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When most people think of peanuts, they think of roasted, salty treats that come from the snack aisle. But where did they grow before that? Peanuts aren’t as foreign as you may think—you can even grow them in your own backyard.
Ernie Racz, “Head Nut” at Kernal Peanuts in Vittoria, Ontario, says peanuts are actually fairly easy to grow in Canada. He and his wife Nancy have been growing them since 1976.
There are four varieties of peanuts (Valencia, Spanish, Virginia and Runner), but only Valencia peanuts are typically grown in Canada and they’re the only type grown commercially in Ontario. They mature earlier than other varieties and are the best choice for Canadian gardeners. Racz says they’re medium sized and the sweetest variety, too.
Here’s what you need to know to grow your own peanuts:
Starting your peanuts
All you need to start is an unroasted peanut with its skin still on. You can get these from some Canadian seed companies, including OSC Seeds.
Plant the peanut, skin and all, about 1/2 an inch deep in May, when the ground reaches about 70 degrees Celsius.
Racz says you can start plants indoors, but it’s not imperative. Your plants will mature in about 120 days.
Where to grow peanuts
Peanuts want to grow in loose, sandy soil that drains well and holds warmth. They need plenty of sunshine, so grow them in full sun. “They’ll take a lot of hot, dry weather,” says Racz. “But they don’t like to get their feet wet for a long time.”
It’s also important to give each plant plenty of space to grow. In about June, says Racz, you’ll start to see yellow flowers appear. These will self-pollinate and then your peanut plant will start to send pegs down into the ground. A peanut pod will grow at the end of each peg, and your plant will continue to send these down until the first frost.
Keep the soil around your peanut plants weed-free so the pegs can grow properly. Too many weeds can reduce your overall yield.
Peanuts will fix their own nitrogen, so you don’t need to worry about fertilizing them. | <urn:uuid:71160ca3-79bd-4151-a81b-8fdbf860eb72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://canadiangardening.com/gardens/fruit-and-vegetable-gardening/how-to-grow-your-own-peanuts/a/42484 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954921 | 494 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Georgia legislators sponsoring anti-immigrant bills say they have been forced to act by frustration with the federal government, which they believe has been unwilling to address illegal immigration issues.
Unfortunately, those legislators have a point, at least about the federal government’s failure to act. In fact, they have every right to be frustrated, even if the solutions they propose to fill the void left by federal inaction are unworkable.
Thanks to a combination of cowardice and political opportunism, Congress has indeed abdicated its duty to deal with tough immigration issues. The few steps it has taken in recent years — such as efforts to tighten border security — have been little more than useless if expensive window dressing.
Certainly, our border with Mexico needs to be tightened as much as possible. In practical terms, however, a boundary more than 2,000 miles long through mainly undeveloped areas can never be made secure against people sufficiently motivated to cross it. That’s a fact.
It’s also a fact that at least 10 million illegal immigrants already live here, and at this point, most have every intention of staying. According to the 2010 Census, roughly 850,000 Hispanics live in Georgia, and by some estimates as many as half may be here illegally.
So what do we do about them?
That’s the question that elected officials at the federal level refuse to address. That’s the vacuum that state legislators such as Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, and Sen. Jack Murphy, R-Cumming, claim to be trying to fill. And it is really the crux of the whole illegal immigration debate. With the economy in the tank and the flow of illegal immigrants greatly reduced, the real issue is how to deal with those already here.
There are two basic options: Either make those people go back where they came from, or they stay. Ramsey, Murphy and other conservative legislators prefer that they go back where they came from, and are trying to pass laws so punitive that they will leave on their own. (The option of tracking down, arresting and removing 10 million people, using law enforcement and the judicial system to sift the illegal from the legal, is understood by almost everybody to be hopeless.)
Personally, I have no faith that a policy of discouragement can work. Illegal immigrants have already proved themselves willing to endure great risk, sacrifice and hard work.
No matter how difficult we make things, no matter how inhumane or punitive we make our laws, most illegal immigrants are going to conclude that things are better for them and their children here than they would be back home. And if you think about it from their point of view, they’re right.
Changing that calculation would be very, very difficult.
The alternative, then, is to acknowledge the continuing presence of illegal immigrants while providing an avenue for them to leave the shadows and join the mainstream. That’s a step that only Congress can take — a step that it has so far refused to take, and that it shows no signs of taking in the foreseeable future.
Back in the ’80s, President Ronald Reagan supported legalization, explaining in a 1984 presidential debate that “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.” Thanks to his backing, Congress agreed.
A few years ago, President George W. Bush tried to convince members of his party to follow Reagan’s lead, but the effort failed. President Barack Obama has also expressed support for such a change, but with chances of passage almost non-existent, he has expended no political capital on its behalf.
As a result, we’re stuck with a choice between bad solutions and no solutions at all.
– Jay Bookman | <urn:uuid:c5d863e0-c2ed-4301-b668-8d9f0f73c1c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/03/29/federal-inaction-on-immigration-lets-issue-fester/?cp=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97465 | 787 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Last week Rachel blogged about some of the trade-offs the government faces in the upcoming Spending Review. She argued that more government spending must be prioritised towards those areas that drive growth and boost the long-term competiveness of the UK. One of these areas is innovation.
Innovation is vital to the long-term competitiveness of individual firms, and the UK economy as a whole
But innovation is risky, and requires resources that companies – particularly SMEs – do not always have access to
As a result, Government must step in as an active partner
This is something that government already does, and the focus of support is right, but the level is insufficient
Despite recent new initiatives, the level of support for innovation is low, especially when compared with support for science.
Both science and innovation require some public investment to deliver the optimal level of total investment. But while the UK’s science base is highly successful, as an economy we have not always succeeded in capitalising its outputs. Innovation is necessary to do this. Without sufficient support for innovation, we risk an economy that is “all engine, no transmission”.
Recommendation: The TSB – and its budget – should be moved into the science ring-fence to create a protected “science and innovation” pot of approximately £5bn at current levels of funding. We would advocate a modest increase to the TSB’s budget of £43mn resource funding p.a., but at the very least the innovation budget should be protected.
Additional money for innovation should be used to strengthen the Catapult centres and increase support for SMEs:
Two of the key barriers companies face when innovating are access to facilities and expertise. Catapult centres help address this, but we have concerns that they neither have sufficient funding to keep their facilities at the cutting edge, nor to keep their research focused on innovation (rather than focusing on more commercial projects).
Recommendation: Double operational funding for the High Value Manufacturing Catapult
Almost all barriers to innovation are felt most acutely by smaller companies; as such it is important that there is sufficient support directed towards SMEs. The Smart grant successfully boosts innovation in smaller companies, but despite recent increases in budget – the grants are oversubscribed, “highly competitive” and consequently have a low success rate of only around 20%.
Recommendation: The funding for Smart should be increased from £40mn to £50mn to make the success rate more comparable with other TSB schemes.
Universities, Catapult centres and other research institutes offer facilities and expertise and can be a vital support for innovative companies. Innovation vouchers are an effective way to increase SMEs’ access to the research base. The scheme has recently been reintroduced but it could be better aligned with other innovation support.
Recommendation: extend Innovation Vouchers to align them more closely with the technologies currently covered by Catapult centres; the budget should be increased by ½mn p.a. for each of the Catapult areas not currently covered, at a total cost of £3mn p.a.
The TSB must remain the responsible agency for innovation support
The TSB is currently the primary agency for dispensing innovation support. In general it does so successfully, despite some concerns about relatively complicated application processes. As such we have some concerns about possible changes to the innovation support landscape.
Proposals to integrate the TSB into the Business Bank risk adding an unnecessary additional layer of bureaucracy to application processes for innovation support if access to support was dependent on a generic diagnosis of needs.
The TSB is not a natural candidate for inclusion within the Business Bank. It offers different support from some of the other programmes that might be included, meaning it is not clear how companies would benefit from a unified front end.
Recommendation: The TSB should remain separate from the Business Bank
The move towards delivering innovation support through a national agency was a positive one, as it removed confusing regional support and reduced the potential for duplication of efforts – something that is particularly important given the small budget for innovation. As such, we are concerned that innovation funding could be channelled through LEPs. LEPs are likely to develop expertise that could help to shape and inform how the TSB allocates its funding, but the ultimate decision should lie with the TSB, which has oversight of national priorities.
Recommendation: Innovation support should be distributed at a national level
Future sector strategies must deliver maximum value for money
The growth partnerships and resultant sector strategies are an important component in addressing some of long-term challenges faced by UK industries. But we need to ensure the spending prioritised through sector strategies delivers maximum value money for the economy as a whole. A budget of £1.6bn has been set aside for sector strategies, but – after the release of only four out of eleven strategies – most of this has already been committed, leaving very little in the pot for the remaining strategies.
Recommendation: Decisions around sector strategies will face the same squeeze as everything else. Unless it is prepared to increase the funds available to sector strategies post 2015/16, the government should wait until all strategies have been produced to understand which proposals will garner the highest return for the economy and make some tough prioritisation decisions.
It is right that sector strategies should interact with the support the TSB offers and that some of the TSB’s competitions should be influenced by these priorities, but the strategies should not imply new constraints on the competitions the TSB runs. In order to provide flexibility for the TSB to support new technologies and supply chains that are not directly covered by sector strategies, decision-makers at the TSB must ultimately be the ones who allocate competitions.
Recommendation: The TSB must also be allowed to run its competitions independently of the government’s sector strategies | <urn:uuid:7c68f21b-a6f6-43bf-936b-057f158ac6e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eef.org.uk/blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947495 | 1,196 | 2.03125 | 2 |
System Management vs. Service Management
A short while ago I related a personal story about an excellent service encounter I had recently at a restaurant (see blog I posted on July 29th). At that time I asked, “Does this personal story translate to IT services??” The more I contemplate this concept the more I say…“absolutely!!” Folks, if those of you in IT support don’t readily agree, then all may be lost for us.
There is a simple way to describe what a typical IT organization does for a living. It’s been called “system management.” I think we all understand that IT manages a lot of technology that is strung together into “systems.” Part of our job is to manage those systems so they operate optimally. That means monitoring, performing regular preventive maintenance and repairing them when they malfunction. But there is more to what we do than system management.
If you ask your business peers (outside of IT) they may describe us as doing “service management.” Here’s what I mean. If you ask a non-IT business manager to describe email it might sound something like this:
“When I come to work in the morning after I boot up my PC then I click on my email icon. When -mail opens I am then able to send and receive messages to anyone I want. This is a service provided to me by IT.” So the business perceives what we do as providing services to them-not systems or technology. Interestingly, when you ask IT staff to describe e-mail, you may get very different descriptions:
The Desktop Support Manager would say that email is a software disc that we load onto everyone’s PC or laptop. A Network Administrator would call email data that travels back and forth on their network from servers to users. A Server Administrator would say email was an application that is loaded onto a group of servers.
So we in IT see the email through the eyes of however our job is related to email. In other words, through the technology or “system” that we are managing. But the business sees email as a service. This is a bit of a disconnect that we need to reconcile. If we are following goals in IT Service Management as described in ITIL, we should be striving to be integrated with the business, which is a step beyond just being aligned with the business. If we are to be integrated, we should begin to think and act more like the business than we have in the past. So let’s look beyond “systems management” and see ourselves as managing services.
Let’s take this concept a step further. If you look at the key objectives for ITIL processes, you’ll see a recurring theme. Among those objectives you will often see…”to meet or exceed the agreed upon goals of the business.”
I’ll be looking at some of the ways we may want to address “meeting or exceeding the agreed upon goals of the business” in my next blog entry. Meanwhile I welcome your comments and perspectives.
Previous entry: Our Value Proposition | <urn:uuid:f4003eab-89bd-450b-ab17-a3d9948c8183> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/tpnb/comments/system_management_vs_service_management/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95585 | 659 | 1.578125 | 2 |
John F. Reeves
Belief conflict patterns (BCPs) are knowledge structures representing the understander’s moral attitude toward problematic interpretations of the events in a story. These structures are used to model interest in stories by contrasting the understanding of stories to the system’s beliefs about the characters and what they have done. Once recognized, BCPs provide a framework for interpreting the rest of the story, and a basis for identifying the theme of the story. The representation of reasons for the attitude that the understander has of characters are called character assessments. Character assessments form the basis for BCPs by giving the understander a prior attitude under which to judge the character’s actions. BCPs organize the subjective reasons that the understander has for why a goal success/failure for a character should or shouldn’t have occurred, and these reasons provide support for the problematic interpretation of the story events. A process model for BCP recognition and how thematic resolution is accomplished is presented. The role of BCPs in a program that models the interpretive understanding of a short ironic story is described. | <urn:uuid:9d96cca8-4b7b-40d5-9a3e-e34c7d0343a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aaai.org/Library/AAAI/1988/aaai88-041.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949517 | 227 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Published on October 15, 2010 by John
native art, native american jewelry, native american rings, turquoise crafts, student loans, debt financing, native american astrology, native horoscopes, student debt, Indian Genealogy Records, family tree, native heritage, native jobs, native study, native students, native american university, grant, native ancestry, dna test
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua
Tribe of Indians
Umpqua refers to any of several distinct groups of Native Americans that live in present-day south central Oregon in the United States.
The Upper Umpqua tribe is represented as the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. The tribe signed a treaty with the U.S. federal government on September 19, 1853. The Upper Umpqua was the first Oregon tribe to sign a federal treaty. The Cow Creek Band spoke the now-extinct Takelma language. The Cow Creek Band has a reservation near the modern-day city of Roseburg, Oregon.
The Lower Umpqua tribe is represented in modern times as one of the three Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians located on the southwest Oregon Pacific coast in the United States. They spoke a language close to Siuslaw.
Some bands of the Umpqua are part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon.
The Cow Creek Tribe now operates the Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort in Canyonville. | <urn:uuid:64e537bc-6291-4a13-9cf8-cfb9f2714fd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nativeamericanencyclopedia.com/umpqua-indian-tribe-of-oregon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927782 | 313 | 2.828125 | 3 |
O.L. Vrouwe Onbevlekte Ontvangenis (Dom. P. Bellot, 1926-1927)
far from Waalwijk's centre,
in the former village of Besoyen, which now is a part of Waalwijk,
stands this catholic church in expressionistic style. It was built
behind its predecessor, a neo-Classical church from 1851. When the new
church was finished, the old one was demolished.
The current building was designed
by Benedictine monk and architect Dom. Paul Bellot, who took much of
his inspiration from brickwork architecture in Catalonia, in
cooperation with P. Cuypers jr., Jos. Cuypers' son. An almost identical
tower can be found at the church
of the Sacred Heart in Eindhoven, built by Bellot and H.C.
van de Leur
in 1930-1931. The church closed in 2000. Its future is uncertain. | <urn:uuid:942b2582-af5c-4b95-a5f1-7fa60bc9a9d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archimon.nl/noordbrabant/waalwijkolvoo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95071 | 214 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Rain hampers ND small grains harvestFARGO (AP) — Widespread rain over the past week has hampered the harvest in North Dakota.
FARGO (AP) — Widespread rain over the past week has hampered the harvest in North Dakota.
The Agriculture Department says in its weekly crop and weather report that the seeding of spring wheat, durum wheat and oats remains behind the average pace, though the barley harvest is nearly complete.
Sugar beets are 9 percent lifted, compared with 4 percent last year and on average.
The rain boosted topsoil moisture, which is rated 91 percent adequate to surplus, compared with the five-year average of 60 percent.
Pasture and range conditions are rated 64 percent good to excellent, and stockwater supplies are 96 percent adequate to surplus. | <urn:uuid:660f4499-32e8-4e29-b277-bcb3694790f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/39663/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948018 | 166 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Stokes sets are surfaces (codimension one) in space, across which or acquires an exponentially-small asymptotic contribution (in ), associated with a complex critical point of or . The Stokes sets are defined by the exponential dominance condition:
In the following subsections, only Stokes sets involving at least one real saddle are included unless stated otherwise.
The Stokes set consists of the rays in the complex -plane.
The Stokes set is itself a cusped curve, connected to the cusp of the bifurcation set:
The Stokes set takes different forms for , , and .
For , the set consists of the two curves
where are the two smallest positive roots of the equation
For , the Stokes set is expressed in terms of scaled coordinates
where satisfies the equation
For , there are two solutions , provided that . They generate a pair of cusp-edged sheets connected to the cusped sheets of the swallowtail bifurcation set (§36.4).
For the Stokes set has two sheets. The first sheet corresponds to and is generated as a solution of Equations (36.5.6)–(36.5.9). The second sheet corresponds to and it intersects the bifurcation set (§36.4) smoothly along the line generated by , . For the second sheet is generated by a second solution of (36.5.6)–(36.5.9), and for it is generated by the roots of the polynomial equation
This consists of three separate cusp-edged sheets connected to the cusp-edged sheets of the bifurcation set, and related by rotation about the -axis by . One of the sheets is symmetrical under reflection in the plane , and is given by
Here is the root of the equation
and such that
This consists of a cusp-edged sheet connected to the cusp-edged sheet of the bifurcation set and intersecting the smooth sheet of the bifurcation set. With coordinates
the intersection lines with the bifurcation set are generated by , . Define
When the Stokes set is given by
where is the root of the equation
such that . This part of the Stokes set connects two complex saddles.
where is the positive root of the equation
In Figures 36.5.1–36.5.6 the plane is divided into regions by the dashed curves (Stokes sets) and the continuous curves (bifurcation sets). Red and blue numbers in each region correspond, respectively, to the numbers of real and complex critical points that contribute to the asymptotics of the canonical integral away from the bifurcation sets. In Figure 36.5.4 the part of the Stokes surface inside the bifurcation set connects two complex saddles. The distribution of real and complex critical points in Figures 36.5.5 and 36.5.6 follows from consistency with Figure 36.5.1 and the fact that there are four real saddles in the inner regions. | <urn:uuid:de056234-21c4-489e-8f5e-91ae465aacfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dlmf.nist.gov/36.5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919617 | 641 | 3.3125 | 3 |
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I was escorted around the vast camp. In each long house (plastic-sided dormitories), a man lay on every third bed, collapsed from depression, boredom and heat. Some of Nauru's inmates have already lost their minds, some hallucinate that they are still on the sea.
The toilet facility advertised itself by its stench. Water is found to clear the toilets about once a week. Flush toilets should never have been installed. The pans and lids are coated or specked with dead and breeding insects. Here was the infectious source of health problems.
A playground was newly installed but on each of my three visits, no child used it. In the open heat a child would turn to a crisp.
As I walked the mini streets of shanty camp dwellings and ghastly crowded long houses, I could see what the letters sent to me by refugees had been unable to describe: the boredom, the waiting and the crowding.
Nauru is an island without fresh water. Australia consistently repairs Nauru's desalination plant which can barely meet the needs of the Nauruan population of 11,000. Water is rationed. For the detainees, water is shipped in from the Solomons. They say that it tastes foul and causes chronic stomach problems.
Food for the detainees comes every two weeks from Brisbane because no food is produced in Nauru.
The soils won't support much, and leaves get coated with the dust of the phosphate plant still lazily grinding what's left for a disappearing world market.
Could any location in the world be as unsuited to housing a temporary settlement? Nauru is a sick little country. The hospital is clogged with detention centre patients. Nauru's Opposition party says that the public service is working solely on detention centre matters. None of its own problems get any attention. If I am not allowed to say that Nauru's camps are concentration camps, I will say that they concentrate depression, they concentrate despair. The people I know in Nauru are in grief.
We could end this horror show, get out of Nauru, grant the Afghans amnesty and get on with repairing them and our soiled reputation.
Kate Durham is a founder of Spare Rooms for Refugees, a Web-based network that offers shelter and other assistance to refugees.
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|text | handheld (how to)||
Copyright © 2002. The Sydney Morning Herald.
|advertise | contact us| | <urn:uuid:d7570304-d327-46d6-b417-7cc847d88658> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/23/1030052974955.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938367 | 723 | 1.960938 | 2 |
A Slow-Motion Bank Run In Europe
Update: This post was written on Sept. 14. On Sept. 15, the European Central Bank, along with other central banks from around the world, announced a new lending program to fight the slow-motion run on Europe's banks. Here's more on that program.
Fear can wreck a banking system and cause havoc in an economy. That's why the recent worries about big French banks are so important, and so scary: Even without a Greek default, Europe could slide into a financial crisis.
For the past few months, what The Economist called a slow-motion run has been underway for big French banks. It looks different than the classic bank run, where ordinary people lose confidence in a bank and rush to pull their money out. That's because big European banks are different from traditional, Main Street banks.
At a Main Street bank, regular people put money in savings and checking accounts. This is, in effect, a short-term loan to the bank. The bank then takes that money and makes long-term loans to other regular people in the form of mortgages, small-business loans, and the like.
Big European banks work sort like that — but on a much, much bigger scale.
Big institutions like money-market funds lend billions of dollars to big European banks. These are short-term loans of a month or so.
The European banks take that money and make huge, long-term loans to big companies national governments. That includes loans to Greece (in the form of Greek bonds) and other countries with financial troubles.
Recently, many of the big institutions that lend money to French banks have grown worried about the banks' loans to Greece and other countries. So they've started pulling their money out of the banks.
For example, U.S. money market funds reduced their deposits in French banks by about a third between May and August of this year, according to one recent analyst report — that's tens of billions of dollars they've pulled out of French banks.
So far, French banks have been managing. They've been paying higher interest in order to borrow from other sources. In a pinch, they can also borrow from European Central Bank. This may allow them to muddle through, particularly if European leaders come up with a bigger, bolder bailout plan for Greece that eases investors' worries.
But if the slow-motion bank run continues, the banks may ultimately be forced to sell off bonds and other assets they hold. If several banks are forced to sell assets at the same time, the price of those assets will fall. It's simple supply and demand.
As Gary Jenkins of Evolution Securities put it when I talked to him this morning: "If all the banks go, who is buying?"
In the language of finance, this can push a bank from liquidity to insolvency.
At the beginning, the bank is fundamentally sound, but can't come up with enough money to meet its short-term needs. It has liquidity problems.
So it's forced into a fire sale of its assets. This drives down the assets' value. The fall in value means that the bank is no longer fundamentally sound — it's insolvent. In plain terms, the bank is bust.
The big French banks are too big to fail. So instead of going bust, they would get a bailout from the French government.
But this would likely be an ugly, scary process. It would cause more fear, and more problems, in financial markets throughout Europe and beyond. It could, in short, be another financial crisis. | <urn:uuid:af7a08fe-23e8-4d6a-92e9-6bcca18bd52d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://redriverradio.org/post/slow-motion-bank-run-europe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96231 | 736 | 2.453125 | 2 |
OWNER CONTROL INSURANCE PROGRAMSM
PROPERTY OWNERS AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS
Many property owners rely upon their contractors' insurance to protect them against environmental liabilities and damage to their property. However, this may not be enough.
A real estate owner may be held liable for property damage and bodily injury during and after an environmental clean up, asbestos abatement project, lead-based paint removal, or a simple underground tank removal.
Tenants, shoppers, building visitors or others who believe themselves harmed by a remediation activity can hold the building owner liable. In addition, an owner needs insurance against unintended property damage on the owner's property from a remediation project.
AN OWNER'S BIGGEST RISK: "ACTION OVER" CLAIMS
The biggest single risk to property owners is liabilities for injuries sustained by their remediation contractor’s employees. This exposure may not be covered by the contractors' insurance. Most owners believe that these claims, called "action-over" claims, will be covered by the contractors' workers compensation-but they are not.
Action-over claims result when a contractor's employee is injured on the job and sues the property owner directly. These claims often come after the contractor's employee has exhausted all available workers compensation benefits. Action-over claims often are filed years after the remediation project is complete. In addition, action-over claims are usually for large dollar amounts.
To be certain of adequate protection, a property owner must regularly monitor the contractor’s coverage and review insurance policies, certificates, endorsements, exclusions, limits and ratings.
To protect against action-over claims, owners often attempt to shift the liability back to their contractors through indemnification agreements. However, the contractors' insurance may fail to protect the owner.
PROBLEMS WITH INDEMNIFICATION AGREEMENTS
In some jurisdictions, the transfer of "action-over" liability back to the contractor is not allowed. In addition, the contractors' insurer may be unrated or unstable. Gaps in coverage may expose the owner to environmental liability, or fail to cover losses the owner may incur from the remediation activities. A contractor may let coverage lapse, or expend the aggregate limit on losses at another project.
The coverage itself may not be adequate. A contractor may have selected "claims made" insurance for remediation, which only covers claims reported during the policy period. A property owner; however; needs "occurrence-form" coverage or longer reporting periods, since injuries from pollution exposure, such as asbestos, may arise decades after exposure. The owner remains liable long into the future.
In short, an owner who depends upon the contractors' insurance coverage may be at risk. The owner takes on an administrative burden, which may still leave the owner vulnerable to "action-over" claims and additional claims regarding environmental risks and property damage.
A BETTER SOLUTION
Environmental Risk Agency's Owner Control Insurance Program offers owners a secure and efficient way to protect themselves from liabilities and losses that may arise from remediation projects. Our Owner Control Programs are available to cover environmental risks associated with environmental remediation, asbestos abatement, lead-based-paint remediation, and underground tank removal projects. Owner Control also has options that can protect an owner against "action-over" exposures.
Owner Control can be combined with other Environmental Risk Agency products, such as Remediation Stop LossSM or Asbestos in PlaceSM Insurance. Through a combination of coverages, the owner can be protected from liabilities that may arise before, during and after the remediation.
With our Owner Control insurance program, the owner purchases the insurance coverage in the name of the owner's company, and extends coverage to the contractors for their specific remediation projects. Thus, the contractors are covered-and the owner retains control of the insurance.
Owner Control insurance programs are available for large real estate portfolios and for single remediation projects. With Owner Control insurance program from Environmental Risk Agency,
- The owner's insurance is with solid, "A rated" insurance companies.
- The owner has control over the insurance and does not need to monitor contractors' coverage. The owner selects the deductibles, limits and policies.
- The owner's policy and its limits are always dedicated to the owner. With an Owner Control insurance program, the owner's limits cannot be expended on losses that originate at a contractor's other project.
- Owner Control coverage responds to the owner's needs for property damage and liability protection. Most importantly, coverage can be customized to respond to "action over" exposures. | <urn:uuid:58a3628c-5433-4f38-9962-351fb5c4c86d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ericcompanies.com/ownercontrol.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947758 | 946 | 1.804688 | 2 |
May 26, 2012
The U.S. and German geologists claim they had discovered the exact date when Christ was crucified, the International Geology Review reported.
According to the report, published in the academic journal this week, the scientists discovered that Christ had been crucified on Friday, April 3, 33 AD.
Jefferson Williams from the U.S. Supersonic Geophysical together with his German colleagues, Markus Schwab and Achim Brauer analyzed seismic activity near the Dead Sea and the earthquakes’ descriptions in the New Testament’s first book, Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew’s Chapter 27 says that as Jesus lay dying on the cross “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”
The scientists, who had detected the signs of two earthquakes in the soil samples from the Dead Sea, revealed that the latter earthquake had occurred between 26AD and 36AD, at the time when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea and when, as all four canonical gospels say, Jesus was crucified.
By putting together several clues from the Gospel of Matthew, combined with the Jewish calendar and astronomical data, the researchers revealed the date of the crucifixion with a fair degree of precision, the journal said.
This article was posted: Saturday, May 26, 2012 at 11:14 am | <urn:uuid:072d8622-76d1-44a9-aef3-18ae2ea205b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infowars.com/u-s-german-researchers-reveal-date-of-christs-death/comment-page-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961874 | 276 | 3.203125 | 3 |
And no that doesn’t mean corn pornography*. Corn smut, or Ustilago maydis, is a fungus that infects corn plants. It’s an old acquantance from my days working in the field. We always used to tell the new hires that corn smut was a rare delicacy in some countries (as we’d been told ourselves), but this was in the days before iPhones so until recently I never actually checked on this bit of received wisdom.
Turns out this particular bit of knowledge was true:
The immature galls, gathered two to three weeks after an ear of corn is infected, still retain moisture and, when cooked, have a flavor described as mushroom-like, sweet, savory, woody, and earthy.
I haven’t been able to figure out what the trade off in nutrition is between the ear of corn that is produced by a normal plant and the fungal galls that can be harvested from a plant infected with corn smut. I’d imagine corn smut provides more (and more complete) protein than an ear of corn (assuming corn smut is nutritionally similar to mushrooms.) But what’s the comparison in number of calories? The fungus is certainly sold at a higher price pound for pound.
My renewed interest in corn smut comes courtesy of a new paper** that came out in PLoS Biology describing how the fungus steals energy from infected corn plants without triggering the corn’s usual anti-fungal defenses. It’s an interesting read, you can check out the paper itself since PLoS Biology is open access, or Diane Kelley’s summary at “Science Made Cool.”
I’d seen a number of talks recently about another fungal parasite, powdery mildew in Arabidopsis, but somehow it’s much easier to focus on this stuff now that I can connect it back to corn. Even mammalian systems can be interesting*** once the make that connection.
*Please PLEASE don’t let that phrase start showing up in the search terms people use to find my site!
**Wahl R, Wippel K, Goos S, Kämper J, Sauer N (2010) A Novel High-Affinity Sucrose Transporter Is Required for Virulence of the Plant Pathogen Ustilago maydis. PLoS Biol 8(2): e1000303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000303
***The talk I’m practicing for Monday actually uses an example of a pheromone receptor in new world monkeys that was lost 23 million years ago in old world monkeys (including us humans). | <urn:uuid:235cf1a9-044d-4a74-b75d-dd08fc38e3f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916711 | 560 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Ghana: The Benefits of Planning, The Challenges of Markets
Ghana is a small country on the southern coast of western Africa, with a population of roughly 22 million people. The development of its Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector has been particularly interesting, since it has been based on a relatively free-market approach. This route appears to have benefited the Ghanaian public, because the cost of Internet access in Ghana is substantially cheaper than in many other African countries. However, no matter how free the market, Ghana's communications are still constrained by the country's low per-capita income, the scarcity of computers, and limited Internet connections that drive up the price of Internet access.
Ghana has implemented relatively liberal policies towards the Internet and new communications technologies. In 2002, the country's ICT Development Committee created a forward-thinking ICT strategy called the Information and Communications Technology For Accelerated Development project (ICT4AD).
This strategy consisted of a three-phase approach: first, the committee members came up with a framework for what they would like to achieve. Next, they developed a set of policies that would help them reach that goal. Finally, they delineated exactly how those policies could be implemented in the real world.
After the completion of all three phases, they took their findings to the Cabinet and Parliament in 2003. The recommendations were subsequently approved, which cleared the way for the government to implement several e-education, e-government and community-based ICT initiatives, as well as a national ICT infrastructure roll-out. This good planning has had a positive effect on the development of ICT-based business and general usage: 2002 - 2005 saw a nearly nine-fold increase in the usage of mobile phones, as well as the birth of an IT industry (including call-centers and some computer manufacturing).
On the other hand, corruption in the Ghanian government remains a major issue in both political and economic spheres. It appears that the Internet and the businesses that have sprung up around it have been less prone to corruption than other areas of the country (e.g. development aid, taxation, policing, et cetera).
However, it is alleged that the National Communications Authority (NCA) has been remiss in its duty to monitor and regulate the service quality of the state telecom provider, Ghana Telecom (GT). This problems has been exacerbated by a scarcity of competition in Ghana's telecom market , since GT is the only major player in the market. Consequently, there is little incentive for GT to improve service beyond a certain minimum level.
Voice Over IP (VOIP) stands to add badly-needed competition to the telecoms sector. But because GT ultimately controls the major access line to the Internet for all of Ghana, it remains to be seen whether services like Skype will be allowed to take off. It's quite possible that they could be blocked either by prohibitively expensive Internet access, or by GT deciding to block the service completely.
Finally, in the realm of broadcasting, the government has made moves to relinquish day-to-day controlover the Ghana Broadcasting Company (GBC), turning to a version of the BBC's funding strategy. The BBC only returns to the government to renew its funding structure every 10 years. In GBC's case, the funding would come from a variety of sources, turning it into a public-service broadcaster with limited government interference.
Related Links http://www.ict.gov.gh/ - Ghana's ICT Development Committee Ghana's ICT Strategy --This document from 2004 covers the early direction for their ICT strategy. It was a working doucment, showing many of the developing options.
Censorship & Privacy
Although the government is enthusiastic about the growth of media in general in Ghana, it has also complained that journalists often disregard the importance of accuracy in their reporting. Mrs. Oboshie Sai Cofie, Minister for Information and National Orientation, has suggested that journalists set up a commission to police themselves to provide the "highest quality news." This appears to be a government response to unfavorable views being reported in the press.
From the other side of the fence, there are many concerns from Ghanaian bloggers and online journalists about a lack of protection for their work. They look to the United States, where there are guarantees for freedom of the press, and lament that no such rights exist in Ghana. This manifests itself in a fear of reprisal for writing unfavorable stories, or even from conducting basic investigations into the government. The government response to this critique is to return to the issue of "accuracy," which illustrates the divide between Ghanaian journalist and the Ghanaian government.
Ghana's biggest limitation (shared with almost every West African country) has been the single underwater fiber-optic cable (called SAT-3) that supplies land-based Internet access. This single source of connectivity to high-speed Internet has rendered the market basically uncompetitive. (There is a fixed cost for getting the Internet into Ghana and there is no real alternative to that method.) Put another way, there hsa been a single wire that connected Ghana to the Internet. Since most of the content Ghanaians seek lies outside of their country, that link to the Internet is crucial.
Compare this to the United States, where there are multiple providers; most of the content on the Internet is generated in the United States for people in the United States; and there are many choices for consumers to access the Internet, as well as many choices for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) both to deliver Internet service to consumers and to connect their services to the Internet.
Efforts to reduce the impact of that monopoly have been somewhat successful. After being pressured heavily by the Ghana Internet Service Providers Association (GISPA), Ghana Telecom lowered its price for a leased circuit from Ghana to Portugal from $15,000 to $8850. This is a lower price than what can be gotten elsewhere in West Africa, but it still represents a fortune.
As for personal access to the Internet, the prices range widely from $100 for a private connection at near dial-up speeds, to nearly $2000 a month for a connection that is equivalent to half of the speed of a cable modem in the United States. In a country where the per-capita income level hovers between $400 and $500 a year, this makes private, dedicated Internet access in the home totally unaffordable ( World Bank Per Capita Income Stats).
The CIA Factbook estimates that 609,800 out of Ghana's population of 22,931,299 have access to the Internet (about 3.5%). (AllAfrica Global Media reckons368,000.) The CIA's figure places Ghana within the top 15 countries for Internet connectivity in Africa, though not in the same league as South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt, where the percentages of the population with Internet access are significantly higher. | <urn:uuid:0698c4a1-e7dc-4d99-9c72-64a83410a240> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/nelson/newmediadev/Ghana.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956958 | 1,413 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Press Release 07-103
Team USA Takes the Prize at the International Linguistics Olympiad in St. Petersburg, Russia
First-time competitors show U.S. strength, potential in this important field
August 17, 2007
Six American high-school students took the top honors in the 2007 International Linguistics Olympiad in St. Petersburg, Russia earlier this month. This year was the first time a delegation represented the United States at the annual competition. Their victory brings a new focus on computational linguistics.
This year's International Olympiad featured 15 teams representing 9 different countries, including the Netherlands, Russia and Spain. Competitors were given problem sets consisting of sentences in languages most people are not familiar with, including: Tatar; Georgian; a language spoken by indigenous people in Bolivia called Movima; the Papua New Guinean language Ndom; Hawaiian; Turkish; and their English translations. With just this information, the competitors then had to translate more sentences from these languages into English. Winners were judged by how accurately and quickly they could figure out the rules and structure of the languages and complete their translations.
Eight high school students from the U.S. competed in the fifth Olympiad from August 1-4, 2007. Adam Hesterberg, of Seattle, Wash., obtained the highest score of all participants in the individual competition. Jeffrey Lim of Arlington, Mass. received top prize for the best solution to one of the problems. In addition, Rebecca Jacobs of Los Angeles, Calif., Joshua Falk of Pittsburgh, Penn., Michael Gottlieb of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. and Anna Tchetchetkine, of San Jose, Calif. won the top prize in the team competition in a tie with a Russian team.
Other American team members were U.S. champion Rachel Zax and Ryan Musa, both of Ithaca, N.Y. The U.S. teams were coached by Dragomir Radev, of the University of Michigan. Also providing leadership for the teams were Lori Levin of Carnegie Mellon University, Thomas Payne of University of Oregon and Amy Troyani of Taylor Allderdice High School, Pittsburgh, Penn.
The U.S. teams were selected from finalists of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) that took place on March 29, 2007, at four different locations across the country, as well as over the Internet.
Aside from being a fun intellectual challenge, the Olympiad mimics the skills used by researchers and scholars in some areas of the field of computation linguistics, which is increasingly important for the United States and other countries. Using computational linguistics, these experts can develop automated multilingual technologies such as translation software that cut down on the time and training needed to work with other languages, or software that automatically produces informative English summaries of documents in other languages or answer questions about information in these documents. In an increasingly global economy where businesses operate across borders and languages, having a strong pool of computational linguists is an important competitive advantage. With threats emerging from different parts of the world, developing computational linguistics skills has also been identified as a vital component of national defense in the 21st century.
Because of the growing importance of this intriguing field, the National Science Foundation initiated NACLO, funding a planning workshop in September 2006, and, together with the North American chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Google, and others helped fund the NACLO this spring that selected the members of Team USA, as well as the team's trip to the International Olympiad. The participants and their families also made contributions to bring the team to St. Petersburg for the Olympiad.
Organizers are planning to expand the size and number of locations for next year's NACLO competition in order to bring another strong team back to the 2008 Olympiad, which will be held in Bulgaria. Coach Radev says "now that everyone is aware of the strength of the US team, we can no longer count on the surprise factor. For next year, we will need to build an even stronger team."
Dana W. Cruikshank, NSF (703) 292-8070 firstname.lastname@example.org
Tatiana (Tanya) Korelsky, NSF (703) 292-8930 email@example.com
Lori Levin, Carnegie-Mellon University (412) 268-8746 firstname.lastname@example.org
The official site of the International Linguistics Olympiad: http://ilolympiad.spb.ru
Try some sample problems in computational linguistics: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev/namclo/
Division of Computer and Network Systems at NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=CNS
For more information about the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad go to:: http://www.namclo.org
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget was $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Get News Updates by Email
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Awards Searches: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/ | <urn:uuid:c12289f3-e97b-4846-b748-93515071d65b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=109891 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924449 | 1,258 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The Bakersfield College Accreditation Steering Committee (ASC), a standing governance committee, ensures that the accreditation or self-evaluation process is woven into the fabric of college activity with its focus on the improvement of student learning and success. Accreditation, a peer review process by an outside agency, focuses on how our resources and processes support student learning. We use valid data to promote institutional excellence and improvement.
The ASC promotes institutional accountability. The ASC fosters linkages between major planning and budgeting processes. The ASC uses evidence gathered by the college community to identify areas in need of improvement and makes recommendations to the college president and the college community. The ASC encourages collegewide dialogue on student success and communicates its findings to college faculty, staff, and students. The ASC focuses its energies on not only what students are learning but also whether it is the right kind of learning. For example, what difference does an education at Bakersfield College make in our students' lives? What evidence do we have to support our conclusions?
The committee ensures that the entire campus works together to support student growth, success, and development for lifelong learning. Overall, such an on-going self-evaluation effort focusing on student learning improves institutional effectiveness. The data will provide evidence for curriculum reform, planning, resource allocation, organizational leadership, and staff and student development. Ultimately, BC's self-evaluation will identify strengths and successes as well as improve institutional accountability, teaching, services, and learning.
Approved by Accreditation Steering Committee (ASC): February 15, 2011
Approved by Academic Senate: March 16, 2011
Approved by College Council: March 18, 2011
This page was last updated: March 24, 2011
Contact for this page: Nick Strobel | <urn:uuid:7b7f829b-a2ca-4c57-87e4-f7cf2fb1cc62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bakersfieldcollege.edu/collegecouncil/accreditation/ascphilosophy.asp?c=Faculty | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954252 | 362 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The Woodland Barn before and after restoration
Work began on the £1.6m project to restore the 17th centry watermill and outbuildings in January 2009. The official opening took place in April of 2010 with the great great grandson of the last Mrs Portman of Hestercombe House, Viscount de Vesci, cutting the ribbon to celebrate the turning of the watermill for the first time in a hundred years.
This dramatic phase in the restoration of the estate provides an invaluable hands-on educational experience showing visitors how a historic property was renovated and restored demonstrating historic and modern energies working side-by-side.
A collection of energy sources dating from Victorian and Edwardian times are showcased in the Dynamo House and Mill Room. The water wheel itself is an over-shot wheel having been restored by leading mill wright, Martin Watts.
The energy generated is used for demonstrations in the adjacent Mill Room to crush apples, grind corn and cut timber - activities that have all been prominent on the Estate over the centuries.
Hydro power from the water wheel is also powering the restored 1895 turbine that originally generated electricity for the Hestercombe Estate. The electricity was stored in glass batteries, many of which were unearthed during the development work.
The Dynamo House
The Dynamo House contains an acetylene plant which produced acetylene gas for the early gas lamps used in the House and a thermalume generator which produced gas from petrol and air - also to fuel the gas lamps. Taking pride of place in the centre of the Dynamo House is a huge, ornate Gas Holder, one of only two left in the country, used to store the gas.
As well as opening up exciting education opportunities, the new development also provides a stylish new venue for conferences, wedding and other big events in the beautifully restored Woodland Barn.
Take time for a homemade cream tea or a cooling ice cream at the Mill Tea Garden (open in the summer) - the perfect interlude to your walk around the gardens in the summer months.
Pop into the Dutch Tunnel to see a fascinating film about life on the estate in the 19th century.
There are several Mill Demonstration Days which are listed in our Events Diary - so come and meet the miller to hear more about Hestercombe in bygone days. | <urn:uuid:00e2b72c-5b5c-4290-a59c-f6cf1d01ae50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hestercombe.com/things-to-do/watermill.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952018 | 468 | 2 | 2 |
King Arthur Theme Chessmen
Type: Chess Pieces - Themed
Dimensions: King Measures 3 1/4"
Packaging: Cardboard Box
Does Not Include Chessboard.
King Arthur was the son of Uther. After Uther's death there was no king ruling all England. A sword had been placed in a stone by Merlin, saying that whoever drew it out would be king. Arthur did so and got himself crowned. This led to a rebellion be eleven rulers which Arthur put down.
He married Guinevere whose father gave him the Round Table as a dowry; it became the place where his knights sat, to avoid quarrels over precedence. A magnificent reign followed, Arthur's court becoming the focus for many heroes.
In the war against the Romans, King Arthur defeated the Emperor Lucius and became emperor himself. However, his most illustrious knight, Lancelot, became enamored of Guinevere. The Quest for the Holy Grial began and Lancelot's intrigue with the Queen came to light.
Lancelot fled and Guinevere was sentenced to death. Lancelot rescued her and took her to him realm. This led King Arthur to crossing the channel and making war on his former knight. While away from Britain, he left Mordred in charge. Mordred rebelled and King Arthur returned to quell him. This led to King Arthur's last battle on Salisbury Plain, where he slew Mordred, but was himself gravely wounded. King Arthur was then carried off in a barge, saying he was heading for the vale of Avalon. Some said he never died, but would one day return. However, his grave was supposedly discovered at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry II (1154-89).
Chessmen, of King Arthur, Guinivere, and Merlin fight the evil side with Mordred and his crew on your chess board. Hand crafted and highly detailed cold cast resin.
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Zimbabwe at centre of gem row
- Mining: Burnishing Marange taints the industry
- Murky world of Marange mining firms
- Marange diamond company is Zanu-PF's best friend
The conference, held in the resort town of Victoria Falls, was meant to win credibility for Zimbabwe's controversial diamond sector. With all the top figures of the diamond industry represented, it was also a chance for the process to mend differences over the group's future.
But it ended in a row between groups hoping to keep controversial gems from the Marange diamond fields on the market and those campaigning for their restriction.
A sign of the divide was the cold reception given by delegates to a report claiming that $2-billion worth of diamonds has been stolen from Zimbabwe. The report received wide international media coverage and support from rights groups, but it was mostly ignored by the hundreds of investors at the conference, who focused instead on lobbying for an end to sanctions on diamonds from the Marange fields.
The process was split into two camps: Western governments and rights campaigners that want Zimbabwean diamonds excluded from world markets and a larger group, made up of influential industry players, who back Zimbabwe's efforts to lift the remaining restrictions on its diamonds.
The Partnership Africa Canada Report, Reap What You Sow: Greed and Corruption in Zimbabwe's Marange Diamond Fields, failed to sway diamond businesspeople from Zimbabwe. It sought to make the gathered delegates feel guilty about dealing with the country, but Zimbabwe's vast potential seemed to be gaining enough support from the world industry.
In a heated session on November 13, the tension between the two sides bubbled over. Industry players pointed out that the Kimberley Process had certified Marange diamonds as fit for sale. But the United States and other Western governments have maintained a blockade on Marange, saying its diamonds were tainted by rights abuses.
Kimberley Process chairperson Gillian Milovanovic came under intense fire from delegates, who accused her of collusion with the US in blocking Marange diamonds.
Abel Chikane, a member of the process who was part of a team that inspected the Marange fields, suggested that Milovanovic had to resign because she was compromised, a sentiment shared by many delegates. Milovanovic angrily dismissed the charges.
South Africa, which backs Zimbabwe on the controversy, takes over as Kimberley Process chair next year, bolstering the campaign against the Western group.
The gap between Western governments and investors was shown when Mark Gonzales, the political and economic chief at the US Embassy in Harare, said that his country's embargo on Marange gems would be lifted only when Zimbabwe reformed politically. His remarks were sharply criticised by well-known "diamond hunter" Yianni Melas. "I am willing to take the risk on Zimbabwe," Melas said.
Ahmed Bin Sulayem, chairperson of the Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre, said he was working hard to ensure the truth about Zimbabwe's gems was known, "not the lies and dishonesty" that, he said, had been driven by the media.
Stephane Fischler, president of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, said restrictions on Marange gems were damaging Zimbabwe. "We are convinced that the resulting de facto exclusion of imports from certain areas negatively affects [its] ongoing social and economic development."
On November 12, former South African president Thabo Mbeki urged an end to sanctions on Zimbabwe, but warned against allowing the diamonds to fall into the hands of a "predatory elite".
"This must also mean that [its] political leadership, including all the parties which serve in the ... government, must absolutely ensure that the diamond mining industry is not governed by a predatory elite, which uses its access to state power to enrich itself against the interests of the people as a whole, acting in collusion with the mining companies."
Rights campaigners also want to widen the definition of "conflict diamonds" to include wording that would ban gems from regions where rights abuses are reported.
"Consumers are – or will be – looking for more and the core definition of 'conflict diamond' therefore needs to be updated as our own investment in the Kimberley Process's future as a modern and relevant system of certification, just as other industries are doing as we speak," Milovanovic said.
But there is suspicion that powerful governments want to use the proposed changes to exclude diamonds from Zimbabwe.
Namibian Mines Minister Isak Katali said: "Unfortunately the discovery of diamonds in Zimbabwe has been a thorn in the flesh to those that have issues with Zimbabwe."
Diamonds, smuggling and a dead body
A Mafia-style murder, a web of unknown mine owners and disappearing diamond stockpiles are part of the “biggest single plunder of diamonds the world has seen since Cecil Rhodes”, according to a new report by Partnership Africa Canada.
In Reap What You Sow: Greed and Corruption in Zimbabwe’s Marange Diamond Fields, released this week, the partnership, which campaigns against “blood diamonds”, links the murder of Harare businessperson Allan Banks to diamond deals. Banks was found dead in the boot of his car in July with a plastic bag around his head, an event that led to rumours he may have been involved in diamonds.
The partnership based its claims on “a source with first-hand knowledge of Banks’s diamond dealings”. However, his family has previously denied he was involved with diamonds.
Banks, claimed the report, had been introduced to diamonds by members of an army unit who had asked him to sell stones they had “acquired during their rotations in Marange”. Banks had then been granted “privileged access to diamond vaults”, but he and his associates were “soon in above their heads” when they began dealing in diamonds worth millions of dollars.
The report also said the March arrest of Israeli pilot Shmuel Klein while trying to board an aeroplane to South Africa carrying $2.4-million worth of diamonds showed how easily runners were getting in and out of Zimbabwe. His arrest was likely a “mistake by a junior customs official” because he was later acquitted and only fined on an immigration charge. “His passport had no entry stamp, suggesting he had been accorded VIP treatment in circumventing immigration officials upon arrival,” the report said.
The partnership places the military at the centre of diamond smuggling. Its report charges that “estimates place the theft of Marange goods at almost $2-billion since 2008”.
“In 2010, leading experts had predicted annual production estimates of as much as 30-million to 40-million carats if the Kimberly Process restrictions were lifted. At the current average of $60 a carat, the low end of that estimate would have realised annual sales of almost $2-billion.”
Not a trickle, but a flood
The report claimed collusion between Zimbabwean and foreign traders. It said 10-million carats of Marange diamonds were exported to Dubai late this year for $600-million, half of its actual value. The parcel was sold for double when it left Dubai for Surat, India, where the bulk of the world’s diamonds are cut.
The Marange smuggling “is not a trickle, but a flood”, said the report.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of illicit diamond trade had been Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, who had become one of Zimbabwe’s biggest property owners, it said. Mpofu had spent up to $20-million – mostly in cash – buying up properties and businesses and the figure did not include the $500000 he had doled out in donations this year alone.
Mpofu dismissed the report, saying it was the work of “detractors” and that its release had been deliberately timed to cloud the diamond conference. Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa earlier this week brushed off charges that the diamonds were funding military cartels. “If they have that evidence they should present it,” he said.
The partnership said its sources for the report included “liberation-era guerrilla leaders, insiders from across the political spectrum, former smugglers and sources in several of the companies operating in Marange with government approval”.
Marange mines are mostly owned by Chinese and Zimbabwe army joint ventures, but the true beneficiaries were not known, the report said.
“Little is known of the corporate structure of companies operating in Marange. However, several are known to be registered in secret tax havens such as Mauritius, where their owners are protected from public scrutiny.” | <urn:uuid:84699ae7-084a-4636-9e85-a9486ba66add> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-16-00-zimbabwe-at-centre-of-gem-row/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979206 | 1,801 | 1.75 | 2 |
Cato Policy Analysis No. 389
December 13, 2000
by Gene Healy
Gene Healy is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and an attorney practicing in Washington, D.C.
In his classic 1973 book The Imperial Presidency, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that the American political system was threatened by "a conception of presidential power so spacious and peremptory as to imply a radical transformation of the traditional polity." America's rise to global dominance and Cold War leadership, Schlesinger explained, had dangerously concentrated power in the presidency, transforming the Framers' energetic but constitutionally constrained chief executive into a sort of elected emperor with virtually unchecked authority in the international arena.
As William Jefferson Clinton came to power in January 1993, there was some reason to hope that the imperial presidency would be scaled back. Clinton, after all, was the first post–Cold War president and a member of a political party that had in the wake of the Vietnam War striven to restrain presidential aggrandizement in foreign policy.
Such hopes proved illusory. Throughout his administration, President Clinton has adopted a view of his executive power that is positively Nixonian in its breadth and audacity. The administration insists that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty still binds the United States under international law, even though the Senate explicitly declined to ratify that agreement. Administration officials likewise insist that the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty is still in effect even though one of the contractual parties (the Soviet Union) no longer exists. The administration has attempted to implement provisions of the Kyoto Protocol on the environment while continuing to refuse even to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. Those actions demonstrate that President Clinton has routinely abused the treaty power.
In addition to the abuse of the treaty power, the president has repeatedly usurped the congressional war power. In Haiti, Iraq, Sudan, and Bosnia, the Clinton administration displayed its contempt for the constitutional process and asserted a unilateral power to wage war without congressional approval. The most flagrant example was the 78-day air war conducted against Serbia in 1999 despite Congress's adamant refusal to approve the action.
As we approach the end of President Clinton's second term, the imperial presidency is as unconstrained and as menacing as it has been at any time since the Vietnam War. Bold congressional action is needed to reclaim legislative authority over the war power and the treaty power. Only then will America have an executive branch that comports with republican principles of government and the original constitutional design.
|Full Text of Policy Analysis No. 389 (PDF, 25 pgs, 149 Kb)|
© 2000 The Cato Institute
Please send comments to webmaster | <urn:uuid:b879722e-3ccd-48ed-98d1-4f42adf1a6ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-389es.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956642 | 542 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Multiple Sclerosis: Hold on to Your Health Insurance with COBRA
When you have multiple sclerosis (MS), hanging onto your health insurance can be difficult due to increased expenses, loss of income or employment benefits, and other problems. Fortunately, Congress and many states have already passed laws to protect your eligibility when you have MS.
In fact, these laws protect all Americans through life's most common life — such as getting too old to be covered by your parents' insurance policy, getting divorced, getting laid off from your job, or retiring.
One of the most important major laws you should know about is the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act (COBRA), which was passed into law by Congress in 1986. It protects your right to continued eligibility under your group health plan for a certain number of months after coverage would otherwise end.
This protection is important because lapses of 63 days or more in health insurance coverage make it difficult for a person to enroll in a new plan. COBRA guarantees continued eligibility for all qualified beneficiaries (covered employees and their covered spouses and dependents) for a limited time period after employment ends.
COBRA protection is triggered by several different kinds of events:
Your employment is terminated voluntarily or involuntarily for any reason except gross misconduct.
You change your work status to part-time and become ineligible for your employer's health plan.
For spouses of covered employees (domestic partners aren't covered):
Your husband or wife (the covered employee) is terminated voluntarily or involuntarily for any reason except gross misconduct.
Your husband or wife changes his or her work status to part-time, resulting in ineligibility for the employer's health plan.
Your husband or wife becomes entitled to Medicare.
You get a divorce or legal separation.
Your husband or wife dies.
For dependent children:
The qualifying events for dependent children are the same as for spouses (see the previous bullet).
An adult child turns 27 and ages out of a parent's coverage.
When you make use of your COBRA privileges, you must agree to pay the former employer (or a designated third party) the full premium plus a 2 percent surcharge. After you pay this amount, your employer no longer pays any part of the cost of your coverage.
The law requires your employer to notify you about your COBRA rights when you join the group health plan and then again when you're about to leave the plan. As a qualified COBRA beneficiary, you have 60 days from the date of the COBRA offer to tell your employer whether you plan to elect or reject the continued coverage. COBRA coverage begins the same day that the other coverage ends — without any gap in protection.
You can elect COBRA for yourself and any family member who's covered under the same plan. If your spouse is the covered employee, he or she can elect it for you if you're covered under the same plan.
The length of time that you receive COBRA benefits depends on what triggered your COBRA eligibility. For example:
If your job is terminated or your work hours are reduced, the COBRA benefit period is 18 months.
If the triggering event is loss of dependent status for an adult child at age 27, a divorce or legal separation from, or the death of, your insured spouse, the benefit period is extended to 36 months.
If any qualified beneficiary (employee, spouse, dependent child) becomes disabled during the first 60 days of COBRA coverage, he or she may extend coverage for an additional 11 months.
To be eligible for this extension, you must give the insurance plan administrator a copy of the Social Security Administration's disability determination within 60 days of receiving it. But bear in mind that the premium can legally be increased by 50 percent for months 19 through 29. | <urn:uuid:b9a3bc4f-3bbb-4502-a20c-9dd697f32d66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/multiple-sclerosis-hold-on-to-your-health-insuranc.navId-811935.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952167 | 787 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Since the dawn of civilization, pretty much, bread has been known as “the staff of life.” But for those suffering from gluten intolerance, bread may be more like “the enemy of the state” or at least feel that way from the associated digestive issues.
There are times when cutting down on bread can facilitate weight loss, which would make anyone feel better. However, bread, even whole grain bread eaten in moderation, may cause major problems to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract for those gluten sensitive individuals. This GI distress can lead to further complications stemming from malabsorption of essential nutrients as well as concomitant auto-immune diseases.
Gluten intolerance, also known as celiac disease, is an auto-immune disease in which the GI tract is the initial site of injury. Gluten refers to a group of proteins found in wheat, rye and barley. For those celiac disease suffers, the immune system treats gluten as a foreign body and inflames the villi (little finger-like projections in the GI tract) to protect the body from the perceived intruder.
Under normal circumstances, the villi are the main site for nutrient absorption. In their inflamed state, nutrient absorption is hindered leading to nutritional deficiencies and possible short- and long-term complications. Common nutrient deficiencies associated with gluten intolerance include low iron in the blood or anemia which may cause chronic fatigue. Calcium absorption can also be inhibited leading to bone loss or osteoporosis. Gluten intolerance has also been linked to other chronic auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and type-1 diabetes.
It seems that once your body begins fighting battles to protect itself from invaders like gluten, it sometimes kills off its own healthy cells. This is the case with type-1 diabetes where the beta-cells of the pancreas are destroyed thereby eliminating the body’s own insulin production. An auto-immune response may promote an increase in pro-inflammatory agents as a way to protect specific body parts from assailants while at the same time unintentionally causing pain and suffering to other areas such as the joints, as seen with rheumatoid arthritis.
Technically, you do not have a true gluten intolerance or celiac disease unless tested and confirmed by a physician. The tests include blood work for the anti-gliadin antibodies (IgA) as well as a biopsy of the GI tract. If you suspect that you are gluten intolerant and begin to eliminate sources of gluten, as I did, your tests will come back negative. You have to ingest the offender in order to stimulate the antibodies. For more on gluten intolerance and foods to avoid as well as foods to include, tune in next week. For now, at least pizza is back on the menu!
Elizabeth Brown is a gluten intolerant registered dietitian and certified holistic chef who has learned that there is more to life than bread. For more information visit her Web site: http://www.thekitchenvixen.com.
Gluten-free pizza crust recipe
1 packet or 2 1/4 tsp. active, dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water, not too hot to touch
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup brown rice flour
3/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup millet flour
2 tsp. xanthan gum
3/4 tsp. sea salt
2 eggs, room temperature
2 tbs. olive oil
2 tbs. ricotta cheese, room temperature
Allow ricotta and eggs to come to room temperature. Preheat oven to 200 degrees and place pizza stone or baking sheet in oven to warm. Place yeast and sugar in a small bowl and add 1/4 cup warm water. Mix to dissolve yeast and sugar and wait five minutes for yeast to activate. The water will appear milky and tiny bubbles will rise to indicate the yeast is active.
In one mixing bowl, combine the flours, xanthan gum and salt. In another bowl, beat eggs and combine with oil and ricotta cheese. You can combine all ingredients by hand in a very large mixing bowl, or use a standing mixer or a food processor. Combine the flour with the yeast-water. Add the egg-ricotta mixture. Add more water very gradually while you either knead the dough by hand or with your mixer. Your goal is to get a shiny, pliable dough.
Turn off your oven. Remove pizza stone or baking tray. Cover stone or tray with parchment paper. Coat your hands with olive oil. Place the dough on your pizza stone or baking tray lined with parchment. Shape the dough into a 12-inch round pizza. Pull up the edges to create a crust.
Turn on your oven light, place the doughy pizza crust in the oven. Do not turn on the oven. Let the dough rise for 45 minutes in the oven with the oven light on. Once the dough has risen, turn the oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake the crust for 10 minutes or until golden. Remove crust from the oven and top with your favorite toppings. Turn the oven heat to 400. Bake pizza with toppings for 7 minutes. Or for those anxious pizza eaters, try Amy’s Organic Rice Crust Gluten-free Pizza. | <urn:uuid:ddee2fe9-3562-41ac-aaa2-c41eaee4ba12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smdp.com/cant-live-by-bread-alone/74819 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932242 | 1,080 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Danger on High for Little Climbers
By Tony Thomas, MD
Toddlers will climb. It’s as natural to them as breathing, eating, sleeping and exploring their environment.
And furniture will fall when tipped off balance by an adventurous, inquisitive child.
There’s nothing natural about what happens next: Severe injury or death to the child who is pinned beneath the TV, bureau, bookcase or other tall furniture.
Tip-over-related accidents are occurring in alarming numbers. In one recent year in the U.S., there were more than 44,000 tip-over accidents reported by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. There were 3,000 children under 5 treated in ERs from TVs falling on them. When the victims are small children, the risk is the greatest for life-threatening injury or death.
Tip-over accidents are most likely to occur when children use drawers or bookshelves as ladder steps or when they use things like stools, chairs or toys to climb higher to reach the top of high furniture. Televisions are especially likely to be tipped over when they are not secured or placed well back on the top of TV stands.
Here are some suggestions for securing your home when you have small children or if you expect them to visit:
- Always check the stability of TVs and teach children not to climb to reach the TV or the remote control. Place the TV on sturdy furniture appropriate for the size of the TV or on a low base. Then push the TV back as far as possible.
- Verify that furniture is stable on its own. For added security, attach to the wall or anchor to the floor all entertainment units, TV stands, bookcases, shelving and bureaus, using hardware such as angle-brackets, screws or toggles.
- Make sure electrical cords are out of reach and teach kids not to play with them.
By Dr. Thomas practices with CHKD Health System’s Pediatric Associates. | <urn:uuid:7ad77fcd-2759-4431-887b-346bdb3d40db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chkd.org/WTG/08Spring/DangerOnHigh.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947591 | 411 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Head Start is an early childhood education program that serves low-income and at-risk families and families that have children with disabilities. The recent sequestration is requiring Head Start programs across the state to cut their funding by 5.3 percent and that could mean big changes to the services it provides. Barbara Haxton is the Executive Director of the Ohio Head Start Association. She says that next year the Miami Valley could lose as many as 300 slots for children in local Head Start programs.
Springfield's Air National Guard Base will lose 47 jobs due to government cost cutting. The Guard Base and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base continue to deal with harsh budget cuts.
Springfield's guard base is losing 47 intelligence and reconnaissance positions within the 178th Fighter Wing as a result of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal-year 2013 that President Obama signed on January 2. | <urn:uuid:783f453b-c77f-4e31-8673-3e0625003392> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wyso.org/term/sequestration?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960154 | 174 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Payment By Results For New SSSI Management Agreements
News from English Nature
25th April 1996
An innovative and successful scheme for management agreements on Sites of Special Scientific Interests (SSSIs) is being adopted England-wide by English Nature. The scheme, called the Wildlife Enhancement Scheme (WES), reimburses owners and managers of SSSIs for carrying out agreed conservation tasks.
The Wildlife Enhancement Scheme centres on a simple agreement, in plain English, setting out the management tasks necessary to maintain and enhance a particular SSSI for nature conservation. Standard payments have been devised for dealing with many different types of habitat. These make future nature conservation agreements much more straight forward than old-style arrangements which compensated SSSI owners and managers for loss of potential agricultural productivity.
This new approach enables English Nature to work with owners and managers and reward them for fine tuning regimes to the special needs of an SSSI.
Many old-style agreements were drawn up in the Seventies and Eighties when public money encouraged the intensification of agriculture and forestry. This has largely changed, and we need to make landowners and managers more aware of the benefits of managing land for conservation," said Paul Silcock, English Nature’s WES Co-ordinator. "It is payment by results for nature conservation and makes sense in today’s society."
English Nature is working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure that WES agreements mesh in with MAFF’s key schemes for the wider countryside, Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) and Countryside Stewardship.
"People seem a lot happier with WES because it is easier to understand and the conditions and management tasks are clear and uniform for everyone on an SSSI. Everyone is a lot more positive as they are being acknowledged for taking a responsible attitude towards conserving special sites," said Paul Silcock.
NotesThere are over 3,800 SSSIs in England. They cover approximately 7% of England’s land area. They are notified by English Nature because of their importance for wildlife, geology or physiography. Most are privately owned or managed.
Wildlife Enhancement Schemes currently cover the following areas: Culm Grasslands - Devon; Pevensey Levels - East Sussex; Coversand Heaths and Peatlands - Yorkshire; Craven Limestone Grasslands - Yorkshire; Dorset Heathland; Thames Basin and Wealden Heaths; Magnesian Limestone Grassland - Tyne & Wear to Derbyshire; Hereford and Worcester Grasslands; Avon Levels; North Penine Moorlands. | <urn:uuid:8ae7ff14-9f7c-4c6b-9ccc-76f50db945a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.birdcare.com/bin/shownews/14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93846 | 536 | 1.984375 | 2 |
New Jersey's Smoke-Free Air Act of 2006 ensures that workers have a safe, smoke-free workplace and that all nonsmokers -- including children and senior citizens -- can breathe smoke-free air in public places.
Secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard that can lead to illness and premature death in children and non-smoking adults, according to the U.S. Surgeon General. As New Jersey’s Smoke-Free Air Act states, it is clearly in the public interest to prohibit smoking in enclosed indoor spaces.
The law is an important part of New Jersey’s effort to eliminate tobacco use as one of our most significant public health threats, reduce smoking-related illnesses and save lives for generations to come. | <urn:uuid:761fd441-92ee-4e99-8ef8-a54a8f645f17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nj.gov/health/ctcp/smokefree/index.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944886 | 149 | 2.65625 | 3 |
News & Public Affairs12/19/08 By Andrea Lypka
WMNF Drive-Time News Friday Listen to this entire show:
The Outpost is not just a run of the mill art gallery in Gulfport but a gallery where art is made from recyclables.
Carol Zuelsdorf is an environmentally inspired artist who incorporates trash into a functional art. “Green art is using things over and over again to help our environment,” she said.
During the eco-cleanups organized by her husband Kurt Zuelsdorf, she picks up debris from Clam Bayou and incorporates it into her art. She turns palm fronds into colorful fish or masks, coc...Be the first to comment | <urn:uuid:6107b3d3-1529-400d-850c-d1c3d33e38ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmnf.org/news_stories?tag=lypka | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916714 | 151 | 1.523438 | 2 |
SEATTLE – Some opponents of tolling on Interstate 90 are pushing to get an initiative on the November ballot that would prevent tolling on federal interstates running through Washington.
Democracy Workshop filed paperwork in Olympia last week to initiate the process. The group plans to collect about 350,000 signatures by early July to get the measure to the ballot, which may not be an easy process.
“The interstate’s a little different from state roads,” said Elizabeth Campbell, the group’s director. “They’re the spine of the economic and commerce that goes through our area and it’s important to keep those free.”
The Washington Department of Transportation is researching the possibility of tolling I-90 to help generate more money for the State Route 520 bridge project and to help even out traffic crossing Lake Washington.
Some believe more tolling is necessary so the state can meet its transportation needs.
WSDOT has been collecting comments over the past few weeks. The deadline for collecting comments is Friday, then the state will move forward with an environmental study.
Many have voiced concerns about I-90 tolling at WSDOT open houses. A new group called “No Toll on I-90” has recently formed and has started posting signs throughout Mercer Island. | <urn:uuid:04b863a7-78be-4f08-92ea-ea2e1c1d6b18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.king5.com/news/politics/I-90-tolling-opponents-push-for-November-initiative-191634601.html?ref=next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946712 | 269 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Art review: Nira Pereg at Shoshana Wayne
Nira Pereg's three-channel video, "Kept Alive," is an engrossing meditation on some of the physical and social implications of death and burial in Israeli society. Projected in an asymmetrical arrangement on two adjacent walls at Shoshana Wayne, it documents everyday activities at the Jerusalem cemetery, Mountain of Rest.
Yet the piece is anything but restful. One screen shows a continuous loop of a man digging a grave, filling the room with an almost constant drone of scraping and scuffing. On the other two screens, long shots of the hillside cemetery – a veritable city of concrete tombs – are interspersed with scenes of mausoleum construction, weed cutting, stone clearing and the carving of grave markers.
These markers, it turns out, are not tombstones but merely labels indicating plots purchased for future use. They read simply in Hebrew, "Kept Alive."
This sentiment applies to the still-living buyer but also the memory of the dead, which is kept alive both through mourning and physical maintenance of the graves. Strikingly, these two activities are performed by two groups. The visiting mourners are mostly fair in complexion, often attired in Orthodox Jewish garb; the cemetery workers are almost all slight, dark-skinned men. The video quietly but emphatically registers class, racial and religious differences, contrasting a long shot of a group of Jewish men swaying in prayer with a close-up of the dust-whitened hands of an elderly worker and another man who kneels and prays toward Mecca.
Yet the overall impression is of hard work: the constant, monotonous physical labor that goes into caring for the dead. On one hand this speaks to the importance of tradition and memory in Israeli society. On the other, it reminds us that the houses of the dead are not so different from those of the living – built, cleaned and maintained by an otherwise invisible underclass.
– Sharon Mizota
Shoshana Wayne, 2525 Michigan Ave. B1, Santa Monica, (310) 453-7535, through Feb. 27. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.shoshanawayne.com
Image: Kept Alive. Photo credit: Courtesy Shoshana Wayne Gallery / Michael Spezialy. | <urn:uuid:0a569c71-4219-4c0b-8ae7-e4d3b91bdf13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/01/art-review-nira-pereg-at-shoshana-wayne.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930935 | 482 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Lifelong resident Harry “Bubby” Buell emailed me earlier this year about his Jacaranda tree that was blooming. “I don’t think there are any more in town,” he said. His tree is “about 25 years old and this is the first time it has bloomed,” with “the flowers 30 feet up.”
Harry has several other Jacarandas growing in his Duffrin Street landscape, but this one is by far the largest.
Approximately 25 years ago, Harry got the seeds in St. Petersburg when he was visiting his son, Harry Jr., who was celebrating a birthday. Harry Jr. retired from the Coast Guard in November, 2011.
Jacaranda is a sub-tropical tree native to South America that has been widely planted elsewhere because of its beautiful and long-lasting deep blue flowers.
The Blue Jacaranda has been cultivated in almost every part of the world where there is no risk of frost; established trees can however tolerate brief spells of temperatures down to around 20 degrees.
In this country, it grows in parts of Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and Florida and has been reported to grow in Lafayette and southern Louisiana.
Blooms generally appear in spring and early summer, and last for up to two months. They are followed by woody seed pods which contain numerous flat, winged seeds.
Buell has a number of other things growing on the North City property including Rose-of-Sharon. Citrus trees include ruby red grapefruit, naval oranges and satsuma. Datil and bell peppers and tomatoes were also growing in the landscape in May. | <urn:uuid:f6759267-110f-4923-93df-208c28b70f66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://staugustine.com/living/garden/2012-08-03/jacaranda-offers-showly-flower-display | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975469 | 352 | 2.140625 | 2 |
South Florida Records Two Driest Back-to-Back Years
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida, January 8, 2008 (ENS) – The past two years have been the driest back-to-back calendar years in South Florida since rainfall recordkeeping began in 1932, meteorologists at the South Florida Water Management District confirmed today.
The 2006-2007 rainfall total of 83.63 inches district-wide displaces by nearly an inch the previous low of 84.59 inches that fell 50 years ago in 1955-56.
Last year was the ninth-driest year in the 76-year record with rainfall of just 42.88 inches, across the district, 82 percent of the historical average,
It followed rainfall of only 40.75 inches in 2006, the sixth-driest year on record.
The combined two-year total is nearly two feet less than the historical district-wide average of 104.5 inches for a typical two-year period.
“The district’s rainfall data confirms that South Florida is still in the grips of a severe regional drought, which has led to a multi-year water shortage the likes of which we have never experienced,” said SFWMD Governing Board Chairman Eric Buermann.
“South Florida residents – as well as water managers – must live with limited water supplies this dry season, and we all must practice conservation and follow the one-day-a-week restrictions if we are to successfully minimize the impacts of this water shortage,” he said.
All during 2007, the district imposed one new water restriction after another in an effort to conserve scant water supplies.
Now, the most restrictive rules ever imposed in South Florida take effect next week.
In December and for the first time in the agency’s history, the district declared an extreme water shortage, and established a one-day-a-week watering schedule for residential landscape irrigation.
Water management is easier when plants with similar water needs are grouped together, advises the South Florida Water Management District. (Photo courtesy SFWMD)
Landscape irrigation accounts for up to half of all household water consumption in the state of Florida and totals more than seven billion gallons per day nationwide.
The new restrictions become effective Tuesday, January 15. Enforcement, including issuing of of civil fines and notices of violation will begin on that date. For information on watering days and times, as well as restrictions on specific use classes, visit www.sfwmd.gov/conserve.
In checking the rain gauge, I found that we had a hair over 7″ of that elusive wet stuff in my little area of NE Florida this week.
If you read the article, you will find that Lake Okechobee is at very low levels and you may infer that this is due to the drought, which is not entirely correct. The level was reduced to make room for the record number of hurricanes (and heavy rainfall) predicted for the summer hurricane season (which never materialized) as there were concerns with whether or not the dike would hold. | <urn:uuid:6825199c-4f52-49bc-9b5f-3c6fe18b2e36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://swampie.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959559 | 630 | 2.5 | 2 |
Back in 1933, when national liquor sales were re-legalized, some pols weren’t too happy. Prohibitionist Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot was one of them. Because of that, he created the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, he said, to “discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible.” Seventy-eight years later, we’re one of two states (Utah being the other) in which the government still controls both wholesale and retail sales of alcohol. Thanks a lot, Pinchot.
But times may have changed. The GOP controls the state Legislature and governor’s mansion, and we seem to be in an era of major government-program backlash. So a new bill that seeks to privatize the PLCB may be exactly what Pennsylvania needs to move into the 21st century.
Sources say the bill is very high on the Legislature’s agenda (No. 2!), and when House lawmakers return on Sept. 26, the fight over the PLCB is set to get down and dirty.
The man with the plan: Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai. In July, he introduced House Bill 11—called the LCB Privatization Plan—which he and others say would help both consumers and business owners while bringing in a ton of much-needed cash by selling off liquor licenses to private industry.
The first step would include auctioning off 1,250 private liquor licenses to the highest “responsible” bidders (the current government licenses, of which there are 621, would be defunct). That would include 750 “Class A” licenses—stores with 15,000 square feet of space, or more—and “Class B” licenses, for smaller stores. Turzai and others say the state would collect $2 billion immediately, though others, including the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1776 say that number is inflated and based on estimates from 1997, the last time privatization was attempted.
Next, the lawmaker plans to eliminate the 30 percent PLCB markup and the “Johnstown Flood Tax” (18 percent liquor tax) to be replaced with a “Gallonage Tax,” the price of which is yet known. Twenty-six states employ a gallonage tax on liquor and 35 impose one on wine.
Turzai also hopes his bill will encourage independent stores and large retailers to hire back PLCB employees, many of whom are part of the UFCW, through tax credits; allow tuition reimbursements for employees who get further schooling in the subject; and provide a nonspecific “leg up” for former employees who choose to seek other civil-service work in Pennsylvania.
“[Turzai’s bill] restores the American way,” says Jay Ostrich, director of Public Affairs for the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based think tank that’s dedicated much of its research and lobbying efforts to getting the government out of the booze business. “The PLCB, as it stands today, is absurd. It’s a socialistic system and it certainly flies in the face of freedom.”
Liquor sales brought in a record $496 million in tax revenue for the fiscal year that ended July 7, according to a PLCB report. Critics like the Commonwealth Foundation call this number inflated, and say it does not take into account the more than $215 million in salaries, benefits and pensions to government employees, including “$90,000 per store spent in yearly taxpayer-funded advertising.”
Turzai’s legislative plans for getting this through is anyone’s guess (he did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this article), and when the House reconvenes there’ll be a mess of amendments to deal with on the issue, many of which State Rep. Mike O’Brien, who opposes the bill, plans on introducing.
“In this economy, the bill is nothing more than a fire sale,” says O’Brien. “You’re selling something that’s currently undervalued and [the state] is going to lose a lot of money if this goes through … A lot of people just don’t want to vote in favor of liquor-store clerks to lose their jobs right now.”
O’Brien, a self-described “pro-labor Democrat,” says there’s an estimated 3,500 UFCW Local 1776 employees who will be out of work should the bill be passed (he doesn’t believe it will get through the House, though; a coalition of Democrats, pro-labor Republicans and socially conservative Republicans will keep the bill from going through, he says). O’Brien believes large retail stores like Wal-Mart will purchase the bulk of Class A liquor licenses and move their current employees around so they stack liquor shelves in addition to their normal routines, creating no jobs.
State Sen. Larry Farnese doesn’t think the bill will make it to the Senate, either, and agrees there will be layoffs the state can’t afford if it does. “I’ve had conversations with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I don’t see support for it,” he says. “It’s not going to be along party lines, either. You’re going to have broad-based opposition to this bill … The fact that there’s a real possibility that people will lose their jobs is not something we can afford right now.”
Wendell Young IV, head of Local 1776, has taken a front seat in the fight against this bill, testifying several times to the Pennsylvania House Liquor Control Committee. “If this were successful you would not only see my members all laid off but 5,000 Pennsylvanians would lose their jobs in the worst economy of our lifetime,” he says. “There’s no doubt about that. And Turzai walks around cavalierly, saying ‘They’ll be fine, they’ll be rehired’ but the evidence is abundantly clear by what goes on in other states that the lion’s share of licenses will be purchased by existing retailers who will allocate the assignments of their current employees.”
But Ostrich says pro-labor groups are the ones using scare tactics. He believes the bill’s incentives and two classes of liquor licenses ensures Young’s predictions don’t come true. “We don’t want to replace a public monopoly with a private one,” he says, pointing to a provision in the bill that would not allow one entity to own more than 40 licenses. “If Pennsylvania went to the per-capita national average, we’d have 2,800 liquor outlets [and] 6,600 wine outlets. The current measure doubles the number of existing stores to 1,250 but we’d like to see that number grow so it’s reflexive of a true free market.” Unlike the current system, he says, the free market wouldn’t cap the number of jobs.
To illustrate just how complicated liquor control has become, even former PLCB Chairman Jon Newman has publicly denounced the Board as a counter-productive entity that’s outlasted its welcome. He also believes, given two-thirds of Pennsylvanians currently favor privatization, it’s going to be hard for many state lawmakers to vote against Turzai’s bill.
“Pennsylvania has a real prohibitionist mentality,” Newman says. “But with the sophisticated populaces in places like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, [lawmakers] owe it to their constituents to bring them into the 21st century. If this thing steam rolls and it gains excitement and momentum, it’s going to be hard for people not to vote their district’s interests.”
A source close to the Governor’s Office who wished to remain anonymous says if the legislation is struck down, Gov. Corbett may offer his own bill. Who knows, maybe Corbett would have better sway over the Legislature than Turzai to get the bill passed.
But if not, Newman says, “the bill is dead for our generation.”
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor | <urn:uuid:5cd007e6-c1ee-46b6-9c0d-181d6ed34c75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/Harrisburg-Prepares-for-Epic-Fight-Over-Liquor-Privatization.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95501 | 1,764 | 1.859375 | 2 |
But the advantage possessed by career-oriented majors may be short-lived. Once in a career path, the more general skills of communication, organization and judgment become highly valued. As a result, liberal arts graduates frequently catch or surpass graduates with career-oriented majors in both job quality and compensation. A longitudinal study conducted several years ago by the National Center for Educational Statistics found that the wage differentials that existed between career-oriented majors and academically oriented majors were all but eliminated within 10 years after graduation.
Now, if this is true, and my experience confirms that it seems to be so, then what universities should be doing is holding true to standards in which the best can succeed, and if others are willing to put in the hard work, then they too should be held to a standard of excellence steeped in the liberal arts tradition. This has always been my problem. Philosophy majors tend to be exceptionally bright. They are studying the physics of the humanities and they have acquired a level and depth to their critical thinking that outstrips the typical business student. Now, I don't pretend to be not biased, but I have also taught in universities in which this bears out time and time again. Business students account for 1 in 6 majors in the United States. Philosophy majors, I read somewhere, account for about 1% of all Bachelor degrees given out every year.
The NCES study doesn't surprise me given that liberal arts majors are more likely to attend postgraduate education of some variety, and the pressing need for future critical thinking skills in life may far outweigh exactly how an accounting major learns to do her thing.
But let me return to my initial thought. Is it the job of universities to improve the quality of the overall person, or train future workers in a economy? Why is it the university's sole responsibility to supply an economy with workers ready-made and gift-wrapped upon graduation? Given how volatile our economic cycles can be, I do not think something as unpredictable should have a bearing on educational outcomes at all. Perhaps, it is the economy and the people working within it that need to be more adaptive to the inherent chaos within how an economy moves. Ideas come from innovative people, individuals with skills to adjust to life. It makes no sense to plan a life around something as volatile as the economy. This is not a call to hold back a second and try to assess how we can best serve ours students. This can only be done by a liberal arts education that fosters the capacities to learn and adapt--that is, namely, teaching those critical thinking and communication skills that come from assessing arguments in Plato, or reading theology, art history or any number of classical disciplines in which have no direct immediate gain; instead, the humanities proffer a lifetime gain over a long period of study by promoting reflection, critical thinking and the ability to clearly articulate and appreciate contexts that transcend the immediate and instrumental needs.
Maybe the private sector can help and anticipate its own needs by further training people as the needs become apparent. If companies want good workers with critical thinking and communication skills, then perhaps they should invest in human capital more, and I'll increasingly teach more philosophy majors to boot. | <urn:uuid:ced6da71-4503-40b2-a98f-e09994f2d543> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://philosophicalchasm.blogspot.com/2011/12/college-majors-that-dont-pay.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961535 | 643 | 2.140625 | 2 |
No, you will get closer to 60% meat from a sheep. These were very sad looking sheep; short, thin and did not do very well which is why they never were sold and why I slaughtered them, I just did not want them in my flock.
I love raising sheep even though I grew up with beef and dairy cows primarily. I like their size for one, which can be intimidating with 2000 pound cows. And I like lambing season, but mostly it is because of economic factors. The price of lamb is higher then other meats, you only have to raise them from Spring until fall to get a nice finished lamb (so you only have to winter feed your breeding stock), and they are incredibly hardy. As long as they have roughage and water, and are out of the wind, they can survive in temps as low as -40 below zero, so barn facilities can be quite meager. You also get more hang weight per acre then any other animal, and unlike cows that prefer grass to graze on, sheep love weeds. In fact their favorite food is poison ivy. With their wool, it does not bother them and I have mob grazed acres of the stuff out of my old pastures here. The only weeds they do not like are milkweed and thistle...they even tolerate smooth bedstraw quite well.
But there are issues with sheep too. Lambing can be tough, and I have dealt with overeating disease and foot rot. The latter did not kill my sheep, but it was a time-suck to deal with. Overeating disease killed 40 of my best lambs one year but now found a vaccine that stops it. Bloat killed 17 breeding stock sheep in one night, so every time I learn something about sheep, it comes from the price of having dead sheep.
Fencing is expensive too, but a must. Electricity and sheep in wool do not jive which means Page Wire Fence is a must and is very expensive. I only have 15 acres of wire up because that cost $20,000 dollars. I free range the rest, but I do worry about coyotes. Myself, and my Grandfather have never lost a sheep (yet) to coyotes, but they are nearby and so even when I free range my sheep on the upper most fields, I lead them into a fence with wire every night for their safety.
(I did try an experiment of running my sheep with a bull thinking it would act as a deterrent from sheer size alone, but it did not turn out well. Without electricity on my fence, the bull would tear apart my sheep fence and had to be put down, that being a $750 dollar animal was not worth losing $20,000 worth of fence for. But I have tried using a Pony as a guard animal with some success...again the size of it being a deterrent more then anything...and a donkey, but the donkey was more harmful to the sheep then the coyotes. I guess that is fitting, the donkey's name was Obama after all.
Overall though, I will never be without sheep. Partly because we have always had them. There is no record of sheep being on the Mayflower, but three years later records show someone traded sheep for some land, so they were here quite early. My Great Grandfather 14 times removed who came over on the Mayflower was a Tailor by trade, so it makes sense that upon finding out how cold New England is, imported sheep pretty quickly just for their wool. We do have records showing that he was the first sheep shearer in New England, and had the first sheep shearing shed, so being a 14th generation sheep farmer, I am pretty biased about sheep. The other aspect is, being a Christian, raising sheep really makes the bible come alive because there are so many references to sheep.
But atlas I was really kicked in the teeth this week. I already have 3 girls so I was hoping the baby I have coming in May would be a boy, and be a 15th Generation Sheep Farmer, but we found out we are having our 4th girl. I know we have no right to be sad, but the wife and I were so hoping for a boy that it brought tears to our eyes. | <urn:uuid:dd376252-06a4-440d-980d-a59fe6766721> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nepacrossroads.com/post336996.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985724 | 875 | 1.5 | 2 |
Click on image for larger annotated version
This image captures the tropical beauty of the major islands of the Little Bahama Bank, the most northerly of the island groups that comprise the Bahamas. The island at the west edge of the image is Grand Bahama Island, which lies 60 miles east of West Palm Beach in Florida and boasts the second largest city in the Bahamas, Freeport. The island takes up an area of 530 square miles and has a population of 40,898 (1990). The economy is, of course, based on tourism and fishing, with a substantial amount of forest products adding to economic exports. The islands taking up the center and southeast edge of the image are Little Abaco and Great Abaco. The Abaco island group takes up 780 square miles, and is the most northerly section of the Bahamas. Most of the water visible in this image is relatively shallow, reaching depths of no more than 200m (650ft). Along the northeastern edge of the photo, however, there is a visible drop off as the depth increases from 200m (650ft) along the Little Bahama Bank to 1000m (3281 ft) in the open Atlantic Ocean.
The islands of the Bahamas rest on a foundation of ancient coral, on top of which is a layer of sandy soil. Towards the interior of the islands, this soil is cemented to form Bahama limestone. Because they are built up merely by sedimentation and coral growth, the landscape is quite flat and only about 20 feet above sea level on average.
EarthKAM was formerly known as KidSat. To see images of KidSat, see http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/KidSat . | <urn:uuid:b7bbffcb-9f93-41b7-9b92-521920572313> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11068 | 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 | 0.924102 | 350 | 3.375 | 3 |
Written by C.G. Jung
Visions: notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 by C.G. Jung, Volume 2
Carl Gustav Jung, Claire Douglas, Mary Foote
Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997
Pages displayed by permission of Princeton University Press. Copyright.
For C. G. Jung, the beautiful and gifted 28-year-old Christiana Morgan was an inspirational and confirming force whose path in self-analysis paralleled his own quest for self-knowledge. By teaching Morgan the trance-like technique of active imagination, Jung launched her on a pilgrimage of archetypal encounters in a quest for psychological integration--encounters she recorded in the words and brilliant paintings that formed the basis of the seminar Jung would give to his circle in Zurich. Here the careful transcriptions of the seminar notes are combined with color reproductions of the visions paintings, offering an unprecedented view of Jung as a teacher and as a man. He speaks candidly and brilliantly in a dialogue with members of the seminar about the Morgan visions, even as he struggles with the feminine principle in his subject and in his own psyche. The theories of his years of intellectual research--the anima and animus, the process of individuation, the mythopoetic archetypes of the collective unconscious--all spring to life in the fiery imagery of the vision quest.
Morgan paints an imaginal landscape where the feminine self crosses into the unconsciousness of night and death. In her visioning she links earth and sky, body and spirit, the infernal and the sublime. Recounting her journey, Jung employs his full range of scholarship and professional experience as he unravels the skein of archetypal parallels from western myth and eastern yoga. | <urn:uuid:4cbfc0fb-59c2-4195-add6-416448c82bd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iaap.org/publishing/limited-previews/visions-notes-of-the-seminar-given-in-1930-1934-by-cg-jung-volume-2/Print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929829 | 354 | 2.078125 | 2 |
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Advisory extended for water near Sandsprit Park in Stuart
We got stuck with a plumbing system conceived and designed in the 1st half of the last century. The options of the water managers are limited. If there is to be a flow-way south, it won't be easy. Due to soil subsidence (oxidation of the muck soils) the elevation of the EAA south of the lake is about four feet lower than the levels at which releases currently occur. A flow-way will have to be highly managed. Several land owners in the footprint of the flow-way have received land use approvals for limestone mines, with no intention of mining. They'll have a much higher appraised value then agricultural lands, when or if it comes time for a buy out. Eminent domain? The ideology of "property rights" is really big these days. They're just gaming the system. And where will the money come from to finance the replumbing job? The planned C-44 off-line reservoir won't store enough water to matter. Storing more water in Lake Okeechobee will drown littoral areas and harm the lake. These projects they can accomplish are a drop in the bucket.
On the bright but sarcastic side, we can expect our estuaries to meet their potential for health and productivity during a multi-year drought.
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Join us June 26 as we discuss recent pillowcase burglaries. | <urn:uuid:1e53fe9d-0ea6-4862-b8ca-3fe88b62988e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tcpalm.com/comments/reply/?target=61:455151&comment=980483 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957184 | 385 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Government officials are changing how they talk about terrorism in the United Kingdom, acknowledging it hurts community relations with Britain's Muslim community.
Counter-terrorism officials are rethinking their approach to tackling the radicalisation of Muslim youth, abandoning what they admit has been offensive and inappropriate language. They say the term "war on terror" will no longer be heard from ministers. Instead, they will use less emotive language, emphasising the criminal nature of the plots and conspiracies. The government in future, they add, will talk of a "struggle" against extremist ideology, rather than a "battle".
"We hadn't got the message right," said one senior official. He added: "We must talk in a language which is not offensive." Another said that the terrorist threat must not be described as a "Muslim problem".
In the article, the Guardian also notes that the head of MI-5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, is expected to tell Members of Parliament (MPs) today that the length of time the government should be able to hold terrorism suspects for is not up to the security and intelligence agencies, but a matter for Parliament and the police services to decide.
Precharge detention is a judicially supervised process whereby the police service can hold a suspected terrorist for a legislatively determined amount of time before charging the suspect with a crime. The current time limit for precharge detention is 28 days, but a maximum of 90 days has been discussed. There is widespread opposition to extending precharge detention any further from civil liberties advocates as well as conservative MPs.
As a recent report from the International Herald Tribune put it, conservatives in Britain have found their "inner Liberal" on the issue of precharge detention. As Raymond Bonner reports, conservative opposition isn't mere political pragmatism to deliver a blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his majority Labour Party.
The basis for the Conservative Party opposition is not only political but also philosophical, party officials and independent analysts say. The party has long expressed a deep commitment to individual liberty. It opposes national identity cards, which Labour has proposed, and control orders, which let the police restrict the movement and activities of suspected terrorists.
Stay tuned for the January issue of Security Management, where our cover story tackles how Britain's counterterrorism efforts, including the government's use of language and precharge detention, have been percieved by British Muslims and whether it's helping to sabotage the radicalization process. | <urn:uuid:5ee46819-4182-4d62-9b59-aa310b85f6c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/british-government-change-counterterrorism-language | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957326 | 495 | 1.609375 | 2 |
St Rita of Cascia
If St. Rita belongs to that wonderful band of elect who were holy from their cradles, it must be said that she required every available help that sanctity gives, to have enabled her to endure the trials and difficulties with which most of her life was filled! She was the daughter of parents, both nearing middle age at the time of her birth, and the author of the Latin memoir of the Saint says that shortly after this event (1386), a swarm of bees was seen to come and go several times to and from the cradle a portent which was taken as indicating that the career of the child was to be marked by industry, virtue and devotion.
The father and mother of Rita were themselves very pious, and from their laudable habit of composing the quarrels and differences among their neighbours, they were known as the "Peacemakers of Jesus Christ." Little Rita as she grew up, seems to have acquired a great deal of this spirit of the supernatural, for she showed little if any inclination for games, seeking her recreation chiefly in prayer and visits to sacred shrines-an exercise, by the way, which-granted the proper disposition-brings with it a wealth of real enjoyment and satisfaction quite wanting to other arid more secular amusements. This being so, it is not surprising to learn that Rita, as she neared womanhood, felt that her vocation lay in the convent rather than in that of domestic life.
We are not aware of the circumstances that led her parents to oppose this apparently obvious course, but oppose it they did, and Rita submitted, even so far as to please them by marrying a man whom all accounts describe as exceedingly bad-tempered and something worse! It is the teaching of the Church that the grace of the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony, if corresponded with by a good life, works miracles, almost, in the way of establishing and perpetuating conjugal happiness.
Acerbities of temper, temperamental differences, and all the other difficulties arising out of the necessary variations of human nature, are, under God's influence, toned down and adjusted, provided always Holy Mass, prayer and the sacraments are not forgotten—for "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." So Rita tamed her rough spouse, and for two-and-twenty years lived harmoniously (concorditer) with a husband who, like most quarrelsome individuals in the days when sword and stiletto ever sharp, hung from every Italian gentleman's belt, perished in a feud.
Such a death in the Italy of the Decamerone and
the Republics, and, indeed, till well into our own time, usually meant a prolonged vendetta, and, of
course, the two sons of the dead man at once took up the quarrel. Meantime, poor Rita was in
despair, and finding her expostulations useless to prevent further effusion of blood, she had
recourse to prayer, earnestly beseeching God to take her boys from this world rather than permit
them to live on stained by homicide. The mother's prayer was heard, and the two youths shortly
afterwards died edifying deaths, forgiving their father's slayers and resigned to God.
The way was now clear for our Saint to satisfy her long yearning for a conventual life. After due consideration, she applied to be "accepted" by the Augustinian nuns at Cascia, but was informed that the custom was only for women who had never been married, to be received as postulants.
The time was to come when not only widows were to enter religious orders of their own sex as a matter of course, but even occasionally to found them, as in the case of St. Jane Francis de Chantal and the Nuns of the Visitation. Again did Rita have recourse to prayer, and it is related that the night following her second great "storming of Heaven," St. John the Baptist, to whom she had a great devotion, appeared to her, accompanied by St. Augustine and St. Nicholas of Tolentino, and these three Saints conducted her to the convent, where the Superiors who had been similarly warned, received her with great kindness.
The new postulant entered upon her life in
religion with characteristic zeal and thoroughness. She disposed of her family property as alms to
the poor, and in addition to the ordinary mortifications prescribed or permitted by the rule, she
added others of great severity, wearing a hair shirt, fasting rigorously on bread and water and
taking the discipline at intervals. The Passion of Our Lord was her constant meditation, and while
recalling the manifold sufferings of the Man of Sorrows, she often seemed to be carried away by
mingled grief and devotion.
In the midst of such wonderful progress on the road to perfection, this pattern to the community was afflicted by God after the following mysterious manner. She was meditating one day on the Passion before the crucifix, when she apparently, accidentally, wounded her forehead by striking it against some of the no doubt very realistic thorns in Our Lord's crown.
The injury caused by the hurt developed into a serious ulcer, one most painful and unsightly, so unsightly, in fact, that for many years Sister Rita had to make her devotions alone! She accepted this great trial in the light of an additional penance sent her by God, and it was about this time that many spiritual and temporal favours are said to have been granted to various persons as the direct result of the prayers of this wonderful religious, the fame of whose sanctity had already extended far beyond the convent walls.
The extraordinary fact, too, that her garden—which, in common with the rest of the nuns, she had allotted to her—produced beautiful roses and ripe figs in the depths of an abnormally severe winter, was taken as an additional sign that the unceasing prayers and heroic virtues of Sister Rita were blessed beyond measure, even in this world.
The last years of the Saint were marked by a most painful and lingering illness—cancer doubtless—which as in the case of all her other seeming misfortunes she employed as another means of forwarding her greater sanctification. At the approach of death, she received with wonderful fervour the last rites of the Church, and then, as it is piously believed, at the call of Our Lady, she breathed forth her spotless soul to God on 20th May, 1456.1
The sacred remains long after death yielded a most sweet and refreshing odour, and many miracles have been recorded as the fruit of her powerful intercession. The cultus of the wonderful nun of Cascia spread far and wide, notably in Spain, where she has since been known as "La Santa de los impossibiles!" She was Beatified by Clement XII, though as far back as 1637, a Mass and office were granted in her honour by Urban VIII. Finally, on 24th May, 1900, Pope Leo XIII enrolled her name among the Saints-the Saints it may be added, whose virtues shone as stars both in the world and in the cloister.
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Write a comment on this article| | <urn:uuid:1b6d98fe-923b-4855-b946-37fb0b9fbf29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=dedestaca&id=7839&grupo=&canal= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980187 | 1,597 | 2.125 | 2 |
Medical Experts have assured the public that there is no resistance to Artemisinin Combination Therapy ( ACTs), the latest anti-malarial drug Africa.
A team of health experts drawn from East and Central Africa regions On Wednesday 23 refuted the claims and confirmed that the drugs were still effective.
Speaking at the Anti malaria Drug Resistance stakeholders meeting held at a hotel in Nairobi, Dr Willis Akhwale, Head of the Division of Disease Control and Prevention, Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, stated that researchers have not identified or confirmed any cases of antimalarial resistance in Africa to date.
This was in response to media reports that the malaria causing parasite has become resistant to the drug.
The doctors however, admitted that malaria drug resistance has been recorded in South East Asia in the border regions of Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.
The medical experts warned that Africa needs to be watchful as the conditions that support ACTs resistance are favorable in Africa.
“We cannot be complacent and assume that resistance will not occur in Africa.
“Mosquitoes don’t need a visa”. The risk that antimalarial drugs resistance will spread is significant, due to increased trans-continental flights. East Africa is particularly vulnerable, due being a major regional trade hub in the Eastern African region”, added Dr Akhwale.
He (give name) argued that recent media reports of the phenomenon were inaccurate representations of published research findings.
Dr Akhwale argued that Africa must be prepared for a possible emergence of antimalarial drug resistance. He called upon for collaboration between scientists,research institutions, policymakers, and national malaria control divisions in response to the health threat.
The health experts identified self medication, sub-standard drugs, counterfeits and inadequate access to ACTs as some of the challenges facing eradication of the menace in Africa.
Dr. Joaquim Da Silva, Coordinator, Roll Back Malaria-East Africa Regional Network (RBM-EARN) said that overdose or underdose of drugs used to treat malaria contributes to drug resistance. He advised that patients should take the full dosage as prescribed by a medical doctor.
According to recent findings published by Lancet Infectious Diseases, approximately 42 percent of malaria drugs examined in Southeast Asia were fake, while around 33 percent of antimalarial drugs in sub-Saharan Africa contained either too much or too little of the active ingredient
Dr Gaurvika Nayyar, the Lead researcher in the study, said"3.3 billion people are at risk of malaria, which is endemic in 106 countries. Between 655,000 and 1.2 million people die every year from Plasmodium falciparum infection. Much of this morbidity and mortality could be avoided if drugs available to patients were efficacious, high quality and used correctly."
The researchers analyzed data from antimalarial drugs in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and found that in seven Southeast Asian countries, about a third of the 1,437 samples of seven malaria drugs analyzed were fake, over a third failed chemical testing, and almost 50 percent were not packaged correctly.
According to the study in 21 sub-Saharan countries around a fifth of the 2,500 samples tested were found to be fake and over a third failed chemical testing.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received. | <urn:uuid:1fed1e5b-73eb-476d-86e6-86a8709dc7e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news24.co.ke/MyNews24/No-malaria-drug-resistance-in-Africa-yet-20120601 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951762 | 736 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Beaujolais is a 35 mile strip between the towns of Lyons and Macon in eastern France. Beaujolais is made from the gamay grape. It is a light, fruity, and inexpensive red wine that is ordinarily drunk young.
There are three quality levels in Beaujolais. The first is your generic Beaujolais. Next, in its northern region are thirty-nine villages distinguished by superior vineyards. Beaujolais-Villages, is made from grapes from any one or a number of these thirty-nine communes. Beaujolais-Villages is noticeably more concentrated than regular Beaujolais.
Finally, the pinnacles of Beaujolais are ten specific crus, from villages whose vineyards are considered to be the best. Wine from these villages is made from grapes grown only from within the specific village. Moulin a Vent, the crème de la crème of Beaujolais derives its name from the historic windmill located in the vineyard.
Cote de Brouilly
Moulin a Vent
The windmill for which Moulin a Vent is eponymously named. Moulin a Vent, unlike its other Beaujolais brethren, is more concentrated, more tannic, less fruity, and not only capable of, but required to age. Moulin a Vent can age ten years or more. It is so uncharacteristic of the Beaujolais region that it is sometimes compared to a light Burgundy. | <urn:uuid:24e947e7-9c5f-49b4-ba35-4b5c5eed90a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foodforthoughtonline.net/Beaujolais_Crus.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928446 | 315 | 1.828125 | 2 |
High quality, easy-to-follow curriculum
Learn at your own pace and study in your spare time
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What This Course Will Do for You
In this in-depth writing course, you will learn how to come up with great story ideas, write material that editors will want to publish, polish your style, and move your writing career forward on a fast track to success while having fun doing it! Discover why many aspiring writers will never break into print, and how you can gain a competitive advantage over others and seize on opportunities to get published quickly and with the least amount of effort.
By following the practical advice in this course, you will learn how to find writing assignments, decipher editorial guidelines, produce quality material efficiently, and know when a "final" draft is ready to send. You will also learn how to work with editors and turn these decision makers into allies and friends. Time-honored techniques used by practicing journalists will be examined, such as how to conduct an interview, write a news story, and write a review. The course explores how to cope with rejection slips and better yet how to avoid them. Useful books and tools that belong on every writer's desk will also be examined.
This course focuses on nonfiction writing, a huge market where good writers are in constant demand, the earnings are steady, and you can count on seeing your work published again and again. If you are ready to write your own recipe for success, this course is your first step!
When you have completed this course, you should be able to:
Lesson PlanSyllabus: Getting Started (Course Syllabus)
Unit 1: Writing and the Path to Success
Unit 2: Writing Basics
Unit 3: Interview Someone Special
Unit 4: Write a Review for an Easy Credit
Unit 5: Write A News Story
Unit 6: Writing the Query Letter
Unit 7: Rewriting and Polishing Your Final Draft
Unit 8: Building Healthy Writing Habits
Unit 9: Getting Automated, Coping with Rejection and More!
Unit 10: Final Exam
About the Instructor
Gloria Oren is a published author, editor, book reviewer and proofreader. She is an active member of several online writing groups including the Muse it Up Club and the Redmond Association of SPokenword (RASP). She is moderator of the Alpha Musers critique group for writers. She has published book reviews in the Association of Jewish Librarians' Newsletter and posts many of her writings on her blog . Gloria won an honorable mention for her personal experience article submitted to a contest sponsored by Bylines Magazine and the same article was accepted for publication in the Thin Thread Stories anthology that is due out this fall.
Gloria is currently working on an autobiography about her life as an adoptee and the challenging, successful search that led to her reuniting with her birth mother and members of her paternal birth family. In her daily life, she wears many hats. She is a daughter, wife, mother of three, cancer survivor, reunited adoptee, baby boomer, oldest of ten birth siblings combined, raised as an only child, data entry clerk, avid reader and writer of nonfiction articles (personal experience, parenting, senior issues). Gloria currently resides with her family in Washington state.
About the Course Developers
This course is a "best of the best" anthology that includes lessons developed by past and present VU writing instructors Nancy Kobryn, Diana Barnum, and Richard De A'Morelli, with additional editing by author Gloria Oren.
How to Participate in this Course
Enroll and start learning today! All course materials will be available when the class begins, so you don't have to wait for weekly lessons and you can truly learn at your own pace. You don't have to be online at any set time; study at your leisure from the comfort or your home or office.
The course curriculum will include tutorial lessons, suggested readings, and optional homework activities. If you are taking the class for enjoyment or self-enrichment, homework is optional but participation is encouraged. Students who approach online learning as an adventure and actively participate will derive the most benefit and enjoyment from online learning. Homework projects, if completed satisfactorily, will earn Extra Credit points which will be added to your Final Exam score and may increase the overall grade you earn in the course.
The Student Handbook provides useful information on how to make the most of your online learning experience at KSURF's Virtual University. Refer to this guide for helpful tips on how to access classrooms, post homework, and answers to most frequently asked questions. | <urn:uuid:2e809573-a8a9-45cc-b6b6-917b7b048e89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ksurf.net/vu/catalog/3140.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944217 | 990 | 2.171875 | 2 |
According to Kiderra, psychologists at UCSD found that men barely beat out women in subjective measures of humor, scoring .11 points higher on a 5.0 scale.
Despite men’s slight edge in a caption writing test modeled on the now famous New Yorker cartoon contest, 90 percent of male and female study participants believe that men are funnier than women. And this was true even though men laughed louder and longer at captions written by other men than did women – a full .10 points louder and longer.
As Kiderra explains, the U.C. San Diego researchers’ work challenges the theory that men are funnier and rebuts the theoretical basis for their supposed superiority – evolutionary biology.
Girls Like It When Boys Make Us Laugh
Back in 2007, bad boy Christopher Hitchens started a firestorm in Vanity Fair by writing Why Women Aren’t Funny. Hitchens opined that funny men had an evolutionary advantage over their dour peers because women were more likely to shed their Dior – or throw their animal skins on the cave floor – if they were laughing.
A rock-hard six-pack won’t do the trick. Nor will displays of facility with weapons, tools, or chocolates, the last in short supply during the Plesistocene Era when men were apparently inventing three men walk into a bar instead of tinkering with that wheel idea or inventing the camp fire.
“If you can stimulate her to laughter,” Hitchens wrote, “then you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression.” I guess cave men also hadn’t yet invented liquor and that Hitchens was singularly unable to procure any during an adolescence in which he perfected his skill at inducing
real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud ) peal of delight. | <urn:uuid:49224adc-f718-4467-9237-2e9411b4df77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/shenegotiates/2011/10/20/men-slightly-funnier-but-mostly-to-each-another/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967256 | 439 | 2.125 | 2 |
Expressing hurt in the moment is a large component of the healing process. Suppressing instead of expressing leads to hurt moving inward, becoming fear and eventually manifesting as either unrealistic fears or inappropriate anger—all destructive emotions. Music has especially amazing powers to help with the healing process because it not only allows for a healthy outward expression but combines that outward expression with a positive flow of strong emotion that is deeply cleansing.
This was never more clearly evident than last Saturday night, October 20, 2001 at the “Concert for New York.” You may have seen it. It was organized to help the families of the New York Firefighters, Police, Port Authority and Emergency Workers who have sacrificed so much for the people of this great city, nation and the world since the September 11th attacks. But of course the show ended up offering restoration to everyone concerned.
On the bill were some of the biggest names in Rock history and all did an exemplary job of offering their gifts on such short notice. I know the country is grateful. Just to name a few: The Who and James Taylor preformed perfectly executed sets. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards graced us with their infectious and legendary style of rock and roll. Melissa Ethridge belted out a powerful solo acoustic set and Elton John and Billy Joel concluded their performances with a piano duet of “Your Song.” It was Paul McCartney who brought the show to a close and it is to him that this Guitar of the Week and this left-handed Drop Top are dedicated.
I know that Paul commands so much adoration that there is almost nothing left to say about how meaningful his music has been to so many. But I think the secret of this prolific artist lies well beyond even his music. It comes down to his very essence. The driving force behind this one is a self-commitment to quality in everything that he views as important. As The Beatles, they were more than music. It was an offering of a better, more peaceful life communicated through actions and dialog as well as music.
Last Saturday night Paul left no doubt of his resolve to enrich the world he occupies. The songs were amazing, of course, and were a wonderful release of emotion for all. But of equal importance were the thoughts expressed between each song. He spoke, simply at first, to a grieving nation of friendship, love, hope and victory in very gentle yet powerful terms. This son of a World War II, Liverpool Firefighter—whose nation has much more recently than ours had to fight for its very survival—made it crystal clear that nothing less than the world’s very freedom is at stake. Halfway through his set, he performed a brand new anthem-like song entitled Freedom. Paul had written it the day after the September 11th attacks. By the time he was one measure into the first chorus, he had all of Madison Square Garden singing along as though we were all in his living room. They performed the song again to close the show. Everyone joined his band on stage including some of the Rescue Workers and their families. The audience again sang along at the top of their lungs. Over McCartney’s left shoulder was a sight I will never forget. On stage, dancing, singing and kissing a portrait of her lost husband was a Firefighter’s widow. I don’t think I’d be too far off the mark if I guessed that this was probably the first time she had been able to celebrate life since September 11th. As she sang the words:
Freedom…I’m talking about
I will fight for the right
To live in Freedom
At that moment it became very simple and clear that these ones so dear to us had a distinct purpose for their life and death—the right of everyone to live in Freedom! This is what Paul McCartney, the Beatle, the lad from Liverpool, gave—much more than just great music.
So to you Paul McCartney I say something I have always wanted to say to you: Thank you! The quality with which you conduct your life has made it all worth while. You should be pleased with how you have chosen to use the gift given you.
Call me a dreamer but one day I would love to see an Anderson guitar like this one in Paul’s hands. The flamed maple top of this lefty Drop Top is finished in Translucent Amber with a color matched headstock. Thanks to a perfect fret job, its sleek T/A Standard neck plays like butter while the Anderson-built H1-, SA1 and H2+ pickups deliver a huge, powerful tone that still has lush articulation for beautiful to powerful chording and singing single note lead lines.
MODEL: – Drop Top-Lefty
FINISH: – Translucent Amber with Binding
BODY WOOD: – Flamed Maple Top with Basswood Back
BODY WOOD BACK COLOR: – same
NECK WOOD: – Maple with Indian Rosewood Fingerboard
HEADSTOCK COLOR: – Matching
NECK BACK FINISH: – Satin
NECK BACKSHAPE: – T/A Standard
NUT WIDTH: – 1 11/16th-inch
SCALE LENGTH: – 25 1/2-inch
FRETS: – Heavy
BRIDGE: – Vintage Tremolo
HARDWARE COLOR: – Chrome
PICKGUARD: – n/a
NECK PICKUP: – H1-
MIDDLE PICKUP: – SA1
BRIDGE PICKUP: – H2+
SWITCHING: – Switcheroo
PICKUP COVERS: – n/a
PICKUP RINGS: – Black
STRING GAUGE REQUESTED: – .010-.046
DESTINATION/LOCATION: – Guitar Center/Cherry Hill, New Jersey | <urn:uuid:6cd4c9da-e697-4cef-a5da-c6f578fcd837> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.andersonguitars.com/cfpages/displayGOW.cfm?theDate=10/29/01&status=archive | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972044 | 1,215 | 1.6875 | 2 |
11-06-2009 12:18 PM
Have new Dell Inspiron 546 computer with Windows 7. Keep getting Error Code 651 when attempting to connect to Comcast High Speed internet. Have no idea what this code is! Connecting through RCA-DCM305 stand alone Modem. Have tried USB and Ethernet cables and still get code and not connection. Tried shutting off new computer and powercycling modem. I can switch back to existing old computer and can connect everytime. New computer has not internal modem.
Comcast Tech said no modem driver are needed is I use ethernet cable. Still no luck. Help with suggestions. Have gone thru all FAQ's. Also when I am online to Comcast, it go's nowhere when you enter Windows 7 questions.
Thanking you in advance
11-06-2009 04:12 PM - edited 11-06-2009 11:14 PM
Where are you getting this code? When does it show up? What is the EXACT error message? 651 is an error usually associated with dialup modems.
Comcast is correct, no driver is needed when using ethernet. Do NOT use USB. Try this:
It should now be connected and online. Open your browser and go to http://www.comcast.net. Do you see the Comcast home page? If not, tell us exactly what you do see.
11-06-2009 05:17 PM
You directions proved successful. Instead of just pushing the off button on the modem I unplugged the main power per your instructions. Followed the sequence you supplied and it finally worked!
Thank you for the help, next beer is on me.
11-08-2009 01:25 AM
I am having a nearly identical problem. I have a new HP Pavilion PC and cannot connect. When I use the connection wizard and choose Broadband, I get a window asking for my user name and password. The machine searches and then says Error Code 651. Using my old computer, I contacted the live chat help desk last night and a tech had me power cycle and also enter commands into the Command Prompt. After an hour, she told me to complete the sequence again and then use a link she gave me to get back to her. Her instructions didn't work and neither did the link. So I logged into chat again and got a different tech who promised to solve my problem and then "left the room." I don't know what she did but I suddenly had no Internet connection at all.
I called the 24 hour number and a girl tried to reset the modem but couldn't. She said it had a "permanent block" and a technician would have to do it this morning. She also said she'd call me this afternoon to make sure my problems were solved. I wasn't reconnected and she never called. So I called again and talked to a young man who confirmed the block and said I would be reconnected in 24-72 hours! I am furious that I may have to wait three days for Comcast to solve a problem their tech caused.
Anyhow, I will still have the connection problem with the new computer when I get cable back. I don't understand the ethernet advice. My old computer has a USB connection to the modem. Will that not work on the new one?
11-08-2009 10:17 AM - edited 11-08-2009 10:18 AM
My old computer has a USB connection to the modem. Will that not work on the new one?
The USB connection will work only if the modem's USB driver is installed on the new computer. But don't use USB. USB can be flaky. Use ethernet. Ethernet was made for connecting networking hardware. And never use those wizards. They are not needed. Are all your devices being powercycled in the proper sequence ? Is there a home networking router in the mix ?
11-08-2009 11:28 AM
11-08-2009 03:57 PM - edited 11-08-2009 03:58 PM
Assuming the your computer has a working ethernet adapter (most do), there is nothing you need to do to make it work with your cable modem, just follow the instructions as above. As EG says, stay far away from those wizards, they are not needed and in many cases can lead you into some real problems.
Your reboot is correct for a non-telephony cable modem. If you have Comcast's Digital Voice service and your phone is conencted through your cable modem, then you need to reset the Reset button on the modem since removing the power cable does nothing as the modem has internal battery backup in case of power failure.
11-10-2009 09:27 PM
©2011 Comcast | Investor Relations | Press Room | Corporate Blog | Privacy Statement | Visitor Agreement | Comcast.com Feedback | Site Map | <urn:uuid:1a1d1665-d8ee-4990-9fa5-26e0c6721cea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Basic-Internet-Connectivity-And/Getting-Modem-Code-651/m-p/738532 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944236 | 1,004 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Why We're Here
We believe there is great power in storytelling. It’s an enabler of strengths, a catalyst for change and a means to propel people and organizations to an inclusive, harmonious and prosperous future, a place where they have their greatest impact.
While storytelling is our skill and occupation, it’s driven by our hopes and aspirations for a better world.
With each organization we serve we take a step towards a better world, a thriving world. It’s our collective efforts to serve a purpose greater than ourselves that will affect The World We Want to See.
Together, we can change the paradigm of what is possible. We can demonstrate through an abundance of personal, practical stories a better way, a strengths-based way to a brighter future. | <urn:uuid:f92bbc74-4ed8-46de-8573-fbdb250d87fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://axiomnews.ca/who/1345 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931939 | 161 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Tim Prosser's Future Blog
This is the first paint with human intelligence.
She brightens the room and thinks about her own nature.
She wonders about the paint that came before:
the shadow paint, the colour of watchful trees,
lying silent underneath her gleaming skin.
She is a million molecules of white light.
Insects travel on wings of light
rumbling with coarse intelligence
around the room which is a skin
she wears on the inside; this is nature
as no one intended it. She considers the trees,
which have been watching this space since before
the people came with their whiteness, since before
anything was painted, when it was merely light
that passed between the tops of trees
with no greater intelligence
to name it with circling fingers: this is us, this is nature.
This is the mebrane that separates us: skin.
So insects arrive trembling beneath their armoured skin
to worship at the altar of her, kneeling before
the image of her better nature
searching for the the core, the source, the meaning of all light.
They follow instinct not intelligence,
abandoning the world outside, sun, rock, flowers, trees.
Underneath the shadow paint has no thought of trees
or of anything. Invented before Pearl skin,
this was just paint. No lurking intelligence
or curiosity about what comes after or came before,
it has no memory of the certain quality of light
that travelled through the trees, casting patterns of nature
on the sunlit wall. The skeletons of nature,
shadow and sun, still enter through the trees,
a melancholy leaf-dappled light
deep with the sort of longing that shivers a lover’s skin.
The Pearl paint has never felt light before,
trapped until now in a tin, amorphous intelligence.
She spreads under nature and absorbs light through her skin.
She is a lover of trees, a love that wasn’t possible before
there was light, carnal with intelligence.
A sci-fi sestina, inspired by our painting the loungeroom today with "smart paint" that claims to have nanotechnology in it. | <urn:uuid:00c314a6-3ba0-456f-b18d-6c8ce29bbc7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eglantinescake.blogspot.com/2013/01/nano-pearl-paint.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94438 | 465 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Date of this Version
Extraordinary phenomena can occur at the interface between two oxide materials. A spectacular example is a formation of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the SrTiO3/LaAlO3 interface. In this dissertation the properties of the 2DEG are investigated from first principles.
The spatial extent of the 2DEG formed at the SrTiO3/LaAlO3 n-type interface is studied. It is shown that the confinement of the 2DEG is controlled by metal induced gap states formed in the band gap of SrTiO3. The confinement width is then determined by the attenuation length of the metal induced gap states into SrTiO3 which is governed by the lowest decay rate evanescent states of bulk SrTiO3 which in turn can be found from the complex band structure of bulk SrTiO3.
Magnetic properties of the 2DEG formed at the n-type interface of the SrTiO3/LaAlO3 superlattices are investigated. It is found that for a thin SrTiO3 film the interface is ferromagnetic but for a thicker SrTiO3 film the magnetic moment decreases and eventually disappears. This is a result of delocalization of the 2DEG that spreads over thicker SrTiO3 film which leads to violation of the Stoner criterion. Further, it is shown that inclusion of the Hubbard U interaction enhances the Stoner parameter and stabilizes the magnetism.
The effect of the 2DEG and the polar interfaces for the thin film ferroelectricity is investigated using both first principles and model calculations. Using a TiO2-terminated BaTiO3 film with LaO monolayers at the two interfaces it is shown that the intrinsic electric field produced by the polar interface forces ionic displacements in BaTiO3 to produce the electric polarization directed into the interior of the BaTiO3 layer. This creates a ferroelectric dead layer near the interfaces that is non-switchable and thus detrimental to ferroelectricity. It is found that the effect is stronger for a larger effective ionic charge at the interface and longer screening length due to a stronger intrinsic electric field that penetrates deeper into the ferroelectric.
Adviser: Evgeny Y. Tsymbal | <urn:uuid:a12c4bcd-8611-4079-bc10-eeff3780c97d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicsdiss/18/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911034 | 477 | 1.90625 | 2 |
On the late afternoon of 28th June the Newcastle area suffered a terrible storm which resulted in severe flooding over a large area. We received more than a fortnight's rain in an hour. The sky was black and the thunder and lightning terrifying.. The rain fell with huge force damaging plants and shrubs. In my garden. I have several very mature bushes and some quite large trees. I have been feeding the birds for many years and have been saddened by the realisation that I have not seen any Blue tits or Coal tits, Robins or Bullfinches.since the storm. I have seen two goldfinches but had been seeing several at any one time during the day. I can only think the small birds have died in the ferocity of the rain and wind.
We seem to be seeing more sparrows . Also we had not seen starlings at all for some time but the storm seems to have relocated them and we had twenty sitting on the bushes in the sunshine drying out on Friday morning in the sunshine.
Nature can have such devastating results.
Hi Valerie welcome to the forum from Sheffield.
Sorry to hear about the effect the storm had on you all not just the wildlife.
It's been a bad year so far for the birds especially the small ones like the Blue Tits,we've had a lot dying in the nestboxes this year.
But i think nature has a way of bouncing back and if we get some decent weather soon you may see the birds back in your garden.
My photos are on Flickr and Website
It is really sad to see the effects this 'summer' is having on our wildlife.
I live in Nottingham and we have house martins nest under the apex of our roof every year, they are such a joy to watch, but about a week ago I was devastated when I arrived home to find four dead chicks had been thrown from the nest onto my drive, they didn't look more than a couple of days old. Obviously due to the cold, wet and windy weather the adults have been unable to find food for the chicks.
They are still in the nest so i'm hoping they have laid more eggs, lets hope the weather improves soon or they may lose these as well! | <urn:uuid:040feaa5-f169-400d-a05c-fbbc052d9df1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/wildlife/homesforwildlife/f/905/p/82226/547742.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981446 | 456 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Deafblindness, sometimes called dual sensory impairment, is the combination of both hearing and vision impairment. Most people with deafblindness have some residual hearing and/or sight and a wide range of forms of deafblindness exist. There are many causes of deafblindness; congenital deafblindness is when someone is born with combined sight and hearing difficulties and acquired deafblindness is when someone loses hearing or sight, later in life. It is useful to identify two distinct cultural groups within the deafblind community. The fi rst group are born blind and lose their hearing as adults. They tend to continue to use speech as their main communication and have a variety of hearing devices to enable them to communicate. The second group are born deaf and lose their sight as adults. This group are culturally deaf and use sign language to communicate. A significant community of deafblind people have a genetic condition called Usher Syndrome. They are born deaf and develop Retinitis Pigmentosa (tunnel vision) when they are adults. | <urn:uuid:457343e1-5115-4777-b8d1-0c8c7211682d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://deafblind.org.au/deafblindness-in-depth.asp?template_id=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979532 | 206 | 4.03125 | 4 |
Teachers' learning curve in Ghana
Teachers Beyond Borders is a small NGO set up by a group of friends who wanted to share their professional skills with teachers in Ghana.
Project leader Amanda Budge, who lives and works in Accra, recalls early meetings with Ghanaian teachers.
"We met really disheartened teachers who felt their jobs were unacknowledged," she said.
A BBC/OU co-production. | <urn:uuid:99936178-f1fa-4cf2-bd7c-518ad13ce0fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass/19716265 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983296 | 89 | 2.03125 | 2 |
In non-diplomatic usage, referring to someone as persona non grata is to say that he or she is ostracized. Such a person is for all intents and purposes culturally banished, so as to be figuratively nonexistent.
A bigger percentage of Americans believes that the sun revolves around the Earth (22%) than in evolution without God’s guidance (15%)
More Americans Believe Obama is Muslim Than in Theory of Evolution
America, what is wrong with you? | <urn:uuid:bd76a241-c245-45f0-8498-796210c05159> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moltovomito.com/tagged/fml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92804 | 99 | 1.90625 | 2 |
First, let me say that I too have felt quite keenly
the same awe and wonder at the intricacy of life that gitm
talks about. Its part of my religious faith
as a Unitarian Universalist
But, there is a problem with his teleological argument for the existence of God. Consider the human appendix. If humans were designed with a purpose, by a creator, with all that that implies, why would there be a useless or vestigial organ in the human physiology? Or, put another way, if evolution's tendency to produce species that are perfectly adapted to their environment is evidence that there is a divine purpose behind evolution, again, why after millions of years of evolution are there so many imperfections?
In fact, these very questions are discussed far more capably than I ever could by one of my favorite philosophers and scientists, Stephen Jay Gould. Dr. Gould argues that the apparent trend towards perfection is an artifact of humans' understandable tendency to focus on the presumed progressive evolutionary history of our own species, while ignoring the evolutionary history of the vast majority of other organisms (they must not be important because they didn't lead to mammals and humans...)
Indeed, the human appendix is the boring, textbook counter-example to the idea that evolution produces optimal (perfect/purposeful) results. Consider:
Why is most DNA permanently inactive?
Why does the human body produce and respond to, at last count, 14 different proteins that trigger angiogenesis (the growth of blood vessels in new tissue), instead of just the one or two that are most effective?
One could of course argue that these lingering imperfections are the exception, and that in time these imperfections will fade away as evolution continues optimizing each species. Gould argues, however, that these imperfections are the rule rather than the exception; that in fact if you look at the full breadth of physiological, DNA, and behavioral evidence, it would be more accurate to say that evolution produces not perfect species, but species that are just good enough.
In Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1994) and elsewhere, Dr. Gould argues that is when you take an unvarnished look at how creatures have evolved, it seems clear that evolution could not have been the result of a Creator:
The second argument -- that the imperfection of nature reveals evolution -- strikes many people as ironic, for they feel that evolution should be most elegantly displayed in the nearly perfect adaptation expressed by some organisms -- the camber of a gull's wing, or butterflies that cannot be seen in ground litter because they mimic leaves so precisely. But perfection could be imposed by a wise creator or evolved by natural selection. Perfection covers the tracks of past history. And past history -- the evidence of descent -- is the mark of evolution.
Evolution lies exposed in the imperfections that record a history of descent. Why should a rat run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones unless we all inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch, could design better limbs in each case. Why should all the large native mammals of Australia be marsupials, unless they descended from a common ancestor isolated on that island continent? Marsupials are far from being ideally suited for Australia; witness how many have been wiped out by placental mammals imported by man from other continents
(Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," May 1981; from Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, pp. 253-262.)
But having (hopefully) punched some holes in the argument that organism's adaptations to their environment are Teleological and evidence of a Creator, I'll now reverse course a bit and admit that I am not an atheist, merely an agnostic. I think there is a lot of evidence in nature for the existence of a higher power of some sort. It is miraculous that there is order of any sort at all, not to mention the level of order required for an organism to be able to write this write-up. Its just that evolutionary biology is not a very good place to look for this perfection.
Rather, one should look at physics. Consider that both gravity and electromagnetism both follow the same inverse-square law, i.e. that the strength of the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Consider too the elegant perfection of equations such as E = mc2. Now its possible we will one day formulate a grand unified theory, that shows gravity and electromagnetism (and the strong and weak nuclear forces) to be in fact one phenomenon. If so, it would support a more atheist view. But current thinking, for example Stephen Hawking, suggests that gravity and the other forces are not manifestations of a single force; instead, Hawking proposes "weak anthropomorphism" (sometimes called the "weak anthropic principle") as the explanation for why gravity and the other forces both obey the inverse-square law, even though they are different, irreducible phenomena.
Weak anthropomorphism is hard to summarize, but I'll try: it states there are a number of different universes that could exist, each with their own set of universal laws. In the set of all possible laws in all possible universes, laws that involve inverse-square relations are common enough that it is likely that a given universe will have more than one law that involves an inverse-square relationship. In other words, we do not need to postulate a extra-natural creator to explain why the laws of unrelated phenomena have certain similarities. One scientific test to support or refute weak anthropomorphism would be something like: use mathematics, especially set theory, to describe the set of all possible universes and their laws and their relations, then count the number of laws that have the inverse-square relation as compared to the ones that don't, on a per universe basis. If weak anthropomorphism is true, the number of universes having few or no inverse-square laws would turn out to be much smaller than the number of unverses having many inverse-square laws.
A similar experiment might be imagined to explain why laws like E = mc2 exist, in other words, to explain why so many fundamental, distinct entities (energy, mass, and the speed of light) turn out to be related in such an elegant way. And so on for all the other amazing examples of elegance we observe in the universe. Hawking hasn't done these experiments, but he believes they can and should be done.
According to Hawking, there are two alternatives to weak anthropomorphism: creation and strong anthropomorphism. For a variety of reasons, creation isn't useful as a scientific theory, as has been discussed more than adequately, elsewhere on E2. Strong anthropomorphism essentially states that the observation that we exist and have observed the inverse-square law in unrelated phenomena, proves that no universe can exist without the inverse-square law. According to Hawking, strong anthropomorphism is a tautology, and therefore is not useful as a scientific theory.
So until Hawking delivers his proof, I think the best example of the Teleological Argument in action is found in physics, not in evolutionary biology.
Fun Gould Quotes:
Dr. Gould provides some colorful examples of why one shouldn't infer purpose or intent from behavior that seems directed towards a goal.
...the most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria. In fact, this is not the age of man as the old textbooks used to say, or the age of mammals, or even the age of insects, which is more correct, if you want to honor multicellular animals. This is the age of bacteria. Bacteria have always been dominant.
The drunk isn't ending up in the gutter by design. When we see a species that appears to evolve towards an end, we shouldn't necessarily infer that this is by design (the creature's or a creator's).
It’s an old statistical paradigm called the drunkard’s walk, which is a wonderful way of illustrating how you can get directional and predictable motion within a totally random system. All right. Here’s the story. A drunk staggers out of a bar. Here’s the bar, and he’s leaning right against the wall of the bar. Now, he’s staggering completely at random, back and forth. There’s a gutter 30 feet away. He staggers five feet every time he staggers, completely at random, goes towards the bar as often as he goes away, except if he hits the bar wall, he can’t go through it, so he just stands there until he staggers away. Now, where does he end up every time? Of course, he ends up in the gutter. He falls down in the gutter, the thing’s over. We understand that very easily.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/gould_11-26.html, Nov. 26, 1996 interview "Spinning Evolution".
Dr. Gould is fond of interdisciplinary analogies to illustrate his point, in this case, architecture and physiology.
Here's the situation: You decide to build a church by mounting a circular dome on four rounded arches that meet at right angles. I'll accept that as an analog of adaptation; that's an engineering design that works. But once you do that, you have four tapering triangular spaces where any two arches meet at right angles. The spaces are called spandrels or pendentives, but the more general architectural term is spandrels. They're spaces left over.
These spandrels were side effects of the "evolution" (actually evolution by design, not evolution by natural selection; but we can safely ignore that flaw in the analogy) of church "physiology", they did not initially make the church more useful to its builders, but they didn't hurt either. Later in history, builders began taking advantage of these odd triangular spaces to serve as niches for statuary and the like, thus spandrels became advantageous instead of incidental, without having been purposefully designed as such.
No one can claim that the spandrels under the dome are adaptations for anything. I suppose it's a good idea to put some plaster there otherwise the rainwater is going to come in but the fact that they're tapering triangular spaces is a side consequence of the adaptive decision to mount the dome on four arches. It's space left over. It's a side consequence; it isn't an adaptation in itself.
One of the arguments supposedly in favor of the teleological approach is that higher intelligence is a complex emergent property, that isn't very useful unless it appeared simultaneously with communication, tool use, and other things; therefore it is unlikely that all these things could have evolved all at once, without some kind of design. Dr. Gould argues that intelligence may have evolved in a fashion analogous to spandrels; natural selection initially might have favored larger brains and larger neocortexes because they allowed a greater number of stimulus-response associations, or because it was useful to have spare capacity in case of brain damage. Stimulus-response associations are present in a variety of animals and are generally not considered to be intelligence. Emergent properties such as higher order associations (intelligence) were a side effect of this larger neocortex, and remained latent until other prerequisites for intelligence, such as communication and tool use, evolved.
When confronted with the most primitive, ad hoc adaptation, theists will take it as proof of divine benevolence. When confronted with the overwhelming chaos of nature's blind nigh-excretory life-production, they will ignore it. The world looks exactly as we would expect it to look if nobody were at the controls. You can quote me on that.
Well put! But what about that inverse-square relation, eh smarty? Thanks to basic geometry and conservation of angular momentum, the centripetal force required to keep an object in orbit is the inverse-square of the radius. How is it that both gravity and electromagnetism just happen to follow this same relation? If they didn't, the only stable orbit would be a perfect circle, any perturbation and the solar system, or an atom, would fly apart or implode. Even many atheists admit to an overwhelming sense of amazement and wonder at stuff like this.
Stable orbits certainly don't prove that God exists, but clearly, further research is required...
Update April, 2003: Apparently there may be the outlines of a mathematical basis for why certain seemingly unrelated forces follow inverse-square laws, check out Any's Why gravitation is an inverse square force and the stuff at The Inverse Square Law. I still wonder if there mustn't still be a role for some higher power, and my wondering goes like this: sure, we understand the earth is round, the solar system is arranged thus and so, and by applying some equations we can confidently predict the precise moment the sun will rise tomorrow morning. But what causes the scientific principles that held true yesterday to persist in holding true tomorrow? I suppose this is akin to Aristotle's Unmoved Mover idea. Clearly, more research is still required... | <urn:uuid:8d711dc4-ab8d-484a-8553-85876156496b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://everything2.com/user/e-hadj/writeups/Watching+the+Teleological+Argument+in+action | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9523 | 2,766 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Sandy update: Cuomo orders NYC tunnels closed, fears storm surge
VideosSandy: Tracking 'Superstorm' Sandy's path: Emergency officials ready Sandy's path headed toward New York
GalleriesSandy hits New York City Superstorm Sandy pictures of aftermath in the Hudson Valley Sandy slams East Coast
Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered two tunnels to New York City closed at about 10:30 a.m. for fear of flooding from the affects of Hurricane Sandy.
Cuomo, state and federal officials said their biggest concern were new predictions for potential historic storm surges of the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson River, flooding Long Island beaches and low-lying coastal areas.
Updated projections estimate a possible 11.7 foot water surge Monday evening near New York City at 8 or 9 p.m., compared with a peak surge for Tropical Storm Irene of 9.5 feet.
Superstorm Sandy photos in Hudson Valley
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"These forecasts for the surge are really extraordinary," Cuomo said.
Flooding concerns prompted Cuomo to order the Holland Tunnel and Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) closed as of 2 p.m. Bridges over the Hudson River will remain open unless winds reach 60 mph. Cuomo also called up an additional 1,000 National Guard service members to aide in emergency response and clean up.
In our area, water from the Hudson River has already started swamping Piermont and communities on the Sound Shore -- Mamaroneck and Port Chester -- are experiencing some flooding along the waterfront.
Cuomo also visited the World Trade Center site Monday morning and expressed concern over flooding because of the ongoing construction there.
"God bless them. That is the site of resilience and the site of can-do," Cuomo said, noting that workers have piled thousands of sandbags and have water pumps at the ready. "I believe they're prepared for it."
Cuomo urged New Yorkers to also stay safe and stay off the roads.
"You do not need to be going to the beach to take pictures," Cuomo said. "Don't be fooled. Don't look out the window and say 'well it doesn't' look so bad.' Keep yourself safe and use common sense." | <urn:uuid:2f5613c3-106c-47a1-bee1-9414fcbd701a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newyork.newsday.com/news/weather/sandy-update-cuomo-orders-nyc-tunnels-closed-fears-storm-surge-1.4165255 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932956 | 486 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Aigues-MortesArticle Free Pass
Aigues-Mortes, town, Gard département, Languedoc-Roussillon région, southeastern France, southwest of Nîmes, on the Canal du Rhône à Sète, with its own 3.5-mile (6-km) canal to the Gulf of Lion. Its name comes from aquae mortuae, the “dead waters” of the surrounding saline delta marshland. Built by Louis IX as the embarkation port for his two Crusades (seventh, 1248; eighth, 1270), the little town is enclosed by crenellated and tower-strengthened walls 25 to 30 feet (8 to 9 metres) high, which trace a rectangle roughly 0.5 by 0.25 mile (800 by 400 metres). The medieval town plan remains intact. Fishing is a source of revenue, although the port long ago silted up. The principal industry is the extraction and processing of marsh salt. Tourism is also important. Pop. (1999) 6,012; (2008 prelim.) 6,798.
What made you want to look up "Aigues-Mortes"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:cd2fc0f1-f52c-4c2a-aaff-5fe9e70f6937> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/10459/Aigues-Mortes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901544 | 260 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Night Heron, a heron that feeds at dusk and at night, remaining hidden during the day. Night herons are about 24 inches (60 cm) long. They have stockier bodies than other herons, and shorter necks and legs. The black-crowned night heron is found in temperate and tropical regions throughout the world. It is blackish green on top of its head and on its back. It has gray wings and tail, and a white breast. There are two long white plumes on its nape. The yellow-crowned night heron breeds in the central and eastern United States and winters in south to northern South America. It is bluish gray, with yellowish white crown and plumes.
Night herons belong to the family Ardeidae. The black-crowned night heron is Nycticorax nycticorax; the yellow-crowned, Nyctanassa violacea. | <urn:uuid:84edfccd-24ff-422b-8f23-71b995efca35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://animal.discovery.com/birds/night-heron-info.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950688 | 198 | 3.453125 | 3 |
What's the Best Song-Pre 1940s Edition
Due to a couple of requests, we'll be moving back in time in our quest to choose the best song of all time and we'll be revising the voting procedure a little bit. Instead of just choosing your favorite, you can now rank the choices. Hopefully that will allow us to do some more accurate polling.
The candidates for the pre-1940s best song are:
- Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, by Fisk Jubilee Singers
- When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, by Chauncy Olcott
- West End Blues, by Louis Armstrong
- Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin
- In The Mood, by Glenn Miller
- Back in the Saddle Again, by Gene Autry
- Can the Circle be Unbroken, by The Carter Family
- Over the Rainbow, by Judy Garland
- God Bless America, by Kate Smith
- The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin
(opens in new window)
For more information and previous results in our Greatest Song competition, click here.
Update: The polls are closed and "Rhapsody in Blue" is our winner.
Posted by at December 2, 2005 02:07 AM
The trackback entry for this page is : http://www.inthehat.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1184
|# December 1st, 2005 8:20 PM james|
|wait a minute, shouldn't there be a requirement that the artist have actually written the song?
From the last edition, Bing Crosby didn't write White Christmas, Irving Berlin did.
This time, the Carter Family didn't write "Will the Circle be Unbroken," it's an old spiritual.
|# December 1st, 2005 8:21 PM james|
|i think that swing low sweet chariot is a spirirual, too |
|# December 1st, 2005 8:28 PM kris|
|No, why should it? For example, Aretha Franklin didn't write Respect (Otis Redding did). Elvis didn't write the lyrics or the music for Heartbreak Hotel. We're judging the performance, not the songwriting. At least that's how I'm looking at it. |
|# December 1st, 2005 8:37 PM james|
|your first poll post was entitled "What's the Best Song of All Time?" that made me think that you were talking about songs and songwriters.
more accurately, it should have been titled "What's the Best Performance of All Time?"
"Will the circle be unbroken" has probably been recorded by over 100 different artists. So what you're saying is that in your poll, i'm only voting on the Carter family performance (which blows), and the Statler Bros performance (which rocks) is irrelevant. Right?
|# December 1st, 2005 8:39 PM kris|
|# December 1st, 2005 8:41 PM james|
what % of people living today do you think has heard Kate Smith sing "God Bless America?"
|# December 1st, 2005 8:42 PM kris|
|anyone who is a Philadelphia Flyer fan, or hell, a hockey fan, has heard the Kate Smith version |
|# December 1st, 2005 8:45 PM james|
|so, like 1% then?
|# December 1st, 2005 8:46 PM james|
|make that 1.0000001%, im gonna download it. but im not gonna become a flyers fan. (sorry, daddy) |
|# December 1st, 2005 8:46 PM kris|
An interesting chapter was added to the Kate Smith- God Bless America story in the twilight of her 50-year career. Officials noted that when the national anthem was played at the opening of Philadelphia Flyers' hockey games, the fans were not properly respectful, while they listened more quietly to Kate's record of God Bless America. Furthermore, a statistician noted that they won most games when the latter was played. Fans were given a surprise on October 11, 197 3, at the season opener, when Kate Smith walked across the red carpet on the ice to sing her anthem in person. They beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 2-0. Announcer Gene Hart commented that Kate "brought chills and a standing ovation of three minutes. It fully met the ultimate definition of the word triumph." At critical games Kate was driven down from New York to repeat the favor. When the Flyers clinched the championship and won the Stanley Cup by defeating the Boston Bruins 1-0, even the Bruins skated over to shake Kate’s hand. She was called their talisman and good luck charm; she loved the free publicity! She repeated the role the next season, and the Flyers defeated the New York Islanders to retain the Stanley Cup. In 1987 they erected a bronze statue in memory of their "rabbit's foot" or "secret ice weapon," who had died the previous year.
They still will play the video of her singing it before big games.
|# December 1st, 2005 8:52 PM james|
|the song was written by irving berlin in 1918. there is an OK chance that smith's 1939 performance is no longer covered by copyright, but i'm not sure. (go sonny bono! you rule! (not really))
Here's an MP3 of Smith's 1939 Performance
|# December 1st, 2005 9:01 PM kris|
|she kicks all kinds of ass on that song |
|# December 1st, 2005 9:19 PM james|
|she does. i kinda wish i'd have voted her higher now. |
|# December 1st, 2005 9:41 PM kris|
|I'm going to start the 1950s poll on Monday. I'm excited about that poll. I think it has by far the best selection of songs. I'm surprised, as I didn't realize that I liked 50s music. |
|# December 1st, 2005 10:21 PM james|
|there are so many 50's songs that are groundbreaking, from a musical history perspective. i think you should post a list of proposed songs here in the comments and let people add/criticize.
|# December 2nd, 2005 2:24 AM TheUnabrewer|
|The distant whirring sound is Robert Johnson spinning in his grave. |
|# December 2nd, 2005 9:09 AM kris|
|Well maybe he shouldn't have sold his soul to the Devil |
|# December 2nd, 2005 10:31 AM james|
|hey! our poll is broken!!! wtf? |
|# December 2nd, 2005 10:32 AM james|
|ok, i'll write a poll application later today. i was gonna stay in tonight anyway. post specs/requests here. |
|# December 2nd, 2005 11:10 AM kris|
|I'd like 10 choices. I don't need an instant runoff, but I'd like them weighted like this:
1st place-15 points
2nd place-10 points
3rd place-8 points
I want 1st and 2nd place votes to count for relatively more.
Highest overall point total wins.
|# December 2nd, 2005 11:13 AM kris|
|wait-it shouldn't be that rigid. a point system that would give a higher percentage to the first and second place rankings no matter how many choices there are |
|# December 2nd, 2005 11:24 AM kris|
|the poll is working again |
|# December 2nd, 2005 11:46 AM james|
|im drawing up the tables now. interesting problem: how shall i deal with non-votes? for instance, if a poll presents 10 choices, and the taker only ranks 5 of them?
option 1 is that the poll doesnt allow that - it makes you rank everything. that could be annoying to the taker, and would lead to skewed results. people would rank choices they really didnt care about.
option 2 is that the software assign random values to each of the unranked choices. that alleviates the annoying part, but still leads to erroneous and skewed results.
option 3 is that the unranked choices don't get a value at all or they get the lowest value - eg they all get "0" or "1".
i think 3 makes the most sense, but you'd have to understand that that's how the poll works in order to properly understand the results.
i suppose i could make it an option, but i probably won't implement that right away. what do you think?
|# December 2nd, 2005 11:48 AM kris|
|option 3-they can all get a value of "1". that's fine with me |
|# December 2nd, 2005 10:30 PM Daddy|
|I get CHILLS down my spine when I see Kate Smith sing "God Bless America".
BTW, when they resurrected her via video during the 1987 Finals, the Edmonton Oilers of Gretzky-Coffey-Messier-Curry-and everybody else (y'know the dynasty?) spanked 'em HARD.
|# December 2nd, 2005 11:32 PM james|
|ok, i didn't write the poll thingy tonight. but you know what i did do? i wrote a whole freaking IP locator service. i have a site where i really need to know what country people are coming from.
so, where my logs used to say :
46 23:24 1 126.96.36.199
they now say
46 23:24 1 188.8.131.52 UNITED STATES
and by "logs" i mean custom-written-by-me tracking programs and what-not.
with this, ive been able to deduce some killer stats about how people in different countries use search engines to find my sites.
in one report, for instance, i take the referer search terms and run them against a wordlist - would it surprise you to learn that folks outside of US/Canada are much more likely to use a verb as the first word in their search phrase than US users are? from my stats, it's true.
also, i see that different geographical areas have the same misspellings, i.e. they use a single "l" when they should a double-l. of the l v ll misspellings, 90% are from out of the US. many of the omitted l's look to be coming from eastern europe, but that's something im just eyeballing.
interestingly enough, US users seem to be more prone to misjuxtapositions than they are misspellings. (is that word?) for instance, they don't say "pontiac sunfyre," they say "pontiac fire sun."
people out of the US do the former (that is, misspell) at an 70-30 rate. that is, of all of the misspellings, 70% are from outside of the US. people in the US are reponsible for the latter at a 90-10 rate. that is, of the juxtapositions, 90% are from users WITHIN the US.
fascinating, isnt it?
|# December 3rd, 2005 1:52 AM kris|
|i'm fine with this current poll as long as it doesn't break
i'm ashamed to admit that i rooted for those 87 Flyers. I liked Scott Mellanby
|# December 3rd, 2005 2:13 PM Daddy|
|I'm ashamed to admit that I debated forsaking game 7 in the 87 finals to go to a Megadeth show.
I didn't go. I watched the game. I should've seen Megadeth. I heard Dave Mustaine trashed his drummer's kit and there was a screaming match (on stage) just after the encore that led to Gar Samuelson's ouster.
|# December 4th, 2005 12:08 AM mbrlr|
|Where *are* the blues in this list? I wouldn't necessarily argue for Robert Johnson (well, yeah, I would) but no blues? And no, Louis Armstrong's song, brilliant man though he was, doesn't count. |
|# December 4th, 2005 12:18 AM mbrlr|
|The Carter Family's not even in the running! Anathema sit!
And, y'all...dear lady though she was and as much as I may, despite what you think, generally agree with the basic premise of the song...Kate Smith's "God Bless America" version is pure, unadulterated treacle. That it's listed as one of the choices and nothing by *any* of the pre-50s blues artists is here is just unfathomable.
|# December 4th, 2005 9:36 AM kris|
|In the 1960s, the Beatles don't have a song in the critics top five, so I'd have to pick one song for the list. I think that's crazy, so I've decided to give them their own category. So now we have:
5. The Beatles
I think we should have 10 songs in the finals, so any thoughts on what a 10th category should be?
|# December 4th, 2005 10:38 AM Daddy|
|# December 4th, 2005 10:41 AM Daddy|
|Lately, I've been gettin' a wild hair and listening to KROKUS. Yes, they're still alive. I've listened to "The Blitz" once a day for the past week.
Hey, there's your Category 10:
|# December 4th, 2005 11:39 AM kris|
|I've got it. Category #10 will be songs that people think I should have included. So, it'll have Robert Johnson and I'm sure there will be 9 more songs that I've overlooked as we move along. Plus, that'll give people an incentive to keep commenting |
|# December 4th, 2005 12:15 PM james|
|all beatles songs sound the same. there is hardly a need for a whole beatles catgory. |
|# December 4th, 2005 12:43 PM kris|
|yes. i've often confused Please Please Me for The Long & Winding Road | | <urn:uuid:056d3b3a-f3c9-47d8-b296-e1b62b5d6d33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummocrats.com/archives/001215.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969553 | 3,074 | 1.515625 | 2 |
by Deng Yushan
BEIJING, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- Japan's central bank on Tuesday officially boarded the roaring train of what is dubbed Abenomics, stamping harder on the monetary accelerator pedal in a bid to jerk the bogged-down economy back into motion.
Albeit understandable, Tokyo's decision to crank up money printing presses is dangerous. Such a beggar-thy-neighbor practice is likely to force others to follow suit and thus push the world ever closer to currency wars.
Whether bowing to government pressure or not, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) wrapped up its two-day policy meeting with the introduction of the 2-percent inflation target Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shooting for and an open-ended commitment to asset-buying from next year.
The measures signaled a dramatic change in the central bank's modus operandi. But given Japan's seemingly perpetual economic slump under the curse of deflation, the BoJ has a handful of plausible reasons to resort to more and bolder quantitative easing (QE). Many are beating the drum for the idea that Japan inflates its way out of the current doldrums.
Yet should history be any indicator, the effectiveness of Japan's colossal cash dose is questionable. The previous 10 rounds of monetary easing in recent memory have failed to spark new life into the world's third largest economy.
What is unquestionable is its potential perilousness. On the domestic front, to the accompaniment of session after session of liquidity infusion, Japan's debt has snowballed to more than double the size of its GDP -- a staggering ratio that dwarfs those of its industrialized peers.
Some argue that Japan's debt is of no big concern thanks to the overwhelmingly domestic ownership. But exorbitant monetary easing and public spending might eventually sap the public's faith in the government's debt control ability, pushing up yields and setting off a vicious spiral. Loss of confidence could be abrupt and self-reinforcing.
From a global perspective, the auguries are even more ominous. The easing of Japan's monetary policy entails the weakening of its currency, a side effect -- if not the purposeful design -- that can translate into an artificial and unfair price advantage for Japanese exports.
It is a safe bet that others would respond with driving their own currencies down, thus igniting a downward race among the world's most heavily traded media of exchange -- known in a more dreadful way as currency wars.
An outbreak of such competitive devaluations, which would trigger cross-border trade hostilities and undermine global cooperation, is the last thing the world economy needs to keep its wobbly recovery on track.
Also, at a time when experimental medications like QE have turned into over-the-counter drugs for sickly economies -- from the United States to the European Union to Japan, massive excess liquidity is sloshing around in global markets, posing a risk of asset bubbles.
Given today's deep-going globalization and Japan's economic heft, a healthy Japanese economy benefits the whole world. But as has been demonstrated repeatedly, cash injection is not the cure -- not to mention a cure-all -- for the Asian power's economic malaise.
As placebo is no substitute for proper treatment, monetary easing can not replace the more politically difficult decisions Japan has to make to put its economy back on a solid footing, including implementing structural reforms and strengthening fiscal discipline.
Either it chooses to stand up to the daunting challenges, or it might be forced to. | <urn:uuid:a900946d-6028-4d27-9383-8bd617060be4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-01/22/c_132120127.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928539 | 718 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Acne Facial Cleansers
There are plenty of good facial cleansers on the market for people with skin that doesn’t suffer from acne. Many acne sufferers, however, make the mistake of using those cleansers instead of one made especially for them. This article will discuss the most important reasons for someone with acne to use a good acne-specific cleanser, and what to look for.
The most important thing to consider in this equation is that we want to make sure that the cleanser doesn’t have any moisturizing or cleansing ingredients which can clog pores and make acne worse, OR that it might have ingredients which can irritate or over-dry the skin. Acne-prone skin is already usually pretty irritated with the redness of pimples. Putting a product on it that makes that redness worse is a nightmare.
Facial cleansers made JUST for acne sufferers will not only cleanse and kill bacteria while calming and soothing the skin, but will also make sure the skin is “prepped and ready” to receive the treatment of an acne cream. Many normal facial cleansers might tighten up pores or tone the skin to a degree that makes the skin resistant to absorbing treatments. This could result in applying an acne cream to the skin and having all the active ingredients just sit on the surface of the skin, rather than penetrating and healing the acne. A proper acne facial cleanser has ingredients like tangerine oil, that actually increase the skin’s ability to absorb therapeutic ingredients. This is a vital point that very few people, including many dermatologists overlook. | <urn:uuid:652c14f7-314e-44e2-b68c-42ec8c4af65f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.facialcleansers.com/acne-facial-cleansers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947864 | 329 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Guest post by Michelle Langlois
I got a new smartphone seven months ago, and it's a pretty handy little gadget. I'll never get lost again since I have a map that can pinpoint my location down to whether I'm in the front or back of my house. I downloaded a banking app that lets me check my balance, pay bills, and transfer funds whenever I want to do it. And, of course, I can tweet, foursquare, play Frozen Bubble, and watch YouTube any time I like.
So why did I just uninstall almost half of the apps I had on my phone? Because, while I know that any smartphone is not secure, and while I realize there's no such thing as real privacy, I discovered that many of the apps I had on my phone fall way short of even the relatively low expectations I have for privacy.
Now when I download an app, I check to see whether it wants to "Read phone state and identity." If it does, I don't download it. Know what that means? Here's the explanation my Android phone gives me for that permission:
Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like.
So let's just look at that for a moment. For some reason, the companies that make the following apps seem to think that they need to know my cell phone number, when I'm on the phone, and WHO I'M ON THE PHONE WITH:
- Canada Post
- Shoot Bubble Deluxe (video game)
- Shazam ("listens" to song playing and tells you what it is)
- Ringdroid (records your voice and turns into ring tone)
I have now uninstalled all of these programs. There is no reason why a video game needs to know who I'm talking to on the phone. Certainly Canada Post doesn't need to know in order to tell me where their locations are or to help me look up a postal code. Does Scotiabank really need to know the phone number of the person I'm talking to or how long I'm on the phone with them in order to help me transfer funds from one account to another?
I get why many apps want GPS info - they want to know where you are so that features in the app that tell you what's near you now can work. Yes, it's a privacy issue too, but one I can live with if it actually makes the app work. But none of them - and I mean NONE of them - need to know who I'm on the phone with.
Here are some apps still left on my phone that don't ask for your phone call information:
- GO Mobile
- Frozen Bubble (by a free software developer - doesn't ask for ANY permissions!)
Unfortunately, I can't uninstall all the programs that spy on my phone calls, because a number of them come installed by the phone's manufacturer and won't let me uninstall them. (I'm sure there's some way to get around it, but I haven't the time or inclination to find out - which I'm sure these corporations are counting on.) These programs have absolutely no business spying on my phone in order to perform the functions of the app:
- Google Maps
I'll be looking carefully from now on whenever I'm considering downloading an app, to make sure it doesn't demand more privacy permissions than it needs in order to perform its functions.
This post was simultaneously posted at http://classrage.ca . | <urn:uuid:8ee226af-12e3-4b41-8521-ed7fac552173> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/radiorahim/2012/06/dear-cool-apps-why-are-you-spying-my-phone-calls | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967856 | 744 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Delay On Elected Police Commissioners Hurts Everyone - Except The Major Parties?
In May 2012 English and Welsh voters in 41 constabularies are due to go to the polls to elect Police and Crime Commissioners. But with the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill gutted by the Lords and unlikely to receive Royal Assent before the summer recess, the Home Office has now conceded that the Bill won’t become law until September at the earliest.
The delay has left the Electoral Commission casting fresh doubts on whether there is time to prepare for the elections at all. Local authorities, current Police Authorities, chief constables and potential candidates are still unsure what powers the new office will have, so managing the introduction of PCCs is set to become even more difficult once Parliament breaks for summer.
Elected PCCs will replace police authorities, which are appointed bodies of councillors, magistrates and others who oversee police spending and set local priorities. The government believes replacing these authorities with an elected person will rebuild public confidence in the police. Ministers also hope the increased pressure on chief constables will reduce bureaucracy.
But opponents are adamant that the elections will do more harm than good. "PCCs are the wrong reform at the wrong time," says Nathan Oley, head of press at the Association of Police Authorities. The APA claims the new commissioners replace a system "that has not been shown to be failing". They also argue elections could compromise the operating independence of the police, and add that it is an open question whether the new PCCs will be able to cooperate with their peers on regional or national crime once they are elected on primarily local issues.
Wherever you stand on the changes, the Home Office now concedes that the Bill will not pass by the summer recess. With the Lords not holding its third reading until July 19 it seems unlikely the Bill will become law before the autumn. A Home Office spokesperson committed only to "later in the year" when asked about the timeline for Royal Assent.
This delay is a concern for the Electoral Commission, which believes there might not be enough time for local authorities or candidates to prepare for the elections. In a briefing to Peers last week the Commission said that unless the basic regulatory principles of the elections are in place by July 19, it would be difficult for candidates, campaigners or local returning officers to start working towards the May deadline.
"Our concern lies with the impact that finalising the rules at a late stage will have on both campaigners and those administering the proposed Police and Crime Commissioner elections," the Electoral Commission said in its briefing.
Senior police officers are concerned that the more the Bill is delayed, the greater the risk the looming changes will affect public safety. Hugh Orde, president of The Association of Chief Police Officers, warned the ACPO summer conference on Monday that if the reforms were mismanaged they could “threaten the impartial model of policing that has existed for 180 years”.
Police Authorities also worry that the transition period to elected commissioners is looking increasingly difficult. "Time is skipping by," said Peter Williams, who is chairman of the Surrey Police Authority. "There is a huge amount of work to do with regard to staff and who owns them, assets and who owns them, dealing with all the legal transfers and paperwork that goes with it, and it would have been a help if it had been 12 months to do what is a huge huge task instead of perhaps 12 or 18 weeks."
The delay on PCCs also creates problems for candidates. Without the details on what the role will entail, some are finding it hard to commit to standing. Steve Waight - the current chair of Sussex Police Authority and a Conservative councillor - is still undecided. "When people ask 'are you going to throw your hat into the ring,' my response has been I don't know where the ring is to throw my hat into," he said. "I don't know what the process is. I'm not aware of anyone who knows what the process is. And it's becoming more of an issue day by day."
Candidates of all types, but particularly independents, will find it tough to gather the funds to run for office in areas such as West Midlands, which has more than 2.6 million people, or Sussex which has 1.5 million. And the longer the delay the more difficult it will become. Independents such as Ann Barnes, chair of Kent Police Authority, have already expressed fears that they will be priced out of the election.
Evidence is also mounting that the public don’t understand what elected commissioners will actually do once they’re elected. A recent study conducted with the help of Lancashire Police Authority showed that most members of the public would expect PCCs to take charge of local matters like low-level anti-social behaviour and even graffiti - neither of which will be in the PCCs' remit.
A process to inform the public should already be in place, Steve Waight argues. "The majority of the public really don't understand the roles and responsibilities of the police authority," said Steve Waight. "And currently there is no sign that any sort of information process is underway to do that."
It’s possible the delays with the Police Reform Bill could leave only the major parties in a strong enough position to fight the elections when they finally come next spring. The major parties will be able to mobilise their campaigning machines quickest, fund the elections with least difficulty and manage the technical and legal hurdles with greatest ease. Each of the three major parties are currently remaining quiet on their plans for PCCs, with perhaps the Lib Dems privately the most pessimistic on their chances.
Alternatively it might be that independent candidates will always struggle to match the parties when it comes to funding, delay or no delay. "One can't really envisage a scenario in which independent candidates are going to be raising huge quantities of money anyway... I'm not sure it will be exacerbated by the time delay," said Dale Bassett, research director at the think-tank Reform. "The reality is these delays mean we might not be having the elections in 2012 anyway, in which case there isn't an advantage or a disadvantage."
The delay on PCCs is increasingly dangerous for the government. If the Lords don't back down the Home Office will have to offer further concessions to those announced last week, or else face the prospect of delaying the elections for another twelve months. That would mean the commissioners being in place for less than two years before the General Election in 2015.
A Home Office spokesperson said: "We will deliver Police and Crime Commissioners, which will give local people more say in how their community is policed and replace invisible, ineffective and bureaucratic police authorities... We expect the Bill which will deliver PCCs to receive Royal Assent later this year and the elections to be held throughout England and Wales in May next year.” | <urn:uuid:48ea0080-9236-447f-9b68-cdc0b43a98a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/03/commissioners-delay_n_889799.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970689 | 1,408 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Household germs are running rampant in your kitchen. With a few simple changes in your routine, you can take back what is rightfully yours and tell those yucky E. coli and salmonella critters to take a hike.
Get a disinfectant at the store. One that actually says it's a disinfectant, not just soap or a fancy cleanser. Use it all around your kitchen—cutting boards, sinks, countertops, refrigerator handles, and the like.
Wet sponges and dishrags are perfect homes for happy germs. Toss your sponges into the dishwasher every night. If you don't have a dishwasher, dump them into a bowl with some disinfectant and pour boiling water on them—then rinse and hang them to dry or put them in the dryer. Don't let them sit on the sink and stay wet. Put your dishrags in the washing machine, using hot water with detergent and bleach.
Wash Your Hands!
Invest in a liquid soap for regular use by you and the kids. Get your hands wet, squirt some soap on the hands, and rub them together (do it like you mean it!) for at least 15 seconds—or until you get through the ABC song.
Get between each finger, under the nails, and on the top and palms. Get a dry towel and dry your hands, then turn off the faucet using the towel. You turned on the faucet with your germy hands, so you don't want to immediately re-infect them by bare-handing the faucet.
Get a stepstool for the smaller kids so they can reach the faucet and soap. Teach them how to wash their hands and make sure they know to do so before and after they eat, after using the toilet, after playing outside, and in general any time they've been handling icky stuff or their hands look dirty.
If kids get positive reinforcement for this, they'll be happy to wash their hands. Make it fun and sing a song while they wash. To show them how germs hang on, put some nutmeg in a little bit of petroleum jelly and rub it on their hands before they wash. Explain that the nutmeg represents germs. They'll have to do a good job washing to get rid of the nutmeg.
A little time spent teaching the basics makes a huge difference in how much time you have to spend caring for a sick child!
Important disclaimer: The information on pkids.org is for educational purposes only and should not be considered to be medical advice. It is not meant to replace the advice of the physician who cares for your child. All medical advice and information should be considered to be incomplete without a physical exam, which is not possible without a visit to your doctor.
Top 4 ways to prevent the spread of disease:
Wash your hands often.
Practice standard precautions. | <urn:uuid:6d793d7b-63c7-4a1f-9cc9-6348ceb7008e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pkids.org/infection_protection/germs_disease_prevention.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947657 | 605 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Almost as Jean Borotra was speaking, another senior Frenchman was making news back home. He is Georges Cormier, who, for most of his life, has nurtured a great if almost forgotten French tradition. He is a free balloonist. The first two humans ever to ascend in a balloon (Nov. 21, 1783) were Frenchmen; when Paris was besieged during the Franco-Prussian War, Minister of the Interior Leon Gambetta sailed over the heads of encircling German troops in a balloon to rally new armies in the provinces. Tales like this were fresher when Cormier, a tailor, made his first ascent 55 years ago, and though the airplane has made him a kind of human curio he has never lost his enthusiasm—in his half century of ballooning he has made 500 ascents, has floated over the Pyrenees to Spain, over the Channel to England, has landed in Holland, Italy and Africa.
Georges is now 82 years old, his eye has dimmed, he can no longer work at his trade, and he lives alone among the poor people of Paris. Nevertheless he still keeps two balloons in storage, and a few days ago he hauled one of them to the town of Angers, where, once a year for 35 years, he has ascended as part of a festival for indigent old people. Neat, spry, sparsely mustached, he climbed into his basket. The tugging balloon was cast off. He rose into the sky. He had promised to make only a short flight, but the balloon went up, up, up until it was only a spot in the clouds. Then it vanished. "Georges," worried people in his audience, "has probably been stricken ill, and his balloon is drifting aimlessly." The local police sent out the alarm; people sat up all night waiting for word, although most believed they had seen the last of him. Georges, however, telephoned the next morning. He had descended at twilight in a pasture 60 miles away and had spent the night with a hospitable farmer.
"I knew exactly what I was doing," he said testily. "I intended to come down in 10 miles, but I ran into a 35-knot wind and there was nothing to do but ride it out until I could maneuver into a quieter air current." Later he attempted to describe the things that keep him in the sky at his age—he talked of seeing the sunset glinting on the Seine, of trains rushing noiselessly across the countryside far below, of tiny cows trooping at evening toward lonely farmhouses.
"There is no future in ballooning for anyone but me, "he said, "but from every flight I come back content. It's a pleasure, always a pleasure."
The half-time band appears upset,
They're leaving in a muddle;
They've somehow lost their majorette,
She's back there in the huddle.
—F. E. WHITE | <urn:uuid:a7e06e7f-eaa2-4c62-b550-416d893cbe68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1146423/5/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989749 | 621 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Death of Indian Woman Forces Ireland to Face Abortion Taboo
It’s taken the death of a 31-year- old Indian woman in a hospital in the west of Ireland to force politicians to confront the taboo over abortion.
Successive governments fearing a backlash in a mainly Catholic nation have avoided introducing laws to fasten down the meaning of a 1992 Supreme Court ruling granting women the right to an abortion where the mother’s life is at risk. Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told parliament yesterday the government won’t “ignore and neglect” the issue anymore.
The case of Savita Halappanavar, who died last month of septicemia after doctors decided not to carry out a termination, reignited the battle over abortion, which remains among the most divisive issues in an increasingly secular society. The death of the dentist in Galway sparked protests and candlelit vigils demanding that the government act, while anti-abortion campaigners prepare to mount resistance on concern that Ireland may open the door to easily accessible terminations.
“There has been an abdication of a responsibility to enact legislation that is practically necessary, but politically costly,” Fiona de Londras, a law professor at Durham University in England, said in an interview. “Those opposed to change are very vocal and very effective in getting their message across.”
The issue moved back to center stage after the Irish Times reported Halappanavar’s story on Nov. 14. The 17-week pregnant woman arrived at the hospital on Oct. 21 suffering from severe back pain and was found to be miscarrying, the newspaper said.
Halappanavar’s request for a termination was refused because a fetal heartbeat was present, the Irish Times said. She was informed she was in a Catholic country, the Dublin-based newspaper reported, citing her husband, Praveen. Days later, on Oct. 28, she died after developing an infection. Her husband said she could have been saved had an abortion been carried out.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Nov. 14 he would await the outcome of investigations into the death before considering an independent inquiry.
Any probes may examine whether doctors considered a substantial risk to her life existed, and, if so, why termination wasn’t carried out given there was scope for abortion in the circumstances. Campaigners say that the lack of any detailed laws to flesh out the general constitutional principle may have hampered medical staff in Galway in deciding when to intervene.
Gilmore, Kenny’s deputy, said the government will act to establish clearer guidelines for doctors.
“This government is going to deal with this issue,” Gilmore said in Dublin yesterday. “We need to bring legal clarity to this situation and that is what we will do. We won’t be the seventh government to neglect and to ignore this issue. We also need to have clarity for medical professionals who have to make medical judgment calls in real life.”
About 1,000 people protested outside parliament on Nov. 14, with rallies also taking place in Cork and London.
India’s ambassador to Ireland, Debashish Chakravarti, told Dublin-based RTE radio today that he had raised his government’s concerns with Irish officials, and wanted an investigation carried out as “quickly as possible.”
“There should be an independent inquiry, short, sweet and to the point, and then the government should legislate,” said Sean Breen, 56, a librarian in Dublin. “We are more concerned with trivial things such as interest rates and putting bankers in jail. We should get on with life.”
The hospital is now investigating the death and some warn against pre-judging the outcome.
“There has been a complete rush to judgment as to what caused the death of the woman at the center of this,” David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, which promotes religion in society, said in an interview. “It has been assumed she died because of our laws on abortion. That has absolutely not been determined,” he said, adding it was his personal opinion rather than that of the Dublin-based institute.
Under a Supreme Court ruling in 1992, a woman has a right to an abortion when there is a substantial risk to her life, and doctors say terminations are carried out in some situations.
Yet successive governments have avoided introducing laws to elaborate the ruling’s meaning, in part because legislating may mean explicitly setting out a threat of suicide as grounds for abortion, which opponents fear could lead to terminations becoming relatively easily accessible. In 2002, voters narrowly defeated a referendum to remove suicide as grounds for abortion.
The Savita case, as it has become known in Ireland, risks exposing tensions in Kenny’s coalition between his more socially conservative Fine Gael and Gilmore’s center-left Labour Party.
Fine Gael is more cautious, with ministers warning against rushing into legislation. Health Minister James Reilly on Nov. 14 told lawmakers that he “doubts” religious beliefs were behind the decision not to carry out the abortion.
“There is potential for this causing divisions in the government because you have a Labour Party which would be reasonably liberal,” said Eoin O’Malley, a politics lecturer at Dublin City University. “It is an issue politicians have tried to palm off by giving to the people by referendum.”
For now, the government can avoid conflict spilling over, as it awaits the outcomes of inquiries into the death.
Kenny’s administration is also considering a 2010 European Court of Human Rights judgment that decided while Ireland had the power over abortion, if there was a right of access to a termination then a system must in place to implement it. Gilmore said yesterday the government will respond to the Council of Europe by the end of the month.
The government may have more room to maneuver than in the past, as the Savita case weighs on voters and the Catholic Church loosens its grip on Irish society. Contraception is widely and openly available. In 1996, divorce was introduced, and same-sex civil partnerships became legal last year.
“I suspect in this case the Irish people if they were asked would have no problem legislating for abortion for the Savita case,” said O’Malley, the academic. “Any situation when you can put a human face on the behavior of politicians or the absence of action, it makes it easier to protest.”
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tim Quinson at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:72096a28-de82-48fc-a71d-66ce315d1ace> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-11-16/death-of-indian-woman-forces-ireland-to-confront-law-on-abortion.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967001 | 1,379 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Related: Theme Parks: Singapore - the Lion City roars in 2010/ ‘Live Park’, World’s First 4D Avatar Theme Park, Success In Korea/ Hong Kong: IAAPA's Asian Attractions Expo Reaches New Heights
By Thibault Paquin
Thibault Paquin (left) is the founder and principal of Celebrating Life Asia, an independent consultant and development company for the leisure & entertainment industry. He is also the managing director of iVenture Card Asia, which is operating attractions passes in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore.
Originally from France Thibault holds an MBA from HEC Paris; he is an expert in hospitality and leisure development in Asia where he spent the last 10 years, partly with Accor Hospitality, between Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong.
All eyes are turned to Asia. A growing middle class and regional travel made easier foster a strong growth of the attractions industry. Now we take a closer look at the two regional magnets of Singapore and Hong Kong: how do they compare, compete and what role their attractions play in building two of the world’s top tourist destinations?
Singapore, the island state, managed a superb shift from what was once considered a ‘boring’ destination to one of the most exciting in Asia, with attractions playing a pivotal role. Back a few years ago the government decided to put tourism at the forefront of economic development. Huge budgets were allocated to build superior infrastructure (MTR, airport), promote the destination (advertising, events e.g. F1 Grand Prix) and develop its attractions: Singapore Flyer, Singapore Zoo, Sentosa all received government help. More recently Singapore used incentives to get private investors develop new world-class attractions, and there is no better incentive than a casino license! The result: arrivals to Singapore increased by 35% between 2006 and 2011 and Singapore’s attractions welcomed almost 50million visitors in 2011.
Bustling Hong Kong, on the contrary, never feared of being boring but had to manage a soaring increase of visitors from mainland China since 1997.The government decided to build two massive family attraction-destinations, Ocean Park and Hong Kong Disneyland, both with huge capacity and strong marketing appeal. HK$9.1billion (US$1.2billion) were spent in the last 5 years to expand both parks. Whether they ran out of budgets or thought that was enough (Hong Kong has many non-gated attractions/sights, e.g. The Peak, Victoria Harbour) the government did not support the development of smaller attractions made otherwise impossible due to the exorbitant real estate prices. The result: Hong Kong’s 2 theme parks welcomed 13million visitors in 2011 (of which more than 50% from Mainland China) but on the other hand the Hong Kong Association of Attractions and Amusement Parks formed earlier this year has only 7 founding members, so few for a city welcoming over 40million visitors!
Different visitors origins and different tourism development strategy produced two very different sets of attractions in Singapore and Hong Kong. When it comes to selling the destination as an ‘experience’, which seems to be the recent trend in destination marketing, Singapore will put forward a unique combination of star attractions along with star restaurants and retail outlets/shopping malls whereas Hong Kong will promote a more wholesome city experience based on neighborhoods, sightseeing and street shopping with theme parks as complementing family activities. Two very compelling ‘experiences’ indeed but the difference shows in the bottom line: average tourist spending was 40% higher in Singapore than Hong Kong last year!
The more the merrier
One thing the 2 cities have in common is acute competition, which results in healthy attendance growth. In the city-state of Singapore over 40 attractions managed to reach, through competition (or maybe is it coopetition?), a total of nearly 50million visitors in 2011. In Hong Kong, the ‘war’ between Ocean Park and Disneyland boosted overall theme park visitor numbers from only 3million before the arrival of Mickey to 13million in 2011.
Singapore has adopted an attractions hub strategy where it facilitates the concentration of attractions in identified precincts giving them more visibility and building sub-brands within the main Singapore brand: Mandai Lake with the famous Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, new River Safari coming soon and plans for hotels and other facilities; Sentosa with over 15 attractions, the new Resorts World Sentosa including Universal Studios Singapore, the Maritime Experiential Museum and Marine Life Park and a 2015-2020 master plan expected to take the island to a whole new level.
Further north, Hong Kong’s interpretation of hubs is a little more extreme with everything concentrated in two sprawling theme parks. Together with the Peak (where Madame Tussauds Hong Kong is located) they are the only world-class attractions really! Things might change as the Hong Kong Tourism Board is trying to promote Lantau Island as a sub-brand with Disneyland as an anchor. Also, on Hong Kong Island, the MTR station being built for Ocean Park will generate more consolidation opportunities.
Out with the old, in with the new?
Obsession with modernity on the one hand: first Disneyland in Asia for Hong Kong, first integrated casino resorts in Asia for Singapore, 2 new picture-perfect landmarks with Sky100 Hong Kong and Singapore Flyer proudly standing in the cities’ new skylines. Nostalgia and celebration of the ‘good old days’ on the other hand: Ocean Park opens the very popular Old Hong Kong bringing back the many fond memories of life in the '50s -'70s, Singapore Flyer adds old food carts, and more heritage-inspired attractions are in the planning (e.g. project at Ngong Ping 360 Village in Lantau and redevelopment of Images of Singapore in Sentosa).
So what to think? Are heritage and modernity aimed at pleasing different markets or is it maybe the sign these two destinations are established, proud of their identity/heritage but resolutely modern and forward thinking. Take the Louvres pyramid, a classic example of a modern twist on Paris ‘grande dame’ of museums.
Speaking of museums, it is interesting that both cities each have a very ambitious defining museum project. Hong Kong chose British architect Norman Foster to build the M+ Museum, which will “focus on 20th and 21st century visual culture, broadly defined, from a Hong Kong perspective and with a global vision”. Singapore went for French architect Studio Milou to build the National Art Gallery, which aim is to “strengthen Singapore’s role as a regional and international hub for visual arts”. It is not only about heritage; it is a race to take a regional and global leadership role in arts and culture. New York, Paris, London, watch out!
With tourist arrival growth of 13-16%, who would not be envious? So naturally both neighbours want a piece of the action. With Legoland Malaysia opening in September 2012 and Zhuhai (China) Ocean Kingdom opening its first phase in 2013 just 15min drive from Macau, it’s serious competition on the doorstep.
The question is how healthy this competition will be. If internal competition seemed to have worked and experts even refer to the beginning of an ‘Orlando’ phenomenon in Singapore, we can only wonder if it will work in a two-country environment. Is it in Singapore’s interest to push for a multi-park experience: Universal Studios Singapore + Legoland Malaysia? Will it increase the average tourist spend in Singapore? Is there a real potential of Orlando-style family tourism in Asia?
What’s in the future?
According to a report by the Association of Singapore Attractions (ASA) local residents made up 53.1% of the 50million attractions visit in 2011. It is the variety (over 40 attractions in Singapore) and quality of attractions that make them popular among local residents. There is something for every age and style; going to an attraction is a usual week-end/holiday activity and that makes good grounds for new operators to come in with innovative offering. Maybe this is where Hong Kong needs to start, with the local residents, if it wants to develop new attractions. The potential is there: 2.4million Hong Kong residents went to Ocean Park in 2011, that’s 34% of the total population!
On the tourist side, both Singapore and Hong Kong attractions are fighting for the same markets, which offer significant growth potential: China, South East Asia, India, etc. It is important that they differentiate and ‘stick’ to the destination for a sustainable impact.
- Home-grown - Take Singapore Zoo/Night Safari and Ocean Park, some of the most popular attractions in Asia; they are local darlings and they ‘personify’ the destination overseas. They have been built over time with strong local support and pride. They cannot be copied and that makes them great tourist assets. We want to see more of these in existing and future attractions hubs: Mandai Lake (River Safari), Sentosa, Jurong Lake in Singapore and Island South, Lantau in Hong Kong.
- Nature-based - Amazing lush island settings and increased global environmental awareness provide good grounds for nature-based attractions. What is coming next after the opening of Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay? With Marine Life Park and a water-based master plan for 2015-2020, we’d better watch towards Sentosa… As for Hong Kong, will the government change attitudes towards National Parks to allow for attractions? There’re operators ready with great concepts!
- Heritage - Celebrating the heritage of a place and its people has always been at the heart of every tourism development strategy. If it has recently taken a slightly more ‘nostalgia’ path, multiple other forms remain to be explored. We want to see more world-class and tourist oriented museums as well as cultural shows and new food-related concepts.
Hong Kong – Singapore: two fascinating attractions markets servicing two booming destinations. They compete, they build, they innovate, they thrive! Could we be looking at the next Paris – London? We quickly drew a parallel and found some staggering facts: giant Ferris wheel + numerous midway attractions + brand new studio attraction for London/Singapore vs. observation tower + numerous state-run museums + Disneyland for Paris/Hong Kong. Did we not say all eyes turned to Asia? | <urn:uuid:d696d523-9cbf-4dc1-abff-4c0a3a0e9a4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blooloop.com/Article/Singapore-v-Hong-Kong-Thibault-Paquin-Discusses-Asia-s-Attractions-Markets/339 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937143 | 2,174 | 1.71875 | 2 |
This site collects, sorts and annotates more than 275 resources about Genghis Khan, the great Mongol conqueror. It includes academic biographies to movies of his life, the hunt for his long-lost tomb and his surprising genetic legacy. It represents everything I can find of any value, but it can never be finished.
Start by reading one of the many Web Biographies. The Paper Biographies section reviews Weatherford's new account Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, highly favorable to the Mongolian conqueror, and other major biographies. Examine selections from some of the major Primary Sources (too much hasn't made it on the web yet). Under Mongol Empire are found sections on the Mongol army, the Yasa or "Laws" of Genghis Khan, maps, timelines and so forth. The Kids section is devoted to the younger set, and to educators.
A number of topics have caused a stir. World's Greatest Lover? covers the findings that Genghis Khan is the direct ancestor of an astounding number of the world's population, and the private firm that offers Khan-targeted genetic testing. Tomb of Genghis Khan follows a recent ill-fated attempt to find Genghis' final resting place. Politics, Ethnicity and Ideology reviews the "use and abuse" of Genghis' image, from Chinese appropriation to Persian spleen. Travel enthusiasts will enjoy Travel and Travelogues, art aficionados the Art and Exhibitions section.
Who was Genghis Khan?
Genghis Khan was born Temüjin between 1155 and 1167 (the date is uncertain) somewhere near Like Baikal in Mongolia. Although of noble blood, he inherited difficult circumstances in a fractious and violent Mongolia. Nevertheless, he was able to unite the Mongol tribes under his command, being proclaimed "Genghis Khan," or "Universal Ruler" in 1206. Striking out from the traditional Mongol homelands he defeated the Chinese states of Xia Xia and conquered much of the Jin Empire. He then went west, demolishing the Persian state of Khwarizm. His generals pushed Mongolian power to Novgorod in Russia. Genghis died in 1227, by one account owing to a fall from his horse.
Genghis Khan's rule has been variously assessed. Historians of the states he conquered, notably the Chinese and Persians who suffered greatly at the hands of Genghis and his descendants, stress his ruthless, indeed bloodthirsty tacticsmassacring whole cities that resisted him. The Mongols have traditionally revered him as the father of their nation, who introduced a script for writing the Mongol language, and writing, and promulgated a harsh but fair code of law over his entire domain. Many scholars now emphasize his religious tolerance, tax policies, and the unparalleled "free-trade zone" his conquests created.
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All material © 2000–2005 Tim Spalding.
Presented in Association with Amazon. | <urn:uuid:97c2845f-c86a-4c7f-a4bd-80b34a288a01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/genghis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951713 | 649 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Proposition One: X-rayed Objects without X-rays
November 7th, 2011
Ever thought about what your gadgets would look like when they’re X-rayed? Or how would they look if you would have X-ray vision? Well, Spanish photographer Max de Esteban surely asked himself this question when he decided to create this series of photos of X-rayed objects that he called Proposition One.
The cool thing is that they’re not really X-rays. Max actually disassembled these objects and took photos of the individual components, then layered them back together to create the X-ray effect. Max chose to expose a cassette recorder, various cameras, an old reel-to-reel deck, and other delightful tech relics. In the collection, you’ll find a bunch of other retro gadgets X-rayed, which is even better in my opinion, because I honestly don’t want to know what an X-rayed smartphone looks like. It can’t be nearly as interesting as something mechanical. | <urn:uuid:59cc8d40-0405-4157-8838-130f6bd31f51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://technabob.com/blog/2011/11/07/proposition-one-x-rayed-objects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958251 | 219 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Inspired by the ambitions of Milwaukee’s first bishop, John Martin Henni, Marquette College opened in September 1881 on a hilltop overlooking the city’s expanding downtown. Named for the great explorer and missionary of the American Midwest, Pére Jacques Marquette, the institution’s educational foundation drew upon the well-developed, clearly-elucidated traditions of the Society of Jesus. After twenty-five years as a small, liberal arts college, Marquette blossomed into Wisconsin’s largest private university through its affiliation with the Milwaukee Medical College in 1907, the purchase of two, privately-owned law schools in 1908, the establishment of a engineering college that same fall, and finally, the opening of journalism and business programs in 1910. By this time, the institution had moved from its original hilltop site at Tenth and State streets to Grand Avenue, alongside the Church of the Gesu. Soon Marquette set a course toward coeducation, the first Catholic college/university in the world to make this choice. Marquette’s reputation as Milwaukee’s university grew steadily during the 1920s, accompanied by the school’s first building boom.
Dependent from its earliest days upon tuition income, the school struggled through the hardships of the Great Depression and enrollment disruptions of World War II. With the end of that conflict, however, Marquette came into full glory, becoming by the late 1950s the largest Catholic university in the country.
The quarter of a century preceding the school’s centennial celebration in 1981 was highlighted by an urban renewal program that transformed the campus neighborhood, by the appearance of a lay-dominated leadership core, and by an outspoken student body experiencing every emotion of the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a complete rereading of the university archives, this volume depicts the first one hundred years of Milwaukee’s Jesuit University, with an emphasis upon the themes of student life, administrative decision-making, and Marquette in Milwaukee.
Dr. Thomas Jablonsky, a member of the Department of History at Marquette, is the Harry G. John Professor of Urban Studies. Born and raised in Chicago, the author completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at California State University, Los Angeles, and his doctorate in American history at the University of Southern California where he subsequently spent nearly two decades before coming to Marquette University in 1995 as director of the Institute for Urban Life. Milwaukee’s Jesuit University is the third volume in the Urban Life Series, published by Marquette University Press. | <urn:uuid:83b3c6bd-446e-4d01-967f-9d1e849f0ff8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mu.edu/mupress/MUHistory.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949017 | 527 | 2.65625 | 3 |
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LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 16, 2013
A look at the PyPy 2.0 release
PostgreSQL 9.3 beta: Federated databases and more
LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 9, 2013
(Nearly) full tickless operation in 3.10
If so, that's bad: the browser should connect to it via SSL (using a static certificate) and at least warn if connection fails.
Fraudulent *.google.com certificate issued
Posted Aug 30, 2011 9:51 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
AFAIK, current browsers prefer to use OCSP instead of CRLs.
Posted Aug 30, 2011 13:42 UTC (Tue) by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
* It's up to the CA whether to use OCSP or not. Most don't.
* There is a performance hit associated with doing the OCSP query. You don't want every outgoing connection you make to trigger a query, so you have to cache the responses.
* You disclose to the CA which web sites you visit, how often you visit them and how long you remain there. I don't think the connection to the OCSP server is itself encrypted, so anyone between you and the server will also become privy to this information.
* If the OCSP server is down and your browser is configured to ignore the failure, then a DOS attack on the OCSP server could compromise your security as you wouldn't know that a server's certificate has been revoked.
* If the OCSP server is down and your browser is configured to fail the connection, a DOS attack on the OCSP server becomes a DOS attack on all the web sites that use it.
If browser makers were serious about security then they would insist that every CA certificate they ship either:
* maintain an OCSP server; if so, connections to a web site must fail if an OCSP response can not be obtained
* publish CRLs; if so, the browser must be pre-configured to update each CA's CRL at regular intervals and refuse to connect to a web site if a recent CRL for the site's CA is not present.
I just checked Firefox, and it doesn't know about CRLs for *any* of the CAs whose certificates it ships, let alone automatically update them. I also checked Chrome, and it doesn't even have a UI for managing CRLs!
Posted Aug 30, 2011 20:49 UTC (Tue) by paravoid (subscriber, #32869)
Commercial Wi-Fi hotspots usually redirect your traffic to their own website where you can buy a short-term pass or a subscription.
Since a) those WiFi networks are non-encrypted, b) they require either a short code that's equivalent to some money paid or your credit card, it's frequent to see HTTPS being used on their captive portal.
But the hotspot doesn't allow any kind of traffic besides connecting to the captive portal and even redirects HTTP requests that try to connect elswhere.
which breaks OCSP. And present you with a nice chicken-and-egg problem.
(yes, they're broken by design, and yes I know about iodine :))
Posted Aug 30, 2011 21:51 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
Posted Aug 31, 2011 16:34 UTC (Wed) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
Posted Aug 31, 2011 18:03 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
Posted Sep 1, 2011 7:58 UTC (Thu) by Comet (subscriber, #11646)
Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds | <urn:uuid:054d1c88-1abf-488d-be61-4b9b2ee79762> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lwn.net/Articles/456832/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926038 | 837 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A set of outstanding programs that re-create the human drama and spectacle that helped shape the American nation we know today. All 18 programs in this series are of feature-film caliber, and many star familiar actors. Written and filmed with the assistance of leading scholars, "The Shaping of the American Nation" will take your students to key historical locations and stimulate imagination and discussion about crucial people and events.
Grade Levels: 7 to Adult
Set of 18 Discs | <urn:uuid:eccb3b03-6541-4225-ba24-d566b183b15d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phoenixlearninggroup.com/Products/VideoDetail.aspx?id=1217a7d2-3b78-40a8-a7e5-fbdf7cc67651&sub=f7246a67-d9d0-4986-b3c4-d8f67a161a17&cat=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942459 | 94 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Action Coming from South High School Brawl
The massive fight at South High School in Minneapolis last week is sparking action.
The brawl broke out in the cafeteria as a food fight, but ultimately involved hundreds of students and police using mace. A few students were even taken to the hospital.
Some students believe tensions between African American and Somali students ignited the fight. Now Somali students and community leaders are calling for action from Minneapolis Public Schools.
"It's beyond a food fight, these are things we've been encountering for longer that a year," said junior Kowsar Mohamed. "The fact that I'm a first generation child and my parents came here to give me a better life, it just feels like the fact that people are trying to take that away from me or that they don't understand what I'm trying to achieve, and that they won't accept me for who I am, I don't feel that that's acceptable."
Minneapolis public schools says since the fight, they've been talking with students in class about acceptance, and they're looking into more training for staff.
They are also still investigating the fight itself, but no word yet on who will be disciplined or how so. | <urn:uuid:178947e3-d7cc-47ae-9abf-ac0c18cb86b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kstp.com/news/stories/s2937205.shtml?cat=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983646 | 243 | 1.632813 | 2 |
OGDEN -- When Carolyn Becker heard there was a therapy dog at Ogden Regional Medical Center, she immediately said she would like to see him.
The golden retriever named Bert walked into her room, jumped on the bed, curled up and went to sleep while Becker rubbed his ears.
"(The other night) I was dreaming that my cats were in bed with me," Becker said, "so seeing Bert was really a pick-me-up. He's beautiful and has a delightfully smooth and touchable coat."
The hospital recently started using three therapy animals to help patients heal and relax, said Sally Gale, director of volunteer services at Ogden Regional.
Once a week, the pets from the Delta Society -- a nonprofit organization that provides resources to help people incorporate therapy, service and companion animals into their lives -- visit patients as well as folks in the waiting rooms.
The dogs -- Dazzle, Bert and Toby -- are owned by Sue West, Vicki King and Marian Evans.
"They are all amazing dogs," Gale said. "The pet therapy teams serve as hospital volunteers. We have three teams consisting of the pet owner, the pet and a volunteer companion."
The pet usually gets up on the bed with the patient or sits on a chair, Gale said.
"With patients and guests, the dogs approach only if invited," she said. "They are stroked, hugged and even get their ears tugged by youngsters. A lot of people use their cellphones to get a photo with the dog."
Several studies have shown that animal-assisted therapy helps patients experience a decrease in blood pressure, relief in stress and even improvement in certain illnesses, such as heart disease.
"We know that a pet visit is a stress reliever," Gale said. "We can watch a patient's blood pressure (go down) during a visit. The emotional support animals offer is incredibly powerful. We have had grown men break down in tears during a pet visit."
David Eller was with his wife, Cindy, during a recent visit from Bert.
"Bert is very well-mannered and -trained, and he just crawled up on the bed and lay down right beside her," Eller said.
Cindy "was definitely more relaxed. ... Having the dog visit has just been very personal for Cindy. She's been distracted by the dog, and it's helped lift her spirits," he said.
Gale said one of the dogs even helped a pediatric patient do some exercises needed to help her recover from an illness.
"The dogs are meticulously groomed," she said. "Because of the grooming standards, a dog can only visit one day a week, as it isn't healthy to bathe them more often than that."
Becker said she absolutely approves of having therapy animals in a hospital setting.
"It was nice to have a visitor," she said.
"You're very isolated when you're in the hospital, and having a dog here to visit you is just so nice. It really helps you get through the day." | <urn:uuid:9df686ed-0e79-4636-bdc5-187f11225245> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.standard.net/stories/2012/01/17/therapy-dogs-lift-patient-morale-ormc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987288 | 627 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A Nanoparticle Sunlight-to-Hydrogen Generator
Durable artificial-leaf scheme could be cheap
14 November 2012—Researchers at the University of Rochester have found an efficient way to produce hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight. A light-powered hydrogen generator might replace bulky hydrogen tanks in future cars or complement photovoltaic solar cells, some scientists suggest. The system improves on previous schemes by both lasting longer and generating larger amounts of hydrogen. It might also be cheaper because it does not use a catalyst made of platinum or other precious metals, as is common in other experimental artificial photosynthesis systems.
In photosynthesis, two molecules of water are split into “reduced hydrogen equivalents” and oxygen in the presence of sunlight, storing energy. The hydrogen equivalents then enable the transformation of carbon dioxide into simple sugars. Artificial photosynthesis schemes aim to replicate the process but have focused on producing hydrogen, which is a comparatively simple process.
For hydrogen generation, a molecule is needed to absorb photons and transfer electrons to a catalyst, which in turn transfers the electrons to the water molecules’ protons, producing hydrogen. Unfortunately, in many of the artificial photosynthesis schemes that have been tried, this light-absorbing molecule decomposes quickly. Two days has been the upper limit for systems that use organic dyes or compounds containing metals like iridium as photosynthesizers. To overcome the decomposition problem, researchers looked to semiconductor nanocrystals. These are more stable, but those tested so far have produced little hydrogen.
However, the new University of Rochester system, detailed last week on the website of the journal Science, had the right combination of endurance and activity. As the light absorber, the researchers used cadmium selenide particles from 2.5 to 5.5 nanometers in diameter, coated with a chemical agent to make them soluble in water. They used nickel salts as catalysts. The artificial photosynthesis system lasted for about 15 days and converted more than 7000 moles of hydrogen per mole of catalyst per hour. Another measure, quantum yield, was also high. For every 100 photons absorbed, 36 electrons were transferred to the catalyst. In natural photosynthesis, the equivalent number may be less than 10.
It is an “incredibly robust” system, says Daniel R. Gamelin, a professor of chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, who was not involved in the research. He also points out that the catalysts represent a shift to a less-expensive metal ion. People have combined similar nano crystals with other catalysts and generated hydrogen before, he says, but usually these were proof-of-concept studies using platinum—currently around $50 000 per kilogram—as a catalyst.
Indeed, the nickel catalysts may be the most significant tweak. In a controlled experiment, the researchers found that without nickel, the system doesn’t function. “The combination of making these nanocrystals soluble in water and having them in the presence of some nickel ion—that is the advance,” says Richard Eisenberg, who heads the group at Rochester.
The researchers don’t know all the details of how the system works. For instance, they don’t know what type of nickel ion is involved. This happens in catalysis, Gamelin says. “On the one hand, you may say it’s a shortcoming,” he says. “On the other, it’s a fantastic attribute of a catalyst that you don’t have to worry about it. You just add the ingredients, and it self-assembles.”
The next steps, according to Nathan S. Lewis at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Caltech, who was not involved in the Rochester research, should be “to eludicate clearly the energy return on energy invested—the thermodynamics of the process.”
Eisenberg believes hydrogen could be combined with solar cells to reduce our carbon footprint. “I’m not sure this will be the way things go, but it’s very important to have support for research on many different levels,” he says, “because something will work.” | <urn:uuid:39c693a2-0285-44a0-b286-33c3a826c367> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/a-nanoparticle-sunlighttohydrogen-generator | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934669 | 865 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Volume 34, Issue 3 (May 1989)
A Review of Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives
This is an exciting book. Written by two Special Agents of the FBI and a Professor of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, it presents in detail extensive data concerning 36 convicted, incarcerated sexual murderers. Primarily for law enforcement personnel, this volume provides an excellent perspective of criminal personality profiling, a technique developed by the FBI to help identify, apprehend, and convict violent criminal offenders. The authors demonstrate many ways in which these techniques have assisted in the apprehension, identification, and conviction of offenders. They show the social, environmental, and behavioral antecedents to sexual homicides; the relationship between the crime and the surroundings; the motivation leading to the criminal behaviors; and the factors assessed in legal and psychiatric investigations. These myriad elements ultimately cohere leading to criminal conviction and incarceration. | <urn:uuid:eace1e75-c191-45b5-9ca7-d5998115ae4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/JOURNALS/FORENSIC/PAGES/JFS12705J.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915625 | 173 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The OLPC Association is pleased to announce new internship opportunities for the coming year. Country support interns will support an established deployment for 3 to 12 months, in one of four countries: Rwanda, Paraguay, Peru, or Nicaragua.
[caption id="attachment_1183" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Learning outside with an intern teaching assistant in 2009"][/caption]
Support interns serve a vital role in building local capacity of partnering countries and organizations. Innovators in business, engineering, social sciences, computer science, and public relations will be paired with experts in local knowledge and community building. Teams will work alongside local school children, teachers, community members, and government officials to accelerate each country toward their long-term goals for education development. Projects range from technical infrastructure support and local software design to advocacy and classroom assistance. Internships are open to students over the age of 18.
There are also internship opportunities in grant writing and foundation outreach. These interns will work remotely, conducting research and working with country deployments to formulate and submit grant proposals. These are unpaid internships, with possible opportunities to travel to partnering countries.
Apply for an internship online, or find out more about the program.
Read the rest of this entry
Peru is planning to expand their OLPC program to reach every primary school in the country next year. Last week, during a meeting with regional leaders from the country's 24 departments, Oscar Becerra commented on plans for the program to reach over 16,000 primary schools across the country - though not every child in each of those schools will have an XO at first. | <urn:uuid:c5d7b0ba-b46a-44fc-a512-e10a8deea6cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laptop.org/news/tags/peru | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932269 | 333 | 1.5 | 2 |
Aims and Objectives
The Centre was established to cover development oriented research, training and teaching on survival, adaptation and productivity of mountain plants. Thus the major objectives of the Centre are:
- To undertake fundamental and applied studies on mountain plants.
- To undertake studies on conservation of endangered plant species.
- To set up demonstration units.
- Teaching and information diffusion.
- Framework of functioning
The activities of the Centre are organized under following groups:
- Seed biology and physiology of reproduction in threatened/endangered species and wild edibles.
- Biomass production potential in mountain plant species.
- Physiology and biochemistry of adaptation in high altitude plants.
Training and Teaching
- Ph.D. programme in the proposed fields of research.
- Environmental Plant Biology course at M.Phil. level.
- Post Graduate Diploma in Biotechniques of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.
- Certificate Course on Biotechniques of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.
- Short term orientation course in nursery practices, plant form and functions, conservation
of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) and environmental management.
- To develop package of practices for the cultivation of endangered MAPs and mountain
- Establishment of nursery and demonstration units.
- Demonstration unit on revegetation of wasteland in mountains.
- Publication and consultation in relevant fields.
The Centre has its Main Building and Laboratory at Srinagar Garhwal and Field Station at Tungnath. The main building at Srinagar has an analytical laboratory (800 sq.m), four glass houses and a net house. In addition, a Medicinal Plant Biotechnology Laboratory has also been set up at Srinagar hosing tissue culture labs, green houses and analytical laboratories.
The Alpine Research Station of the Centre in 10 acres land is situated at Tungnath (3600 m a.s.l.). This Station has residential facilities and Weather Monitoring System. At present the Garden at this station has about 50 rare species of alpine herbs and more will be added to this collection in coming years. In addition to this, a sub-station for medicinal plants has been established at Pothibasa (2200 m).
Alpine field station Tungnath (3600m)
Main Laboratory at Srinagar, Garhwal (550m)
Alpine Field Station, Tungnath (3600 m)
Demonstration site at Pothibasa (2200m)
A small library is housed in the Centre which contains important reference books. So far, nearly 1000 accessions of books have been procured and more are being added regularly. The Centre has been subscribing to 14 Indian and 4 foreign journals. This facility is frequently used by the researchers from other departments and institutions. | <urn:uuid:efdb0765-aee9-47ad-9129-60157af0d209> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hnbgu.ac.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=321&Itemid=316 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915943 | 577 | 2.75 | 3 |
I was looking at Crazybadcuber's video
on how to make a half proportional 3x3x5 by moving the top layers between a c4u 3x3x4 and 3x3x5. In his video the corner and edge pieces can be changed, but he sands down the centre caps to make them match and then glues them on.
But I thought that rather than sand down the caps, you should be able to unscrew them and swap them also. And then I thought that I could then put the spare pieces back onto the other cube and end up with two new cubes instead of one. So I started with these:
File comment: Starting cubes
cubes_3x3x5_3x3x4.jpg [ 219.63 KiB | Viewed 1192 times ]
And ended up with these:
File comment: End cubes
cubes_3x3x4_3x3x5.jpg [ 219.39 KiB | Viewed 1192 times ]
The 3x3x5 shape changes like a fully functional 3x3x5. Both are very smooth turning, although the 3x3x5 is the better of the two.
PS When I returned to get the link for the video, I noticed that someone has commented that you can just swap the caps like I did, rather than sanding them. But no mention was made of making the second cube as well.
PPS I searched for these ideas on the museum and this forum, but I couldn't find them anywhere. Apologies if I missed them.
PPS I suppose you could also swap parts between these and the centre edges of a c4u 3x3x9 as well? | <urn:uuid:19ebd4ce-044d-4c71-afd5-5c9392787bcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=283485 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960597 | 360 | 1.859375 | 2 |
What is the Role of International Human Rights in the War on Terror?
Robert J. Delahunty
University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota)
University of California at Berkeley School of Law
DePaul Law Review, Forthcoming
U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-16
UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 1595148
What role, if any, does international human rights law (IHRL) have to play in situations of armed conflict? More specifically, does IHRL have any application to the conduct of the “war on terror”? More specifically still, does IHRL partly or wholly displace the traditional law of armed conflict (LOAC) - as embodied, for instance, in the Hague and Geneva Conventions - in regulating the armed conflict that arises in the “war on terror”?
We focus in this Article on the last of these questions. To sharpen the discussion, we concentrate on the applicability of the1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to the conduct of hostilities in the “war on terror.” More narrowly still, we will consider the applicability of ICCPR Article 6(1) - which guarantees that “[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life” - to combat operations in the “war on terror” by U.S. Armed Forces outside the United States.
One advantage of this specific focus is that it will enable us to examine, within the brief compass of this Article, the legality of the United States’ use of unmanned Predator drone missiles to kill suspected al Qaeda targets, such as the incident involving the killing in Yemen on November 3, 2002 of Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi - reputedly a senior al Qaeda operative - while he was traveling with five companions in a car. Citing the ICCPR, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions took the position that the attack constituted a clear case of extrajudicial killing. The United States, in reply, maintained that the ICCPR had no application to the incident on the grounds that “[t]he conduct of a government in legitimate military operations, whether against al Qaida operatives or any other legitimate military target, would be governed by the international law of armed conflict,” rather than by IHRL. The Obama Administration has continued the practice of using missiles to target and kill suspected al Qaeda and Taliban figures. It is reported that unmanned drones have become among the U.S. military’s favorite weapons in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan - including for use in targeting suspected terrorist compounds - and the Obama Administration is said to be preparing a budgetary request for the development of new drone systems.
In Part II, we survey the origins and growth of the LOAC and IHRL, and we discuss the beginnings of their asserted “convergence.” In Part III.A, we restate and defend the traditional view that the LOAC and IHRL fundamentally differ in their scope, purposes, and protective concerns. Then, in Part III.B, we argue that the ICCPR, in particular, was not intended, and should not be understood, to regulate the conduct of armed conflicts that are otherwise governed by the LOAC. In Part III.C, we address certain objections that have been raised against this construction of the ICCPR. Finally, in Part IV, we apply the results we have reached to the controversy over the incident involving Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 49
Keywords: law of war, law of armed conflict, law of international human rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, war on terrorAccepted Paper Series
Date posted: April 24, 2010
© 2013 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This page was processed by apollo5 in 0.532 seconds | <urn:uuid:5ea0e421-ad30-4981-bfff-83ce74aeed21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1595148 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930713 | 825 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Posted by Freida
on 2002-06-24 16:09:02
I live on a house boat and do my gardening in pots.
My tomatos started out beautiful, heavy bottom crop then the leaves started to look wilted and turning and the top crop looks to be on the sick side.
No insects to be seen.
Does anyone have an answer? Thanks
Posted by Shirley
on 2002-07-01 10:28:02
Maybe your plants aren't disease resistant......What kind of soil are you using? Maybe the soil wasn't sterilized? If it's a disease try cutting off the yellowed leaves and get rid of them. Maybe the plant will continue to grow and give you a crop for the summer. | <urn:uuid:8922c79f-231d-43dc-af10-2e4e54ff058c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.garden.org/boards/index.php?q=view&id=6132&board=20&top=6132 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940989 | 153 | 1.867188 | 2 |
The HarborEast development was a brainchild of H&S Properties and Streuver Bros. Eccles Rouse. It was designed to bring revitalization and gentrification to an area southeast of the Inner Harbor, one block across from Little Italy and a few blocks west of Fells Point.
The Marriott Waterfront Hotel on Aliceanna Street in HarborEast. The only accomodations at this point in HarborEast are either Marriotts (Waterfront (pictured), Courtyard) or Hiltons (Garden Inn, Homewood Suites). However, in a year or two, a Four Seasons condominium/hotel will be constructed bringing in luxury accomodations to the area.
A shot of the Marriott Waterfront hotel from Little Italy
A shot of the Marriott Waterfront Hotel with the Legg Mason/Four Seasons construction lot
720 Aliceanna Street building with the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in the background, 720 Aliceanna street contains above ground parking, and three restaurants: Fleming’s steakhouse, Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion restaurant, and James Joyce bar
Fleming’s steakhouse located on the ground floor of 720 Aliceanna Street, it is connected to the Marriott Waterfront Hotel by an above ground walkway and also contains two other restaurants: Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion and James Joyce as well as parking
800 Aliceanna Street containing two hotels: Hilton Garden Inn and Homewood Suites as well as many condominiums
800 Aliceanna Street building with a Haagen Daz on the ground floor as well as a Landmark Theatres movie theatre
The Oceanaire Restaurant located on the bottom floor of the Spinnaker Bay condominium building
The Marriott Waterfront entrance on the left side with 800 Aliceanna Street and Spinnaker Bay in the background
800 Aliceanna Street from Little Italy
Down Aliceanna street west
800 Aliceanna street on the left, and Courtyard Marriott/1000 Aliceanna street on the right
The Harborview Condominium Building and Ritz-Carlton Residences
The Ritz-Carlton Residences located across from HarborEast on the western side of the Inner Harbor
The Intercontinental HarborCourt Hotel, is the only 5-star hotel in Baltimore until the Four Seasons is built is located on the other side (west) of the Inner Harbor | <urn:uuid:ed682ab7-b23a-48bc-a519-e5c8735a3cb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://architectureandtravel.wordpress.com/2008/01/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916194 | 480 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Fridays the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by jbakerjonathan, commenting on “Tens of Thousands March in Protest of Arizona’s SB 1070,” by Seth Hoy. Here’s Jonathan’s comment:
I agree that there is a problem for America in keeping a status quo with illegal immigration – something must be done. Why? Among other things, illegal immigrants don’t pay the taxes which legal immigrants and American citizens pay. The lack of that extra money causes our hospitals, schools, police departments – all of those entities that support our society – to be either overburdened or to be increased in size with additional tax money from the taxpayers. Because our borders are porous and our tracking systems for limited visas are all but non-existent, our society has a group of people (illegal immigrants) not paying their fair share.
Businesses delight in having a labor pool of illegals. They can be taken advantage of and they can’t complain. This translates into higher profits for the unscrupulous business corporation, be it large or small. The illegal workers on the farms in the fields, in the lawncare industry, the service industries, the meatpacking industry, all work for lower wages and for longer hours, many times under unsafe conditions, doing jobs that aren’t applied for by American citizens in many cases. Not withstand that, illegal immigrants find America to offer a better life for them and they keep coming to partake in that better life. And, as long as politicians in foreign countries can maintain their status quo by having the illegal emigration safety valve and not having to tackle the hard task of improving the standard of living of their constituents, those politicians will do nothing.
It’s all about the money, folks.
Ok, here is what I think would help to resolve the illegal immigration problem, although it would not be welcomed by those who profit from the status quo: create a Guest Worker Program. Workers would be given a limited visa (two, three or four years). Those workers would pay all the taxes, pay into a group health plan and would not be allowed to have their family with them. The idea is to have them pay their way without being a burden to our society and to give them an incentive to return to their own country. A turnover of workers would result, allowing other foreigners the legal opportunity to work here, thereby reducing illegal immigration to a very small number. The wage paid to the guest workers must be at least the minimum wage so American citizens could also vie for those jobs, if they so desired. Over a long period of time, the cost of the creation and maintenance of the guest worker program can be paid in part through a tax paid by the guest workers.
Although somewhat unfair, initially the Guest Worker Program would be filled with all the current illegal immigrant workers now in the US. Families residing with them would remain here until the visa time limit was reached. Then all would return to their country of origin.
Additionally, we must increase our border security north and south, together with the incarceration for five years of captured illegals. Heavy fines must be levied on businesses caught hiring illegals to prevent their abetting illegal immigration.
The citizens of this country want immigration reform. The politicians in Washington, DC are finding it difficult to turn their backs on the monetary contributions made by big business. We have to raise a big enough stink to make them realize the folly of not resolving this issue. We have to make them understand that keeping their jobs depends on their resolving the illegal immigration problem now. | <urn:uuid:9584c041-a807-4288-930b-9dcbed5a8388> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laprogressive.com/friday-feedback-guest-worker-program/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973174 | 743 | 1.640625 | 2 |
NASA Gives 'Go' for Space Shuttle Launch on June 8
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - On Thursday, NASA senior managers selected June 8 as the official launch date for Space Shuttle Atlantis. Commander Rick Sturckow and his six crewmates are scheduled to lift off at 7:38 p.m. EDT on the STS-117 mission to the International Space Station.
During the 11-day mission and three spacewalks, the crew will work with flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, to install a 17-ton segment on the station's girder-like truss and deploy a set of solar arrays. The mission will increase the International Space Station's power capability in preparation for the arrival of new science modules from the European and Japanese space agencies.
Atlantis' launch date was announced at the Flight Readiness Review. During the two-day meeting, top NASA and contractor managers assess any risks associated with the mission and determine whether the shuttle's equipment, support systems and procedures are ready for flight. The first Flight Readiness Review for STS-117 was held Feb. 27-28. A hail storm on Feb. 26, however, damaged Atlantis' external fuel tank and delayed the planned mid-March launch.
"While we cannot control the weather, this team can ensure that when we do launch, it will be as safely as possible," said Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, who chaired the meetings. "This second Flight Readiness Review was as thorough as the first. The discussions were open, healthy, and are evidence of a team that is ready for a complicated and important station assembly mission."
Joining Commander Sturckow on STS-117 will be Pilot Lee Archambault and Mission Specialists Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson, John "Danny" Olivas, Jim Reilly and Clayton Anderson. Anderson will replace current station crew member Sunita Williams, who has lived on the station since December. Williams will return to Earth on Atlantis.
For more information about the STS-117 mission, including images and interviews with the crew, visit:
- end -
text-only version of this release
To receive status reports and news releases issued from the Kennedy Space Center Newsroom electronically, send a blank e-mail message to email@example.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail message to firstname.lastname@example.org. The system will confirm your request via e-mail. | <urn:uuid:f0452be8-8261-49a3-a073-7601517e89e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/releases/2007/release-20070531.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907175 | 532 | 2 | 2 |
Sorry, no definitions found.
“Now, of course, in the wake of the ever-burgeoning "farm to table" movement, gorgeous, green-topped, and very pointy carrots abound at local farmers 'markets as well as on restaurant menus across the country.”
“The train reached the end of the bridge and started the long climb up to the green-topped cliffs on the opposite side of the bay, and the rain closed in again.”
“He found a seat in the farthest corner of the saloon, and waited, penciling feverish circles upon the green-topped table to keep his hands steady.”
“Tuatha De Danann ( 'the Tribes divine of Danu') were wont to put herbs and plants of healing and a curing charm in the waters and rivers of the territory of Conalle Murthemni, to help and to succour Cuchulain, so that the streams were speckled and green-topped therewith.”
“In the rear of the store were four green-topped tables, three for pool and one for billiards.”
“So I rather fancy that, when the peacemakers deal out the cards upon the green-topped table, Albania will become Italian in name, if not in fact, under a control similar to that which the French exercise in”
“There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland, overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped, self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes and be strong.”
“Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.”
“Sunshine Pleasure Club -- an occupation which is St. Petersburg's equivalent for Palm Beach's game of tossing chips on the green-topped tables of a gambling house.”
“Richard approached through the yard, coming from the street without entering the house; and anxiety was manifest in the glance he threw at the green-topped glass upon the table, and in his greeting.”
Looking for tweets for green-topped. | <urn:uuid:f2d8e28d-c177-41ca-ac70-cfbe7144378f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/green-topped | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949291 | 462 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The ranking marks Louisiana’s third consecutive year in that position and the state has never ranked higher than 47 since the survey’s inception in 2002.
The significance of a state’s legal climate on business expansion decisions has steadily increased over the last five years.
Seven out of ten survey respondents say a state’s lawsuit environment is likely to impact important business decisions at their company, such as where to locate or expand their businesses, a 13 percent increase from survey results just five years ago.
“As our economic downturn has continued, a growing percentage of business leaders have identified a state’s lawsuit climate as a significant factor in determining their growth and expansion plans, and the jobs that come along with them,” said Lisa A. Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. “That makes the consequences of this survey even more significant to the economic growth of Louisiana.”
According to the study, Creating Conditions for Economic Growth: The Role of the Legal Environment, completed for ILR by NERA Economic Consulting in 2011, Louisiana could save up to $1.1 billion in tort costs and increase employment between 1.03 – 2.79% by improving its legal environment.
“Despite recent positive developments, Louisiana is still notorious for excessive verdicts, loose class-certification standards, and an unfair judiciary,” Rickard said.
Harris Interactive conducted the survey Lawsuit Climate 2012: Ranking the States by telephone and online between March and June 2012. The respondents — general counsels and senior attorneys or leaders in companies with annual revenues of at least $100 million — were asked to rank states for their overall treatment of tort, contract, and class action litigation. Among other elements, respondents also ranked states for the impartiality and competence of their judges and the fairness of their juries. | <urn:uuid:8eb2fc23-453a-4410-baa0-0a44121fc0ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stmarynow.com/view/full_story/20110818/article-Survey-again-rates-Louisiana-at-bottom-of-lawsuit-climate?instance=secondary_stories_left_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965744 | 381 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Argos Therapeutics and Université de Montréal today announced the presentation of new information on Argos' process for developing dendritic cell-based immunotherapies for HIV. Results from the study demonstrate that loading monocyte-derived dendritic cells with combinations of HIV antigen RNA stimulates the expansion of HIV-specific T cells, which attack and kill HIV-infected cells.
Argos' immunotherapies are generated by the Company's Arcelis™ technology, which is a platform for creating autologous, RNA-loaded dendritic cell-based therapies perfectly matched to each patient's unique virus. These data were presented in an oral poster discussion August 5, 2008 at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.
"A key step in the durable control of HIV infection requires enhancing the development of memory immune responses and the stimulation of potent cytotoxic T cells through therapeutic vaccination," said Charles Nicolette, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Argos. "Working with our colleagues at the Université de Montréal, we have shown that Argos' approach of transfecting dendritic cells with autologous, HIV-specific antigens effectively activates dendritic cells and enhances the HIV-specific T cell response. We believe that these results support our methods of developing potent immunotherapies that help patients' immune systems more effectively fight HIV infection."
The inability of the immune system to effectively mount a response against HIV may be caused by a defect in the maturation of T cell memory. To explore this hypothesis, researchers from Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sékaly's laboratory at the Université de Montréal and Argos tested whether modified dendritic cells, derived from monocytes of HIV-infected individuals, could correct the defective maturation of HIV-specific CD8 T-cells responsible for virus eradication. To potentially improve the magnitude and quality of the anti-HIV T-cell response, maturing dendritic cells were transfected with mRNA-encoding autologous HIV sequences combined with mRNA encoding immune modulatory molecules. These modified dendritic cells were then tested for their ability to expand and mature T cell responses in vitro.
The results of these recent assessments, presented for the first time at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico, show that this novel product induces greater proliferation, maturation and differentiation of HIV-specific CD8 cells in vitro. These properties, especially expanding memory cells, required for long term protection against pathogens, may represent an improvement worthy of future of clinical development.
"We believe that this improvement may represent a significant step forward," said Dr. Sékaly, professor of immunology at the Université de Montréal. "The fact that we can stimulate a specific, long-term immune response gives us great hope that, with additional development, we will be able to give people infected with HIV a new option to battle the virus."
Source: University of Montreal
Explore further: 'Gap' for HIV vaccine efforts after latest setback | <urn:uuid:71b3bf3e-d62c-47a3-82a1-c9ef5f8d950d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/news137176195.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906897 | 625 | 2.265625 | 2 |
I'm Lactose Intolerant and Got a Burning Pain After Drinking Milk. What Should I Do?
My doctor says I'm lactose intolerant and I drank some milk. Now I have the worst burning pain in my stomach. What is safe to take to ease the pain? - Shin*
Lactose intolerance usually gives a person a stomachache and gas pains or stomach cramps. Gas pains can feel sharp at times, though they don't usually feel like burning. Gas pains can hurt a lot, but they don't last long. They often move quickly to different parts of the belly.
Someone with lactose intolerance may notice bloating, stomach cramps, or nausea within a couple hours of eating foods with lactose. Some people say the gas they get feels like having a bubble in the belly — they might even feel it moving through the digestive system.
Lactose intolerance can give people diarrhea or make them fart after eating cow's milk products. All these things happen because the digestive system is trying to process the sugars found in cow's milk.
Before you take anything to try to feel better, check with your doctor. Since burning pain isn't usually part of lactose intolerance, you'll need your doctor's advice. Any time you notice symptoms that seem different from your usual ones, you want to get checked out, since they could be a sign that something else is going on. | <urn:uuid:515767ba-77ad-45aa-a60e-eeacd34cdbb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kidshealth.org/PageManager.jsp?dn=RadyChildrensHospital&lic=102&cat_id=20386&article_set=87993&ps=204 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961102 | 288 | 2.203125 | 2 |
will support the critical work of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, a world leader in cancer research and one of the largest and most successful medical research institutes in Australia. Originally established in 1945 by the Queensland Government to further the study of tropical diseases in North Queensland, QIMR has broadened its scope over time and now dedicates more than half of its research to cancer.
With more than 700 scientists and support staff working across 50 separate laboratories, QIMR has the unique capability of being able to take cancer research findings from the laboratory bench to the clinical bedside. Fundraising dollars will be put to immediate use by QIMR researchers translating groundbreaking research, and clinical trials into the breakthrough cancer care of tomorrow.
QIMR is raising community awareness of critical medical research and inspiring the scientists of tomorrow. Each year, QIMR opens its doors to more than 2,000 Queensland students from school-based education programs for primary students to postgraduate positions for Honours and PhD students.
For more information about the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, visit http://www.qimr.edu.au/
or freecall 1800 993 000. | <urn:uuid:e20d3d29-3412-4a18-b36e-73c20acd69ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://br11.conquercancer.org.au/site/PageServer?pagename=br11_aboutus&JServSessionIdr004=xdu9zu6ih4.app246b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945201 | 235 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Sums add up for numerate graduatesPUBLISHED: 27 Aug 2012 00:10:00 | UPDATED: 27 Aug 2012 07:12:54PUBLISHED: 27 Aug 2012 PRINT EDITION: 27 Aug 2012
University of Melbourne’s Hyam Rubinstein says maths graduates can choose from a wide range of careers. Photo: Arsineh Houspian
Maths and statistics courses will guarantee graduates high-salaried jobs in diverse fields, say professors who spruik the flexibility and real-world applications of their discipline.
The shortfall in the number of maths graduates means an honours student can command a salary of $100,000 straight out of university, one expert says.
An Australian Mathematical and Science Institute report, released earlier this year, shows that employer demand for mathematical and statistical skills already outstrips supply. Demand is set to increase by 55 per cent by 2020.
Yet the appetite for maths at university level remains low. Hyam Rubinstein, professor of mathematics at the University of Melbourne, says mathematicians are “extremely concerned” that high school students aren’t aware of the myriad opportunities that await graduates.
In 2007, Rubinstein chaired the national strategic review of mathematical sciences research, which found a shortage of maths graduates would impede business, industry and government departments.
He says university departments are trying to educate tertiary students about job opportunities.
The problem, he says, is that few jobs have the title “mathematician” in them, making it hard for students to work out where maths can lead them.
“But it’s just amazing the diversity of areas that people go into,” Rubinstein says, adding that there is “tremendous demand” for statistics graduates in biomedicine, marketing, finance and as consultants. An honours graduate with almost no experience can earn $100,000 a year.
One of IBM’s divisions, business analytics, which aims to optimise business processes, is an example of a business that hires maths graduates.
“Business analytics has really been a great driver of IBM success,” Rubinstein says. “And who are they going to employ? Mathematicians.”
Rubinstein has applied his own knowledge in a creative way as part of a group of mathematicians and engineers developing software to help the mining industry design underground mines.
Natashia Boland, a professor in the school of mathematics and physical sciences at the University of Newcastle, has also seen the mining industry scoop up mathematicians.
A burgeoning area is working out a mining company’s future equipment needs as miners generally lease rather than own their equipment.
Boland says graduates are also needed to plan the logistics of transporting coal and iron ore.
Like Rubinstein, Boland works on projects that use logistics to improve efficiency. She has used mathematics in the health sector to optimise cancer treatment using radiation. The idea was to work out how to zap tumours from a number of angles, while trying to spare healthy tissue.
Boland has also used maths to work out the most efficient ways of scheduling airline crews. As crews constantly fly in and out of different cities, scheduling their work is critical.
A new area she is researching is mathematical psychology, which uses mathematical modelling to understand memory and decision-making. “One of the things that is so wonderful [about maths] is that it is so flexible,” she says.
Australian Mathematical Society president Peter Taylor agrees. “Universities these days talk about generic skills, and what we would say in terms of teaching people problem-solving skills and analytical skills, there is no better way to do it than to do a maths degree,” he says.
Taylor says graduates working for industry or the government don’t only do maths but also have to analyse material for reports.
Some graduates may need to upgrade their skills while others whose maths was part of a commerce degree may need to upskill.
University of NSW professor of mathematics James Franklin says that since the financial crisis, some working in the banking and finance industries have found they need a deeper understanding of maths.
“They discovered that maths is useful in making sure the risk is right,” he says.
Franklin says openings in fraud detection have also grown.
“It’s about looking for unusual data and investigating them further, so you need mathematicians to determine what is unusual,” he says.
UNSW offers a masters in financial mathematics, which Franklin says aims to make students’ maths skills “high powered”.
Students are also doing research degrees in mathematics to gain a deeper understanding of their subject. Franklin says employers understand this and ask for PhD graduates.
The message that maths can lead to a bright future may be getting through to some year 12 students.
Last year, UNSW started a five-year combined degree in advanced mathematics and commerce. Franklin says 20 students were expected, but 100 turned up. The 2012 cut-off entrance score was 96.40.
“They are very, very smart people,” he says.
“They are going to be the leaders of the finance and business world.”
The Australian Financial Review | <urn:uuid:3f7ba62c-2537-43b9-95d9-85bb1741a402> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.afr.com/p/national/education/sums_add_up_for_numerate_graduates_VQ3e5x1F8yFkmtQyDwBjSK | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959587 | 1,097 | 2.125 | 2 |
Everyone at work occasionally has a bad day, or even a string of bad days; that’s exactly the moment you can do a wonderful thing by offering up encouraging words for co-workers.
It happens every so often. A co-worker has the bad luck to make a mistake, or be singled out as the one who’s going to take the fall for a group effort that didn’t go over with management.
Some co-workers fear being around the victim, as if that taint of failure might slosh over onto them. That’s bad form, but worse, it has a domino effect on everyone in the immediate group.
Don’t turn your back on a fellow employee just because they made a mistake. Remember, you’re all on the same team, and while it might be the next cubicle tenant’s fault this week, it could be your turn to be singled out next week.
You’ll want someone to give you the kind of support in the next future that you give to your fellow employee today.
Karma is a definite phenomenon in the workplace. Be there for your co-workers. They’ll be there for you when it’s your turn to need a sympathetic ear.
You know the routine. You work hard on a project, positive it’s going well, and you’ll get recognition for a job well done. Something happens, and it’s not good. You miss a deadline, your boss got bashed by his boss, and as they say, manure runs downhill. This time, though, it’s a co-worker who has gotten the booby prize, and she’s taking it hard.
What can you say, particularly if you know her work really wasn’t the best she could’ve done? Be honest - but not blunt. You won’t be doing her a favor by adding to the general piling-on she’s experiencing. Point out something good she did - her dedication, her creativity, her unfailing work ethic. In other words, before you go in with the vinegar, add a little sugar to it to make it more palatable.
Fellow employees will take a difficult truth a little more easily if they think it’s coming from someone interested in their welfare. Your co-worker may be competition for you, but not everything in the world is about winning.
Sometimes it’s just about being human. Give her your honest appraisal, but don’t forget to tell her what she’s doing right. No one becomes horrible overnight. Don’t add to her low self-esteem by beating her up. Guaranteed she’s probably doing a good job of that herself. What she could use, or what everyone in your group could do with, is some encouraging words for co-workers.
You will all profit by the truth, leavened with some kindness and consideration.
Not every source of pain or hurt for an employee is an issue with their job. Sometimes the trials and travails of everyday life just slosh over into the work sphere.
It’s difficult to keep them separate, especially if the personal issue is a huge one: divorce, illness, death, problems with children or parents. They all add up and put a strain on the best of employees.
What should you say? Well, you may not want to cross over personal boundaries, particularly if the relationship you have with your co-worker has always been a purely professional one. You may like and respect one another, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily are friends on your own time.
Even so, if the issue is one that’s common knowledge, such as a death in the family, give your best and most heartfelt words of condolence to your co-worker.
He won’t be sorry to hear it. It’s always a good thing to know that even the people you work with are human enough to care about the painful things that happen in private.
There is no such thing as being too kind or considerate of the people you work with. That kind of empathy can only bring your group closer together. Plain old human decency only greases the wheels of interaction, and makes it easier for everyone to get along, in private or public life.
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Over the weekend I wrote a post titled 51 Things You Can Do to Bless Your Kids. It was a simple list, really, one that I wrote from my heart - it's those things that we all kind of know but don't articulate or remember to do. One of the items that I dear to me is the idea of letting kids try. We need to embrace, to give opportunities for not only our children, but for ourselves to just try.
Trying is not failing.
You've heard me write those words. Over and over and over again. When we try, we are pushing ourselves to dream, to be better, to look beyond the present, and ultimately to embrace the moment that we are blessed to live in.
I often sit in our living room and remind my kids about Thomas Edison and how many times it took him to invent the light bulb. They'll look at me, and I'll tell them that it took him more than 1000 times to actually figure out how to get the lightbulb to work. Then, I'll look them in the eyes, and I will ask them why it's important that he kept trying all those times. The first couple of times, they tell me because otherwise we wouldn't have a lightbulb.
Otherwise someone else would have invented the lightbulb.
When we stop trying, we in fact, actually allow opportunity to pass us by.
Our kids need to be taught to keep trying, to keep pushing, to keep believing in dreams that often don't even seem possible. Of course we can chat about options, strategies, realities, and ways to implement. We can embrace their dream and help them figure out ways to make it become a reality. Just don't stop and squash the dream or the need to try when it's new and fresh.
Let them invent. Create. Make a mess. Fail. Succeed. Keep trying.
And that goes to you as well. Today, pick yourself up, look at your day and try. Look at the to-do list, your goals, your dreams, and put yourself out there. Be bold.
We need more bold in this world.
Imagine if Edison had decided to quit the time before he succeeded.
Keep going. Keep trying. Live boldly.
And teach that to your kids.
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The Albazin Icon of the Mother of God “the Word made Flesh” is of great religious significance in the Amur River region. It received its name from the Russian fortress of Albazin (now the village of Albazino) along the Amur river, founded in the year 1650 by the famous Russian frontier ataman Hierotheus Khabarov on the site of a settlement of the Daurian prince Albaza.
The hue and cry over the Amur Albazinsk fortress became an object of enmity for the Chinese emperor and his generals, who then already dreamed of expanding their influence over all of Russian Siberia.
On the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, on March 24, 1652, the first military clash of the Russians with the Chinese occurred at the Amur. Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos the pagans were scattered and fled to their own territory. This victory seemed like a portent for the Russians. But the struggle had only just begun. Many sons of Holy Russia died in the struggle for the Amur, and for the triumph of Orthodoxy in the Far East.
In June of 1658 an Albazin military detachment, 270 Cossacks under the leadership of Onuphrius Stepanov, fell into an ambush and in a heroic fight they were completely annihilated by the Chinese.
The enemy burned Albazin, overran Russian lands, and carried off the local population into China. They wanted to turn the fertile cultivated area back into wilderness.
During these difficult years the Most Holy Theotokos showed signs of Her mercy to the land of Amur. In 1665, when Russians returned and rebuilt Albazin, together with a priest there came to the Amur the Elder Hermogenes from the Kirensk Holy Trinity monastery. He carried with him a wonderworking icon of the Mother of God “the Word made Flesh”, called the Albazinsk Icon since that time. In 1671 the holy Elder built a small monastery on the boundary mark of the Brusyan Stone (one and a half kilometers from Albazin near the Amur), where the holy icon was later kept.
Albazin was built up. At two churches in the city, the Ascension of the Lord and St Nicholas the Wonderworker, Albazin priests offered the Bloodless Sacrifice. Not far from the city (along the Amur) another monastery was built, the Spassky. The fertile soil produced bread for Eastern Siberia. The local populace adapted itself to Russian Orthodox culture, peacefully entering into the multi-national Russian state, and found Russian protection from the plundering raids of Chinese feudal war-lords.
At Moscow they did not forget the needs of the far-away Amur frontier. They strengthened military defenses and improved regional government. In 1682 the Albazin Military-Provincial Government was formed. They concerned themselves about the spiritual nourishment of the Amur region peoples. A local Council of the Russian Church in 1681 adopted a resolution to send “archimandrites, igumens, or priests, both learned and good, to enlighten unbelievers with the law of Christ.” The Daurian and Tungusian peoples as a whole accepted Holy Baptism. Of great significance was the conversion of the Daurian prince Hantimur (renamed Peter) and his eldest son Katana (renamed Paul) to Orthodoxy.
The servants of the Chinese emperor planned for a new attack. After several unsuccessful forays, on July 10, 1685, they marched against Albazin with an army of 15,000 and encircled the fortress. In it were 450 Russian soldiers and three cannon. The first assault was repulsed. The Chinese then from all sides piled up firewood and kindling against the wooden walls of the fortress and set it on fire. Further resistance proved impossible. With its military standards and holy things, among which was the wonderworking Albazin Icon, the soldiers abandoned the fortress.
The Mother of God did not withhold Her intercession from Her chosen city. Scouts soon reported that the Chinese suddenly began to withdraw from Albazin, ignoring the Chinese emperor’s command to destroy the crops in the Russian fields. The miraculous intervention of the Heavenly Protectress not only drove the enemy from Russian territories, but also preserved the grain which sustained the city for the winter months. On August 20, 1685 Russians were in Albazin again.
A year went by, and the fortress was again besieged by Chinese. There began a five-month defense of Albazin, which occupies a most honored place in Russian military history. Three times, in July, in September, and in October, the forces of the Chinese emperor made an assault on the wooden fortifications. A hail of fiery arrows and red-hot cannon balls fell on the town. Neither the city nor its defenders could be seen in the smoke and fire. And all three times, the Mother of God defended the inhabitants of Albazin from their fierce enemy.
Until December 1686, when the Chinese lifted the siege of Albazin, of the city’s 826 defenders only 150 men remained alive.
These forces were inadequate to continue the war against the Chinese emperor. In August 1690 the last of the Cossacks departed from Albazin under the leadership of Basil Smirenikov. Neither the fortress, nor its holy things, fell into the hands of the enemy. The fortifications were razed and leveled by the Cossacks, and the Albazin Icon of the Mother of God was taken to Sretensk, a city on the river Shilka, which flows into the Amur.
But even after the destruction of Albazin, God destined its inhabitants to do another service for the good of the Church. By divine Providence the end of the military campaign contributed to the increase of the influence of the grace of Orthodoxy among the peoples of the Far East. During the years of war, a company of about a hundred Russian cossacks and peasants from Albazin and its environs were taken captive and sent to Peking.
The Chinese emperor even gave orders to give one of the Buddhist temples in the Chinese capital for an Orthodox church dedicated to Sophia, the Wisdom of God. In 1695 Metropolitan Ignatius of Tobolsk sent an antimension, chrism, service books, and church vessels to the Sophia church. In a letter to the captive priest Maximus, “the Preacher of the Holy Gospel to the Chinese Empire,” Metropolitan Ignatius wrote: “Be not troubled, nor troubled in soul for yourself and the captives with you, for who is able to oppose the will of God? Your captivity is not without purpose for the Chinese people, so that you may reveal to them the light of Christ’s Orthodox Faith.”
The preaching of the Gospel in the Chinese Empire soon bore fruit and resulted in the first baptisms of Chinese. The Russian Church zealously looked after the new flock. In 1715 the Metropolitan of Tobolsk, St Philotheus “the Apostle to Siberia” (+ May 31, 1727), wrote a letter to the Peking clergy and the faithful living under the Peking Spiritual Mission, who continued with the Christian work of enlightening pagans.
The years went by, and the new epoch brought the Russian deliverance of the Amur. On August 1, 1850, the Procession of the Precious Wood of the Life-Giving Cross, Captain G. I. Nevelsky raised up the Russian Andreev flag at the mouth of the Amur River and founded the city of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. Through the efforts of the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, N. N. Muraviev-Amursky (+ 1881), and St Innocent, Archbishop of Kamchatka (March 31), and through the spiritual nourishment which obtained in the Amur and coastal regions, in several years the left bank of the Amur was built up with Russian cities, villages and Cossack settlements.
Each year brought important advances in the development of the liberated territory, its Christian enlightenment and welfare. In the year 1857 on the bank of the Amur fifteen way-stations and settlements were established (the Albazin on the site of the old fortress and the Innokentiev, named in honor of St Innocent). In a single year, 1858, there were more than thirty settlements, among which were three cities: Khabarovsk, Blagoveschensk and Sophiisk.
On May 9, 1858, on the Feast of St Nicholas, N. N. Muraviev-Amursky and Archbishop Innocent of Kamchatka arrived in the Cossack post at Ust’-Zeisk. St Innocent was there to dedicate a temple in honor of the Annunciation of the Mother of God (Blagoveschenie, in Slavonic), the first building in the new city. Because of the name of the temple, the city was also called Blagoveschensk, in memory of the first victory over the Chinese on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1652, and in memory of the Annunciation church at Irkutsk, in which St Innocent began his own priestly service. It was also a sign that “from that place proceeded the blessed news of the reintegration of the Amur region territory under Russian sovereignty.” New settlers on the way to the Amur, journeying through Sretensk, fervently offered up their prayers to the Holy Protectress of the Amur region before her Wonderworking Albazin Icon. Their prayers were heard: the Aigunsk (1858) and Peking (1860) treaties decisively secured the left bank of the Amur and coastal regions for Russia.
In 1868 the Bishop of Kamchatka, Benjamin Blagonravov, the successor to St Innocent, transferred the holy icon from Sretensk to Blagoveschensk, thereby returning the famous holy icon to the Amur territory. In 1885, a new period began in the veneration of the Albazin Icon of the Mother of God and is associated with the name of the Kamchatka bishop Gurias, who established an annual commemoration on March 9 and a weekly Akathist.
In the summer of 1900, during the “Boxer Rebellion” in China, the waves of insurrection reached all the way to the Russian border. Chinese troops suddenly appeared on the banks of the Amur before Blagoveschensk. For nineteen days the enemy stood before the undefended city, raining artillery fire down upon it, and menacing the Russian bank with invasion.
The shallows of the Amur afforded passage to the adversary. In the Annunciation church services were celebrated continuously, and Akathists were read before the Wonderworking Albazin Icon. The Protection of the Mother of God was again extended over the city, just as it had been in earlier times. Not daring to cross the Amur, the enemy departed from Blagoveschensk. According to the accounts of the Chinese themselves, they often saw a Radiant Woman over the bank of the Amur, inspiring them with fear and rendering their missiles ineffective.
For more than 300 years the Wonderworking Albazin Icon of the Mother of God watched over the Amur frontier of Russia. Orthodox people venerate it not only as Protectress of Russian soldiers, but also as a Patroness of mothers. Believers pray for mothers before the icon during their pregnancy and during childbirth, “so that the Mother of God might bestow the gift of abundant health from the Albazin Icon’s inexhaustible well-spring of holiness.”
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... Richard Mellitz, NCR
>From: Michael Chin[SMTP:firstname.lastname@example.org]
>Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 1997 5:59 PM
>To: si-list@silab.Eng.Sun.COM; smithh@VNET.IBM.COM
>Subject: [SI-LIST] : Re: delay lines with PCB traces
>I would like to echo that this zip-zag trace pattern has been known
>and oberserved in the lab to reduce the total expected delay. I
>came across a situation when I was using PCB trace to add some "skew"
>into the clock nets. The actual clock skew that was induced thru this
>kind of topology was measured to be less than the min. expected delay
>by 5% to 10%.
>I ended up running the serpentine in a wider gap (24 mil to 30 mil)
>to allow an accurate clock skew distribution. But, this costed us
>more space on the PCB to delay the clocks.
>Cisco Systems, Inc
>> From owner-si-list@silab.Eng.Sun.COM Wed Sep 24 14:35:44 1997
>> The 2nd order effect that Andy alludes to is what I call current jumping
>> in a zig-zag pattern. Primarily due to inductive coupling, the active
>> signal induces a return current on itself which due to the zig-zag pattern
>> propagates in the same direction as the active. The outcome of this effect
>> is a net delay decrease.
>> So when you force wire in a zig-zag pattern to obtain a certain net delay
>> (i.e. for clock balancing, etc.) and expect a To*L result, be careful.
>> You may have just added an unwanted skew in your clock distribution or
>> pop up early mode surprise in your design.
>> > ...
>> > What about second-order effects; for example, does the little zig-zag
>> > approach allow a weaker wave mode to zip right along as if the
>> > zig-zags weren't there? | <urn:uuid:10bafdb8-2371-4184-bdf1-225addde4ac6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu/si-list2/pre99/0710.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900012 | 464 | 1.5 | 2 |
Lisbon Treaty Not An Easy Sell, Admits Irish EU Commissioner
By Honor Mahony
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – With just three weeks to go before Ireland’s highly anticipated referendum on the Lisbon treaty, the country’s European commissioner has admitted that the document is hard to sell because it does not bring tangible benefits to the population.
“One of the difficulties this time in getting out the vote is seeing how you can energise voters,” said Charlie McCreevy in an interview with EUobserver, with pundits widely predicting that a low voter turnout would result in a “No” vote on 12 June.
He noted that arguments such as the treaty “improving the situation” or giving Ireland “a bigger say in a better organisational structure” are not as grabbing as “we’re going to get a whole lot of money through the Common Agricultural Policy or we’re going to get a whole lot of money from structural funds.”
In the past, Ireland has been a major beneficiary of the EU’s generous farm policy as well as picking up aid for its poor rural areas. This, coupled with access to the EU’s internal market, has turned the country into one of the richest member states.
Now it finds itself in an uncomfortable spotlight as the only country to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - the new set of institutional rules bashed out last year after the shock rejection of the EU constitution by France and the Netherlands in 2005.
The Lisbon Treaty’s main innovations include an EU foreign minister, a permanent president of the EU and freeing up the decision-making process in several areas.
A “No” vote is likely to scupper the whole process, as all member states need to ratify the document for it to kick into place.
Mr McCreevy, in charge of the EU’s internal market portfolio, says: “Looking at it from an Irish perspective,” it would be better to have a Europe-wide referendum to ease the burden on the electorate.
“What this is doing is that the whole concentration of the whole of Europe is solely on us. We’re under total scrutiny.”
“People feel under a fair degree of pressure about this, whereas if everyone was voting you wouldn’t feel under the same pressure.”
In addition, the treaty – an amalgamation of existing treaties, plus a series of innovations, protocols and opt-outs – is not the easiest read.
Mr McCreevy has himself not read it. “I have a document that puts together what it would look like and I have read most of that,” he says.
“I would predict that there won’t be 250 people in the whole of the 4.2 million population of Ireland that have read the treaties cover-to-cover. I further predict that there is not 10 percent of that 250 that will understand every section and subsection.
“But is there anything different about that?” said the commissioner, adding: “Does anyone read the finance act?” referring to the lengthy, yearly documents he drew up when he was finance minister in Ireland.
He conceded that the high percentage of people who remain undecided (47% in the latest opinion poll) could lead to a lower turnout.
“When there is a high number of undecideds in a very complex debate … you’d be very much afraid that it would lead to a lower turnout.”
Riding high in political memory is Ireland’s “No” to the Nice Treaty in 2000 (voter turnout was 34.8%), which was turned into a “Yes” the following year with a turnout of 48.5 percent.
He refused to be drawn on what would it would mean for Europe if Ireland votes “No” this time round, with some analysts suggesting it would plunge the bloc into a protracted political crisis.
“We have to live with that too,” he said, referring to a possible rejection of the treaty. “Having debated the issues thoroughly, months of everyone having their say, all types of issues being dragged into it, the Irish people go to the polls and they must say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ After it’s over, you shouldn’t complain about it.” | <urn:uuid:6c7977c4-166c-4b1d-9c1c-b41089aea6ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiseupjournal.com/?p=325 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965558 | 928 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The House Judiciary Committee heard police and legal experts say there needs to be more oversight and tighter standards on the use of confidential informants in law enforcement at a July 19 hearing. The hearing was called by committee chair Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to look into ways to avoid abuses such as those that led to the shooting death of 92-year-old Atlanta resident Kathryn Johnston last December.
Johnston was killed after opening fire on undercover Atlanta narcotics officers who were breaking down her door to serve a "no-knock" search warrant for cocaine. Those officers had obtained the warrant from an Atlanta magistrate by falsely telling him that a confidential informant had made drug buys at Johnston's location. Later that same day, those officers attempted to get that informant to lie and back them up, but the informant instead went to federal authorities. Two officers involved have since pleaded guilty to manslaughter, while a third awaits trial on false imprisonment charges.
While it was the Johnston killing that led directly to last month's hearing, concern over the widespread use of informants, or snitches, has been mounting for years, especially in regard to drug law enforcement. Hostility toward law enforcement either threatening low-level offenders to intimidate them into informing on others ("Do you want to be gang-raped for 30 years in prison instead?") or cultivating mercenary informers who infiltrate communities and set up drug deals for monetary gain has been simmering in poor and minority communities for years.
The "Stop Snitching" movement, much maligned by law enforcement officials as undermining the rule of law, is, at least in part, a direct consequence of the drug war's reliance on confidential informants. Especially in black communities, which have been hard hit the drug war, anger over drug war tactics, including the use of informants, is palpable.
Now, with Democrats once again in control of Congress, Congress is ready to listen -- and possibly to act. Rep. Conyers said at the hearing and in meetings with American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Drug Law Reform Project and Drug Policy Alliance staffers that is he preparing legislation to attempt to rein in the out of control use of informants. The use of informants is "totally out of control," said Conyers. "It's every law enforcement agency for itself. This is corrupting the entire criminal justice process," he warned.
"We've got a serious problem here that goes beyond coughing up cases where snitches were helpful," Conyers continued. "The whole criminal justice system is being intimidated by the way this thing is being run and in many cases, especially at the local level, mishandled... A lot of people have died because of misinformation, starting with Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta. Getting the wrong house, they cost the 92-year old woman her life. But then law enforcement tried to intimidate the confidential informant to clean the mess up. Then you get law enforcement involved in perpetrating the cover up of what is clearly criminal activity. So this is not a small deal that brings us here today and we are going to do something about it."
There will be more hearings to come, Conyers promised. "This is the first time that we have gotten into this matter in more than a dozen years... But this is only the tip of the iceberg. We've got to hold the most thorough hearings in recent American history on the whole question of the criminal justice system, which goes way beyond informants. It's been picked up and articulated by many of the witnesses, that we are talking about the culture of the law enforcement system and how it's got to be changed. One hearing starts us off, and I'm very proud of what we have accomplished here today."
At the hearing, law enforcement personnel and legal scholars alike acknowledged that the informant system is loosely supervised and can lead to corner-cutting and abuses by police. "The government's use of criminal informants is largely secretive, unregulated and unaccountable," Alexandra Natapoff, a Loyola Law School professor who studies the issue, told the panel.
The massive reliance on informants makes communities not safer but more dangerous, said Natapoff. "What does this mean for law abiding residents like Mrs. Johnston?" she asked. "It means they must live in close proximity to criminal offenders looking for a way to work off their liability. Indeed, it made Kathryn Johnston's home a target for a drug dealer. It also means that police in these neighborhoods tolerate petty drug offenses in exchange for information, and so addicts and low level dealers can often remain on the street. It also makes law enforcement less rigorous: police who rely heavily on informants are more likely to act on an uncorroborated tip from a suspected drug dealer. In other words, a neighborhood with many criminal informants in it is a more dangerous and insecure place to live."
The massive reliance on informants also corrodes police-community relations, Natapoff said. "This question about the use of confidential informants goes to the heart of the problem of police-community relations," she told the panel. "It's an historical problem in this country, it's not reducible to the problem of informing or snitching or stop snitching, but I would submit that the 20-year policy on the part of state, local and federal government of using confidential informants and sending criminals back into the community with some form of impunity and lenience, and turning a blind eye to their bad behavior, has increased the distrust between police and community."
The Rev. Markel Hutchins, pastor of the Philadelphia Baptist Church in Atlanta and a spokesman for the Johnston family, also addressed the hearing. "There is a problem with the culture of policing in America," Hutchins said. "And because of that culture, far too often police officers feel that they can do what they want to under the cover of law. This committee has a unique opportunity to help protect even the officers themselves that engage in this kind of behavior by insolating them from the capacity or the potential they have to engage in this kind of corrupt behavior."
There must be more accountability in the courts, said Hutchins. "I will submit to this committee that if the fabricated confidential informant that was mentioned and feloniously used in the Kathryn Johnston case had been required to appear before a judge, Ms. Johnston would still be alive today... It was just too easy for these police officers to go in front of a judge and to lie. They've engaged in this kind of practice for years and it's been happening all over the country... If police had done due diligence, they would have known that a 92-year old woman lived there in the home by herself. There was no corroboration. There was not any appropriate investigative work done. But I think that probably the most poignant thing that happened to Ms. Johnston is had she not been 92-years old, and had she been my age, 29-30 year old, and a young black man, we might not be having this hearing right now," Hutchins said.
Even National Narcotic Officers' Association Coalition President Ronald Brooks agreed that reforms are necessary. "We need to take an absolute hard line posture when law enforcement breaks the rules, like in any other profession," he told the committee. "The conduct at first blush committed in Atlanta, and in Tulia, and in Dallas, and in a host of other places was criminal conduct by law enforcement officers and that conduct should be punished vigorously... We need to instill an ethical culture that says that the ends never justify the means... We only have one opportunity to have credibility in our courts and in our communities," Brooks said.
"It was a really good hearing," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "Conyers said he wants to introduce omnibus legislation overhauling the use of confidential informants. Right now, we and the ACLU Drug Policy Law Project are working with his office to come up with specific language," Piper said. "The question now is what the bill is going to look like. If anyone has suggestions, contact us or Conyers' office," he said.
"The hearing was amazing!" said Ana del Llano, informant campaign coordinator for the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. "We are hoping that when Congress comes back from recess in September, we will be able to have a bill filed."
Advocates are focusing on a number of reforms surrounding the use of informants:
* Guidelines on the use and regulation of informants'
ãIt's about time -- both for hearings and for the passage of legislation to rein in the snitchesä, said Nora Callahan, director of the November Coalition, a drug reform group that concentrates on federal drug war prisoners. "The informant system is a secret, hidden policing system," she said. "When queried, most police departments, federal, state and local, don't have any written policy or procedures with regard to their use of informants. How dependent is law enforcement on a system of snitches? Police departments can't give us data on snitches. Researchers have discovered that about 90% of search warrants are granted by judges who see nothing more than an officer's statement from a confidential informant. They bust down doors on words of people trading information for police favors."
The system is truly pernicious, Callahan argued. "Some psychologists teach police departments how to turn people into cooperators, also called informers or snitches. It's time, the threat of long years in prison, that reduces people to rolling over on their mothers, or their best friends," she said.
Now, at long last, Congress may intervene. But last month's hearing was only the beginning.
We are careful not to duplicate the efforts of other organizations, and as a grassroots coalition of prisoners and social reformers, our resources (time and money) are limited. The vast expertise and scope of the various drug reform organizations will enable you to stay informed on the ever-changing, many-faceted aspects of the movement. Our colleagues in reform also give the latest drug war news. Please check their websites often. | <urn:uuid:8ef675bd-9ede-48c5-ac4e-ddbc7695d66b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking07/SnitchSpotlight.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971273 | 2,048 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Under the auspices of the U.S. Army Air Service, the Fokker T-2 made the first nonstop U.S. transcontinental flight in 1923. Two failed attempts at a west-to-east crossing were followed by a successful east-to-west flight when Air Service Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready took off from Long Island, New York, on May 2 and landed at Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, on May 3, slightly more than 26 hours and 50 minutes later.
The airplane was the fourth in a series of transport designs by famed Dutch manufacturer Anthony Fokker and his chief designer, Rheinhold Platz. Manufactured as a Fokker F-IV, the aircraft was purchased by the U.S. Army Air Service in June 1922 and re-designated the Air Service Transport 2, or T-2. Required modifications for the transcontinental flight, such as increasing the fuel capacity, making structural reinforcements, and adding a second set of controls, were carried out at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio.
Transfer from the U.S. War Department
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Wingspan: 24.5 m (80 ft 5 in)
Length: 15.2 m (49 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.7 m (12 ft 2 in)
Weight: Gross, 4,932 kg (10,850 lb) at takeoff for coast-to-coast flight
Engine: Liberty V-12, 420 horsepower
Engine: Liberty V-12 (408-hp)
Manufacturer: Ford Motor Car Company
Serial No.: A.S. No. 5142
Propeller: Fixed-Pitch, Two-Blade, Wood
Manufacturer: Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Co.
Markings: Curtiss Propeller #1249, Walnut, Standing RPM 1415, Part No. 047315, A.S. No. 110781, Plane MB-2, NBS-1
Overall Radius: 159 cm (62.5 in.) measured on displayed aircraft. (Dwg. 047315, from Air Service Report)
The Fokker T-2 was the first airplane to make a nonstop flight spanning the North American continent. The flight was made under the auspices of the U.S. Army Air Service. Lieutenants Oakley G. Kelly and John A. Macready took off from Long Island, New York, on May 2, 1923, and landed at Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, on May 3, slightly more than 26 hours and 50 minutes later.
The success of the transcontinental flight can be attributed not only to the preparation and skill of the Air Service, but also to the design of the aircraft. The product of famed Dutch manufacturer Anthony Fokker and his chief designer, Rheinhold Platz, the transcontinental airplane was built at Veere, the Nether-lands, in 1922. Called the Air Service Transport 2, or T-2, it was the fourth in a series of commercial transport designs by the Fokker Company. Two of these airplanes, originally carrying the designation F-IV, were sold to the U.S. Army Air Service in June 1922.
The largest Fokker aircraft up to that time, the T-2 featured a fully cantilevered wooden monoplane wing spanning nearly 25 m (82 ft) and a fuselage just short of 15 m (49 ft) long. It was powered by an American-built 420-horsepower Liberty V-12 engine. In its standard configuration, the Fokker had a single pilot's position located in a forward open cockpit to the left side of the engine. The enclosed cabin carried 8 to 10 passengers and their baggage.
Early acceptance trials by the Air Service indicated that the T-2 was capable of carrying heavy loads and could be adapted to make the long-distance flight from coast to coast. Modifications would be required, however. The center section of the wing would have to be reinforced to handle the added weight resulting from the greatly increased fuel supply. The standard 492-liter (130-gallon) fuel tank, located in the leading edge of the wing, was supplemented by a 1,552-liter (410-gallon) tank in the wing center section and a 700-liter (185-gallon) tank mounted in the fuselage cabin area. Also installed in the cabin was a second set of controls to facili-tate control of the airplane when the two-man crew exchanged positions.
The first two attempts of the coast-to-coast flight started from San Diego to take advantage of prevailing westerly winds and to use the refined fuel available in California, which had a higher natural octane rating than other fuels. On the first try, fog in the mountain passes 80 km (50 mi) east of San Diego forced Kelly and Macready to turn back. They remained aloft long enough, however, to test the performance of the airplane under extended flight conditions. The second attempt ended at Fort Benjamin Harrison, near Indianapolis, when a cracked water jacket caused the engine to seize. In the course of the preparations and the two unsuccessful attempts at a west-east crossing, several new engines were installed, and many minor modifications were made to the T-2. All of this work was carried out at the Army Air Service installation at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio.
The third and successful attempt was made from east to west. Kelly and Macready took off from the combined Roose-velt-Hazelhurst Field on Long Island, New York, at 12:30 p.m., eastern standard time. At takeoff, the airplane had a gross weight of 4,932 kg (10,850 lb)-only 68 kg (150 lb) less than the T-2's specified limit of 4,990 kg (11,000 lb). Lieutenant Kelly was at the controls first, and flew as far as Richmond, Indiana. Kelly then switched places with Lieutenant Macready, who flew the air-craft until midnight, at which time they were approaching the Arkansas River, the 1, 900 km (1,188 mi) point. They exchanged positions there, again at Santa Rosa, New Mexico, at 6:00 a.m. the following morning, and once more as they crossed the Great Divide at an altitude of 3,110 km (10,200 ft). Macready landed the T-2 in San Diego on May 3 at 12:26 p.m., local time, completing the nonstop transcontinental journey in an official time of 26 hours, 50 minutes, and 38 3/5 seconds. The T-2 had flown 3,950 km (2,470 mi) at an average ground speed of 147 kph (92 mph).
In November 1923, the Air Service offered the T-2 to the Smithsonian Institution, and transferred the airplane in January 1924. The T-2 was fully restored in 1962-1964, and minor refurbishment was done in 1973 in preparation for display of the airplane in the new National Air and Space Museum building in 1976. | <urn:uuid:93e42fde-8b55-4fa6-9a3c-1d298a6d53e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19240003000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955732 | 1,477 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Pan Am: The ride of a lifetime
Linda Awkard is not just a pretty face. She was a chemistry major at Florida State when Pan Am hired her.
Her mother was horrified and told her that she was ruining her career.
Awkard was one of only a few African-American stewardesses in 1970 - a problem for flights to apartheid South Africa.
“They had to stay on the plane,” she says. ”They could not stay in a hotel because there were no blacks allowed in hotels.”
It was the era of hijackings, and the bomb that downed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbee, Scotland.
But, Awkard says, nothing like today.
“The fear I had mostly was taking off and landing,” she says.
She's kept the dark navy Adolfo suit - with its Pan Am wings. and it still fits today - a size 4:
Awkard never became a chemist. she became a business lawyer. Instead, whose world travels with Pan Am have helped to mold her practice.
“I have … a global sense that allows me to analyze things a little differently,” she says.
The Lockerbie bombing, deregulation and changing times all ultimately ran Pan Am out of business Dec. 4, 1991, ending what Awkard and thousands of other loyal employees say was a class-act operation - and the ride of a lifetime.
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No one knows quite what Klout is, but these big 'myopic little twits' appear to have it. | <urn:uuid:75efacd1-93a6-48de-9511-9844a5613c7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wjla.com/articles/2011/11/pan-am-the-ride-of-a-lifetime-69063.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97431 | 410 | 1.609375 | 2 |
TIM SMITH/BRANDON SUN
Wawanesa School Grade 11 student Cassie Power and math and science teacher Paul Friesen check out the school telescope on Wednesday in advance of the unveiling of the new shed and concrete stand for the telescope scheduled for Wednesday evening.
Wawanesa School has joined a rare group of educational institutions that have their own research-grade telescope, thanks to key financial donors and some persistence from a local group.
The school unveiled the telescope, which was once used at Brandon University’s observatory on top of McMaster Hall, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house yesterday.
The telescope will significantly boost the science curriculum in the village south east of Brandon with a population of more than 500 people.
Light pollution from Brandon’s street lights can cause problems for those trying to use this type of telescope within city limits, which is one of the reasons Brandon University has obtained new equipment with the technology upgrades needed to work around those issues. Wawanesa has considerably fewer street lights in operation, and as the community sits in a valley, the old telescope’s new location is quite suitable to see planets, stars and other sights not visible to the naked eye.
"With some experience with a telescope, I am guessing the conditions down there are vary favourable for seeing fine details on the planets or the moon," said Austin Gulliver, a Brandon University physics and astronomy professor.
"If you get a temperature inversion, where the warmer air sits on the cooler air in the valley, you get low air turbulence. The conditions could be unusually good and the optics this telescope provides will do justice to this kind of location."
While the telescope in Wawanesa has more manual moving parts than more modern equipment, it has simple parts and can be easily operated by those with proper training.
Paul Friesen, a math and science teacher at Wawanesa School, said the telescope would be available for community use as well as other school programs and students who have an interest in astronomy.
Friesen said an Internet search has not located any other high school in Canada that has this level of equipment, which enhances the school’s ability to get people hooked on science.
"Astronomy itself is a beautiful science and it’s something the public is able to appreciate and follow," Gulliver said.
"So in the same way you saw photographs that have come to us for decades using the Hubble telescope, you can get with your own eye and take beautiful pictures of the skies."
The telescope, measured as having 15-inch mirror and weighs several hundred pounds, needed to be fixed to a permanent structure, so a group of Wawanesa residents had to raise $10,000 for a concrete stand and a shed with a removable roof to house the prized piece of scientific technology.
Gulliver said the telescope had been placed on top of McMaster Hall 40 years ago and was used extensively for 35 years as a research and teaching tool for thousands of people.
"For example, when Mars came particularly close to us, we had hundreds of people from the Brandon community up to view it," Gulliver said.
Gulliver said it would not surprise him if there was at least another 40 years worth of work in that telescope given its construction and it offers the chance for people to experience the beauty of space from Earth.
Friesen said it was tough to find funding for the required infrastructure, and it was the Canadian Space Agency funding that encouraged other organizations like the Brandon and Area Community Foundation to get involved. The delay in fundraising was actually a fortunate break, as the area of the schoolyard originally chosen to house the telescope would have been affected by the 2011 flood of the Souris River.
The new location is behind the village’s permanent dike.
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition September 20, 2012 | <urn:uuid:930f29ac-e96e-4543-8c71-01c6aabe3138> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brandonsun.com/local/new-telescope-has-students-in-wawanesa-seeing-stars-170478226.html?thx=y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963787 | 805 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Description: Interview from October 1961 with Dr. Harlan Hoyt Horner about the State Capitol fire of 1911. The State Capitol caught fire on March 29, 1911 and was reported at the time as the greatest library disaster of modern times: 450,000 books and 270,000 manuscripts were destroyed. Horner was Secretary to Dr. Draper, Commissioner of Education and went on to be Associate Commissioner of Education in the 1930s.
Series: A1445, Tape recordings, 1961-1962, New York Civil War Centennial Commission
Identifier: NYSA_A1445-78A_rtr_1961-10-aa_edit1 and edit2
Note: this audio file has been edited for time. The original file is 00:24:56. For the complete file, please contact our reference desk at ARCHREF@mail.nysed.gov or (518) 474-8955. | <urn:uuid:6e73377e-9c5c-4027-9528-2a9766fc8ec1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/digital/audio/audio_archival_horner_capitol_fire.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931768 | 191 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Is advertising the next casualty of the on-going digital tsunami’s? For now, advertising looks like the patient who developed an asymptomatic form of cancer without realizing how sick he is. Such behavior usually results from excessive confidence in one’s body past performance, mixed with a state of permanent denial and a deep sense of superiority, all aided by a complacent environment. The digital graveyard is filled with the carcasses of utterly confident people who all shared this sense of invincibility. The music industry or, to some extent, the news business built large mausoleums for themselves. Today, the advertising industry is working on its own funeral monument. Same mistakes….
Before performing media oncology tests and discussing possible treatments, let me describe which soapbox I’m standing on. Each time I raise the issue of advertising trailing behind the digital train, I get two responses: media execs nod sagely, and later explain how they intend to progressively circumvent the ad food chain; advertising people breezily dismiss my remarks: ‘Anyway, you don’t like us’. Untrue.
First, I’m in the same boat with many of my friends in the news media: a significant part of my income, past and future, rides on advertising. Therefore, my pragmatic self-interest is to see digital advertising thrive.
Second, over my 25-year career, I worked with ad people in many occasions. In the late 90′s, for a year, I even worked at a large ad agency, trying to evangelize multimedia. I met interesting people there, even though I quickly realized we had little in common. And my last job as a managing editor was at a free newspaper: 20 Minutes — 100% dependent on advertising.
I am way more open to this business than most of my journalist colleagues are. No ideological posture or agenda on my part. Today’s note is the result of two years of observations and conversations with digital editors and publishers I met in Europe, US or Asia.
Let’s face it. On digital medias, advertising hasn’t delivered. In the news business, we have a rule of thumb: an electronic reader brings 15 to 20 times less in advertising revenue than a print reader does. I’ll stop short of saying this dire state of affairs is only attributable to advertising. Between inadequate interfaces, poor marketing, and the certainty that, just by itself, intellectual superiority entitles to success, medias carry their share of responsibility in this situation. But, for the most part, it is the advertising community who missed the digital target.
Digital advertising sucks. Both on the web and on mobile. Two main reasons for this.
#1: Poor design. Where is the creative talent? Not in digital, that’s only too clear. Let’s face it: most of banners, skyscrapers, sliders, pop-ups, you name it, merely act as reader repellents. Judge by yourself.
These “creative works” end up as fodder for ad-blocking systems. Unfortunately, these defense mechanisms are thriving. A Google query for “ad block” yields 1.25 million pages which send to dozens of browser add-ons. On Firefox, AdBlockPlus is the most used extension with more than 80m downloads and more than 10m active users. The same goes for Chrome whose ad-blocking extension is downloaded at a rate of 100,000 times a week and now has over one million users. For Internet Explorer, there are simply too many add-ons to count.
I spotted this comment in an excellent Media Guardian ad blocking story.
“I work for a digital advertising agency. Along with microsites, iPhone apps and long-form digital content, I make banners. Shitloads of them. And I use Adblock Plus. I also advise my friends and colleagues to use it too. This is because most advertising, online or otherwise, is utter crap. And banners contain some of the worst of the crap. Flickering, squiriming, farting, buzzing crap”.
Another sign of the ad design failure is Apple’s decision. Not only does Apple enter the mobile ad business as a sales house, but Jobs’ company will also design ads, for a hefty $50,000 to $100,000 fee. Apple’s message is the profession needs to reboot advertising graphical standards. How strange it is to see a technology company giving lectures on design to the very people who prided themselves for their creative brilliance. If this is not a blow…
#2: badly sold, badly bought. A high-tech product sold and purchased in the most low-tech way. One after the other, most technology aspects of the advertising business have slipped out of the hands of those who were supposed to own it: ad serving, data management, behavioral targeting, analytics… All are now controlled by engineering-driven companies.
In the process, the added value of media buying outlets has shrunk to a bare minimum, in which a bunch of twenty-something are negotiating discounts with their counterparts in media. That’s the exact opposite of yield management.
Everyone laments that Google, the ultimate geek machine, has absorbed a large part of the digital advertising business, but that’s just the logical consequence of an inability to invest in technical talent.
The digital world is not the only one affected by advertising’s creative weakness. Over the recent weeks, I met some managers of RTL, the n°1 French radio. Their take:
- True, the overall quality of ads we air is falling.
- We know that such degradation contributes to the erosion of our audience numbers; listeners tends to shift to quieter listening such as public radio. (This is especially in the morning time slot where commercial stations make most of their revenue, hence their concern).
- We try to limit the damage by screening and sometimes rejecting the most inaudible ads, but economic conditions don’t help: we can’t afford to lose any campaign on the basis of aesthetic considerations.
- Fact is: because they don’t make enough money on ads, creative agencies are simply not motivated to invest in the talent needed to develop good ads.
Three trends should cause the advertising community to stop and think harder about its future.
- The technology dimension of the business will intensify. Competence and imagination will tend to be in the hands of small companies. As they already do, the biggest and the smartest ad outlets will want to acquire such talent pools. But they will face tech companies ready for a bidding war; see what happened in the mobile ad sector with the AdMob’s acquisition by Google and Quattro Wireless taken over by Apple – with the subsequent launch of iAd, (on the subject, see this preset search on TechCrunch).
- Media will have a strategic interest in boosting their CRM. They’ll invest in developing this crucial asset for their digital properties.
- Media will tend to move up the ad production chain by having their own creative teams, working more closely with big advertisers; (see this Australian example mentioned in a previous Monday Note Digital Takeover, The Fairfax way).
In that matter, Apple could give an interesting pitch: “We are the media, we spent time and money designing a good interface; we don’t want our work ruined by sub-standard advertising; let’s work directly with brands and concoct great campaigns that will benefit us, the advertiser and the reader”. This could become a broader trend, spreading to other medias, such as broadcast radio, neglected by today’s ad creatives.
Does this lead to the extinction of big advertising shops? Certainly not. First, there is the inertia factor; these companies remain quite wealthy thanks to decades of solid rainmaking. Second, agencies still enjoy profitable strongholds in which their value added is undisputed such as outdoors display, television and print — and the associated media and strategic planning. Third, they have no shortage of good managers able to organize turnaround… in due course.
It is hard to reform a fat-cat culture – from heavy margins, captive clients, cozy cronyism – to a more agile one, where technology and innovation drive the business. In this very respect (again), advertising and news media converge: both have been late in hiring developers able to understand the specifics of their business. Because of their intrinsic vulnerabilities, media have been the first to take a hit. If advertising wants to avoid a Jivaro-like downsizing, it needs to listen to the clock: it’s ticking away.
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