ethnic minorities (63 percent Hispanic and around 34 percent African American). The priorities, in the past, for these populations have not included sending their kids to camp during the summer. However, the camp's success in forming strong partnerships has helped parents in these communities re-examine their priorities — now they are putting summer camp as a top item on their list of summer activities. Without a doubt this is the result of an overall camp strategy that has involved the untiring efforts of a committed board of trustees (through an active camp committee and various subcommittees), a visionary executive director, and the tireless work of a team of summer camp staff that strongly believe in the importance of the camp experience, the value of loyalty, and the significance of strong community partnerships.
A Worthy Challenge
Creating strong camp–parent partnerships in our communities has not been an easy task. It requires a constant exchange of information that moves upward from the campers to the board and downward from the board to the campers. While passing through the different points in between, (camp director, executive director, and different subcommittees) the information is received, interpreted, discussed, and shaped into the strategies that have helped create not only great camp-parent partnerships but also legendary loyalty that has campers and former campers coming back to camp year after year.
The most interesting outcome of this unique communication policy is that by the second season, parents call fewer times than the first and by the third they stop calling entirely. As the first strategy that demonstrated the camp's commitment to serve parents and campers beyond customer service and satisfaction, it has helped cement a sense of trust for the next eleven years that has translated into more Hispanic parents sending their children to camp.
The next time we asked for feedback from parents, their concerns focused in one of our original policies that restricted parents from visiting their children at camp. Our challenge was to convince parents from inner-city Chicago — mainly first generation Hispanics — that the camp was a fun, safe, and positive place for their children. We realized that by not allowing them to visit the camp, the level of trust was not there. If they were not allowed to visit their children at camp, they were not going to send them.
In a drastic change of policy in 1996, we decided to implement an open-door policy for all parents who wished to visit their children at camp. With the implementation of this policy, we have seen an increase in satisfied parents who feel part of our camp community and in control of what's going on in the lives of their children.
Every weekend at the middle of each session, parents are welcomed to visit their children at camp. Many of them take their kids out of campgrounds for the afternoon and when they bring them back, campers seem to be more relaxed and ready for the following week. Parents leave camp convinced that everything is OK.
Each Sunday afternoon in the middle of the session, we have a giant cookout. Many parents drive more than sixty miles to come to camp to help at the grills and to serve the food. It becomes a family event, a community event. The open-door policy also provides parents the opportunity to bring clean clothes for their children, bring boxes full of goodies, and most importantly, meet personally with the cabin counselors, the unit leaders, and the camp director. It is partnership building at its best.
When some parents indicate that they cannot make the decision to send their children to summer camp because they have not seen the camp, the camp and the clubs make it possible for the parents who lack transportation to visit the camp. In some limited instances, when mothers show concern about their children attending summer camp, we provide transportation and invite them to visit the camp with their children. The Boys and Girls Clubs have gone as far as taking groups of parents during the months preceding the summer camp season to visit the camp and have offered summer camp programs like campfires, songfests, etc., at the clubs during the off season to familiarize parents and club members with the camp and all it offers. These efforts have had a tremendous effect in the way parents in our communities view our program and have strengthened the relationships between parents and staff.
Increased Community Outreach
As more parents discover the positive impact of the camp experience, we realize an increase in both public education and public relations on the benefits of summer camp. For example, for the last two years the Department of Multilingual and Multicultural Programs of the Chicago Public Schools has invited the Union League Boys and Girls Clubs Camp to make presentations about our summer camp programs to more than two hundred parents representing all the Chicago Public Schools. This is a definite product of the partnerships that the camp has created over the years with satisfied and loyal parents. Additionally, for five years, the ULBGC Camp in partnership with ACA, Illinois has held camp informational fairs in five Chicago Public Schools during report-card-pick-up day. This year, we increased the number to ten grammar schools.
As we move forward in our quest to serve the disadvantaged children living in our Hispanic and African American communities, it is clear that we will experience more parent concerns. We are already preparing for these concerns. For example, in November 2005, our Camp Program Subcommittee invited a group of campers of different ages and genders — and from different neighborhoods — to come to meet with our board and evaluate the last summer's program together. The outcome was outstanding. Not only did the campers feel that they had a say in the development of the program, but parents thought that inviting their children to be part of the process was an important step. Additionally, the subcommittee had the opportunity to make sound recommendations that will impact the delivery of camp programs for years to come.
The next step is to hold parent forums designed to encourage direct response and to learn more about their concerns, ideas, and expectations. We are continuously looking for new strategies that will increase our parents' sense of comfort with our approaches. Our camp team is committed to developing partnerships with other organizations that offer outstanding programs designed to improve the quality of life in underprivileged communities. We have partnered with FirstPic Inc., the Office of Justice Programs, and Immersion Presents to implement a crime prevention program while teaching campers about science and technology.
Our camp brochures are bilingual — written in both English and Spanish — and some summer staff are recruited from the same neighborhoods from which our clientele come. Parents are offered the opportunity to volunteer and visit the camp and are constantly reminded of the importance of camp–parent partnerships. The camp director makes sure that the camp maintains a strong presence in the schools where most of our campers attend.
The Future Looks Bright
The future looks bright for the Union League Boys and Girls Clubs Camp, yet we remain vigilant to the many challenges that might arise in our pursuit for excellent service. Our commitment is to serve our campers beyond just customer satisfaction and to create strong partnerships with their parents and the communities in which they live. Olga Gonzalez-Granat, an educator at the Valparaiso, Indiana, school district summarized our core camp philosophy — one that we've been practicing for years: "The Golden Rule is out. No longer are you expected to treat people the way you wish to be treated. The new rule is: Treat people as they wish to be treated."
David Lira Leveron has been a youth professional for the last twenty years. For the last thirteen years he has been the camp director at the Union League Boys and Girls Clubs Camp where he has succeeded considerably in increasing the number of Latino children attending summer camp. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors for ACA, Illinois and co-chairs the Public Awareness Committee.
Originally published in the 2006 July/August issue of Camping Magazine. | <urn:uuid:16092c8c-031c-4b19-8918-549a5d5e1ce8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.acacamps.org/print/27090 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970483 | 2,046 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Theodore Roosevelt belonged to that dying breed of amateur historians, such as George Bancroft and Francis Parkman, who had no professional training in historical research but nevertheless composed sweeping historical narratives, told with great dramatic flair. Daniel Ruddy, a marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies with a lifelong interest in T.R., has stitched together selections from several of these histories along with excerpts from Roosevelt's letters and reminiscences of T.R. by associates and friends, to produce Theodore Roosevelt's History of the United States. More than just another anthology of the wit-and-wisdom variety, Ruddy has made an ingenious attempt to weave together Roosevelt's own words into a coherent whole.
Roosevelt's career as an amateur historian is all the more remarkable because he took only one history course while at Harvard, the required sophomore survey of Anglo-American constitutional history. One of the assigned texts was Edward Augustus Freeman's Outlines of General History, a tome that located Anglo-American constitutionalism within the larger "Aryan" tradition. At Columbia Law School, T.R. studied with John Burgess, who similarly traced the "germ" of free institutions back to the Teutonic past. During this time, Roosevelt wrote his first work of history, The Naval War of 1812, critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic for its accuracy, thoroughness, and impartiality. What reviewers failed to mention, however, was how central the notions of "race" and "stock" were to his analysis—factors that would become a constant theme in his historical writings.
On the strength of The Naval War of 1812, Roosevelt was commissioned to prepare a biography of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. In contrast to the two years spent laboriously researching The Naval War, Roosevelt dashed off the biography in five action-packed months while cow-punching in the Dakota Badlands in the spring of 1886. In a letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, who had helped get him the commission, Roosevelt confided that he did not know much about Benton's life after he left the Senate, not even the date of his death, and had been forced to "evolve" his subject largely from his own "inner consciousness." Being "a truthful man," T.R. preferred "to have some foundation of fact, no matter how slender on which to build the airy and arabesque superstructure of my fancy," and asked Lodge to hire an assistant (at Roosevelt's expense) who could research some of the facts of Benton's life. From such modest beginnings was this "major historian," in Ruddy's words, born.
In all, Roosevelt published eight historical studies, which included Gouverneur Morris and Oliver Cromwell (the latter written while he was Governor of New York), his recollections of the Spanish American War in The Rough Riders, biographical essays of American Men of Action and Hero Tales of American History (the latter written with Henry Cabot Lodge), New York, and his six-volume magnum opus, The Winning of the West.
* * *
Published between 1889 and 1896, The Winning of the West traces the exploration and settlement of America from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi and beyond. In a sweeping first chapter, Roosevelt took note of the great period of "race expansion" by the English-speaking peoples over the past 300 years as they spread out into Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. This race-expansion was itself the result of earlier historical developments that could be traced back to the "half-mythical" exploits of the Germanic tribes. Of all the European peoples, only the Germans were able to resist being absorbed into the "all-conquering" Roman Empire, and to retain their distinctive laws, language, and habits of thought. In time, these tribes conquered most of Europe, though they failed to impose their culture on the vanquished people of the south and were eventually absorbed by them. Only in England did the Teutonic "sea rovers" succeed in slaying, driving off, or assimilating the native population and imposing new customs, creeds, and laws. As a result, England "was destined to be of more importance in the future of the Germanic peoples than all their continental possessions, original and acquired, put together."
In time, the Germanic people of England mixed their blood with that of the Celts and Scandinavians, producing a distinct English nationality that had spread around the globe, spawning further variations and adaptations. Roosevelt hastened to assure the reader that this proud racial inheritance was
not foreign to American history. The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself. It was the crowning and greatest achievement in a series of mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with them. Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, however roughly, the past race-history of the nations that took part therein.
The "Winning of the West" was simply the latest, most glorious chapter in this drama, pitting two great branches of the English-speaking peoples against each other and then following the victorious Americans as they battled the native Indian tribes for control of the continent.
Seen from this perspective, it is not easy to recount Roosevelt's history of the United States in a way that will appeal to today's readers and still do justice to his principal themes. Ruddy reserves his own comments to the roughly 30 pages of "Explanatory Notes" at the back of his book, followed by another 50 or so pages of "Source Notes" that identify where every passage comes from.
Readers interested not only in the narrative but also the sources need to check both sets of notes. Even more irritating is that the narrative often draws in a single sentence or paragraph on multiple sources, creating a patchwork of thoughts, and the sources can come from texts separated by years or even decades-a method that sees and raises historian John Morton Blum's assertion that Roosevelt never had a new thought after the age of 40.
Ruddy makes no effort to rank these sources—each is treated equally—and excerpts from the histories are interspersed with selections from private correspondence. Nor does he distinguish between the views that Roosevelt shared with close friends such as Henry Cabot Lodge and those expressed to more casual acquaintances. Ruddy veers away from direct sources even further when he relies upon reminiscences. And for some reason, never explained, he seems to privilege the accounts of certain historians, such as William Harbaugh's Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1961). When citing Roosevelt's works, Ruddy gives only the volume and page of the 20 volume National Edition, compiled by Herman Hagedorn in 1926. Most readers will not have that set at their fingertips, and so will have no idea to what particular work the "Source Notes" is referring. But it matters if Roosevelt is making a statement in 1896, when he was warning of the menace of the demagogue, or in 1912, when he was practicing those political arts himself.
Ruddy manages to impose his own structure on Roosevelt's writings by opening with a chapter "On Writing History," followed by five chapters organized by eras, beginning with the Revolutionary period and ending with the 20th century. Unlike the grand narrative sweep found in Roosevelt's actual histories, these "eras" consist largely of opinions about key political actors, as if Roosevelt's actual histories were compressed into his Hero Tales. Here and there, Ruddy does throw in a few passages from The Winning of the West that give the flavor of T.R.'s assertive nationalism, but the race-expansion of the first chapter has been airbrushed out of the picture. To make matters even more frustrating, the table of contents lists only the "eras," and none of the personages, making it almost useless (though there is an index that lists key players).
* * *
It is in these portraits of American political figures that the book is most successful. Roosevelt was a man of strong views, with a talent for lapidary phrases. He "cordially despised" Thomas Jefferson for taking on the British with his Embargo Act and then failing to prepare the country for the war his policies incited. Alexander Hamilton he judged "the most brilliant American statesman who ever lived," largely because, in T.R.'s view, the author of The Federalist anticipated Roosevelt's "stewardship" theory of the presidency and his "New Nationalism." John Marshall ranked among "the greatest of the great" because he, too, seems to have divined the living Constitution. George Washington was no genius, but genius counted less than character, and on this score our first president possessed the greatest virtues. On rare occasions, Roosevelt revised his views: Thomas Paine was not, as he once famously declared, "a filthy little atheist," but a filthy little deist. At times, Ruddy offers genuine finds. Tucked into the section on Paine one discovers Roosevelt's own distillation of the "essence of religion," neatly summed up in the words of Micah 6:8, "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Surprisingly, given Roosevelt's admiration for Abraham Lincoln—"perhaps the only genius in our political history"—the entry for the 16th president is disappointing. We learn that T.R. considered him the "most real of the dead presidents," but hear nothing of his misguided efforts to conscript Lincoln to the Progressive cause. Ruddy does offer up a few of the most famous gustatory put downs: William McKinley, T.R. thought, had "no more backbone than a chocolate éclair," and concerning Oliver Wendell Holmes, he observed, "I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone." The portly William Howard Taft escaped any reference to food, but fares no better: "a flubdub, with a streak of the second-rate and the common in him." Still, for all these quarrels, we get very little sense of what it is that Roosevelt himself stood for when he launched his Bull Moose campaign in 1912. Where are T.R.'s scalding critiques of the courts, the corporations, and the malefactors of great wealth? And what about his own progressive platform? As for his greatest political foe, Woodrow Wilson, T.R.'s bitter feud with him gets little attention, even though he wrote several volumes castigating the Democratic president for his policies, especially his refusal to take America to war.
Ruddy has performed an enormous labor of love in compiling Theodore Roosevelt's History of the United States, but he might have profited from following T.R.'s own advice to historians. Addressing the American Historical Association in 1912, T.R. observed that the best historical studies, though based on painstaking, laborious research, should also be animated by a vision that is "wide and lofty." Theodore Roosevelt's histories focused on American greatness as it manifested itself in the struggles of a brave and hardy people to expand their rule across the continent. What Ruddy has given us is part of the story, and by no means the whole of it. Nevertheless, for the average American, this is not a bad place to start, not least because T.R. speaks here in his own words, skewering his enemies, admiring his friends, and withal, celebrating the "boundless possibilities" of America. | <urn:uuid:5d99679c-1189-403b-84e3-3b9f25012855> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1807/article_detail.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971319 | 2,403 | 2.453125 | 2 |
statement of faith
Here you can find our Statement of Faith. These are the core Christian truths which guide us as a church and which we ask all our members to identity that they believe. You don’t have to agree with all of it to come along of course, but these are the kinds of things we teach at Emmanuel as we look together at what God says in the Bible.
Emmanuel Church identifies with the doctrinal basis of the Anglican Church
The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the Ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the Said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal (Canon A5).
We summarise below the doctrine which forms the basis for our work and fellowship at Emmanuel Church:
- There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
- God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
- The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
- Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
- The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
- Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
- Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God’s sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God’s act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
- The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
- The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
- The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.
- The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God’s just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.
If you have any questions about the things we believe, we’d love to hear from you. Ask anything you like via our contact page. | <urn:uuid:2525cd4c-f8f9-4fec-a802-8c30745f51a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emmanuelonline.org.uk/about/our-faith/statement-of-faith/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961278 | 595 | 1.953125 | 2 |
November 28, 2012 11:00 AM
Dr. MarkAlain Déry, medical director of the Tulane University T-Cell Clinic, is on a mission to make it cool to get an HIV test. Or at least no big deal.
The event, scheduled for 9 p.m. on Friday (Nov. 30) at One-Eyed Jacks, features local music and entertainers demonstrating how simple it is to get tested for HIV. All it takes is a mouth swab and results are ready in 20 minutes.
“The HIV Awareness Music Project is my way of mixing two things that I love. I am very passionate about HIV awareness and music. My goal is to get the message to young people that they need to get tested for HIV and for them to see how easy it is to be tested,” says Déry, whose band will also perform at the concert.
“If they can see someone like a musician that they admire and respect getting tested for HIV then I think that is a very powerful message that resonates and inspires people to get tested.”
The message is particularly urgent in Louisiana. New Orleans and Baton Rouge consistently rank among the top 10 cities in the country with the highest numbers of new cases of HIV and AIDS. Youth are particularly at risk: a quarter of all new HIV infections in the United States occur in those ages 13 to 24, according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most don’t know they are infected, Déry says.
HAMP also will raise money for the Tulane T-Cell Clinic, a weekly clinic within the Ruth U. Fertel/Tulane Community Health Center that provides care for HIV-positive patients whether they have insurance or not.
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118 504-865-5000 email@example.com | <urn:uuid:d967b88c-bb07-4553-8e19-6877c2367f94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hlarson@tulane.edu/news/newwave/112812_hiv.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932493 | 391 | 1.960938 | 2 |
How Assisted Living Facilities Operate in Glenrock, WY
Assisted Living Facilities is a housing option for older people who need support and assistance. Statistics shows that the average age is 85 to 87 years old. For the most part, assistive care can be a residential type of facility that either is a converted residential home or an apartment within a senior community. A shared room or apartment is available depending on resources available.
Independence and privacy is encouraged with activities available for both social and recreational engagement. Meals are served and residents dine together to encourage socialization. The residents are allowed to do what they can do while assistance is also available whenever the need arises.
Assistance and services may vary but it will always meet the residents' needs and safety first. A Wellness Center allows residents to speak with the nurse or residential coordinator and gain assistance with medications and other health issues. Usually medication is dispersed and management through a Wellness Center.
Should a doctor feel a resident can benefit from Medicare Home Health Services, the resident can still have a visiting nurse and/or physical therapist come into the home. The residents usually coordinate care for Medicare Home Health Services directly with their own doctor as a home care prescription is required. For residents that are not homebound, some assisted living properties may offer an Outpatient Physical Therapy Center.
Some services such as housekeeping, laundry, transportation, medication management and personal hygiene are considered additional services and should be discussed prior to touring a facility.
For the most part, daily meal preparation is included and served in a central kitchen or dining area. Residents can enjoy their meals with other residents and caregivers are available for assistance.
Some assisted living communities have physicians that makes house calls come to the property. It is not a requirement to use the physician’s services however this type of service is a value added perk to senior living.
Checklist for Selecting an Assisted Living Community
The following questions can help you to evaluate the "right" Assisted-Living Communities for your needs. Checklist will basically increase your reliability and help your decision-making. You can make your own check-list according to your needs.
Location and Environment
- Check the general ambiance. Is it home like? Is it clean and attractive? Is courtesy and warm felt in the air?
- Assess the management, the staff and the residents. Are the management and staff friendly and professional in dealing with you and others? Are they quick in answering and assisting you on your tour and queries? Are the residents happy and comfortable? Are they appropriate companion and friends for your love ones? Do they have positive feedback about their community?
- Listen to your personal observation. Do you like the place? Is this the place suited for your love ones? Do you like the atmosphere? Can you envision your loved one socializing with others on property?
- Is the property close to your home or office so you can visit your loved one?
Physical Features and Accommodation
- Look at the design and safety. Is the place designed to meet your love one's need? Is the floor design, stairways and pathways safe for the weak and elderly? Are the rooms, cupboards, shelves are accommodating for them? Are there any hand-rails to aid walking?
- Check Security system. Is it safe? Do they have ample security system like personal alarms, monitoring, smoke detectors, fire exits and others? Is there any elevator for those who need it?
- Notice the lighting. Is the community has enough lights for comfort, security and safety of the residents?
- Cleanliness. Is the facility free of odor? Do the residents look well groomed and bathed?
Services & Amenities
- Check on their personal care services. Can they provide the personal care services according to your love one's need? What are the services they offer?
- Ask about the availability of assistance and support of the staff. Is assistance available 24 hours or as much as it is needed? Who is responsible after normal business hours a clinician or security guard?
- Inquire on housekeeping and transportation services. Do they have transportation for the resident's appointments outside the community? Is there parking available should a resident still drive? Is housekeeping services available weekly or daily?
- Check the food service. Is healthy and variety of food provided? Can you request special food and snacks? Is there a dietician available to help meal plan for those residents with dietary needs? Is it possible to eat in one’s apartment instead of dining area?
- Ask about medical/therapeutic services and programs. Are there any regular medical check-up schedules or visiting physicians available? How about health and exercise programs and activities?
- Check on the space and comfort. Are the room/apartment spacious enough? Do they have own lockable doors and lockers? Are walkers, scooters or wheelchair accommodated in the apartment?
- Look at the emergency system. Is there any emergency system, telephone, internet access, etc.?
- Inquire about apartment furnishing. Do you have to bring your own furnishing or it is provided? Can the resident decorate it on their own taste?
- Social & Recreational Activities
- Inquire about their program and activities. Are there any field trips, theaters, events schedules?
- Ask about pets.
Are residents allowed to have pets? Does the community have its own pet? Can the community staff help care for my pet as well?
Management and Staff
- Ownership of care community. How long has the individual or organization owned/managed the property? Being familiar with the turnover trend of employed caregivers and administration can help give you an idea of the stability of the property and management.
- Price Increase. When was the last time the property had a price increase? Is it standard for an annual price increase?
Steps to Qualify for Assisted Living in Glenrock, WY
An author talked about "time for everything under the sun". He says that there is an appointed time in every activity under heaven. And when the time comes that we have to decide on sending our love ones to reside in an assisted living community, or as an elderly, you realized you're not capable of living by yourself, then you should be prepared. It will be a hard and emotional decision. You need mental and physical preparation because it is another transition period of your life.
Are you prepared for a move? What are the things you need to do?
- Select a location and determine your budget. First, you have to look for an assisted living facility that will meet your needs and budget. Schedule tours in the general vicinity will help you determine care levels offered and pricing. Do the facilities meet your standards? Are the staff and caregivers nice and friendly? What are the levels of care offered? You can check every important detail that you need to know. It is necessary for your decision making.
- Request an Assessment. After narrowing down your search, request for an assessment to be conducted by the facility. The free assessment is conducted by a clinician representing the property to determine cost and level of care. This individual will review the patient’s history and physical information whether your loved one be at home, another assisted living facility, in the hospital or at a skilled nursing and rehab center. There is no cost for the assessment but the assessment will give you a better idea of monthly expense and care required. This functional assessment will list services and is a customized service plan of care. It will give you specific details on how often and who will provide the assistance or service. This service plan can be changed or updated each month or quarterly depending upon the facility.
- Forms Completed by a Physician. Once an assessment is conducted, the facility will provide you with State Forms that requires the primary care physician to make sure that the resident’s care level is appropriate for assisted living. These forms give the facility full understanding about your medical history and present condition and should be submitted 30 days ahead before you moved-in.
- Sign a Residential Agreement. The agreement is between you and the facility. It is all about the services going to be rendered and the possible cost you are going to pay monthly or annually.
Glenrock, Wyoming 82637
GLENROCK ELDERLY HOUSING Assisted Living Facility Options for senior retirement communities with assistance can be found in home settings from group homes in residential communities, assisted…
- Assisted Living
- Respite Care | <urn:uuid:dc03491b-339c-4b23-a4d4-c996fc9c5adc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://silvercensus.com/senior-care/assisted-living/wyoming/glenrock/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952748 | 1,747 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Eating curry containing turmeric once or twice a week could prevent Alzheimer's disease and many researchers are investigating if it can be used as a treatment in those who already have it.
Professor Murali Doraiswamy told delegates at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Annual Meeting in Liverpool that brain plaques dissolved in mice given high doses of curcumin and in younger mice, the spice appeared to prevent them forming in the first place.
Trials are currently under way that could lead to a curry pill, he said.
Professor Doraiswamy said: "There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic reserach on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits. Turmeric has been studied not just in Alzheimer's research but for a variety of conditions, such as cancer and arthritis. Turmeric is often referred to as the spice of life in ancient Indian medical lore." | <urn:uuid:a5120cdf-e2ef-44a2-9457-d950c0a8c12c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://madrc.mgh.harvard.edu/print/1084 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969344 | 194 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Serving the second largest city in New Jersey and located on the Hudson River across from lower Manhattan, the Jersey City Free Public Library system consists of a Main Library, Branches & Bookmobile to provide access to a diversified collection of 400,000+ pieces of printed, audiovisual, and electronic resources that addresses the needs of the truly multicultural clientele of the city's 240,055 population. With the introduction of an online catalog, users can now search the collection from their homes as well as from a growing number of onsite computer terminals. System-wide automation was completed in 2002. On August 17, 2004, the Library held the grand opening of its first new branch in 42 years, serving the M.L.King redevelopment area, the Glenn D. Cunningham Branch, named after the late Jersey City Mayor and State Senator.
(Adopted October 10, 2000)
We serve the Jersey City community by providing access to diversified printed, audiovisual, and electronic resources that help Jersey City residents
As a taxpayer - supported service of Jersey City, we are committed to serving all individuals and groups in the community through a courteous, well-trained staff in a user-friendly environment.
On May 13, 1889, seven men met in the City Hall office of Mayor Orestes Cleveland to organize the first free public library for Jersey City. These newly appointed library trustees chose as their president Leonard Gordon, M.D., a long-term advocate for a public library. Their first task was to file a suit to force the city's Finance Board to appropriate the funds mandated by state law.
With 15,515 books in stock and with no fanfare, the new library opened on July 6, 1891, in rented, gas lit rooms in two adjacent bank buildings on Washington Street near York. To move from one part of the library to the other, the public had to go out into the street. Clearly, a new structure was needed, one designed to house a large book collection and to provide seating capacity for a city with a population reaching the 200,000 mark.
Throughout the 1890s the trustees acquired land at Jersey Avenue and Montgomery Street, hired a supervising architect, Professor A.D.F.Hamlin of Columbia University, and announced a design competition. The architectural firm of Brite and Bacon of New York was selected, and, on August 16, 1899, the cornerstone was set in place. On January 14, 1901 the new building, today's main library, was dedicated.
As Jersey City grew, so grew the library system. The Hudson City branch opened in 1911 in rooms on the second floor of 337 Central Avenue. Its success, with over one hundred thousand books circulated in the first year, demonstrated the need for additional branches. The Bergen branch (now the Miller Branch) opened on Jackson Avenue in 1915 and the Greenville branch on Danforth Avenue the following year. The inadequacy of these rented quarters soon became apparent and, starting in 1917 with the Zabriskie Street library (now the Heights branch), new branch buildings were constructed.
Physical expansion continued into the 1920s, and the main library itself was enlarged. The Depression, however, took its toll by curtailing any additional growth. It was not until 1962 that the library added a new building located at Five Corners.
The library added services throughout the next few decades. Biblioteca Criolla, a Spanish language library, opened in 1972. Storefront branches were added throughout the city. Media services were expanded and video rentals introduced. Additional programming, access to online databases, and the use of microforms, maps, and photographs have augmented the book and periodical collections.
Now in its second century of service to the people of Jersey City the Library has automated its catalog and its circulation procedures. Through the online catalog, patrons can search the collection from their homes as well as from a growing number of onsite computer terminals.The library held the Grand Opening of its first new branch built since 1962, the Glenn D. Cunningham Branch Library & Community Center, on Tuesday, August 17, 2004, with its doors opening to the public the next day to serve the M.L.K. redevelopment area. | <urn:uuid:1f6ec96b-3fdd-4b2b-b606-b185d585221b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jclibrary.org/about/print?layout=default&page=&tmpl=component | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964823 | 862 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Among the many benefits which accrue to curators who lend works of art to an outside exhibition for which there is to be a catalogue is the opportunity to look again closely at the works of art which have been summoned for special display. In some cases there is a temptation to think that there is very little more to be said about a particular object, particularly if it has been researched and catalogued by a renowned scholar like the late Christopher Gilbert, author of three magisterial volumes on the furniture at Temple Newsam. For Taking Shape, however, with its emphasis on the links between sculpture and furniture and the breaking down of art-historical hierarchies, it has led to some new thinking and conclusions about a number of the loans, in particular the furniture made for the great Picture Gallery at Temple Newsam, as well as the famous candlestand made as part of a suite for the Gallery at Hagley Hall, Worcestershire.
This paper is concerned with the way in which the furnishings of these two great mid 18th century interiors – with their examples of sculptural furniture par excellence – are the key integral elements of much bigger ideas which transform or ‘metamorphise’ their spaces, defying the limitations of architecture, painting, sculpture, and textiles, and create instead something unique which in each case expressed their owners’ relationship with the world. On the one hand at Temple Newsam we will see how a Palladian Saloon becomes instead an ‘indoor’ Arcadia, in which the gods of mythology are metamorphosed into sculpture or furniture and now co-exist with very identifiable contemporary and near contemporary personalities in the shape of the portraits which clad the walls. At Hagley, on the other hand, we see how the ‘outside’ parkland or Arcadia - which had already been created before the house was built and which lies directly outside the windows of the gallery - is now brought into the house. This time it is achieved by again ‘metamorphising’ the raw materials of nature (the trees of the forest, the streams and cascades, the rocky escarpments) into the classic repertory of grand furnishings (pier glasses, console tables, candlestands, girandoles, even picture frames).
Although the two galleries are barely 15 years apart (1745 and 1760) they are very different in spirit. The earlier one is perhaps looking backwards in time, being maybe a last gasp of the Baroque salone or great room of entertainment, as well as looking metaphorically inwards in space at the events which are taking place here and now within the room. At Hagley this is reversed: the feeling is of looking forward in time towards the picturesque movement and its expressions in architecture and decoration - towards semi-circular bays with floor-length French windows, verandahs, elaborate framing curtains and valances, indoor jardinières etc etc - and outwards in space – to the parkland in which a tamed and benign nature is found and which is seen as a place of repose, poetic inspiration, and symbolic of the good life.
Yet in all this there is a strange irony: it has long been recognised (and now confirmed) that the Temple Newsam girandoles and Hagley candlestands are derived from the printed designs of two 18th century geniuses, Matthias Lock and Thomas Johnson. Both have the same wildly naturalistic features with strong sculptural and figurative elements. But this is where the similarities end, and not just because they were carved by different hands. The Temple Newsam girandoles are entirely gilt; matt and burnished, gleaming and shimmering as if made of gold. And this is the next degree of metamorphosis: in the hands of the genius artist or alchemist James Pascall a base material, wood, has been transformed into ‘gold’, the material of the gods even if it merely resembles ormolu or gilt bronze. Indeed much of the ornament on the whole suite of furniture is quite clearly simulating applied gilt bronze mounts on the chairs as well as on the girandoles: Pascall’s carving even includes faux screw heads so as to complete the illusion. We are indeed in a golden Arcadia – maybe even the foothills of Mount Parnassus itself. | <urn:uuid:1ef888cc-dfaf-4231-9345-04c0f387b9dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi-journal/homepage/view-occasional-papers/nature-mythology/page-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964517 | 899 | 2.09375 | 2 |
For starters, the documentation of his CIA alias – ‘Tim Osman’ is all over the web.
Flashback: Pakistani president Asif Zardari admits creating terrorist groups | Western Governments Funding Taliban & Al-Qaeda To Kill U.S. Troops, Destabilize Countries | Taliban flee new U.S. drive in Afghanistan | Delta Force Officer: We Weren’t Allowed to Kill Osama Bin Laden | Low Level Driver Convicted Of Terror Charges While Bin Laden’s Senior Body Guard Was Let Go | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Report: U.S. Gave Green Light For Taliban Prison Attack | New Bin Laden Video: 100% Forgery | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran | US Allowed Taliban, Al-Qaeda Airlift Evacuation
Luke Ryland, DailyKOS.com
July 31, 2009
In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”
These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.
As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.
Control of Central Asia
The goals of the American ‘statesmen’ directing these activities included control of Central Asia’s vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.
The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.
Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.
In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)
According to Sibel:
This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.
Of course, Sibel isn’t the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:
“were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China.”
And also that:
“Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia.”
In a separate interview, Margolis said:
“That illustrates Henry Kissinger’s bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America’s enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.
The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden’s collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this.”
Last year, Sibel came up with a brilliant idea to expose some of the criminal activity that she is forbidden to speak about: she published eighteen photos, titled “Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery,” of people involved the operations that she has been trying to expose. One of those people is Anwar Yusuf Turani, the so-called ‘President-in-exile’ of East Turkistan (Xinjiang). This so-called ‘government-in-exile’ was ‘established‘ on Capitol Hill in September, 2004, drawing a sharp rebuke from China.
Also featured in Sibel’s Rogues Gallery was ‘former’ spook Graham Fuller, who was instrumental in the establishment of Turani’s ‘government-in-exile’ of East Turkistan. Fuller has written extensively on Xinjiang, and his “Xinjiang Project” for Rand Corp is apparentlythe blueprint for Turani’s government-in-exile. Sibel has openly stated her contempt for Mr. Fuller.
The Turkish establishment has a long history of mingling matters of state with terrorism, drug trafficking and other criminal activity, best exemplified by the 1996 Susurluk incident which exposed the so-called Deep State.
Sibel states that “a few main Susurluk actors also ended up in Chicago where they centered ‘certain’ aspects of their operations (Especially East Turkistan-Uighurs).”
One of the main Deep State actors, Mehmet Eymur, former Chief of Counter-Terrorism for Turkey’s intelligence agency, the MIT, features in Sibel’s Rogues Gallery. Eymur was given exile in the US. Another member of Sibel’s gallery, Marc Grossman was Ambassador to Turkey at the time that the Susurluk incident exposed the Deep State. He was recalled shortly after, prior to the end of his assignment, as was Grossman’s underling, Major Douglas Dickerson, who later tried to recruit Sibel into the spying ring.
The modus operandi of the Susurluk gang is the same as the activities that Sibel describes as taking place in Central Asia, the only difference is that this activity was exposed in Turkey a decade ago, whereas the organs of the state in the US, including the corporate media, have successfully suppressed this story.
Chechnya, Albania & Kosovo
Central Asia is not the only place where American foreign policy makers have shared interests with Bin Laden. Consider the war in Chechnya. As I documented here, Richard Perle and Stephen Solarz (both in Sibel’s gallery) joined other leading neocon luminaries such as Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Frank Gaffney, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, and Morton Abramowitz in a group called the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). For his part, Bin Laden donated $25 million to the cause, as well as numerous fighters, and technical expertise, establishing training camps.
US interests also converged with those of al-Qaeda in Kosovo and Albania.
Of course, it is not uncommon for circumstances to arise where ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ On the other hand, in a transparent democracy, we expect a full accounting of the circumstances leading up to a tragic event like 9/11. The 9/11 Commission was supposed to provide exactly that.
Sibel has famously been dubbed the most gagged woman in America, having the State Secrets Privilege imposed on her twice. Her 3.5 hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote which refers readers to her classified testimony. In the interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. In the interview, Sibel reiterates that when invoking the gag orders, the US government claims that it is protecting ” ‘sensitive diplomatic relations,’ protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia…” This is no doubt partially true, but it is also true that they are protecting themselves too, and it is a crime in the US to use classification and secrecy to cover up crimes.
As Sibel says in the interview:
I have information about things that our government has lied to us about... those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.
The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.
It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.
The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.
Source | See also under 9/11: Pentagon-handpicked 9/11 families want Gitmo kept open | Ex-FBI Agent: Why I Support a New 9/11 Investigation | Professor fingers Thermite charges as responsible for 9/11 demolition | Obama Administration Shuts Down 9/11 Families Lawsuit | Leaked documents in 9/11 suit show House of Saud links to ‘Al-Qaeda’, extremism | CIA: Bin Laden still in Pakistan | Memo: 9/11 Commission Witnesses Were Intimidated By Government “Minders” | National Post columnist covers architect’s presentation at 9/11 truth event | US Homeland Security forced to retract statement accusing Canada of importing 9/11 terrorists | 9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie About 9/11 | Study claims ‘highly engineered explosive’ found in WTC rubble | Huffington Post article calls for new 9/11 investigation | Fire Consumes Beijing Skyscraper, Unlike WTC7 Building Does Not Collapse | Former President Jimmy Carter Supports Call For New 9/11 Investigation | Newly Uncovered WTC 7 Video Betrays More Foreknowledge Of Collapse | FDNY Lieutenant Admitted Plan To ‘Take Down’ WTC 7 | Sept. 11 suspects want to “confess” | Former ISI Chief: Mumbai And 9/11 Both “Inside Jobs” | Delta Force Officer: We Weren’t Allowed to Kill Osama Bin Laden | National Post Columnist: Who dares to question the ‘Big Lie of 9/11? | Liberal candidate asked to step down over 9/11 comments | Key Witness to WTC 7 Explosions Dead at 53 | Post-traumatic stress disorder may affect up to 70,000 New Yorkers: Sept. 11 study | MSNBC News Anchor: Bush Administration “Allowed 9/11 Attacks To Occur” | Nader Calls For New 9/11 Investigation | NIST WTC 7 Report: Shameful, Embarrassing And Completely Flawed | Building near twin towers felled by fire, not explosives: report | US Government Questioned on Forged Letter Linking Saddam to 9/11 | White House ‘buried British intelligence on Iraq WMDs’ | A City’s Police Force Now Doubts Focus on Terrorism | Who knows what happened on 9/11? | Wolfowitz: U.S. Future Hinges on Another ‘Crisis’ | McCain adviser says terrorist attack would boost campaign | Emergency Official Witnessed Dead Bodies In WTC 7 Prior to Collapse | Impeachment Articles Against Bush Presented in US Congress | The Financial Times Covers the 9/11 Truth Movement | Guantanamo 9/11 suspects on trial | Legendary Author Gore Vidal Calls 9/11, Removal of Magna Carta a Coup d’Etat | Rumsfeld to Pentagon Media Analysts: America Needs another Attack | FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report | 9/11 widows call for new investigation after revelations of White House, commission ties | Director of 9/11 commission “secretly spoke with Rove, White House” | Eight U.S. State Department Veterans Challenge the Official Account of 9/11 | Twenty-five U.S. Military Officers Challenge Official Account of 9/11 | Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job | 9/11 – the big cover-up? | U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos | George W Bush Authorized 911 Attacks Says Government Insider | Conspiracy crusader doubts official 9/11 version | Swiss scientists 95% sure that Bin Laden recording was fake | <urn:uuid:3ce39646-de60-466c-9ec6-8f03eefc59e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://statismwatch.ca/2009/07/31/a-sibel-edmonds-bombshell-bin-laden-worked-for-us-until-911/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934073 | 2,773 | 1.640625 | 2 |
In 1931 Rolls-Royce purchased Bentley Motors and all its assets, starting a partnership that would last over 70 years. With the sale, the Bentley factory moved from Cricklewood to Derby and the Bentley produced there are commonly referred to as 'Derby-Bentleys.' Introduced in 1933 the first of these 'Derby-Bentleys' was simply referred to as the 3½ Litre and was very similar in design to the Rolls Royce 20/25 launched in the same year.
To comply with Bentley's sporty image, the 3½ Litre was equipped with a slightly more powerful engine. This started a tradition of Bentleys being the more powerful and sportier variant of its Rolls Royce counterpart. Power of the six cylinder engine was increased by the addition of a second Carburetor and a slight increasement of the compression ratio. Compared to the previous Bentley models, the 3½ Litre was quite a step backwards technically.
The similarity in design between the Rolls Royce and Bentley did make things a lot easier for the many coach-builders which were responsible for the custom coachwork fitted on the two chassis. For the bodies fitted on the Bentley chassis, the coach-builders usually penned a slightly more aerodynamic and sportive designs. The coach-builders included Mulliner, James Young and Vandenplas.
In 1936 Rolls Royce launched the 25/30 model, closely followed by the Bentley 4¼ Litre. For the 4¼ Litre the second Carburetor and higher compression ratio was retained. Production lasted until the outbreak of the War, with over 1200 examples produced, more than of any other Bentley model before. The six-cylinder engine was used in various post-War models as well, until it was replaced by a V8 engine.
Pictured is a 4 1/4 Litre bodied by Belgian coachbuilder Vesters Neirinck. This unique Bentley is seen here at the 2001 Paleis 't Loo Concours d'Elegance, where the 'Deby-Bentleys' were celebrated with a separate class.
V&N made 11 bodies on Derby rolling chassis from which 6 totally different DHC's. A very interesting new book is Bentley Beauty. You find there the existing cars from V&N. Have you more info about this coachbuilder?
Above car his first owner was M. Pater from Brussels and the present owner is myself.see: www.trouwautoklassiek.nl | <urn:uuid:2539f113-998a-47da-a794-5cd670a06e02> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/2029/Bentley-4.25-Litre-Vesters-and-Neirinck-Drophead-Coupe.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965486 | 514 | 1.867188 | 2 |
“A few months ago, when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia.” – President Obama
This is what Mitt Romney said in a March 26 interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN:
“This is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors. The idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed.”
Blitzer then asked if Russia is a bigger foe than Iran, China or North Korea.
Romney replied: “Well, I’m saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world’s worst actors. Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran. A nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough. But when these – these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when – when Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go – we go to the United Nations, and who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst
It is always Russia, typically with China alongside. And – and so in terms of a geopolitical foe, a nation that’s on the Security Council, that has the heft of the Security Council and is, of course, a – a massive nuclear power, Russia is the – the geopolitical foe and – and the – and they’re – the idea that our president is – is planning on doing something with them that he’s not willing to tell the American people before the election is something I find very, very alarming.” | <urn:uuid:2ac79634-367f-44ca-9f2d-8e99bc93139e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/10/22/fact-check-russia-as-geopolitical-foe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959998 | 354 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Android has long been the target of many lawsuits from large patent holding companies, especially Apple. As a Google owned patent for the notification bar as we know it, filed for in 2009, nears a possible approval, the tables may finally be turned.
When it comes to features, Google’s Android is ahead of, or on par with, every mobile operating system available today. But there’s one area where Android’s severely lacking: patents. Google released an operating system without owning any patents on a lot of the key technologies used to make it function. If Android would have never taken off, this probably wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, as Android has become a success, it’s become the target for what is arguably the most powerful company in the technology industry, Apple.
Lawsuit after lawsuit from Apple has left Android and the manufacturers using the platform trying their best to fight back. If a patent on Android’s notification bar is approved any time soon, Apple may be the one fighting back next.
In 2009, Google filed a patent for Android’s notification bar. If you’ve used iOS 5 or know anything about Apple’s “Notification Center,” you know that it’s a direct, blatant rip off of Android’s notification bar. According to the filing, Google would own the patent for “a computer-implemented user notification method includes displaying, in a status area near a perimeter of a graphical interface, a notification of a recent alert event for a mobile device, receiving a user selection in the status area, and in response to the receipt of the user selection, displaying, in a central zone of the graphical interface, detail regarding a plurality of recent messaging events for the mobile device.”
Since Google doesn’t own the patent to the notification bar yet, they can’t do anything but sit back and watch Apple use it in all of their most popular devices. Even the latest version of the Mac’s operating system, OS X 10.8, uses Notification Center. If Google’s patent application for Android’s notification bar is approved, there’s little to reason to believe it wouldn’t be an easy victory for Google, should they decide to take Apple to court over it.
It will be interesting to see what Google does with the patent should they manage to secure it. Will they immediately take Apple to court, or would using it as leverage in other patent negotiations make more sense? This will definitely be worth keeping an eye on. | <urn:uuid:ed42214d-1531-42ed-8e6e-e3f9d8848427> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://androidandme.com/2012/02/news/googles-notification-bar-patent-could-spell-trouble-for-apple/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926581 | 533 | 1.648438 | 2 |
James K. Glassman, Contributor
I write on the economy, personal investing, and public policy.
It’s hard to put a smiley face on the latest economic numbers, but in a blatantly promotional press release on Friday, the Commerce Department, which is supposed to be the impartial custodian of the nation’s data, did its best.
Our economy “continues to heal,” said the acting secretary, Rebecca Blank. We’ve now had “12 quarters of consecutive GDP growth.” Anyway, if we’re not growing much, it’s not our fault, since the economy faces “headwinds,” namely a decline in state and local spending and those pesky problems in Europe. Therefore, we’ve got to push for President Obama’s policies “by ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas,” etc., etc.
The acting secretary also trumpeted upward GDP revisions for the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. She didn’t mention downward revisions for the first half of 2010 that brought GDP to a little over 2%. Prior readings were nearly 4%
The truth is that the latest statistics show an economy that is just awful. When President Obama was elected, the unemployment rate was 6.8%. When he took the oath, it was 7.8%. The next month, the rate cracked the 8% mark and has been there ever since.
This is the worst recovery from a recession in at least 30 years – and, according to some, including Stanford’s Edward Lazear, the worst in all American history. While apologists argue that the recovery’s anemia is a function of the recession’s severity, they haven’t read history.
Normally, a sharp, deep recession leads to a sharp, big recovery. The analogy is a rubber band: the more it’s stretched, the more powerfully it snaps back. Shallow recessions breed shallow recoveries. Normally, the economy regains everything it loses in a recession, and then some. If it loses a lot, then it will typically gain a lot. That’s not happening this time around.
The recession officially ended in June 2009. After last week’s revisions, the economy’s decline in 2008 and 2009 has been calculated at 3.1% instead of 3.5%, a bit shallower than before but still devastating. In 2010, the effect of stimulus spending turns out to be even worse than we had thought. Growth in that year was revised down last week to 2.4% from 3% by the Commerce Department (though you’d never know it from Ms. Blank’s press release). Growth in 2011 was revised upward by one-tenth of a point to a miserable 1.8%, and that appears to be the path on which we are stuck. Growth from April to June this year was just 1.5%.
These minuscule numbers would seem to reduce to fantasy the title of the book the Bush Institute has just published,The 4% Solution. The book makes the case that the U.S. can increase its rate of growth from a post-World-War-II average of 3% to a sustainable, real rate of 4%. Can we really do it?
Again, it’s normally not much of a problem for an economy, coming out of a bad recession, to accelerate to 4%. For example, we grew at 5.4% in 1976 after the 1974-75 recession and at 7.2% in 1984 after the 1982 recession. But the best we’ve done so far in a calendar year after this one is 2.4%.
So the United States really has two problems: first, it hasn’t recovered sufficiently to get back aboard the trend line after the 2008-09 recession, and, second, even if we do have a recovery spurt, we don’t have the policies to get us to sustainable 4% — much less 3% — growth. The Congressional Budget Office, whose projections have been way too optimistic over the past few years, has forecast 2% growth for 2012 and 1.1% for 2013
But we could have policies that will get us growing again. Growth of 4% is a blood-quickening aspiration, but it is also a practical goal.
Those policies begin with two principles:
First, growth must be the focus of all economic policy. Growth lowers unemployment, lowers deficits and debt, raises opportunity. Every policy change should be judged by the question, “Does it increase growth?” If not, forget it.
Second, the role of government is to help create an environment that fosters growth. Government cannot, on a long-term basis, create growth or jobs. But it can enact the policies that allow the private sector to create them.
The 4% Solution is a serious, non-partisan book with a foreword by President Bush and 21 chapters, five by Nobel Prize-winning economists and the rest by experts in their fields, that propose ways to get to 4% growth. In interviews about the book, I have been asked frequently what we should do first. What gets the biggest, fastest bang for the effort?
Here are my answers:
But to accomplish any of this, we need a real sense of urgency. We face a serious crisis, and only 4% growth can solve it. Plus, growth has the advantage of being an uplifting, optimistic, bright, American goal. We can do it. | <urn:uuid:319b0414-a2c1-424f-b847-5aa005c61f98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesglassman/2012/07/31/lets-be-clear-the-u-s-economy-is-just-awful/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959991 | 1,154 | 1.742188 | 2 |
All areas of research and education related to reservoirs and their watersheds are supported by the
Center. At present, multi-disciplinary activities are organized around five interrelated areas. The
unifying theme is processes which regulate and sustain biological productivity in reservoir
environments. Brief synopses of the areas are provided below followed by active grants. The WSI Long-term Monitoring Program provides database support.
Area 1 addresses chemical and biological processes of catchment basins: assessment of the
quantity and quality of the chemical composition of groundwater, hyporheic water, runoff and
wetlands as they influence surface water chemistry and biota. Special attention focuses on the
documentation of hydrologic events. Several layers of information (land use and cover, erosion
potential, etc.) on Kentucky Lake catchment basins have been compiled in WSI's Kentucky Lake
Geographic Information System. Layers are used to further understand basin composition as it
relates to processes.
Area 2 addresses embayment and reservoir productivity in relation to tributary and mainstem
influences based on analyses of data in the WSI Long-Term Monitoring Program. Understanding
nutrient, carbon, and physical factors which regulate phytoplankton and zooplankton abundance
and species composition is of special importance. Documentation of long-term water column
nutrient patterns in relation to changes in the planktonic communities is essential to characterizing
reservoir response to long-term environmental changes. Samples for enumeration and
identification of planktonic organisms have been collected routinely as part of the WSI Long-Term Monitoring Program since its inception in 1988. Special attention focuses on documenting
the effects of the invasion of exotic plankton into Kentucky Lake, i.e., the exotic zooplankton
Daphnia lumholtzi, and planktonic larval exotic mollusks.
Area 3 focuses on quantitative characterization of the chemical environment within the
sediments of Kentucky Lake. Sediments are important sinks and sources of nutrients and other
chemical species to the overlying water column. Thin layers of sediments in contact with
overlying reservoir waters have been identified as the most active sites of important biochemical
processes such as nitrification, denitrification, and oxygen consumption. This area seeks to
quantify fluxes of a number of chemical species between the sediments and embayment waters.
Chemical conditions within the sediments are closely linked to the activities of both micro- and
macro-organisms inhabiting the sediments.
Area 4 seeks to examine some of the more important biota of embayment environments. Focus
is on the complex diversity of habitats and food resources which sustain the productivity.
Fisheries studies address embayments as important in providing food, shelter, and spawning and
nursery areas. Invertebrate studies focus on unionid clams and the parasites which infect them.
Unionid clams are a commercially important component of the natural fauna of Kentucky Lake,
and relationships between clam abundance and such environmental factors such as phytoplankton
abundance and water chemistry are being assessed. Likewise, links between environmental
factors and parasite species composition and abundance are sought. Assessment of chemical
effects on the life cycles of aquatic insects also are addressed.
Area 5 focuses on improved water quality mapping and modeling for Kentucky Lake with
particular emphasis on incorporation of Landsat TM satellite data. Ongoing are efforts to map
chlorophyll, temperature, and turbidity distributions from TM data (calibrated by field
measurements). A related component of this area is investigation/modification of numerical
hydrologic, thermal, biologic, and sedimentologic models for use in Kentucky Lake. The area
addresses the theme of biological productivity on a broad scale. Models of chlorophyll
concentrations and light attenuation are validated by comparison with field measurements of
primary production and algal composition. Conceptual and numerical models of reservoir
processes provide a mechanism for both incorporating results from other reservoirs and for
extension of project results to other environments. | <urn:uuid:b9fb50cd-6904-4342-9e95-2dadb6e6202e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://murraystate.edu/wsi/wsi_research.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903016 | 863 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Written by PETA
In memory of John Lennon's death: "Give Peas a Chance."
John Lennon was NOT an animal rights advocate. I find it ironic in the same videos where he talks to the media about wanting to give peace a chance, he is wearing a fur coat.
you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to
an animal, please click
here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the
animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local
police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA
immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
Follow PETA on Twitter!
Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights? Read more. | <urn:uuid:b2b37a4b-3223-4c36-a9d5-6ab8330a8820> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2010/12/08/for-john-lennon-imagine-living-life-in-peace.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955342 | 225 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Most Active Stories
Thu January 5, 2012
How A Computer Scientist Tried To Save Greece
Originally published on Mon May 7, 2012 10:13 am
It's like a bad joke. Why did the Greek government borrow so much money?
Because it couldn't get its own citizens to pay taxes.
The Greek government estimates that one third of taxes owed never get paid. And apparently it was far easier to borrow money even at outrageous rates than to make Greeks pay what they owe.
So in 2009, the Greek finance ministry called in an unlikely hero: A methodical, computer science professor at Athens University, Diomidis Spinellis.
Spinellis tackled the problems like it was programming challenge. He made something called a mind map. A mind map looks like a tree, and it maps how your brain works. And Spinellis's mind map illustrated in a precise, clean manner why Greece is missing so much of its tax revenue.
First on the mind map. Locate the tax evaders, he thought, and improve tax collection. It should be easy, because wherever he looked in the data, he saw tax evasion.
For instance, a corporation often lists its shareholders and their compensation. Those shareholders also reported their income for their taxes. So he used a computer program to check that the numbers matched — the reported income should not be less than the compensation. But, Spinellis's program found in many cases, it was:
What we found is that some failed to declare that amount completely and others missed a digit so they declared ten times less what they actually had to declare.
Spinellis's program found hundreds of thousands of cases of potential tax fraud.
Greece has three hundred regional tax offices. Spinellis thought the solution was simple. Share the data with all of them and wait for the revenues to come flowing in.
Most Greeks will tell you there is widespread corruption in the tax offices. Collectors take bribes.
So Spinellis added a new item to the mind map. Management issues at regional tax offices.
Spinellis wrote a small program that would extract each day's performance data from every single tax office. It recorded information on how much revenue was collected, how many cases were closed, the number of days it took to close a case, etc. It also kept a list of the tax offices that had not closed a single case that day. There were hundreds of them.
The program sent an email every single afternoon to the finance minister and every tax collection office, reporting which offices did absolutely nothing that day. And still, days passed with no action.
It is around this point, two years in, that Spinellis had a disturbing thought. A new item on his mind map. Fixing Greece's tax system, and ultimately making the Greek economy work, was not a matter of tweaking his computer programs. It was not an information problem. It was a culture problem.
If the people don't want to pay taxes, the collectors don't want to collect, and the politicians don't want to punish them, perhaps Greece needs more than a mind map.
At the end of 2011, Spinellis resigned from his government job. He's back to teaching.
And for now, Greece is surviving on international bailouts from countries where people do pay their taxes. In just a few weeks European inspectors will travel to Athens to check if, among other things, Greece has increased tax collection. If the culture has finally changed.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Also increase, a top tax official faces criminal charges this week for failing to do his job. That's a common refrain in Greek life, the tax collector who shows little interest in collecting taxes, despite the country's enormous debt.
Chana Joffe-Walt of our Planet Money team introduces us to one man who tried to buck that trend.
CHANA JOFFE-WALT, BYLINE: Diomidis Spinellis has a Mind Map. He's a methodical computer science professor at the Athens University and he has a Mind Map on his laptop.
PROFESSOR DIOMIDIS SPINELLIS: It tries to map how your mind works. It's like a tree.
JOFFE-WALT: Imagine a graphical outline of the tasks before you at any given time, or a flowchart with tasks, subtasks, sub-subtasks. A Mind Map can, for instance, illustrate in a precise, clean manner the situation Greece finds itself in right now.
Greece borrowed too much money. Click, and it branches out to: Greece cannot pay back its debt. Click, two branches here: This fact threatens all euro countries and Greece is surviving off international bailouts. Click, Greece needs to increase revenues.
SPINELLIS: It was actually a no-brainer that I could help with that, or at least I thought I could help with that.
JOFFE-WALT: In 2009, Spinellis brought his methodical approach and his Mind Map to the Greek Finance Ministry. Solving the tax problem, he proposed, was not that difficult. Actually, with the help of information technology, it might even be kind of easy.
SPINELLIS: Because all the data was there; wherever you looked you could see evidence of tax evasion. And I thought you just have to cross-correlate those two tables and you will find the tax evaders, and then we can improve revenue collection.
JOFFE-WALT: For instance, say a corporation lists its officers and their compensation. Have the computer program check the officers' declared income. It should not be less than their compensation, but Spinellis' program found, in many cases, it was.
SPINELLIS: What we found is that some failed to declare that amount completely and others missed a digit so they declared 10 times less what they actually had to declare.
JOFFE-WALT: Spinellis' program found hundreds of thousands of cases of potential tax fraud.
SPINELLIS: Initially, we felt that's simple. We just post those results to the original tax offices, they get the money and we are all happy.
JOFFE-WALT: Greece has 300 regional tax offices. Spinellis shared his data with every one of them. And then he waited for the revenues to come flowing in - nothing. A few weeks later, he sent it out again.
SPINELLIS: The results were disappearing in a black hole.
JOFFE-WALT: Most weeks will tell you there is widespread corruption in the tax offices - collectors take bribes. So an item was added to the Mind Map: management of regional tax offices. Spinellis wrote a small program that would extract each day's performance data from every single tax office.
SPINELLIS: How much revenue was collected through how many cases that were closed; the average number of cases; how many days you would need for all the cases to close if they were working at that rate. And also, a list of tax offices that hadn't closed a single case on that day, and there are hundreds of offices each day that don't close a single case.
JOFFE-WALT: The program sent an email every single afternoon to the finance minister and every tax collection office reporting which offices did absolutely nothing that day.
SPINELLIS: And many days passed without anything happening.
JOFFE-WALT: It is around this point, two years in, that Spinellis had a disturbing thought. Fixing Greece's tax system, and ultimately making the Greek economy work, was not a matter of tweaking his computer programs. It was not an information problem. It was a culture problem.
The people, the tax collectors had to want to go after tax cheats. And if they didn't want to, they needed a boss who would make them want to.
SPINELLIS: This turnaround artist is not somebody we have within the tax collection agency.
JOFFE-WALT: At the end of 2011, Spinellis resigned from his government job. He's back to teaching. And Greece is still surviving off international bailouts.
In just a few weeks, European inspectors will travel to Athens to check if, among other things, Greece has managed to increase tax collections, if the turnaround artists have shown up.
Chana Joffe-Walt, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:477cc756-ce33-4a9f-aa71-6198f368a71a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kenw.org/post/how-computer-scientist-tried-save-greece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97421 | 1,784 | 2.796875 | 3 |
|HSLDA News||July 10, 2001|
The NEA Drops Homosexuality Resolution
The National Education Association dropped a resolution last week, which would have encouraged schools to develop a curriculum that supports the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender lifestyles. The materials would have also addressed student issues like suicide and "health risk behaviors," as well as the heritage, culture, and history of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender people.
Over 600 protesters picketed the NEA meeting last Tuesday. Their concern was that the material proposed by the NEA promoted homosexuality among the students. But a decision to drop the resolution came after members of the Gay and Lesbian Caucus made a recommendation that the NEA postpone their decision. NEA officials said the teachers' union planned to form a task force to explore the issue more thoroughly before taking any further action. "This is an emotional topic for everyone, and we believe a task force is the best way to first hear everyone's voice and then develop actions that will create safer schools for children and staff," said Cathy Figel, co-chairman for the NEA's Gay and Lesbian Caucus.
"This resolution is consistent with NEA's commitment to eliminate parental rights and oversight in education, said Caleb Kershner, acting director of the National Center for Home Education. "The NEA is one of the biggest opponents of parents' rights to home school. For several years, they have issued a resolution to mandate teacher licensing and state approved curriculum for home schoolers." The NEA has a membership of approximately 2.6 million people.
Our public schools have become a battleground where various interest groups and political entities war for our children's hearts and minds. The NEA's attempt to promote objectionable behaviors through school curriculum reminds us of why home schooling is such a valuable alternative for our children. | <urn:uuid:a0ef9631-5a7b-4713-9ccd-6b9040462d56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/hslda/200107100.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970844 | 370 | 2.578125 | 3 |
2 Hawaiian damselflies put on federal endangered list
By The Associated Press
The federal government has designated two species of Hawaiian damselflies as endangered.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the flying earwig Hawaiian damselfly and the Pacific Hawaiian damselfly are now protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Loss of habitat has greatly reduced the species' populations.
The flying earwig damselfly once lived on the Big Island and Maui, but now is seen at only one location in Maui.
Males are blue and black and exhibit enlarged, pincerlike appendages. Females are mostly brownish.
The Pacific Hawaiian damselfly once thrived on most Hawaiian Islands, but is now limited mainly to Molokai and Maui. Both male and female are largely black.
Copyright © 2010 staradvertiser.com
|Photo © Paul S. Hamilton||HOME / DONATE NOW / SIGN UP FOR E-NETWORK / CONTACT US / PHOTO USE /| | <urn:uuid:7b25dbfb-0169-4ff3-9d88-d060443ed436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2010/honolulu-star-advertiser-06-27-2010.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914006 | 212 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Departments & Programs
East Asian Languages and Cultures
The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) is a multidisciplinary and multicultural department that aims to provide students with an enhanced understanding of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages and cultures. The department offers a wide range of culture courses, open to nonmajors, that deal with virtually every facet of the cultures of East Asia. Language courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are offered from beginning to advanced levels.
Two majors and two minors are offered. The majors differ in the amount of language required and in the specificity and range of culture courses allowed. All students majoring in the department are required to contact their faculty advisors at least once a semester. There is a language minor in Japanese, Chinese, or Korean, and a minor in East Asian studies, which requires no language training.
As part of the baccalaureate training, students are encouraged to study abroad in China, Japan, or Korea on one of IU's overseas study programs. Students who are returning from East Asia or who have any background in an East Asian language prior to enrolling at IU are required to take a placement exam before enrolling in a language course.
Majors, Minors, and Programs
- Major in Language and Culture
- Major in East Asian Studies
- Double Major
- Minor in East Asian Languages
- Minor in East Asian Studies
- Program for Teacher Certification
- Policy on Academic Advising
- Policy on Continuing in the East Asian Language Program
- Departmental Honors Program
- Overseas Study
- Placement/Proficiency Examinations
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
250 Goodbody Hall
Bloomington, IN 47405
ealc [at] indiana [dot] edu | <urn:uuid:0c44105a-4d01-411c-8035-f1a6e515c715> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iu.edu/~bulletin/iub/college/2012-2013/departments/east-asian/index.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905571 | 372 | 1.625 | 2 |
The exhibition for artiist R. Nelson Parrish, entitled Surface Tension, presents a new suite of standing totems and wall sculptures comprised of resin, fiberglass, pigmented color, and wood. The objects are a hybrid of both painting and sculpture and visually reference a diverse range of cultures including the tribal traditions of the Pacific Northwest Native Americans and Southern California's pervasive cottage industries of surfboard construction and custom cars.
Parrish employs an intricate and labor-intensive method to craft his artworks from native Alaskan woods requiring hand applied paints and numerous hand rubbed coats of resin – taking months to bring to completion. The results are works which point to the subtle contradictions between the glass like surfaces, layers of diffused and translucent color, and the seemingly unfinished planks below.
Evoking colors of the American West, layered bands of color, emerge and deflect different tones that are characteristic of particular natural environments yet for the artist, the work is a greater inquiry into the qualities of both the natural and the synthetic. “(Parrish) invites us to re-think our notion of the boundaries and lines between the natural, original source and the designed, processed and developed object,” states art historian Dorothea Schoene in an introductory essay that will accompany the exhibition.
Born in Fairbanks, Alaska and having recently received his MFA from UC Santa Barbara, Parrish uniquely contributes to the vocabulary of West Coast Minimalism. Inverting the West Coast’s “Finish Fetish” aesthetics, Parrish builds his work with a myriad of visual sources and delights in what he calls “racing stripes”. | <urn:uuid:13f90c5a-169f-4295-be35-27bf2cd50812> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artslant.com/la/events/show/70973-r-nelson-parrish-surface-tension | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940092 | 339 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Published on: Wednesday, August 15, 2012
A 2012 empirical study co-authored by School of Law Prof. Greg Sisk on Establishment Clause jurisprudence was recently cited in the dissenting opinion of one of most influential federal appellate court judges in the country.
Judge Richard Posner’s dissenting opinion in the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals 7-3 en banc decision of Doe v. Elmbrook School District called on the Supreme Court to provide more concrete legal framework for the lower courts on Establishment Clause jurisprudence or else risk that judges will “inevitably fall back on their priors, that is, on beliefs based on personality, upbringing, conviction, experience, emotions, and so forth that people bring to a question they can’t answer by the methods of logic and science or some other objective method.” Or in other words, Posner wrote, when not given solid jurisprudential ground to stand on in Establishment Clause cases, lower court judges will revert to their political background to decide such a case.
Posner’s opinion cited to and drew heavily from the conclusions of the study Sisk coauthored with Cornell Law Prof. Michael Heise entitled “Ideology ‘All The Way Down,’ an Empirical Study of Establishment Clause Decisions in the Federal Courts.”
Appointments influenced by ‘Devotional Divide’
As a part of Sisk and Heise’s ongoing empirical examination of religious liberty decisions in the lower federal courts, the duo evaluated decisions on cases involving Establishment Clause issues from 1996-2005, a period of time when Sisk said the country began to see a more pronounced “God Gap” or “Devotional Divide” in its politics. During these years Sisk said their research and analysis found that whether a judge was appointed by a Republican or Democratic president had a definitive influence on how they ruled in Establishment Clause cases.
According the study’s findings, Democratic-appointed judges were predicted to uphold Establishment Clause challenges at a rate of about 57 percent, while the predicted probability of success fell to just more than 25 percent before Republican-appointed judges.
“Thus, an Establishment Clause claimant's chances for success were 2.25 times higher before a judge appointed by a Democratic president than before a judge appointed by a Republican president,” Sisk wrote in an article on the study recently published in the University of Michigan Law Review.
School held graduation in a church
The majority in Doe v. Elmbrook sided with the plaintiffs in ruling the defendant Elmbrook School District (located in Brookfield, Wis.) violated the Establishment Clause of the federal Constitution when it held its graduation ceremonies at Elmbrook Church for a series of years in the 2000s. The en banc review reversed an earlier three-judge panel that ruled in favor of the district. The case was originally brought to federal court in 2009 after the plaintiffs, three current and former students filed a lawsuit against the school district claiming its decision to hold the graduation ceremonies at the church was a constitutional violation.
Sisk says the case may reach the Supreme Court and acknowledges that Posner’s dissent could be influential in the court’s analysis. He believes publication of the articles on the study in the University of Michigan and University of Chicago law reviews played a role in Posner’s citation of the study, which he said shows the impact that such scholarship can eventually have judicial decision making.
“I do think (Posner’s citation to the study) is a testament to the prominence of scholarly work on the part of faculty,” Sisk said. “The publication of the articles in prominent law reviews most likely brought attention to the study in a way it might have not otherwise done had it not been published in such law reviews.”
“What Posner was saying in his dissent is essentially what we found in our study,” Sisk added, “that the Supreme Court’s precedents on how to apply the Establishment Clause is so murky, so convoluted, so subjective, that judges, in particular the lower federal courts, are left without any clear guidance on how to decide these cases.
“And if you are left with nothing, no guide posts, no precedents, no rules to apply how are you going to decide it, many times all they can do is decide a case based on the way they see it, based on their background,” he said. “But what our study says is that it doesn’t have to be that way if the Supreme Court simply provides the framework for these judges to make a decision based on law.” | <urn:uuid:d8044b2f-896b-423b-be7e-169666eca5c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stthomas.edu/law/news/title-43426-en.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964027 | 979 | 1.671875 | 2 |
This one's for those with bandwith and a penchent for data only
Great data sets - but I just grab the course.png which shows the path of the vehicle on that days drive - great
NOW - here's the problem - they're not matching up properly...i.e. I've been tracing the route around the edge of Endurance, and Sol 129 I should be right next to tracks from about 20 sols before when the rover headed out the other way. Somewhere, they've got out of line with one another.
Are all sites defined with X, Y and Z being in the same direction - or does a new site define a new set of axis for motion thereafter - and what am I missing to fall short of having these things match up. I don't THINK it's slipage etc - but perhaps it is. I don't know | <urn:uuid:74861d19-7310-4dcb-8219-4b797dc33430> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/lofiversion/index.php/t2563.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954197 | 177 | 1.640625 | 2 |
It’s a well-established fact that women are at higher risk for depression than men, but that may soon change, says a psychiatrist at Emory University.
When Dr. Boadie Dunlop began recruiting subjects for a depression study, he enlisted the help of local sports radio shows, and was surprised by the tremendous response he received — from men. “We were really impressed with the number of men coming in with depression related to employment or marital conflict,” says Dunlop.
That led to discussions about the many social and cultural changes occurring in gender roles that may put men at increasingly higher risk of developing depression, which Dunlop outlines in an editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry. (More on TIME.com: Eating Fatty Foods May Up Your Risk Of Depression)
The most recent recession brought some of those issues to a head, he says, as downsizing and higher unemployment highlighted the death of manufacturing and labor-intensive jobs, which have traditionally been held by men. About 75% of the jobs lost in the downturn belonged to men. Innovations in technology, as well as outsourcing to countries where manual labor is less expensive, are shrinking this sector, forcing more men than women out of work. With men culturally shouldering the role of primary breadwinner for their families, unemployment hits men particularly hard, as their self-esteem, an important factor in depression risk, is often contingent on their role as provider.
At the same time, on a more psychological level, societal norms about the male image are changing, shifting away from males as the stoic breadwinner to a more realistic model of a member of a family who is just as prone to emotional and psychological stress as any other member. This change is making it easier, albeit only slightly, for men to talk about conditions such as depression, and may lead to a bump in incidence as more men start to feel comfortable talking openly about the mental illness.
Traditionally, women have had up to twice the risk of developing depression over their lifetime as men, and the reasons are both biological and social. Biologically, differences between genders in hormone metabolism account for some of the susceptibility to depression; culturally, the higher rates of childhood abuse among girls is also a factor in enhancing rates of depression among women. As adults, women have also been confronted with societal barriers to professional self-fulfillment that have had a negative impact on their self-image and self-esteem. But as more men either share or relinquish their role as primary earner in households, they may feel the same threat to their sense of self as women historically have. In addition, as more men take on child-rearing responsibilities, they may feel inadequate and overwhelmed, fertile ground for depression. (More on TIME.com: A New Antidepressant That May Not Kill Your Sex Life)
“Men are going to be taking on these roles, some by choice and some will have it forced on them,” says Dunlop. “How well will they be able to adapt, and how well we are able to help them if they have troubles with those roles?”
Socially, he says, despite many high profile cases of men admitting to depression, such as Mike Wallace and John Cleese, it’s still difficult for most men to acknowledge feeling overwhelmed and out of control. “To be depressed, to feel overwhelmed and not motivated to do things, are signs that have had the stigma attached to them of mental weakness,” says Dunlop. “And men traditionally have felt that they should just overcome them and snap out of it.”
Acknowledging that men are facing some profound economic and societal changes that could negatively affect their self-esteem is the first step that could help more health-care providers address the issue, he says. For family practitioners or other non-mental health specialists, simply asking about how their male patients are coping with the economic downturn, and whether the financial crisis has caused any changes in his family, is a good start. “A general inquiry about how you are getting by can open the door to how his role has changed, and whether he is finding things tough going,” says Dunlop.
Being aware of the cultural and economic shifts that may make men vulnerable to depression may also end up addressing an important question in mental health circles — how much of the greater vulnerability among women is due to biology, and how much to the sociocultural environment in which they live? If men and women continue to show divergent rates of depression even as gender roles become equalized — as more women become providers and more men take child-rearing responsibility — then it’s likely that nature may trump nurture with respect to depression. But if the rates start to match up, then, says Dunlop, it could suggest that our environment plays a more dominant role in triggering the mental illness. And that, in turn, suggests that there may be things we can do to address it. “If men are taking on different roles, they may need help in learning how to do it,” he says. Providing that help could lead to lowering their rates of depression.
More on TIME.com: | <urn:uuid:4fb62479-18b7-41c2-bcc8-8c7bce264e04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/01/why-the-recession-may-trigger-more-depression-among-men/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97787 | 1,074 | 2.953125 | 3 |
The basic process for self-publishing a book is as follows:
Click to biggify the infographic.
Okay, done. I WISH it was that easy, don’t you? It is easier than you think but you need to understand each step of the process and how to maximize your time/resources at each step to truly succeed. I will outline the process from my own experiences and hopefully shed some light for those of you considering this route for publishing your book:
Step 1: Book Idea
You’ve got an awesome idea for a book. Great! Write down your idea and expand on it as much as possible. A very cool tool I’ve started using for my ideas is Evernote.
Step 2: Write Your Book
Duh. If you are going to publish a book, you’ve got to write it (unless you are Snooki). You must write, write, write, and write some more. Try to do it every day, if possible. The sooner you get your shitty first draft done, the sooner you can get to the good part: editing. WHAT? I hate that part!!
Step 3: Edit and Revise
Every writer hates this part with a passion but unfortunately, this is where your book gets good. It’s VERY SMART to hire an editor that not only knows grammar but also can give you an editorial evaluation. What the heck is that? Well, how good is your book? If you are writing fiction, are your characters believable? What is the plot pacing like: too fast, too slow, too confusing? If you are writing non-fiction, is your writing interesting or more like a lecture given by John Kerry? You need an objective, professional editor to review it, especially if you are hoping to sell it to complete strangers (not just your mom).
Step 4: Identify Your Ideal Reader
If you in fact want to make some money off all your blood, sweat, and tears, you are going to need to know the answer to this question: who is going to read your book? Imagine the actual person, is it a woman, aged 40-50 who lives in the United States and is a Democrat? The more detailed picture you have, the easier it will be to find your ideal reader(s) because you’ll have a good idea where they hang out based on who they are as a person. Then make sure your edits and revision reflect what that ideal reader wants. If the ideal reader is you (many authors write the stuff they want to read), would you want to read your book? If not, you’ve got a lot of work to do. If yes, then Yay for You!
Step 5: Decide What Format to Use When You Publish Your Book
Do you just want to see and hold your book in your hands? Do you want to load your book on a Kindle or Nook? Or do you want your book published in every form known to mankind? Once you decide, there are literally hundreds of options. Most people go with CreateSpace from Amazon for print books because…well, it’s Amazon. If you want to sell your printed book, that’s the place to be right now. You could also get your printed book published at Lulu.com, Blurb, and others. There are tons of ways to publish an eBook but you want to be aware of all the devices people will use to read your book: Kindle, Nook, iPad, phone, computer, and so on. There’s Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, BookBaby, Scribd, Booktango, and others.
Step 6: Create a Book Cover (Hire Someone!)
People DO judge a book based on it’s cover, especially these days. Don’t try to do it yourself unless you have a background in art or design, even then you should be focused on writing the best book you can NOT on designing a cover. You can find a book cover designer just by Googling. It’s better if you know someone but if you don’t, here’s some great resources: The Book Designer, How to Find a Good Book Cover Designer, or How Self-Published Authors Get Their Covers Right.
Step 7: Format the Book Interior
Most of the publishing sites like CreateSpace or Kindle Direct Publishing will have templates you can use to format your book interior. It can be a PAIN however if you cut and paste your manuscript from a word processing program (with its own formatting) into a template. You’ll have to do all kinds of adjusting to get it to work. This may be where you decide to hire someone to format the book for you. I did it myself and now I wish I had hired someone. Again, stick to your area of expertise (writing!) and let other people help you. This is where budget comes in but that’s a whole other blog post (coming soon). Here are a few book formatting professionals to check out: Go Published, Fast Fingers, 4 Book Formatting Mistakes to Avoid.
Step 8: Get a Website
You will need to buy a domain name. Period. You can either use the name of your book or your name. I used my name but others writers (especially those with sequels or triologies) insist on using the name of the their books. Then there’s the website hosting service, design, and content. I use WordPress.com and it was very quick for me to set up a site using a standard template. If you want something super fancy, HIRE SOMEONE! Do NOT do it yourself. You’ll waste countless hours trying to figure out the right HTML code for the color green. I’ve done it!! Here are a few website designers for authors to check out: Author Media, BookBaby, Bizango.
Step 9: Promote Your Book
You actually should start doing this as early as possible. This includes building your audience on every available Social Network there is…it’s NEVER too early to connect with potential readers. I am going to write a series of blog posts on promotion but just a few basic things to think about here: Guest Blogs, Blog Book Tours, Submitting portions of your book to magazines and ezines, Writing/book Conferences, Creating Promotional Materials (book marks, business cards, sell sheets, media kits, etc.). You must use every tool to your advantage and promote your book whenever possible…without making people sick of you talking about your book. No problem, right?
Step 10: Publish Your Book
NOW you can publish and launch your book! All the work you have done up until now WILL pay off. Tell the world that YOU HAVE WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED A BOOK!
Are you considering self-publishing? Have you been through the process? Please share in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you. | <urn:uuid:c920c048-e3b2-42d6-89c7-0f9f901277ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.danaleipold.com/2013/02/07/the-self-publishing-process/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947682 | 1,454 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Don't fall off the fitness bandwagon when you pack the suitcase for your next holiday, Sally Anderson warns.
It takes longer to gain fitness than to lose it, and you can quickly lose all of your hard-earned fitness gains on your travels if you stop exercising completely.
How quickly you lose aerobic and strength fitness varies - it really depends on how fit you are to begin with, and how long you stop exercising.
For some, the loss of endurance will be noticed in about 12 days after eliminating cardio exercise. For strength training, a decline in your level of conditioning can be noticed in approximately two weeks. Flexibility decline is the winner - or perhaps the loser - when you abstain from your exercise routine; it decreases with just one week of inactivity.
So don't stop exercising while travelling. Here are some tips:
Fitness does not have to become a lost cause when you take a break and head out for an extended holiday. There are many creative and easy ways to keep those feel-good endorphins active.
For starters, wear your walking shoes so you will be ready to take advantage of delayed flights or, if you are travelling by car, take breaks for brief walks and stretches.
When packing for your trip, include a few basic light and packable pieces of exercise equipment that don't take up much space in the suitcase, such as lightweight jump ropes and resistance bands. The bands, made of strong rubber, vary in resistance from light to heavy and can provide a workout for every muscle in your body.
If you're headed to a warm climate, you might want to pack aquatic gloves along with your swimmers for a water workout.
Hotel room exercises
- Don't think in terms of an hour workout. After all, this is your holiday time. Instead, go for 10-minute segments throughout the day, building toward 30 minutes. Save the longer workouts for when you return home.
- Warm up with five minutes of light jogging or marching in place.
- Jump rope or simply pretend you are using a rope.
- Jog in place, lifting knees as high as you can, while pumping your arms.
- Mountain climbers: With legs staggered, jump or shuffle feet back and forth, continuing to alternate feet. Hold onto a dresser or desk if you need support.
- Mogul jumps: With feet together, jump side to side, always landing with bent knees.
- Jumping jacks or modified jacks, where you relax knees and step-touch side to side, raising arms shoulder height, but no jumping.
To save time, there are many multi-muscle exercises you can do. You will be working more than one muscle group at a time, such as with push-ups, which would strengthen upper body and core muscles. Don't forget there are such things as wall push-ups, if you don't want to go on the floor.
Performing squats (pretending you are sitting in a chair) will work most all lower-body muscles.
Resistance bands offer no specific weight, but you can feel tension on the band, and if you perform them correctly, you can create resistance from many angles.
Exercises while flying
Help rev up your circulation while confined in the sky by trying these:
- Heel raises: Keeping balls of feet on floor, raise heels using the calf muscles. Hold five seconds before lowering heels.
- Toe raises: Planting heels on floor, raise toes as high as you can. Hold five seconds, then lower.
- Ankle circles: Stretch legs out under the seat in front of you. Lift one leg, rotating ankle inward, drawing a circle eight times; reverse circle, rotating ankle outward. Repeat.
- Point/flex: Point toes downward, then upward. You will be stretching the front of the leg with the pointed toes and back of leg with flexed foot.
- Squeeze tennis ball: Do this or at least pretend you are doing it, opening and closing your fists.
- Abdominal exercise: Contract abdominal muscles, holding a few seconds, then release. This can be performed while standing or sitting.
- Shoulder shrugs: Raise shoulders up and down slowly, making a circular motion, rolling them forward then to the back.
- AAPBy Sally Anderson | <urn:uuid:672d0dee-c47a-403d-bca6-4ae03601a193> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10842328 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936247 | 891 | 1.539063 | 2 |
electronic music or electro-acoustic music, term for compositions that utilize the capacities of electronic media for creating and altering sounds.
Initially, a distinction must be made between the technological development of electronic instruments and the music conceived to utilize the inherent advantages of these instruments. Experiments in electronic tone production began soon after the invention of the vacuum tube (see electron tube). The first important instrument, the theremin, invented by the Russian Leon Theremin in 1920, used interference beats of two oscillators to produce sine-wave tones. The Ondes Martinot, invented in 1928, and the Trautonium, invented in 1930, were of similar design.
The earliest pieces of electronic music used recorded sounds that were then electronically altered to create sonic collages. This style, called musique concrete, was developed in Paris in 1948 by Pierre Schaeffer. The invention of the tape recorder in the late 1940s gave composers new means for modifying recorded sounds, including splicing (cutting the tape to create new juxtapositions of sound), speed variation (which changes the pitch of the recorded sound), and mixing (which allowed two or more different recordings to be played back at the same time). In popular music, Les Paul was one of the pioneers of electronic music, inventing the first solid-body electric guitar in 1946 and recording music in the 1950s in an eight-track recording studio of his own design.
Controlling aspects of the musical sound by means of voltage regulation eventually led to the invention of synthesizers, devices that could produce and modify sound for musical applications. Among the earliest of these was the RCA synthesizer developed in the late 1950s and used extensively by composer Milton Babbitt in many of his electronic works. In the 1950s various studios that specialized in the production of electro-acoustic music were developed, including the West German Radio Studio in Cologne, associated with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Italian Radio Studio in Milan, associated with Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, associated with Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Mario Davidovsky, and Babbitt.
During the 1960s synthesizers were made widely available by companies such as Moog (see Moog, Robert) and Buchla and found widespread usage in rock music. Popular groups such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys began experiments in multitrack recording, years after the innovations of Paul, that enabled several different recordings to be synchronized on the same tape. Eventually synthesizers switched from voltage control to digital control.
In 1983 the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard was agreed on by synthesizer manufacturers (see computer music). This digital code enables different electronic devices to communicate a variety of information to each other and allows computer control of synthesizer output. MIDI can also be used to control a wide range of equipment in addition to synthesizers; these include mixers, lights, and signal processors (devices that modify sounds by adding reverberation, by modifying pitch, and by other means).
Today MIDI is widely used in both academic and popular musical production. In MIDI production, computers are often used as sequencers (devices that control the output of musical instruments and signal processors). Throughout the last three decades of the 20th cent. electronic music increasingly became a part of pop music compositions, eventually allowing a solo artist to compose, produce, and perform music that employs a full complement of instrumental sounds. In the 1980s MIDI was also used in the creation of the radio baton, a new instrument that allows players to control the nuances of the music played.
See P. Manning, Electronic and Computer Music (1985); C. Anderton, The Electronic Musician's Dictionary (1988); H. Russcol, The Liberation of Sound: An Introduction to Electronic Music (1990); F. Rumsey, MIDI Systems and Controls (1990); N. Collins and J. d'Escrivan, The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (2007).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
More on electronic music from Infoplease:
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Music: Theory, Forms, and Instruments | <urn:uuid:a171f1da-cdcf-4ad3-83c4-332e6cb07c1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/entertainment/electronic-music.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945536 | 864 | 3.359375 | 3 |
The rand was weaker in midday trade on Wednesday as the political uncertainty continues to prevail in Europe with the probability of Greece exiting the eurozone raised to 15 percent from 5 percent.
"We are operating much on risk scenario because the euro is under-pressure. It's not looking good for the emerging markets as they seem to be under the spell of global sentiment," a local trader said.
At 11:33 local time the rand was bid at R7.9754 to the dollar from Tuesday's close of R9.9010 and Monday's close of R7.7983. It was bid at R10.3484 to the euro from R10.2639 before, and at R12.8382 against sterling from R12.7580 previously.
The euro was bid at US$1.2980 from Tuesday's close of $1.2992.
Standard Bank said risk aversion remained the order of the day as a light data calendar yesterday, and another today, left markets with nothing to mull over except the on-going ructions in Europe.
"Of particular concern is the failure of Greece to form a new government. This has raised fears that this nation would need to head to the polls again, with the risk that Greece will ultimately exit the eurozone seen to be rising," said the bank.
The bank added that fears of the contagion risk to Greece's more vulnerable EU neighbours, Spain and Italy were adding to the souring in sentiment.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that the euro and other higher-yielding currencies remained under pressure in Asia on Wednesday as political turmoil in Greece continued to fuel concerns about a rekindled European debt crisis.
The single currency failed to get a firm footing above the $1.3000 threshold and stayed just below that mark for much of the Asian day, as failed coalition talks in Greece after elections over the weekend raised the possibility that Athens may not get an international bailout package next month.
"The focus is on the formation of a new government," said Yuji Saito, director of the foreign exchange division at Credit Agricole Bank in Tokyo, as the country will not receive international financial aid if it can't meet a June deadline for the submission of austerity measures.
The euro could stay vulnerable to falls in the near term as protective euro buying to prevent sizable options orders from lapsing at $1.2950 may diminish later this week, Saito said.
"If that point is breached, the euro's fall to $1.2700 could be in sight," he said.
Bonds follow rand weaker
Bonds followed the rand weaker in quiet midday trade on Wednesday.
At noon, the benchmark R157 bond was trading at 6.540 percent from Tuesday's close of 6.480 percent and Monday's close of 6.415 percent. The R207 was bid at 7.660 percent and offered at 7.640 percent from a previous close of 7.580 percent and the R186 was trading at 8.290 percent from its close of 8.225 percent. | <urn:uuid:fd5613b4-eea9-444a-80ea-9a4163346ad1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://business.iafrica.com/randwatch/793648.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968914 | 623 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Contact: Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189
March 20, 1996
Copyright Office Begins Testing Digital Application and Deposit System
The U.S. Copyright Office has begun testing a new electronic system for receipt and processing of copyright applications, deposited works, and related documents that can be transmitted securely in digital form over international communications networks such as the Internet.
On February 27, a graduate student in the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University successfully transmitted a digital copy of her dissertation along with a copyright application form that she filled out on-line and "signed" using public key/private key encryption technology. Using the new test system, called CORDS (for Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation, and Deposit System), the Copyright Office will complete its processing and issue a copyright certificate within a much shorter period of time than is now required.
"Once fully implemented, the CORDS system will aid both the Copyright Office and copyright owners by providing an efficient new registration and recordation mechanism," said Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters. "It should also provide an effective source for the Library of Congress to acquire new publications in digital form for its growing National Digital Library Program."
As "the electronic library of the future," the Library's National Digital Library collections will include a wide variety of materials in digital form, including both older works converted from the Library's historic collections for educational purposes as well as new titles received in digital form via copyright. The new system will continue to be tested over the next few years as the Copyright Office works closely with a small number of representative copyright owners to register in digital form a limited number of selected titles in each class of copyrightable works, including unpublished and published books and serials, images and illustrations, maps, sound recordings, and videos.
CORDS has been under development since 1993 as a joint project with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) under a grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Associate Register for National Copyright Programs Mary Levering is coordinating development of CORDS for the Library of Congress.
The CORDS system will allow applicants to submit digitized applications and works via the Internet, using the latest version of Privacy Enhanced Mail, and to "sign" their submissions using public key/private key encryption technology. The Copyright Office will then verify the authenticity of these electronic submissions, debit fees from the applicants' Copyright Office deposit accounts, and return electronic acknowledgments or correspondence to the applicants. Individual digital works will be assigned unique identifiers, called "handles." The Office's secure digital repository will store these digital copyrighted works in a secure and verifiable manner, providing access to the works in accordance with the law and the terms and conditions established by copyright owners. Rights management information needed for licensing and permissions should be available much more quickly than ever before.
With the support of the Library of Congress and ARPA, CNRI is leading a national effort with the U.S. Copyright Office to develop an infrastructure for linking digital works in electronic libraries and other transaction-based systems. The design and availability of national and international registration and recordation systems are central requirements for a national digital library system. Rights management of digital works is also essential for electronic commerce, by enabling rights owners and users to identify and negotiate terms and conditions for accessing copyrighted digital objects. When linked to standardized naming conventions (handles), copyright registration permits creators and owners to record the existence of intellectual property in the form of digital objects, and for users to know that specified digital objects exist and how to locate them.
The U.S. Copyright Office has been a part of the Library of Congress since 1870. In addition to administering the copyright law, the office creates and maintains the public record of copyright registration, provides technical assistance and policy advice on copyright issues to Congress and executive branch agencies, offers information to the general public, promotes improved copyright protection for U.S. creative works abroad, and obtains deposits for the collections of the Library of Congress.
# # # | <urn:uuid:03132940-910d-4c69-9582-cfc2e5f761a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/1996/96-038.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917129 | 813 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Dramas Offstage: School Plays Rouse Opposition Coast-to-Coast
By Mary Walsh SIECUS Program Research Intern
A Pulitzer Prize-winning play has been deemed unfit for California’s Palm Desert High School due to its references to sex, homosexuality, alcohol, and its characters’ use of curse words. Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, originally written in 1955, became a movie seen by millions in 1958. When questioned about the decision to ban a play written over 60 years ago, Palm Desert’s principal Bob Hicks cited budgetary reasons; however, the budget for the play had already been approved on August 30th of this year. Students and theater teacher John Hadley suggested that budget was less of an issue than sexual expression.1
The amount of editing needed to omit sexual references would have changed the nature of the play considerably. Principal Hicks pointed out that Palm Desert needs to keep its audience in mind, saying that Cat might not be appropriate for younger siblings or grandparents, though many of today’s grandparents were children when Williams won his Pulitzer.
Nationally, the play has long been popular for high schools to perform. For example in Texas, Houston’s Montgomery High School performed the play in September 2011 with minor edits. The student director there, senior Hunter Odom, said that “[they] toned it down without dumbing it down.” They wanted to make sure that “it’s a compelling story, but one that won’t offend.” 2
Meanwhile in Connecticut, Hartford Public High School is stirring up a different kind of controversy with a production of Zanna Don’t, a play set in a fictional world where homosexuality is normative and embraced. Hartford produced the play as part of an anti-bullying initiative, featuring a gay-male kiss which prompted about 30 mostly male students to walk out of the first production. 3
The opposition group Family Institute of Connecticut (FIC) issued a denunciation of the play and urged local conservatives to “send a letter to the Hartford Courant politely expressing disagreement with [the school’s] decision to indoctrinate students in the homosexual agenda, particularly without even notifying parents that they have the right to opt-out their children.” 4 In a statement to the Courant, however, executive principal Jack Baldermann noted that performances for freshmen would require active parental permission to attend. He defended the play as part of Hartford Public High’s effort to become a better school: “Part of that is talking about tough issues. It’s not just algebra and history and English, as important as that is…I mean, really, in this day and age – our students watch movies where people are killed and maimed, and they don’t walk out.”5
1 Denise Goolsby, “Controversy gets ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ cancelled at Palm Desert High School,” The Desert Sun, 15 October 2011, accessed 24 October 2011, <http://www.mydesert.com/article/20111015/NEWS04/110150315/Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof-canceled-Palm-Desert-High?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage>.
2 Brad Meyer, “Montgomery High to present ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’,” YourConroeNews.com, 19 September 2010, accessed 24 October 2011, <http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/news/article_66576822-e3b7-5d2f-a021-8900b796a500.html>.
3 Adam Polaski, “Gay Kiss Prompts Students to Walk Out of School Play,” The Bilerico Project, 19 October 2011, accessed 24 October 2011, <http://www.bilerico.com/2011/10/gay_kiss_prompts_students_to_walk_out_of_school_pl.php>.
4 “Just As We Warned: Outrageous Attack on Parental Rights,” FIC Grassroots Action Center, Family Institute of Connecticut web site, 17 October 2011, accessed 28 October 2011,
5Vaneesa De La Torre, “Gay Kiss At Hartford Public High School Continues to Stir Reaction,” The Hartford Courant, 20 October 2011, accessed 24 October 2011, <http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-zanna-1021-20111020,0,5725718.story>. | <urn:uuid:4d17e55c-81bb-4a86-b366-951b19f238ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.familiesaretalking.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeature&featureID=2054 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943881 | 990 | 1.671875 | 2 |
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Long-distance truck drivers who consumed caffeine were less likely to fall asleep at the wheel than those who did not take any caffeinated substances, the study found.
Caffeine can help prevent road accidents, an Australian study has found.
Researchers from the University of Sydney compared 530 commercial vehicle drivers who had recently crashed with 517 who had not.
After adjusting for factors such as age, sleep patterns and kilometers driven, the study found drivers who consumed coffee, tea or caffeine energy drinks were 63 percent less likely to fall asleep at the wheel than those who did not take any caffeinated substances.
The results were published in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
“While comprehensive mandated strategies for fatigue management remain a priority, the use of caffeinated substances could be a useful adjunct strategy in the maintenance of alertness while driving,” the researchers said.
The paper said 43 percent of drivers in the survey reported using caffeine to stay awake; only three percent reported using illegal stimulants such as amphetamine.
But the researchers noted that it was not clear what benefited tired drivers most – a nap, a short walk or caffeine – and further study was required.
More from GlobalPost: Caffeine being dumped in the Pacific is making fish nervous | <urn:uuid:6a97cf6a-c73e-4a5b-a928-a7b508733b62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/130321/study-shows-caffeine-can-prevent-road-accidents | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960187 | 261 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Some tips from New York City dermatologist and mom, Dr. Nanette B. Silverberg:
—A wet T-shirt has a UPF of 3 and requires concurrent sunscreen
—Standard sunscreen bottles should cover an adult for only four applications. If your bottle sits around forever, you are probably applying inadequate amounts. The less you apply, the less likely you are to reach the SPF indicated on the bottle.
—Sunscreen ingredients may destabilize over time. Toss your bottles and restock annually.
—Read labels: Certain sunscreen ingredients provide a broader protection to the skin. These include: Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Oxide, which are not absorbed in the skin and are the ones deemed safe for small infants (2-6 months of age); Avobenzone or Parsol 1789 sunscreens may be inactivated by reaction with ultraviolet light, causing a degeneration of their strength with time. Helioplex (found in Neutrogena Ultra Sheer SPF 55) and the Active Photobarrier Complex found in Aveeno sunscreens have an ingredient that stabilizes them to produce stable all day protection unless sweating or swimming wash them off.
—If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t apply it on your skin! Children who are allergic to foods such as soy cannot use skin care products containing the same.
Hear their pain
Swimmer’s Ear is an often painful condition that plagues young water-loving children. Also known as Recreational Water Illness, it’s is an infection of the outer ear canal, caused by water sitting in the ear. Drying the ear thoroughly after swimming, and using earplugs, are two ways of preventing swimmer’s ear; a new antibiotic ear drop, Floxin Otic, is a topical treatment that will get your kids back in the water quickly.
—The Terrapin Wireless Gate Alarm is the utmost in pool safety, with an alarm that warns parents the moment a child opens the gate to a pool fence without an adult, and if the pool fence gate fails to latch closed within 11 seconds of an adult entry. $100 at www.safetyturtle.com; (800) 368-8121.
—But everyone who has a pool or is vacationing near one should review safety procedures with the DVD, Ten Minutes for Life. This DVD, from Baby Otter Swim School, offers a step-by-step guide to pool safety. $17.95 at www.tenminutesforlife.com. | <urn:uuid:983d1e49-765d-47a3-a60a-6c198a782e6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nymetroparent.com/article/Sunscreen-safe-tips | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931674 | 528 | 2.078125 | 2 |