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cloister, unroofed space forming part of a religious establishment and surrounded by the various buildings or by enclosing walls. Generally, it is provided on all sides with a vaulted passageway consisting of continuous colonnades or arcades opening onto a court. The cloister is a characteristic part of monastic institutions (see abbey), serving both as sheltered access to the various units of the group and for the recreation of the monks. Cloisters became an important architectural form in the 11th cent., a period marked by active monastery building all over Europe. They were not limited to monastic houses, but were built in some English colleges, as at Oxford and Eton, and in some churches, mostly in England and Spain. In N France many of the original cloisters have disappeared, but superb Romanesque cloisters remain in S France, Italy and Sicily, and Spain. In the typical examples the arches are supported by delicate columns, generally coupled, the elaborate capitals of the paired columns sometimes being interlaced. The 13th-century cloisters of two Roman churches, St. John Lateran and St. Paul's outside the Walls, are notable Romanesque examples, distinguished by twin spiral columns inlaid with rich glass mosaics. Of the Gothic period, the English cloisters are especially fine, as at Salisbury, Wells, and Westminster Abbey. The Renaissance cloisters are confined chiefly to Italy and Spain. In the New World the Spanish colonists began in the 16th cent. to build simple cloisters, generally arcaded, in Mexico, Cuba, and California.
More on cloister from Infoplease:
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Architecture | <urn:uuid:68bc1c1d-a4cf-4b47-9122-8d3d2cf870f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/world/cloister.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958425 | 344 | 3.765625 | 4 |
A word about Giclee printing...
The collection of images here are all Giclee reproductions of original artwork done in pastel, graphite and pastel, or oil on canvas. Each Giclee print is individually signed and numbered.
Giclee is state-of-the-art technology, a digital method of printing that captures the color, depth, and texture of the original artwork using large scale inkjet printers and organic inks. This process allows the image to be printed on the finest of artist papers - 330gm Somerset. This is often the same paper I use in doing the original! There is no finer printing method on the market today. My images can also be printed on canvas by special request, and custom sizes are also possible.
All my images are printed by Hunter Editions of Kennebunk Maine.
Technically, pastel is powdered pigment, rolled into round or square sticks and held together with methylcellulose, a non-greasy binder. It can either be blended with finger and stump, or left with visible strokes and lines. Generally, the ground is toned paper, but sanded boards and canvas are also popular. If the ground is covered completely with pastel, the work is considered a Pastel Painting; a Pastel Sketch shows much of the ground. When protected by fixative and glass, pastel is the most permanent of all media, for it never cracks, darkens or yellows.
Historically, its origin can be traced back to the Sixteenth Century, when Guido Reni, Jacopo Bassano, and Federigo Barocci were notable practitioners. Rosalba Carriera, 1675-1750, a Venetian lady artist, was the first to make consistent use of pastel. Chardin, 1699-1779, did portraits with a hatching stroke, while Quentin de la Tour, 1704-1788, preferred the blended, velvety finish. Thereafter, a galaxy of artists, Mengs, Nattier, Copley, Delacroix, Millet, Manet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Redon, Vuillard, Bonnard, Glackens, Whistler, Chase, and Hassam, just to list the more familiar names, used pastel as finished work, rather than for preliminary sketches.
Degas was the most prolific user of pastel, and its champion, for he raised it to the full brilliance of oil. His protege, Mary Cassatt, introduced the Impressionists and pastel to her wealthy friends in Philadelphia and Washington, and thus to the United States. Today, many of our most renowned living artists have distinguished themselves in pastels, and have enriched the world with this glorious medium.
Flora B. Giffuni (PSA) | <urn:uuid:52bfdf5f-ef49-4525-aadd-946b9dd92669> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.davidcostello.com/about-pastels-giclee-printing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930297 | 591 | 2.453125 | 2 |
UNICEF Pacific signs onto UNiTE To End Violence Against Women and Girls
UNICEF Pacific Representative Dr Isiye Ndombi today put pen to paper and signed a joint UN poster committing to UNiTE to end Violence Against Women and Girls. Several other Pacific heads of agencies, including the UN Resident Coordinators in PNG and in the Pacific, have also signed the poster.
It is expected that all heads of UN agencies in the Pacific will sign the poster. When complete with all signatures the poster will be reproduced and shared widely with UN agencies and partners in the Pacific, communicating the full commitment of the UN agencies in the Pacific region to UNiTE
SAY NO. UNiTE To End Violence Against Women and Girls | <urn:uuid:1eef8419-3c0e-48bc-9f10-3039fb725744> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unicef.org/pacificislands/overview_17825.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910882 | 150 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Jeff Burey and the Midwest Section PGA (Professional Golfers of America) are on a mission to teach the game of golf to kids. “Our game is dying,” said Burey, who managed Wolf Creek Golf Links for 26 years. “We need to grow our game. We have to introduce the game at an early age to the kids.”
PGA professional Matt Murdock added, “Our vision is to introduce the game of golf in the Midwest section. We want to introduce the game of golf to every child.”
The result is the Midwest section PGA’s Golf in School Initiative, called SNAG-a-School.
SNAG stands for Starting New at Golf.
It brought Burey back to Overland Park from Hutchinson, where he retired from managing Prairie Dunes Country Club from 2007 through 2011.
The program started in the Olathe School District in 2011 with the training of the physical education teachers in the district.
“We trained the teachers to teach our game,” Burey said. “We want to reach masses of kids that the game is affordable. And show the teachers that the game is easy to teach and it’s fun and safe.”
The SNAG program contains all of the basic elements of golf, but in a modified form. You might say it falls between miniature golf and regular golf. The program allows for full shots, pitching, chipping and putting.
“The design of the program makes it safe and portable, allowing instruction, practice and play to take place both inside and outside,” Murdock said.
SNAG has its own rules and terminology that makes it fun for the kids to learn and play the game. The Midwest Section PGA purchased all the equipment and other training tools to provide the teachers with the training.
The teachers receive the instructions on SNAG golf and also have the resource of a PGA professional to help them.
This year in the Olathe School District, each school picked several youngsters to represent their school in the Olathe Tournament of Champions. The program has now moved into the Spring Hill and Blue Valley school districts.
A training program for the Blue Valley School District physical education department occurred on Sept. 28.
“Our goal is to introduce the kids to the game of golf,” Burey said. “We want to instill a love of the game.”
Burey, who is in his 60s, noted that golf is a game that can be played for a lifetime. He added that the goal of the Midwest Section PGA is to reach every child in the northern two-thirds of Kansas and from central to western Missouri. | <urn:uuid:aee26c36-1517-4071-979b-9aee42295f72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://joco913.com/news/teaching-kids-to-appreciate-golf-is-goal-of-midwest-pga-program/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970346 | 571 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Technology and Cognition
Dematerialization, Media, and Memory in the Digital Age
by David R. Burns
Dematerialization, media, and memory in the digital age explores the relationship between the media industry’s representation of important events and our personal and collective memories of these events. The paper investigates what happens when an important personal and collective event is recorded to digital and neuronal memory systems. The paper also examines the space between an individual’s personal memories of real-time events and media’s influence over an individual’s constructed memories of these events. Because digital sequences of images are broadcast in real time to media outlets worldwide at the same time as important events unfold, an international consciousness is informed and influenced by these images both during and after these events. On the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, my paper explores and illustrates the effects that the repeated broadcast of lossless imagery of the fall of the World Trade Center has on the individual and collective consciousness.
The paper presentation will also include screening the author’s abstract 3D computer animation. The animation examines the author’s memory of the fall of the World Trade Center in New York City on 9/11. On that day, the author watched the tragic events unfold outside his apartment in lower Manhattan while simultaneously watching the events broadcast digitally to his television in real time. Screening the abstracted representation of this event to the conference participants opens up a dialogue between a newly formed collective memory of events and the author’s personal memory and representation of the fall of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Do we ‘read’ a Van Gogh today as we ‘read’ a Van Gogh twenty years ago?
by Andrew Denham
This paper discusses how ‘culture,’ in an era of unprecedented technological and social change (a digital global connectedness with and in everything), inscribes or sculpts itself on the neural networks in the brain. An evolution in the way we ‘read,’ decode, interpret and process (visual) information. The paper suggests our innate social behaviour patterns and techno-cultural inflection in negotiating networked cyberspace initiate need for a paradigmatic shift to define how these iterative cybernetic loops between socio-cultural immaterial relations and the neural networks in the brain facilitate an evolved perceptual process and contextual reading of ‘visual language.’ How does this digital connectedness in and with everything subsume our collective psyche to sculpt the neural networks in the brain and as a result evolve our social behaviour, cognitive wherewithal and aesthetic processing in the perceptual and psychological reading of visual information?
The paper attempts to arbitrate interdisciplinary thinking at the intersection of technology (the social behavioural systems and mental constructs in networked transactions), art and design (how we decode and perceive the visual, contextual research practice) and science (current paradigms of scientific investigation into the ‘reading’ and psychology of art, yet also a neurologically derived understanding of aesthetic processing). It is suggested that socio-cultural systems and mental constructs in the technologically inflected mediation of simultaneous networked information propagate emergent epistemological learning patterns. This in turn creates profound differences in the way Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants access, decode, interpret and process this acquired (visual) information as knowledge?
What I’m really interested in is the empirical documentation of the socio-cultural behaviour and automated (unconscious) responses that underlie the primary event. These may include social behavioural patterns and mental constructs in networked communications, mimetic behaviour, information filtering, concentration, overload and processing. Operating adjacent to the cognitive / perceptual systems we employ to mediate concurrent networked information, it is proffered that these mental processes may hasten an evolution in ways of knowing, ways of seeing, knowledge acquisition and usage, information processing, aesthetic processing and social behavioural patterns. Can we separate the extent and invasiveness of socio-cultural behavioural precedent in mediating concomitant networked information systems from the contextual ‘reading’ and aesthetic processing of the visual? Are we oversimplifying or reducing the component parts to something that is a far more complex process?
1 Definitions classified by Small & Vorgan in their 2008 book ‘iBrain.’ | <urn:uuid:39adeb95-61c9-42d6-b2a0-24e71e745a27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/content/technology-and-cognition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910709 | 877 | 2.03125 | 2 |
As this proud university slowly closes the book on a yearlong Centennial celebration, alumni everywhere should take a few moments to reflect on the maturation process that has taken place over the past 100 years.
What began as a simple teachers college in 1910 has blossomed into a multi-faceted institution of higher learning with state-of-the-art residence halls, premier research programs and highly acclaimed faculty. With enrollment at an all-time high, Southern Miss is poised to enter its second century as the definitive choice for students across this country and beyond.
A little more than 30 years ago I sat inside classrooms in College Hall, Southern Hall, Stout Hall and many others absorbing various bits and pieces of knowledge that helped shape the newspaper/communications professional I became. Without my coveted degree (a facsimile of which I still carry in my wallet today), I shudder to think how unfulfilled my life would have been.
Immense credit should be granted to those visionaries of yesteryear who fought to see a senior college erected on this hallowed ground. Every student, educator, administrator and staff member would do well to remember the struggles and salute the efforts that helped carve Southern Miss’ spot in American history.
Yes, economic woes and budget reductions create formidable obstacles that cannot be ignored. But visit the campuses in Hattiesburg and Long Beach and you will learn quickly that the business of teaching is alive and well at this university. I am confident that 100 years from now such will still be the case. | <urn:uuid:74d527c4-407c-4398-8d21-6145dbcfdcc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usm.edu/news/blog/100-years-and-still-going-strong | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96954 | 309 | 1.53125 | 2 |
An alarm has been raised over increased diabetes cases among pregnant women. Nancy Ngugi from the diabetes management and Information center says they are concerned because this is exposing the fetuses to death. She is encouraging women to get screened often.
The Star (Nairobi)
Kenya: Worry Over Diabetes in Pregnant WomenBy Diana Madegwa, 14 November 2012
Copyright © 2012 The Star. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 130 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. | <urn:uuid:eeb8d1a3-2a9a-43f7-9093-a35f6499f254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201211150195.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914636 | 186 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Born: 1930 AD
Currently alive, at 83 years of age.
1930 - Born in Gera, Germany.
- He was educated at Columbia University, where he wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator.
1968 - Chief of Washington DC bureau of The New York Times.
1973 - Won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Richard Nixon's trip to the People's Republic of China.
- Sunday editor of The New York Times.
1976 - He is also remembered as being the journalist who asked President Ford about Soviet domination in Eastern Europe during the second presidential debate.
1977 - Editorial page editor of The New York Times.
1986-1994 - Frankel was Executive Editor of The New York Times.
- Frankel is the author of the book High Noon in the Cold War.
Page last updated: 4:40pm, 04th Jul '07 | <urn:uuid:4ab9d3e9-88ae-4884-bd2e-abb321b12ea8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.s9.com/Biography/Print/Frankel-Max | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92529 | 177 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The View From Mexico
"Opinion makers and migrant advocates in Mexico said Friday that the collapse of U.S. immigration reform plans hurts Mexican workers, U.S. employers and anti-terrorism efforts. (AP)
"This is very bad news for Mexican migrants in the U.S.," said Jorge Bustamante, special rapporteur to the U.N. human rights commission for migrants. "It means the continuation and probably a worsening of the migrants' vulnerable conditions." ...
An editorial in the left-leaning newspaper La Jornada called the decision a "triple shipwreck" - a failure for the Bush administration, the United States and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. "The most powerful country on the planet will have to continue living, for many more months, with the scandalous contradiction between its laws and the real needs of its economy, thirsty for cheap labor to guarantee the international competitiveness of its exports, especially in agriculture."
You'd think the UN and the Left were worried about Mexicans in Mexico, or did I miss something? But it's not just the Mexican Left. Elites in the Third World have a found an outlet for their human surplus, not just in the US or Europe, but even in comparatively more prosperous neighboring countries. The cost in broken families in poor countries is the flip side of the undocumented "migration".
In some Third World countries hardly a week goes by without someone you know emigrating. In the last sixty days a lawyer I knew emigrated, legally, with his entire immediate family for Canada. Another acquaintance, an interior designer, left legally for New Zealand. In the Philippines fully 11% of the population -- mostly working people -- are overseas. The breadwinners live overseas. The dependents and the leeching politicians who effectively hold them hostage remain. What is extremely galling is the sight of those same politicians, whose government would be utterly bankrupt without the remittances of those poor expatriates, pretending to preside over a shambolic economy, when it is in reality simply garnishing bought and paid for by the collections imposed on the money flows pouring in from overseas. This does not prevent those same politicians and ruling "elites" from pretending to dignity. On the contrary, the more parasitic they are, the greater the dignity they affect.
Nowhere is this manifested to a greater degree than in a ritual nationalism, attended by an extreme sensitivity to the smallest slight. "Rage Boy" is not exclusively an Islamic phenomenon. Rage against imagined slights is the national industry of the Third World elite. Only last month, the Philippine Supreme Court beat back a lawsuit, filed by the Left, to prevent the teaching of English in public schools. This, in a country dotted with English academies run by Korean entrepeneurs, eager to cash in on the desperate desire by the poor to learn English -- and thereby qualify them for an overseas job. Yet this same Left, which abhors the idea of people learning English, speaks grandly of the rights of "migrants" being denied in the countries in which they have been forced to seek employment. Nor do they object to the color of the money learned by English proficiency, the better to fund their rancid "social programs".
And in the meantime the poor leave. In their thousands, their hundred thousands and their millions. With faked documents, in the care of scam artists and people smugglers, across deserts, oceans, arctic tundras, blazing warzones. To get the job. And back home is a family which might only see their father a fortnight every five years, knowing him only as a photo, taken against a background of snow, the work machinery tastefully out of sight, upon the night-table.
If the defeat of the immigration bill had one unambiguous benefit, it was in sending the message that this can no longer continue indefinitely. Somewhere, sometime, the focus of the problem has to change from how to admit persons into the First World to how to fix the Third World in order to make a better place to live in. But neither the elites nor the Left really want to hear this. Because it means fixing them. | <urn:uuid:b7506945-969c-4d56-a39b-cf1862dc09bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/06/view-from-mexico.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960588 | 852 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) scientists and engineers provide expertise to ESD in microbial ecology and environmental engineering.
The personnel within CEB are supported by the Environmental Remediation Technology Program, the Energy Resources Program, and the Climate Change and Carbon Management Program. The Center for Environmental Biotechnology, houses all of the Ecology offices and laboratory facilities. The Department focuses on research in real-time direct environmental assessment and biological treatment, bioremediation, and natural attenuation.
The Center for Environmental Biotechnology maintains the highest quality and highest visibility for its research and development in these areas: | <urn:uuid:01daaf07-51b9-4191-b0c8-ebadd4ea47f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://esd.lbl.gov/CEB/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900807 | 122 | 1.914063 | 2 |
I have never dipped my hands in MySQL Cluster and want to know how it can benefit me. When is it best to use it, and does it have performance benefits?
MySQL Cluster is designed around 3 core principles:
These are discussed in more detail in the following paper (note, registration required): http://mysql.com/why-mysql/white-papers/mysql_wp_scaling_web_databases.php
Adaptive Query Localization is a feature of the current MySQL Cluster 7.2 development release and rapidly improves performance of JOIN operations by pushing them down to the data nodes, thereby significantly reducing network traffic - to address the point Rolando makes above. You can read more about it here: http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/mysql-cluster-labs-dev-milestone-release.html
MySQL Cluster is licensed under the GPL and can be downloaded from dev.mysql.com, with on-line help via the forums: forums.mysql.com/list.php?25
When I wanted to get information about MySQL Cluster, MySQL (before Sun bought it) would send out a brief questionnaire, which I wish I still had. One of the questions asked if your tables had integer keys only.
Although MySQL Cluster is ACID-complaint, it does not provide a suitable storage engine for data with compound keys. In some respects, you have to plan its usage like that of a MongoDB or Cassandra in terms of data layout and sharding.
You also have to consider the most annoying part of MySQL Cluster: Network Communication. NDB Cluster tends to be chatty among servers. Even Gig-E can be brought to its knees if doing range queries or full table scans. You must be disciplined enough to use primary keys and unique keys, especially if your application thrives on such keys.
Unless you adhere to these simple observations, MySQL Cluster will do way more harm than good. | <urn:uuid:44bd99c6-3a27-4487-b04f-7fda87aa80c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/4115/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-mysql-cluster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912053 | 411 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The post on movie titles from earlier this month got me thinking about Saul Bass, the man responsible for some of the most beautiful examples of movie title design in American cinema. He also happened to work on the titles for a handful of Alfred Hitchcock movies. So, that post naturally led me to think more about the Hitchcock movie to which Bass made his largest contribution, Psycho (1960).
Not only did Saul Bass design the opening title sequence for the movie, he’s also credited as its “pictorial consultant.” Bass created the storyboards for the intricate shower scene, an amazingly elaborate assemblage of shots which conveys its violence, not through depictions of physical violation and gore, but through careful juxtapositions of graphically opposed compositions. Different camera angles, different distances between the lens and its object, different subjects (a torso, a hand, a face): the jarring transition from each shot to the next is the graphic equivalent of the physical violence the scene means to convey. We never see the knife strike the character’s body because we don’t have to: the violence happens inside our heads and that’s so much more effective.
Since I’m giving all this space and thought to the movie, you’d think Psycho was a favorite of mine. In fact, I get a little bored with it after Janet Leigh drops out of the story. But up until her disappearance, I’m glued to the screen. And that, my friends, is an amazing feat of virtuoso story-telling.
Like so many of his later movies, Psycho seems crafted to show us just how superbly Hitchcock can tell a story. He pushes at the very limit of what our interest and attention should tolerate, and does so without our even noticing, wrapping us up so completely in the story as he does.
Audiences today know what to expect from Psycho, even if they’ve never seen it before: some lady gets killed in the shower.
That scene has entered the realm of pop-cultural folklore and it shouldn’t be a big surprise for any viewer who’s even reasonably immersed in western culture. What I find so surprising is that the situation wasn’t so different for audiences seeing it for the first time in 1960.
Long before the movie opened, the press was reporting that Janet Leigh — a movie star of some stature† — was going to appear in a new Alfred Hitchcock thriller and — most remarkably — would be killed off only a short while into the movie. It worked against all common sense to kill off the (arguably) biggest name in the picture; she’s the one we’re supposed to be going to see. Yet every person who went into the theater knew that this was exactly what was going to happen.
That’s where this death-defying feat of narrative comes in.
How could you make a movie about a character whom everyone knew was going to get killed early in the picture? How could you draw people into her story only to abandon it a third of the way in to the movie? How could you seduce an audience into lowering its defenses, to keep it from creating that buffer zone of emotional distance which would prevent it from identifying with Leigh’s character and her story?
With a story-teller the likes of which Hollywood rarely saw.
Even though she appears in only the first third of the movie, Psycho is still Marion Crane’s story. And the arc of that story is a movie all in itself. Marion finds herself with $40,000 in cash and realizes it offers a way to buy a decent start for herself and Sam, the man she loves. On her journey to Sam, she realizes she’s made a mistake in stealing the money and decides to return home, to face the consequences of her theft, and to repair the damage she’s done.
Our ability to understand Marion’s motivations and reactions has less to do with the actual details of the plot than with the way the movie conveys them to us.
The movie opens with that magnificent title sequence over the shrill notes and driving tempo of its wonderful musical score (thanks to Bass and Bernard Herrmann, the composer). As we move from the titles into the proper world of the story, super-titles situate us and the story at a very particular place (Phoenix, Arizona), date (Friday, December the Eleventh) and time (two forty-three P.M.). Our point of view (the camera’s) eases its way through the blinds on the window of a sleazy motel and into a very private scene between Marion and Sam. Both are only partially dressed; you can almost smell the odor of sex on their sweaty skin.
The intimacy of this moment — the privacy we’ve invaded, the way we’ve crept in unseen — makes us feel entirely voyeuristic: sitting in the dark, watching this private moment through a gap in the window blinds. It’s the only time Marion spells out in so many words what’s on her mind (an expedient way to spell out her situation).
After this scene, the movie abandons that sort of outright exposition. And after Marion decides to leave town with the money, there’s not a lot to convey in the way of facts or events. The rest of Marion’s journey is along that interior road toward her decision to turn back to Phoenix and to set things right.
Even though we don’t see another scene as steamy as the one with Sam, the succeeding scenes feel even more intimate, more private as they pull us still deeper into Marion’s inner life. Through her reactions, she’s able to share her thoughts without her having to speak them out loud. In fact, most of the time she’s on the screen, Marion has no one to tell her thoughts to. She’s all alone … well, alone but for all the people who are watching her. And even if you don’t count us Peeping Toms in the audience, there seems to be a lot of them.
This motif of being watched runs strong under the primary thread of Marion’s story. And that’s important because being the nervous object of everyone’s gaze pushes her to feel and act increasingly guilty. The more people watch her — spying on her, staring, peeping or glaring at her — the more anxious she becomes. And the more anxious we become for her: after all, we like Marion Crane.
More importantly, we sympathize with her. Not just in a cerebral way, but in the way we experience her story. From the moment she starts driving to California, every shot shows us either the faces of people gazing at Marion or her reactions to those stares. We see what she sees; then we see her, seeing what she sees.
Guilt is a funny emotion. It presumes that someone or something is passing judgment on us. Whether it’s our internalized sense of the rules we ought to play by, the watchful eyes of those peers who might one day judge us in a court of law, or the all-seeing and all-knowing eye of some judgmental Old Testament god, we all feel that gimlet eye boring through us at various points in our lives. Without that sensation, there’d be little to keep the lid on a society full of people whose baser instincts tell them to do whatever they want.
As the audience in the movie theater, we sit on this weird middle ground: we’re seeing and judging Marion (albeit favorably), objectifying her as someone apart from ourselves. But seeing so much from her point of view allows us to empathize with her at the same time, so much so that we experience her discomfort as if it were our own. And the more guilt-inducing gazes she encounters, the more anxious both she and we become.
After Marion packs her bags and begins her drive out of town, her boss crosses in front of her car at a stop light. We see what she sees (his confusion and suspicious gaze). And we see her as she sees it (surprised and alarmed).
She pulls over to the side of the road that night and falls asleep. A highway cop awakens her in the morning, staring into her window through dark, aviator sunglasses. Besides the scary authority the uniform conveys, besides everyone’s general discomfort with highway patrolmen, his blank, impenetrable stare is really unnerving. We see him staring, but we can’t really see him: those judging eyes are just two black (and blank) holes. Marion’s reaction is agitated enough to arouse his suspicions. And when he asks to see her license, she has to dig past the envelope of stolen cash to find it.
After a rushed purchase of a new car, she’s so unnerved that she almost leaves without retrieving her coat and suitcase from the old one. By that point, she’s aroused the suspicions of not just the cop, but also the car salesman and his mechanic.
Besides raising the tension in the story, all of this cat-and-mouse stuff has other effects. For one, it increases our emotional investment in Marion’s story. As she becomes more agitated and appears to feel more guilty, we share in her anxiety and become more nervous for her. We cringe with every clumsy move she makes. We want her to get away or turn back, not because we’re consciously fearing for a nasty and violent end, but because we fear simply that she’s going to get caught.
By this point, most everyone has forgotten what he knew about this character when he entered the theater. We’re all caught up in our dread that her life will be ruined or that she’ll have to go to prison. Compared with what’s really in store, those sound like far better outcomes. But involving us so deeply with Marion’s point of view, Hitchcock has successfully distracted us from that line of reasoning.
There’s another effect from watching Marion being watched, too. We know she’s guilty. She knows she’s guilty. But through her behavior, she’s also communicated to a number of other people that she’s guilty, even though they have absolutely no other reason to suspect her of anything. Through her behavior, she’s telling a very different story about herself than the one we, the audience, believe to be true. The facts of what she did don’t matter because none of the people whose judging gaze she encounters know anything about the theft. What matters is this general brand of guilt she carries with her. What matters is the larger story of who this woman is. To her boss, to that cop and the car salesman, she’s a nervous fugitive from justice, laboring under the knowledge of her own crime. To us, she’s a good woman who’s simply made a mistake.
And much to our relief, she decides to take control of her story and set it right. As she explains to Norman Bates, the proprietor of the cozy little motel where she stops for the night, she decides to return to Phoenix and see if she can’t get herself out of the trap she allowed herself to step in. We watch her resolve shift to making things right. We watch her calculate the money she’s spent and will have to return. We watch her plan a new end for her story.
The idea of guilt presumes a story explaining not only a person’s actions, but her motives, as well. It presumes that there be someone to tell that story. And that’s the most unsettling element to Marion’s change of heart. She’s made the right choice. But she’s not going to be able to answer the accusatory gazes of everyone who’s followed her on this journey.
One last exchange of Marion being watched. Only in this one, we no longer see Marion’s point of view: the gaze of the man judging her and her reaction to it. Instead, we see Norman’s point of view. We watch him take a picture off the wall to reveal his peep hole. We see him look at Marion. We see what he sees. But Marion is unaware that she’s even being watched. It’s as if we’d been sharing the point of view of the movie’s subject with Marion, but no longer. Suddenly, she’s only the object. We’ve made her well-being our concern. We’ve taken into ourselves a desire that she clear her name and set things right. But we’re not inside her head anymore. It feels like we’re now watching her from outside her point of view, like she’s become an object of our observation and no longer someone with whom we’re connected.
It’s both unnerving and heartbreaking as we realize that Marion has lost control of her story. Not only are we now painfully conscious of what’s going to happen, but we see that there’s no chance anyone will uncover the truth, that anyone can finish her story and explain that she came to her senses and was going to make amends for her mistake. No one — not even Sam — knows she’s coming. She’s signed the motel guest book with a fake name and address. And even her calculation of the money she’ll have to repay is gone, carefully flushed down the toilet so as not to leave a trail.
The violence of the scene continues to shock me each time I watch it. Having resolved to turn things around, she undresses and steps into the shower. As she washes her body, letting the water splash against her face and rinse her hair, her smile suggests that feeling of a burden lifted from the mind. She’s relieved herself of her guilt and anxiety and is ready to start again fresh. Her lighter mood and her (apparently) absolute nakedness present the outward signs of openness and vulnerability.
The amazingly elaborate assemblage of shots which follows never even shows that big blade touching her body. The extreme violence of the scene comes from the careful juxtaposition of graphically opposing compositions, cut against the driving and piercing strings of the musical score. It comes from the open and vulnerable manner we saw in Marion’s face for the first time only a moment earlier. And it comes from our knowledge that she was about to set things right, to redeem her reputation and to answer the accusing gazes of all those who had been watching her.
But all the pieces of her story — the pieces that would tell the world that she was innocent at heart, that she’d meant to set things right, that she wasn’t a bad person but just one who had a momentary lapse in judgment — all those pieces are lost. They’re gone. And as her life slips away, we see her eye — empty and lifeless — superimposed on the image of the bloody water spiraling down the drain.
Just to remind us of what was going to be, the camera pans up from that vacant, lifeless stare to the newspaper, tightly folded around the stolen money. Marion’s dead; her story erased. Where there might have been some solace in telling the truth about her to those accusing eyes, now there’s no way to set her story straight. And that’s the deepest cut of all.
† By 1960, Janet Leigh’s career had begun to slow down. A star through much of the 1950s, she had become popular playing roles appropriate to her young age. As she became a full-grown woman, those roles no longer fit as well. And since much of the magic of movie stars is that they carry from role to role a good deal of their public star persona, such a shift in that persona — from ingenue to woman — could easily spell the death of her career.
Taking the role of Marion Crane may have seemed a step down for a major star since the character would disappear only a third of the way through the movie. But Leigh recognized the value of any part in a movie with so talented a director. And just as importantly she also recognized that after Marion was gone from the screen, all the other characters would spend the rest of the movie talking about her. Not only did Psycho re-start her career, it made her the focus of one of the most remembered scenes in all of movie history. | <urn:uuid:845f7f2c-b1d3-47fd-b4b3-954c888cb5cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://knappy-head.com/2010/05/19/if-looks-could-kill/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969511 | 3,469 | 1.554688 | 2 |
When the tsunamis from the Spellplague buried the island nation of Lantan, they destroyed one of the greatest technological civilizations the Realms had ever seen and dealt a crippling blow to the worshipers of Gond. The High Holy Crafthouse of Inspiration, the seat of Gond’s power, crumbled into the sea, along with all the marvels of Lantan, such as flying machines, the printing press, and numerous clockwork creations. Although many have surmised that the citizens of Lantan must have foreseen the disaster and formulated some kind of escape plan, modern denizens of the Realms have yet to find any trace of these formidable artificers of days gone by.
In the wake of the Spellplague, Gond’s worshipers embraced an itinerant lifestyle, wandering from town to town, seeking employment as engineers, builders, and crafters. Architects designed and rebuilt temples in major cities such as Baldur’s Gate and Waterdeep. Explorers combed the Realms in search of lost designs and inventions. Priests established a new network of information and resources. But perhaps the greatest change was experienced by the artificers of Gond. | <urn:uuid:524c4619-6451-4aca-b794-23fe28c9257a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dra/201109gondsway | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945333 | 246 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Metabolic syndrome not a good predictor of death
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among older adults, two components of the so-called "metabolic syndrome" - namely, high blood pressure and high blood sugar -- are better predictors of death from heart disease, or any cause, than all five components of the metabolic syndrome as a whole, research shows.
The five components of the metabolic syndrome are: obesity, high triglyceride levels, low "good" HDL cholesterol levels, high blood pressure (hypertension), and elevated fasting blood sugar levels.
The overall predictive value of the whole metabolic syndrome "has been questioned, and the ability of metabolic syndrome to identify mortality risk in older adults, the fastest growing segment of the population and the group at highest risk, is not clearly established," Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, of Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues note in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
To clarify the situation, they assessed relationships of metabolic syndrome and individual metabolic syndrome components with death among 4,258 elderly adults participating in a heart health study.
At the outset, 31 percent of men and 38 percent of women had metabolic syndrome. A total of 2,116 deaths occurred during 15 years of follow-up.
Results showed that those with metabolic syndrome had a 22 percent higher risk of dying compared to those without metabolic syndrome. But the higher mortality risk associated with metabolic syndrome was confined to individuals who had elevated fasting blood sugar levels or hypertension as one of the criteria, according to the team.
Patients with metabolic syndrome but no elevated blood sugar or hypertension did not have a higher risk.
When the investigators assessed metabolic syndrome criteria individually, they found that only elevated fasting blood sugar and hypertension predicted higher mortality. Mortality was 82 percent higher among subjects with both elevated fasting blood sugar and hypertension compared to those with neither condition.
The total proportion of deaths attributable to hypertension and elevated blood sugar was 22.2 percent, which is substantially higher than the proportion attributable to metabolic syndrome (6.3 percent).
These findings, Mozaffarian and colleagues conclude, suggest "limited utility" of the metabolic syndrome concept for predicting death in older men and women compared with assessment of fasting blood sugar level and blood pressure alone.
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, May 12, 2008. | <urn:uuid:20d01b5f-e698-406b-bce0-55bcb05ff880> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/31291 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935755 | 475 | 2.578125 | 3 |
State officials on Thursday confirmed a record 103.9-million-pound lobster catch in 2011, which helped Maine fishermen bring in nearly 280 million pounds of seafood and bait last year.
For the first time, Maine lobstermen brought in more than 100 million pounds, according to the Bangor Daily News. The total value of the lobster catch was $331.4 million, representing 78% of the total value of all species caught last year. Lobstermen's prices for their catch, however, fell from $3.31 a pound in 2010 to $3.19 a pound last year.
The preliminary figures show fishermen's haul last year was worth more than $425 million, a $30 million drop over 2010. The total catch was 21 million pounds greater than 2010 and is the largest catch since 2006. Landings of Atlantic herring, used for lobster bait, and groundfish rose in 2011, while harvests for shellfish dropped. | <urn:uuid:5ca22208-8aea-4d54-8616-a1de37ff04a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mainebiz.biz/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120224/NEWS0101/120229975/1088/CURRENTEDITION | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950782 | 192 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Over the past year or so, I have been seriously looking at the idea that perhaps monogamy is not our natural state. In my life, I have rarely been monogamous, even when I had consciously intended to be. And it seems that the world is filled with such stories. Why are the infidelity rates so high? Is it because we are a people with very little integrity, or perhaps because trying to force ourselves into a monogamous mold is against our true nature?
In the animal kingdom, it seems that monogamy is a very rare thing. For example, scientists long touted the heartwarming fidelity of birds, until DNA testing became available. Now we know, if the eggs in most birds’ nests are tested for genetics, guess what? Several different fathers.
So, what would make us think that we are so different in this way from all the animal species out there? Where did this idea come from? It’s only been in recent centuries that the idea of a monogamous marriage, for example, came into vogue. Marriage came about, by the way, as a way to legalize inheritance of property. The first male would become the legal heir after the father’s death. But even then, it was generally accepted that the husband and wife would be allowed to discreetly have other partners. These days, we all know that the only generally accepted option is that the two be completely monogamous. In fact, most of our religions tell us that is the only “holy” way.
But did God really intend for us to be monogamous? Or, are we here to love more than one? Is our love really that limited, that there is only enough for one other? Do we say the same about our friendships- ‘oh, I already have a friend, I can’t have another’? Well, I propose that it is equally preposterous to suggest that we can only have one loving partner.
What I’m suggesting is that we really look at where this idea of monogamy came from, did it really come from Source, or did it, as many of the concepts in religion, come from man? Don’t forget, man has ego (read: agenda), Source doesn’t.
I’m not saying that it would be easy to change the whole paradigm. I know there is such thing as jealousy. I know there are complications in a polyamorous lifestyle. And I don’t think, as a friend recently suggested, that polyamory (loving more than one) is the easy way out. On the contrary, actually. I think it takes an enormous amount of maturity, spiritual enlightenment, and communication to pull it off. And I would put polyamory in the same category as a lot of other things that take some effort to achieve- challenging, but with so many benefits.
What do you think? Do you think there could be some validity in this way of thinking? How has monogamy or polyamory been working for you? | <urn:uuid:087991ac-638b-490d-b422-75cefa636cdb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://synexlove.com/index.php/2011/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982215 | 627 | 1.851563 | 2 |
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Native Houstonian David Waters is a Houston Symphony Orchestra musician who plays the trombone and bass trombone. He attended Austin High School and performed in the All-City Orchestra while growing up....
Guy Covington is a 4th generation shipbuilder from Orange, TX. Guy's father, Don Covington, became president of Levingston Shipbuilding Company and later started Texas Dry Dock, Inc. (TDI) after Levingston...
Kazi, Alia Hayat
Sarosh Manekshaw was born in UP, India but attended a boarding school in Dehra Dun until high school graduation. He completed his BS at IIT – Kharagpur after which he earned an S in chemical engineering...
Johnson, Les "Pe-Te"
Born in Grand Taso, near Eunice, Louisiana. Served in the U.S. Air Force during Korean War and was stationed in Chateauroux, France, for two and a half years. He was a French interpreter when they opened...
Azios, A. D.
Judge Azios is a native of Laredo, Texas. This interview traces his life from Laredo, to the University of Texas, and to his unusual military experience who was sent to language school by the army and...
[Note: Mr. Proffitt's wife also contributed to the interview, especially when talking about moving.] Born in 1926 in Iowa, Jack Proffitt was the son of a machinist. He graduated high school in Ottumwa...
Pankaj Desai enjoyed an affluent childhood in Bombay where his parents had migrated in the 1930s. Originally, his ancestors were from Kindergarten through grade 12, Mr. Desai attended St. Joseph’s, a...
Mike Collins is one of the very old hands at archaeology here in Texas. His specialty is lithics technology and he has worked extensively in the Monte Verde and Gault sites. His contribution to the understanding...
One of three boys, Ed Collins was born in 1924 in Laurel, Mississippi. His father owned a plumbing business. While in high school he roughnecked a bit on a drilling rig and worked as a rod man on a survey...
Anita Jaisinghani is chef and owner of Indika restaurant, located at 516 Westheimer in Houston, Texas. Anita Jaisinghani was interviewed on 17 November 2010. The interview was conducted by James Wall on...
Born in 1915, A. G. Domingue was raised in Carencro in a farming family. He began working as a roustabout for Superior Oil Company the summer before his senior year of high school in 1934. Although he...
Captain Bill Robb grew up near a seaport in Scotland. He went to sea as an apprentice at age 16. When World War II broke out, he was thrust into the Merchant Marine, transporting cargo from Europe to the...
Bob Nicholas is a native of Beaumont, TX. He is currently practicing maritime law in Houston, TX. He worked for Exxon Shipping Company in the 1970s and 1980s and was a "first responder" to the March 24,...
Norman McCall is an 83-year-old crew boat owned and operator. He owned an operated McCall Boat Rentals for several years before merging with SEACOR International in the 1990s. He is one of the pioneering...
Joseph LeBlanc was born in 1939 and raised in Abbeville, Louisiana; his father was a salesman and died when he was 13 years old. After graduating from high school in 1957, he went to college at Northeastern...
Holland, William "Bill"
Victoria (Tory) Phaneuf had been referred to Mr. Holland by local residents who were aware that he was one of the last remaining wooden boat builders in Biloxi. She contacted him and asked if he would...
Born in Rampur, India, Mazahir Khan migrated to Karachi, Pakistan in 1955 where he attended the University of Karachi. In 1966, he came to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship and attended Texas Tech University...
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© 2013 The University of Houston, 114 University Libraries, Houston, TX 77204-2000 (713) 743-1050
State of Texas | <urn:uuid:54286f59-4cf4-4346-bc27-483847a9565a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=any&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOROOT=/houhistory&CISOBOX1=few | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960999 | 949 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Most of us have a slightly competitive spirit within us and that's what makes sport so enjoyable of course. It is the satisfaction of playing a good shot, whether it's tennis, football, badminton, or whatever, and beating your opponent.
Some games though, take a fair bit of practice and a reasonable degree of proficiency before you become good enough to get some real satisfaction. Golf is an example that springs to mind. There are however, recreational activities that almost anyone can do and get a whole lot of enjoyment from, no matter how proficient or otherwise they are. Airsoft is just one of those pastimes, and the fact that it can be played by virtually all ages and levels of ability is one of the reasons why airsoft is becoming so popular.
Airsoft is a recreational activity in which participants beat their opponents by firing and striking them with spherical ďsoftĒ bullets usually made from a plastic material, using guns specially made for the purpose that mimic real weapons but are suitably brightly coloured over at least one area in order to make it obvious that they are only replicas. There are different types of gun available, from the simplest pump action spring type, to gas powered and electric powered which are more powerful and more expensive. (more...) | <urn:uuid:1ef28ccc-582f-4da0-ab3c-949b184a9e83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seco.org.uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972578 | 256 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Outpatient wound services at Logan Regional Wound and Hyperbaric Center offer scientifically proven, evidence based patient care. We use the most advanced wound care dressings, grafts, and negative pressure wound therapy. These advanced dressings and grafts provide rapid wound closure.
We also utilize the latest in gentle, low-frequency ultrasound technology to gently debride necrotic tissue from the wound bed, providing additional opportunity for new-tissue growth. The low-frequency ultrasound technology has also been found to decrease the level of microbial activity in the wound bed.
For vascular testing we use a system that supports the diagnosis of patients with peripheral arterial disease/critical limb ischemia. Our state-of-the-art system accurately detects the presence and severity of disease, even in patients with medial calcifications, incompressible arteries, mild edema, necrotic tissue, or absence of toes. | <urn:uuid:10de0376-1d6d-4f0f-b52a-bac7e5f0ccd1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://intermountainhealthcare.org/hospitals/logan/services/Wound-Hyperbaric/services/Pages/Wound-Care.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908827 | 185 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Dictionary Meaning and Definition on 'Machine'
- any mechanical or electrical device that transmits or modifies energy to perform or assist in the performance of human tasks
- an intricate organization that accomplishes its goals efficiently; "the war machine"
- an efficient person; "the boxer was a magnificent fighting machine"
- 4-wheeled motor vehicle; usually propelled by an internal combustion engine; "he needs a car to get to work" [syn: car, auto, automobile, motorcar]
- a group that controls the activities of a political party; "he was endorsed by the Democratic machine" [syn: political machine}]
- a device for overcoming resistance at one point by applying force at some other point [syn: simple machine] v
- turn, shape, mold, or otherwise finish by machinery
- make by machinery; "The Americans were machining while others still hand-made cars"
- Machine \Ma*chine"\, n. [F., fr. L. machina machine, engine,
device, trick, Gr. ?, from ? means, expedient. Cf.
- In general, any combination of bodies so connected that
their relative motions are constrained, and by means of
which force and motion may be transmitted and modified, as
a screw and its nut, or a lever arranged to turn about a
fulcrum or a pulley about its pivot, etc.; especially, a
construction, more or less complex, consisting of a
combination of moving parts, or simple mechanical
elements, as wheels, levers, cams, etc., with their
supports and connecting framework, calculated to
constitute a prime mover, or to receive force and motion
from a prime mover or from another machine, and transmit,
modify, and apply them to the production of some desired
mechanical effect or work, as weaving by a loom, or the
excitation of electricity by an electrical machine.
Note: The term machine is most commonly applied to such
pieces of mechanism as are used in the industrial arts,
for mechanically shaping, dressing, and combining
materials for various purposes, as in the manufacture
of cloth, etc. Where the effect is chemical, or other
than mechanical, the contrivance is usually denominated
an apparatus, not a machine; as, a bleaching apparatus.
Many large, powerful, or specially important pieces of
mechanism are called engines; as, a steam engine, fire
engine, graduating engine, etc. Although there is no
well-settled distinction between the terms engine and
220 catflap.bishopston.net dictd 1.11.2/rf on FreeBSD 8.1-STABLE
Wikipedia Meaning and Definition on 'Machine'
A machine is a device that uses energy to perform some activity. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work. A simple machine is a device that transforms the direction or magnitude of a force without consuming any energy. The word "machine" is derived from the Latin word machina,
Historically, a device required moving parts to be classified as a machine; however, the advent of electronics technology has led to the development of devices without moving parts that many refer to as machines—the computer being the most obvious example.
"Engines" are machines that convert heat or other forms of energy into mechanical energy. For example, in an internal combustion engine the expansion of gases caused by the heat from an exothermic chemical reaction results in a force being applied to a movable component, such as a piston or turbine blade. An engine is often considered part of a larger machine, such as an automobile or an aircraft.[See more about Machine at Dictionary 3.0 Encyclopedia]
Words and phrases related to 'Machine'
'Machine' in famous quotation sentence
* She used to drag her mattress besider her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that is was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. - Willa Cather
* One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. - Elbert Hubbard
Click here for more related quotations on 'Machine'
Machine Sample Sentences in News
- Soldier slain in London was a machine gunner, Royal Palaces drummer, father
The British soldier slain in a gruesome cleaver attack in London was a well-liked infantryman and machine gunner who served in Afghanistan and Cyprus, and then became a military recruiter and ceremonial drummer outside the Royal Palaces, the military said Thursday. Read more on this news related to 'Machine'
- M.I.T. Scholar’s 1949 Essay on Machine Age Is Found
“The Machine Age,” an essay written for The New York Times by Norbert Wiener, a visionary mathematician, languished for six decades in the M.I.T. archives, and now excerpts are being published. Read more on this news related to 'Machine'
- Machine Announce Rookies' Debuts
COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Ohio Machine announces three debuts of its rookies from the 2013 Major League Lacrosse Collegiate Draft class, including 2013 Tewaaraton Award Finalist Marcus Holman and The Ohio State University players Logan Schuss and Dominique Alexander, who will be playing in their first MLL game on Thursday, May 23, in a CBS Sports Network televised game Read more on this news related to 'Machine' | <urn:uuid:17eb5997-c9bb-4c4d-b0ea-adf9d07565b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dictionary30.com/meaning/machine | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919294 | 1,233 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Resources for Living with Stroke
There are many other services within our health system and in your community that may assist you in your continued recovery. This page highlights services available within our rehabilitation continuum of services and in the local community. We encourage you to call or visit the website for these organizations. However, please do not hesitate to ask us for additional information on these services or for other providers or services in your community.
Services Offered on by WFBH
WFBH's Outpatient Neurorehabilitation Program at CompRehab offers a unique approach for treating people recovering from neurological impairments. The Program's team includes physical, occupational, recreation and speech therapists.
WFBH's Club Independence (Club I) is an interactive Day Recreation Therapy Program that provides education, recreation, and overall health and wellness opportunities for individuals with disabling conditions, including brain injury.
The WFBH Medical Fitness Program offers diagnosis-specific, small group exercise classes designed for anyone who has been discharged from outpatient rehab but is not ready to exercise independently. Evaluation by a physical therapist or physician referral is required for admission to the program. Classes are offered at CompRehab.
For more information:
WFBH offers MyWakeHealth, a patient portal that gives patients unprecedented access to their health information, without the unnecessary burden of waiting. MyWakeHealth allows you to get answers to your medical questions from the comfort of your own home; schedule your next appointment or view details of your past and upcoming appointments; and access test results.
BestHealth is the Piedmont Triad's trusted source for hands-on health knowledge, classes and screenings. BestHealth is presented by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, one of America's top ranked hospitals.
The Inpatient Rehabilitation Programs are pleased to offer a Rehabilitation Resource Center on the Comprehensive Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit. The Center provides literature and web-based access to health information, disability programs and leisure activities, as well as resources available to assist with community re-integration and home modifications.
Other Local Resources
Local support groups:
Wake Forest Baptist Health Stroke Support Group, Contact Rayetta Johnson
Guilford County Stroke Support Group, Contact Jane Edwards
Aphasia Support Group, Contact Beth Crady
Driver Rehabilitation Services include clinical assessments of a person's visual, perceptual, cognitive, physical, and behavioral abilities as it relates to safe and independent driving due to aging, an illness or injury. Two local providers of these services are:
Driver Rehabilitation Services, P.A
Toll-free 888.888.0039 or 336.697.7841
Forsyth Rehabilitation Center
The NC Center for Cognitive Rehabilitation and Brain Fitness is devoted to helping individuals with cognitive impairments as a result of stroke or head injury. Cognitive rehab is functionally based and individualized to assist each person's specific goals. For more information:
Contacts: Robin Alexander Embry or Marcia Weatherly Barnes
Address: 1495 Rymco Drive, Suite 102, Winston-Salem, NC
The Millennium Team Stroke Recover Center at the Kernersville YMCA provided fitness training to stroke survivors to help regain strength, balance, and control.
336.406.6701 (Ed Vankuren)
Additional Educational Resources
The NC Stroke Association's (NCSA) mission is to reduce the incidence and impact of stroke through relationships and collaborations to facilitate screening, education, outcome assessments, and advocacy. NCSA and the American Stroke Association provide a wealth of stroke prevention and caregiver resources.
NC Stroke Association
336.713.5052 (Beth Parks)
American Stroke Association
The National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke provides a wealth of information on treatment, prognosis, research, and post-stroke rehabilitation.
Clinicaltrials.gov provides patients, family members, health care professionals, and other members of the public easy access to information on clinical studies on a wide range of diseases and conditions. The web site is maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
If you need assistance finding additional resources in your community:
336.716.8454 (Karen Lawrence) | <urn:uuid:12074da5-87e8-4064-abf1-2e46be695b56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wakehealth.edu/Inpatient-Rehabilitation/Resources-for-Living-with-Stroke.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911504 | 877 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Assembly Committee Learns About Schools' Success
Date: Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Reference: EDU 05/10/11
Belfast Model School for Girls hosted a meeting of the Northern Ireland Assembly Committee for Education today (19 January 2011). The meeting focussed on the Committee’s Inquiry ‘Successful Post-Primary Schools Serving Disadvantaged Communities’.
As well as Girls’ Model, representatives from three other schools - Ashfield Boys’ High School, St Louise’s Comprehensive College and Coláiste Feirste attended the meeting and presented their thoughts to MLAs on what makes their school successful.
Committee Chairperson, Mervyn Storey MLA said: “The Committee was delighted to visit Belfast Model School for Girls today and to hear first hand from four different Belfast schools about the excellent work they are doing in what are often challenging circumstances. We have already received some very useful information on our Inquiry, and to speak to pupils and teachers directly on these issues has been incredibly valuable.
“To visit Belfast Model School for Girls is of particular interest because it is a Full Service School providing support for pupils and parents and the local community to work together.
“The Full Service Schools scheme supports schools to work with voluntary and statutory agencies and local communities to offer a range of services to young people, their families and the wider community such as adult learning classes, vocational classes and parental and pupil support.”
Notes to Editors:
Further information about the Committee for Education’s Inquiry - including the Terms of Reference - can be found on the Inquiry website:http://archive.niassembly.gov.uk/education/2007mandate/pps_inquiry/inquirypostprimary.htm
The Principal of Belfast Model School for Girls is Mr J.Graham, Belfast Model School for Girls, Dunowen Gardens, Belfast, N. Ireland, BT14 6NQ.
In September 2007 the Minister of Education attended a celebration of the Boys’ Model and Girls’ Model becoming the first Full Service Schools to become operational. A copy of the DE News Release can be found at: http://www.northernireland.gov.uk/index/media-centre/news-departments/news-de/news-de-september-2007/news-de-190907-minister-attends-full.htm .
Mr. Mervyn Storey (Chairperson)
Mr. David Hilditch (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr. Dominic Bradley
Mrs. Mary Bradley
Mr. Jonathan Craig
Mr. Trevor Lunn
Sir Reg Empey
Mr. Basil McCrea
Miss. Michelle McIlveen
Mr. John O’Dowd
Ms. Michelle O’Neill
The Clerk to the Committee is John Simmons
Committee for Education, Rm 242, Parliament Buildings, Ballymiscaw, Stormont Belfast BT4 3XX
Tel: 028 9052 1787
Mob: 07900 053929
Fax: 028 9052 1371 | <urn:uuid:4eb2778e-00d1-420f-89ad-559f0250b5e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/News-and-Media/Press-Releases-2010-2011/Assembly-Committee-Learns-About-Schools-Success/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912593 | 644 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Warning, Tangent Ahead – One of the best tips I’ve had in my new found hobby of growing vegetables is when it comes to growing Tomatoes (we currently have more than V and I can eat – so the tip is working).
The idea behind the tip is simple.
Tomato bushes grow fast in the right conditions and while they might start as a small seedling, left unchecked they will sprout out into all directions with new stems and can quickly become quite out of control and tangled. The result is that you end up with a very healthy looking bush – but because it is so large a lot of the energy that ideally should be being directed into growing fruit is wasted on growing leaves and stems and as a result your crop suffers.
The tip therefor is to look for ‘suckers’ and to prune them.
A sucker is a little shoot that grows out between two stems that can grow out into yet another stem (see picture below). In pruning them you keep the number of branches down and the bush doesn’t get out of control. Suckers also suck the energy away from your bush’s ability to grow fruit.
When I first heard this advice from my green thumbed friend it seems a little strange – surely one would want a big bush – wouldn’t that produce more fruit than a smaller one?
I decided to do a bit of an experiment. I let one bush go crazy and didn’t prune the suckers while I too the advice and removed them on my other bushes.
The results speak for themselves….
I now have one out of control bush that stands taller than I do. It’s actually producing some fruit but is so out of control that it’s obvious that there is less tomatoes and that they are in worse condition and are smaller than what the other bushes are producing. The other problem with this unruly bush is that it’s got a lot of weight to it with so many branches and so yesterday (a hot windy day) it fell over and I lost a fairly large part of it and quite a few un-ripened tomatoes.
As per usual, as I worked on salvaging what was left of my sick tomato bush yesterday, my mind wandered to blogging and I began to ponder how pruning off ‘blog suckers’ might actually be something that bloggers might need to do from time to time.
Perhaps this is more a lesson for me as a blogger with multiple blogs – but I wonder if it might also be where others are at.
As I look at my blogs (I have quite a few) I can see that they have a range of performance levels. Some are doing fantastically in terms of traffic and earnings while there are others that even after many months only attract a handful of visitors per day and correspondingly make little money.
When I analyse how much time goes into these non performing blogs I realise that while I do spend a little less time on them, they do consume energy and time that I could be funnelling into more fruitful activities.
It’s easy to get to this position over time. You have hopes of your blogs being vibrant places of community around a topic – but some just never take off. You convince yourself that they just need more time, that maybe next time Google updates that things will click and you persist – all the time pouring energy into something that bears little fruit.
The advice I regularly give to bloggers is to persist over time. Good blogs do need to mature and can take years to get to a decent level – however there are also blogs (suckers) that are unlikely to ever succeed at anything other than distracting you from your more fruitful blogs.
I’m coming to a point where I’ll need to ‘prune’ some of my own sucker blogs. I’m not planning of deleting them all together (after all they do continue to get a little traffic and make a few dollars a week – which adds up over a year) but instead I’ll just stop giving them attention and allow them to die their own death in their own time. The beauty of not deleting them is not only that they continue to earn a little bit but that they are there if for some reason they ever do take off (either as a result of the topic becoming more popular or by the search engines reindexing in their favour).
I’m still a big believer in diversifying interests and think multiple blogs are a good strategy – however one needs to keep balanced and realistic in the way they spend their time. Afterall – bloggers working by themselves on multiple blogs can only really sustain so many blogs without the quality of their work (their fruit) suffering so once you get to a point of working at capacity – one smart way to grow is to ditch the unproductive areas to focus on what is working.
update: The more I ponder this topic (and I apologise for it’s longwindedness, I’m thinking outloud somewhat) the more I find myself thinking of a book I read in my last holidays called The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Kosch.
In the book Richard argues that 80% of results usually comes from 20% of efforts. In identifying where the productive stuff happens you can increase productivity. Pruning the unproductive parts can help in this process. | <urn:uuid:e22754b7-6921-4669-8a7a-9ac28f906c7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/01/21/lessons-from-my-tomato-patch-on-pruning-sucker-blogs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97203 | 1,122 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Bush promotes economy, better health care
By Bryan Long
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In his second State of the Union speech, President Bush cited stimulating the nation's economy as the first goal of his administration and urged Congress to practice fiscal restraint as deficits grow.
Bush called on Congress to pass the $674 billion, 10-year economic stimulus and tax cut package he outlined earlier in January and said he would send a budget to Capitol Hill that increases discretionary spending by 4 percent -- "about as much as the average family's income is expected to grow."
"Federal spending should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families," he said.
Yet Bush also proposed new spending in a variety of areas, such as $400 billion over the next decade for Medicare reform, $1.2 billion in research funding for hydrogen-powered automobiles, $600 million for drug treatment programs.
In the area of national security, Bush announced the formation of a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, based at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, that would collect and analyze foreign and domestic intelligence. (Full story)
"Our government must have the very best information possible, and we will use it to make sure the right people are in the right places to protect all our citizens," he said.
In addition to the economy, the president named health care and energy policy as his top domestic priorities.
He included a list of programs he described as applying "the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America" and urged Congress to pass his faith-based initiative, which would give religious charities more access to federal funds.
Among the programs: a $450 million initiative to recruit and train mentors to help more than 1 million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners.
"Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus the spirit of service and the resources of government on the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens -- boys and girls trying to grow up without guidance and attention, and children who have to go through a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad," he said.
In promoting his economic plan, which Democrats have criticized as favoring the wealthiest taxpayers, Bush said the economy would grow if Americans are taxed less.
"We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job," he said.
"Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best and fairest way to make sure Americans have the money is not to tax it away in the first place," he said to applause.
The president acknowledged medical care is too expensive and that many Americans have no coverage at all.
"These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care," he said.
"Instead, we must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need." | <urn:uuid:cecb7d98-029e-455f-b5d1-9a082f1ca419> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/sotu.domestic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976896 | 615 | 1.671875 | 2 |
In the September 28, 2006 edition of DB's Medical Rants we find a great quote from Scapel entitled "Are all physicians equal?"
In one of the subsequent letters to Scapel we are correctly told that in the health care "market" prices are determined by a fairly small number of payers, e.g. CMS and the major insurers who follow CMS lead. In regard to physician's fees, there is -for the most part- price controls.Since insurers tend to duplicate CMS's fee structures we have in effect government price controls on physician fees.
(I realize there are a small minority of physicians who operate outside of this control system, for example some dermatologists who do mainly cosmetic work and the concierge practices)
I wrote about this issue before when I suggested an important addition to the medical school curriculum, namely a primer on basic real world economics.What happens when there are price controls is well recognized and repeatedly has been explained in great clarity by economists such as Thomas Sowell.Here are some of his comments on that subject.
Four things tend to happen when there are price controls:
1.Demand increases,there is increased use of the service or product (A recent example-see how long it takes to get in for a colonoscopy since Medicare began covering screening exams)
2.Supply decreases and shortages develop(with price controls in place, suppliers do not rush into that market and we are seeing that in the area of primary care, where fees are set the lowest, fewer medical graduates are opting for primary care specialties)
3.Quality decreases.(providers have little reason to try and differentiate themselves on the basis of quality because of 1 and 2 they have no need for new customers.They may try and make up for lower unit prices by increasing their volume of business, spending less time with each customer, etc.)
4.Black markets tend to develop.This apparently has not happened yet here but has in rigidly socialized countries.
To quote Sowell (from Applied Economics,Thinking Beyond Stage One,2004,Basic Books, p.93)
"All of these things have been found when the prices of medical care have been controlled-and all are particularly harmful in matters involving, pain ,disability and death". | <urn:uuid:236e2fcc-9db1-45b4-890e-e4288ea41a4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mdredux.blogspot.com/2006/09/price-controls-for-physician-services.html?showComment=1160585520000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961852 | 466 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Project Public Service took place in September 2003-2007 with a Congressionally-authorized grant administered through the US Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Project Public Service was designed to advance the mission of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, which is to inspire and prepare students to be public service-minded leaders who impact public policy for the common good. The Project included several individual research projects by USF faculty members.
Required Federal Disclosures: Project Public Service was funded with $993,500 in federal funds. There was also an administrative overhead ("F&A") contribution of $348,430 from the University of San Francisco. Thus federal funds accounted for 74% and nongovernmental sources account for 26% of the overall project funding.
- Inspire and equip students to enter public service and impact public policy, with fundamental concern for and understanding of underserved and disenfranchised persons and communities.
- Conduct projects that will have impact, that will be innovative and that can be replicated elsewhere, towards the advancement of the civic education, both academic and practical, of university students.
- Capitalize on USF's unique strengths, including a 400-year Jesuit tradition of service and training "men and women for others;" an engaged faculty; an extraordinarily diverse student body; a complex and sophisticated urban setting; a Service Learning requirement for all postsecondary students; a Law School and Business School with strong clinical and service emphases; and a partnership with the California Dispute Resolution Institute.
Project Public Service consisted of the following individual research projects:
- Public Service Leadership Recruitment Program
- Citizenship Development Research Project
- Political Ethics Course Development
- Public Service Resource Bank
- Globalization Ethics Project
- Medley of Events on Public Service
- Conflict Resolution Compendium
- Service Learning Conference Attendance, Syllabus and Site Development
- McCarthy Public Service Research Fellowships
- Homelessness Community Partnership
- Community Connections: Bridging the Digital Divide
- Asian American Civic Engagement Project
- PICO Project
- Public Service Leadership Recruitment Program: Focused recruitment program targeting outstanding students who exhibit an interest in public service to encourage application to and enrollment at USF and subsequent participation in McCarthy Center programs.
Project Leader: McCarthy Center Staff
- Citizenship Development Research Project: This Project conducted formal academic research, in collaboration with a research team in the New York City area, to study and understand how university students develop knowledge about, interest in, and become involved in active citizenship.
Project Leader: Professor David Marcotte, SJ, Department of Psychology
- Political Ethics Course Development: The purpose of this project was to prepare an undergraduate course in political ethics, based upon cases that represent standard ethical problems that can be encountered in public life. A team of four faculty members representing the Departments of Politics and Philosophy designed the course and collected case studies and secondary materials.
Project Leaders: Professors Al Jonsen, Fromm Institute, Brian Weiner, Department of Politics; Ron Sundstrom, Department of Philosophy
- Public Service Resource Bank: The purpose of this project was to catalogue and disseminate important public policy resources for postsecondary students. A Public Policy Research Guide was developed in collaboration with the USF Gleeson Library
Project Leader: McCarthy Center Staff
- Globalization Ethics Project: This project produced a paper presenting a framework of the ethical principles evident in the mission statements of major international financing institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO. It then examined those principles relative to the actions of these organizations in a select number of case studies.
Project Leader: Professor Les Myers, School of Business and Management
- Medley of Events on Public Service: The McCarthy Center sponsored events for the USF community and the public at large on important, topical issues relating to public policy and public service.
Project Leader: McCarthy Center Staff
- Conflict Resolution Compendium: This project compiled a comprehensive compendium of the theories, methodologies and practices, and the experienced efficacies thereof, of major approaches to inter-group conflict resolution. The resulting document serves as a baseline primer for inquirers and practitioners alike, a significant contribution to the field of conflict resolution, as nothing such as this currently exists.
Project Leader: Fairuz Abdullah, California Dispute Resolution Institute (CDRI)
- Service Learning Conference Attendance, Syllabus and Site Development: The University's Office of Service Learning is a core component of the Center. This project module consisted of facilitating the development of syllabi that incorporate service learning elements and the development of actual service learning sites; attendance by faculty members at important service learning conferences also was also enabled.
Project Leader: Julie Reed, Director of Office of Service Learning
- McCarthy Public Service Research Fellowships: The Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good (the Center) awarded $109,582 in fellowships to USF faculty for research that inspires and equips USF students to engage in public service and impact public policy with fundamental concern for poor and marginalized communities.
- Partnership on the Homeless in San Francisco: The McCarthy Center, with the St. Anthony Foundation and Homebase, formed the Partnership for Promoting Real Solutions to Homelessness. The goal of the Partnership was to build support for implementing practical policy responses to the problem of homelessness in San Francisco. The Partnership hosted briefings and presentations in an effort to form coalitions of support.
- Community Connections: Bridging the Digital Divide: We established a project known as Community Connections in the USF Computer Science (CS) department, with the goal of fostering a service learning culture within the USF CS department. There were three major results to date from this project:
- We established a Service Learning course (CS 480), offered every Spring semester, in which CS students work with local nonprofits to assist them with technology and IT support.
- We had a group of approximately 20 students provide ongoing technical support and assistance to several Bay Area nonprofits, including Network Ministries, Breakthrough Collaborative, and Hire-ability.org.
- We took nine USF students to Tacna, Peru, where we installed and networked approximately 100 donated computers in two local schools. This was part of an ongoing effort to provide computers to poor schools in Latin America. We currently have two students following up by spending 3 weeks in Tacna, working with the teachers to help them incorporate computing technology into their classes.
Photo Gallery: March 2004
Project Leaders: Professors Chris Brooks and David Wolber, Computer Science Department
- Asian American Civic Engagement Project (AACEP): Although there is a large Asian American population in the San Francisco Bay Area and at the University, Asian Americans are under-represented in the formal processes of governance. This project attempted to encourage and stimulate increased participation and involvement of Asian Americans in public life and service, including public forums, visiting scholars, and funding for student internships.
Bridge Scholars: For the spring semester of 2005, AACEP welcomed Community Bridge Scholar Jay Mendoza, Executive Director of FOCUS to USF who performed presentations and lectures, interacted with students and faculty, created joint activities between USF and the community, and developed educational materials related to civic commitment and campus-community relations.
Student Internships: AACEP provided funding to students to support summer internships at San Francisco Bay Area Asian-American public or nonprofit organizations.
Project Leader: Professors Jay Gonzalez, Politics Department and David Kim, Philosophy Department
- PICO Project: The Pacific Institute for Community Organizing ("PICO") is the leading organization in empowering marginalized communities to engage in formal processes of public policy and program change. It has over 350 affiliates in California and scores of others elsewhere. The PICO Project will produce a vernacular description of the PICO model of organizing and empowerment for widespread use, complete with a series of oral histories of some of its principals.
Project Leader: Robert Blair Kaiser, McCarthy Center Visiting Scholar, 2003-04.
Back to Top | <urn:uuid:512eeedd-7cdf-4f0a-a617-4a7f65bf1bb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usfca.edu/centers/mccarthy/research/project/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927116 | 1,644 | 1.851563 | 2 |
The wrecked destroyers USS Downes (DD-375) and USS Cassin (DD-372) in Drydock One at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, soon after the end of the Japanese air attack. Battleship USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) is astern, occupying the rest of the drydock. When the Japanese raiders arrived over Pearl Harbor, Fleet Flagship Pennsylvania was in Pearl Harbor Navy Yard's largest drydock and therefore was beyond the reach of the torpedoes that inflicted such devastation on four of the fleet's other heavy ships. Though bombers of the second wave attacked her, Pennsylvania was directly hit only once, by a 550-pound (250-kilogram) bomb that struck amidships, putting some of her five-inch guns out of action but generally causing only minor damage to the heavily-constructed ship. Also in the drydock, side-by-side ahead of Pennsylvania, the destroyers Cassin and Downes were not nearly so lucky. Several bombs hit on or near them, puncturing their thin hulls with fragments, releasing fuel oil and starting major fires that badly strained their structure. They were further damaged by exploding ammunition and the detonation of one of Downes's torpedoes, which blew a large hole in her midships port side. Finally, when the drydock was partially flooded as a precaution against an attack on its entrance caisson, Cassin came partially afloat and capsized against her consort. The fires caused additional, but superficial, damage to Pennsylvania's bow, and the two destroyers were almost completely wrecked.The torpedo-damaged cruiser USS Helena (CL-50) is in the right distance, beyond the crane. Visible in the center distance is the capsized USS Oklahoma (BB-37), with USS Maryland (BB-46) alongside. Smoke is from the sunken and burning USS Arizona (BB-39), out of view behind Pennsylvania. USS California (BB-44) is partially visible at the extreme left. This image has been attributed to Navy Photographer's Mate Harold Fawcett (January 13, 1917 - June 5, 1999) who was wounded in the knee during the attack. These photos were suppressed until December 1942. | <urn:uuid:b2bf690d-68d5-4bf7-9f32-40f30d29b31c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldwar2database.com/gallery3/index.php/wwii1398 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959672 | 453 | 3 | 3 |
Kate and William's strange food choices during their honeymoon has led to even more baby-making speculation.
They ate what? As US Magazine reports, William and Kate (aka the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) could have ordered just about anything to eat and drink during their super-deluxe Seychelles honeymoon—so why did they have their private villa stocked with the rather odd combination of cream cheese and Brussels sprouts?
If all those "we can't wait to have a baby" rumors we've been hearing are true, this menu choice could be more than a case of quirky taste buds. For couples trying to conceive, Brussels sprouts are a great dietary source for folic acid, the fertility-boosting nutrient that assists with healthy sperm production in men and egg maturation in women (folic acid remains important during pregnancy as a way to reduce certain birth defects). Brussels sprouts, like broccoli, cabbage, and other cruciferous vegetable, also contain indole-3 carbinol (I3C), a natural compound that some natural health experts believe helps to balance the body's estrogen levels and gives fertility a lift, especially when women struggle with fibroids, endometriosis, and other conditions related to too much estrogen.
As for the cream cheese, the creamier the better for a couple trying to conceive. As a study of over 18,000 women found consumption of low-fat and skim-milk products, including cheese, resulted in decreased fertility in women, while consumption of full-fat dairy products increased fertility. As researchers explain, when milk is skimmed, estrogens are removed along with the fat, leaving behind only male hormones. Eating dairy products made from skim or reduced-fat milk (and getting too many unbalanced androgens) could disrupt female fertility.
What else should you be eating? A balanced diet is key, but it can't hurt—and may even help—to sample some healthy foods known for their fertility-boosting powers. Why not start with shellfish? Just one tiny oyster is an incredibly rich source for zinc, a nutrient that aids in testosterone production in men and helps maintain healthy cell division in the earliest stages of pregnancy. Or check out chicken—the low-protein source is also a good source for B3, another vitamin that assists in sex hormone production. Going nuts trying to have a baby? Then eat nuts. Brazil nuts and almonds, in particular, contain nutrients that may help you crunch your way to conception.
As for Kate and William, we don't know what they are having for dinner tonight, but we're sure there will be much more news about what's on the menu for everyone's favorite royal couple. | <urn:uuid:18be32ec-39a6-410f-8ecf-2a67b577addd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.babyzone.com/getting-pregnant/fertility-boosters/fertility-foods-kate-and-william-s-honeymoon-food-requests_202450 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963447 | 553 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Designed for associate-degree MLT/CLT programs and baccalaureate MT/CLS programs, this textbook presents the essentials of clinical microbiology. It provides balanced coverage of specific groups of microorganisms and the work-up of clinical specimens by organ system, and also discusses the role of the microbiology laboratory in regard to emerging infections, healthcare epidemiology, and bioterrorism. Clinical case studies and self-assessment questions show how to incorporate the information into everyday practice.
More than 400 illustrations and visual information displays enhance the text. Essentials boxes, chapter outlines, key terms, summaries, and other study aids help students retain information.
A bound-in CD-ROM includes additional review questions, case studies, and Web links.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1. I’ll be honest, I am a slow learner… This book is great, it’s has great explanations. I started studying this the summer before the actual class and totally understood the concepts before it was taught to me (thats not an easy thing for me to do). I have an “A” in class thus far and a lot of it is due to the book itself explaining everything in great detail and easy to understand English!!
2. Excellent (rarely have I thought that about reference books). Well written (very readable) making it very accessible for the reader. The material is well structured into chapters that can be tackled one at a time ensuring the book is not a daunting read (you don’t need a long stretch in solitary to get through it!). Overall a very good introduction, as a non-medically trained epidemiologist this book is what I have been looking for a while. It provides just the right amount of detail and background to laboratory testing for infectious diseases that I need to engage with my diagnostic colleagues. A book I would certainly recommend.
3. Just what I needed for my Microbiology and Pathogenic class. It is also a very good book; easy to understand and has all the important information for identification and classification of microorganisms. This book does not have a chapter on cellular respiration which we did have to cover in class, but overall this book is easy to understand and very helpful.
GET IT HERE | <urn:uuid:465e30db-7795-4a4c-bad5-623e6b81a192> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medicalbooksfree.com/category/microbiology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937032 | 464 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Can we get real and cease with the tired rhetoric? Credit card companies are not evil.
When it comes to profits, credit card companies are also no more greedy than, say, the Hollywood movie industry.
As someone who has been a credit card user for more than 20 years, I have never once been taken advantage of by a credit card company. In fact, they’ve always gone out of their way to ensure they keep me a satisfied customer – despite the fact that I’ve never paid a penny in interest to them over all that time. That’s just one reason why I refuse to cut up my credit cards – and why maybe you shouldn’t, either.
I know what you’re thinking: But, Len, how can that possibly be? Credit card companies don’t care about their customers!
They most certainly do. The competition out there between the credit card companies is fierce – especially for their best customers.
And just who are their best customers? Is it the poor sap who’s exceeded his credit limit and is making the minimum payment each month – at an interest rate of 29.9 percent – on a balance of $15,576? Nope.
Think about it. How on earth can a high credit-risk individual who’s always one missed payment away from defaulting on his debt and leaving the credit card companies holding the bag be their best customer?
The reality is a credit card company’s best customers are people like you and me: folks with superb credit who charge nearly everything they buy each month to their card and then pay the balance off in full at the end of each month.
Even though we don’t pay a cent of interest to them, the credit card companies love folks like you and me because we earn them a steady stream of income from the merchant transaction fees that are generated every time we use our cards. Best of all, because we are financially responsible, they have almost zero risk of us ever defaulting on thousands of dollars of their money. As a result, the credit card companies are more than happy to let us take advantage of them.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s post…
One day not too long ago, I noticed my wife and I were charged $107.47 interest on our credit card statement.
So I called customer service to say there must be some mistake. Unfortunately, there was no mistake at all. It turns out the credit card company received my payment one day beyond the end of the grace period, and so interest charges were applied as per the terms of the contract I agreed to when I first got the card. Fair enough.
Truth be told, this was the third or fourth time in 20 years that I had interest charges applied because a payment got to the credit card company a day or two late.
Hold on, Len. But you said you’ve never paid a dime of credit card interest in 20 years. How did you get the interest charges waived each time?
I simply asked.
And their reply was as swift as it was decisive, “That will be no problem at all, Mr. Penzo.”
Hey, why wouldn’t they waive the charges? I’m one of their best customers. Well-run corporations aren’t in business because they are stupid. They know I’d leave them in a New York minute if they let those charges stick, and I’m worth much more to them than $107.47.
Just keep in mind that if you make late payments more than once per year, it will probably take more than simply asking to get your credit card company to waive those interest fees. And who can blame them?
Credit card companies certainly aren’t evil. Not by a long shot. But they are in business to make money. | <urn:uuid:b237a411-ddca-41cf-81e2-4e6f4165d9d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/this-simple-trick-will-get-your-credit-card-interest-charges-waived-2011-11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979179 | 802 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Archbishop of Canterbury leads gay summit -1/12/04
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will lead a summit of more than 50 Church of England bishops today to discuss the way forward over the homosexuality crisis in the Anglican Church, reports the Times. It folows a 3?-page letter from the Archbishop, sent on Friday to Primates, warning of serious consequences if Anglicans do not heal their rift. The meeting, to be chaired jointly with the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, will take place behind closed doors at Lambeth Palace, in London. All 44 diocesan bishops and 10 suffragans have been invited to debate how to give a lead to their flock over Octoberís Windsor Report, the document produced by the commission set up to examine the crisis. The report called for a moratorium on the authorisation of same-sex blessing ceremonies and on the consecration of gay bishops and for statements of regret from provinces that had breached the ìbonds of communionî. It also proposed a covenant to be agreed by all 38 provinces to inhibit further schismatic developments. | <urn:uuid:4cb63274-a1ae-4176-8d61-f87d4f96ab90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_04121row.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947993 | 226 | 1.59375 | 2 |
William Gates III
In 1974, when the world's first commercial microcomputer was unveiled in a hobbyists' magazine, Gates and his boyhood friend Paul Allen immediately saw the potential of the thing, and Gates dropped out of Harvard at age 19 to co-found the world's first microcomputer software company.
All these efforts have paid off. Gates's tennis game improved. He is mastering African geography. And his stock in the Microsoft Corp., of which he is chairman and chief executive officer, is worth $2.5 billion. A phenomenal burst of growth has taken the company from 38 employees in 1980 to some 5,000 today, and due to Gates's generous stock option program, a number of his workers are paper millionaires.
Few of them put in longer hours than the boss. Gates has happily devoted his life—in year after year of seven-day weeks and 15-hour days—to building Microsoft from a shaky student venture into a billion-dollar-a-year giant. A brilliant programmer, he wrote key portions of early Microsoft software and still spends much of his time with company programmers, critiquing their work and contributing his own ideas. But unlike such other computer whiz kids as Apple's Steve Jobs and Mitch Kapor of Lotus, who were not entirely comfortable in the corporate world. Gates is also a masterful business strategist. In the early days of the PC industry, when companies were opening and folding daily (12 of his initial clients went bust). Gates's conservative administration kept Microsoft solvent, with enough surplus cash to finance its own growth. Gates also forged a series of alliances with computer hardware manufacturers, most notably IBM, that gave him a powerful role in shaping—and getting a big share of—the microcomputer software industry.
Today Microsoft's MS-DOS ("disk operating system"—the program that controls a computer's basic functions) is used with 50 million IBM-compatible desktop computers. The company is also a leader in applications software, with such entries as Microsoft Word, a word-processing program, and Excel, a spreadsheet. In May, after earlier versions faltered, it brought to market Windows 3.0, a wildly successful program that gives IBM-compatible machines the ease of use of the (generally more expensive) Apple Macintosh. "One of our big problems," says recently retired Microsoft president Jon Shirley, "is what to do with all the cash we generate."
Success, or perhaps advancing age—Gates is, after all, now pushing 35—has slowed him down a little. He rarely pulls all-nighters at the office anymore. He takes weekend evenings and most Sundays off. Last winter he even took a Caribbean vacation, although he takes pains to point out that the trip involved only five days away from work. "There were nine days," he concedes, "[but] with weekends on the ends."
For Gates, nothing is as much fun as running Microsoft. "It's a pretty neat job." he says in his typically youthful lingo. His enthusiasm for computers and software is still that of a bright 13-year-old—which is what Gates was when the Mothers' Club at his private school in Seattle bought time on a mainframe computer for the students. Intrigued, Gates, a math whiz, could soon write a program to play ticktacktoe.
He and like-minded friends, including Paul Allen, began hanging out at a local computer company, where they were so eager to learn how the machines worked that they would root around for scraps of paper left by programmers. "Paul would hoist me up on the garbage cans, and I'd get the notes out with the coffee grounds on them and study the operating system," Gates recalls. "We were total addicts," Allen says.
But unlike his hacker friends, Gates—whose father is a prominent Seattle attorney and whose mother sits on the boards of the University of Washington and several corporations—had a head for business too. "I was the mover," Gates says. "I was the guy who said, 'Let's call the real world and try to sell something to it.' " He and his friends wrote a payroll program for a computer time-sharing company, then started a company called Traf-O-Data, which analyzed traffic patterns for city and county governments. Traf-O-Data hired seventh graders to transcribe the information from those black hoses laid across highways. Then Traf-O-Data executives (including Gates, age 14) fed the data into a computer.
During the last half of his senior year in high school, Gates got permission to forgo classes in favor of working 170 miles away as a full-time, $30,000-a-year computer programmer at TRW. He drove home for graduation and then, two months later, set off for Harvard, where he went into a bit of a funk. "At my high school I was kind of unique," he says. At Harvard he wasn't: there were lots of very bright kids around. Gates had thought he might become a math professor—until he met other students who were better at math than he was.
Gates passed his time playing pinball, bridge and poker in all-night games where players could win or lose $2,000. He speaks gleefully of the economics exam he aced, through a last-minute burst of studying, without ever going to class—and can even remember the questions. He also earned a reputation as an eccentric. "I heard about this crazy guy," recalls Steve Ballmer, a dormitory neighbor who is now a senior Microsoft executive. "He never put sheets on his bed. He went home for Christmas vacation with the door to his room open, the lights on, money on the desk, the windows open, and it was raining, and Bill was in Seattle."
In December 1974 Paul Allen, who was working near Boston, spotted an article about the world's first home computer, the Altair 8800, in Popular Electronics. By today's standards it was laughably primitive, with only 256 bytes of memory (most computers today come with at least 640.000). It also had no software—programs that would enable it to do something. Seeing an opportunity, Gates and Allen called the manufacturer, MITS, in Albuquerque, N. Mex., and told the president they had written a version of BASIC, a popular computer language, for the Altair. When he said he'd like to see it, Gates and Allen, who had written nothing, started working night and day in Gates's dormitory room. Making the program fit in the Altair's tiny memory was a major challenge, but Gates, who wrote most of it, succeeded. "That's the coolest program I ever did." he says. "We just had this book that described the machine. If we had read the book wrong, or the book was wrong, we were hosed."
Instead, the program worked perfectly. Allen moved to Albuquerque, and Gates soon dropped out of Harvard and followed. Together they founded Microsoft. But it was hard to sell microcomputer software in a world with few microcomputers, so Gates set about lobbying major electronics firms to manufacture the new devices. Executives who came to Albuquerque were surprised to walk into meetings and be confronted by a bunch of long-haired youths. "You could see it on their faces," recalls Steve Wood, an early Microsoft employee. "Their first reaction was, "Who are all these kids? Where's the leader?' Then Bill would take charge of the meeting and, within 10 minutes, that wouldn't be an issue anymore."
Gates lost no opportunity to corner a market. In 1980, when he learned that IBM was having trouble obtaining an operating system for its new PC, Gates bought some software from a small Seattle company for a reported $50,000, developed it into the MS-DOS program and provided it to IBM on a royalty basis. IBM's clout made MS-DOS the world standard, and royalties from the program still bring Gates some $200 million a year. Next, Gates expanded into applications software until Microsoft led the PC software industry in sales. "We have a maniacal work ethic here." says Scott Oki. a Microsoft senior vice president. "Everyone has a sense of participating in a crusade."
Gates is their natural leader. It is only fitting for a company filled with software engineers to be headed by a man who has twice been described on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as a "nerd." And Gates does fit that bill. For years a favorite Saturday night pastime was watching videotapes of university physics lectures on his VCR. But Gates also has a quick sense of humor—asked how the prosperity of Microsoft has affected his personality, he replies. "I smile when I tell people to work harder"—and an engaging personality. "A nerd couldn't be a good manager and a good leader of a company," he says. His peers agree. Gates is treated like an elder statesman in the computer industry, his pronouncements pored over for keys to the future.
Gates has made his employees comfortable on the four-year-old Microsoft office campus, a cluster of low-rise buildings around a pond (dubbed Lake Gates) in a woodsy suburb of Seattle, and he looks and lives like one of the guys. He buys his suits off the rack, flies coach and, for late-night snacks, calls out for pizza or opens a can of SpaghettiOs (as a "random test of discipline." Gates hasn't eaten meat for three years). He employs a part-time housekeeper who replenishes the larder. He could, of course, have pâté flown in nightly from Paris if he cared to. His wealth, he acknowledges, is "effectively infinite in terms of 'what do I decide to do.' " Paul Allen, who left Microsoft during a bout with cancer in 1982 but still owns more than $1 billion in stock, has founded his own software company and purchased the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team with some of his discretionary cash. Gates's main indulgence in the past has been cars; he owns two Porsches (one a million-dollar limited edition), a classic Mustang and a Lexus. Now he's doing a little catching up by building a new house.
"I'd like a home that's more interesting than most homes," he says. So Gates is building it into the side of a hill on five adjacent lots on the shore of Lake Washington. Its 37,000 square feet of living space will include a swimming pool, a trampoline, a library for 14,000 books, a game room, a movie theater, a beach, underground parking for 26 cars and a pavilion that will comfortably seat 100 for dinner.
Planning ahead, Gates has included bedrooms for five children. He has said in the past that he would like to marry and have a family. He occasionally takes a couple of days off—usually at Thanksgiving—to walk on the beach and think about his personal life, although he admits that business does cross his mind. At those times, he says, "I've had mixed-mode thinking." His competitors in the software business can't wait for him to settle down. Willard Peterson, executive vice president of the WordPerfect Corp., recently told the Wall Street Journal, "We'd love to see Bill get married and have a few kids. We'd love to see him mellow out."
Neither mellowness nor children appear imminent, although Gates does have a girlfriend, whom he declines to name. "She's someone in the industry I met because of work," he says. She accompanied him to the Caribbean last winter. So did several books on scientific topics, which Gates reads for fun. (He is especially interested in biotechnology, which he describes as his hobby.)
Gates's new house will have high-definition TV monitors in most rooms, but not for watching Geraldo ("Who's Geraldo?" Gates asks) or even science lectures. Instead they will display images from a collection of several hundred thousand stored in a computer. "We'll have images of most of the famous art, cars, planes, maps, boats," says Gates. "So if you type in 'French sculpture,' you'll see French sculpture. If you type in 'snow resorts,' you'll see snow resorts.... You're sitting at a table and someone says, 'Russia's bleak.' So you say, i don't think it's so bleak,' type 'Russia' and take a look."
Pushing a button on a penlike pointer will superimpose explanatory captions on the screens. "Say I was going to Brazil," Gates says. "I could type 'things that relate to Brazil.' And the week before I go, whenever I'm walking around, I'm seeing pictures and maps and people and art from Brazil." Which would, of course, be a very efficient use of his time. | <urn:uuid:bce1a5c3-9df4-4dcf-a6d4-439ae5cd4581> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20118511,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981553 | 2,664 | 2.265625 | 2 |
“As the Honourable Members are aware, our balance of payments with India has been worsening and the RMA has been facing a severe scarcity of Indian Rupees…” That was the finance minister’s opening line when he introduced the Tax Revision Bill in the National Assembly earlier today.
Yes, our balance of payments with India is in bad shape. And we are facing a severe shortage of Indian currency. In other words, we face a rupee crisis.
We have a crisis in our hands. And it’s no point playing the blame game. We must work together – we must think and act as one – to overcome the current crisis. And we must seize every economic opportunity, old and new, so that we emerge stronger from these difficult times.
Still, we must know who got us into this mess. And we must hold that person to account. That’s if we are serious about good governance. That’s if we are serious about getting out of this mess. Otherwise, with the same person in charge, the situation will just get worse.
So yesterday, during the National Assembly’s Question Hour, I asked the finance minister to tell us who should take responsibility for the rupee crisis. My question was straightforward:
The rupee crisis has caused a great deal of hardship to the people of Bhutan. More importantly, the crisis could compromise the economic sovereignty and security of our country. Will the Hon’ble Minister please explain who will take responsibility for the rupee crisis?
My question was straightforward. But the reply, which offered a detailed account of the causes and solutions of the rupee problem, was long and cumbersome. And the reply did not point out who, specifically, should be held accountable. Instead, the finance minister indicated that the Bhutanese people were both responsible and accountable for the current situation.
So let’s take a poll. Let’s see who we think should assume responsibility for the rupee crisis. Should it be the prime minister? Or should it be the finance minister? Or the RMA governor? Or should it be the people at large who should take responsibility for the economic mess? | <urn:uuid:d7dac48d-2e98-4b99-b2d4-9fda02183499> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tsheringtobgay.com/economy/2012/responsible-government.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961499 | 448 | 1.6875 | 2 |
JERSEY SHORE - Donnie Laubscher was a healthy 47-year-old man when blood work from a routine colonoscopy suggested something was wrong. After a marrow biopsy and appointments at the local cancer center, he found out he had myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare and potentially fatal stem cell disorder.
Laubscher's doctors believe his best chance at survival is to receive a stem cell transplant, but first a matching donor must be found.
To help him, a bone marrow donor registration drive is being held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Elks Lodge 1057, 203 N. Main St., to increase the odds of finding a match. Anyone can do a cheek swab to register as a marrow donor.
The drive was arranged by April Hennigan, of Jersey Shore, who works with Laubscher's wife Angie. Hennigan contacted DKMS, the world's largest bone marrow donor center, to set up the donor registration.
"If I can swab a little over 500 people, I'd be thrilled," Hennigan said.
She found statistics that show for every 500 people swabbed, one might be a match for someone.
IF YOU GO:
WHAT: Bone marrow donor registration
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Elks Lodge 1057, 203 N. Main St., Jersey Shore
"The more people you get swabbed, the more chance you have of not only helping Donnie, but anyone who needs bone marrow," she said.
To qualify, donors must be between the ages of 18 and 55 and in good health. Registrants must weigh more than 110 pounds, but not exceed a body mass index of 40. Registering donors can be matched with anyone in the system who needs a bone marrow transplant.
People who register to be a bone marrow donor stay on an anonymous list until their 61st birthday and are expected to update their contact information until then in case they match someone who needs the bone marrow.
If a match is found, a representative will contact the donor to fill out a health questionnaire and possibly undergo additional testing, according to DKMS.
"It would be a miracle if we can find one for Donnie, but it would be a miracle if we could find one for anyone," Hennigan said. "Whose life wouldn't you want to save?" | <urn:uuid:2efd1c7d-538b-42c3-8106-4afea24129f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sungazette.com/page/content.detail/id/578183/Bone-marrow-donor-registration-for-Jersey-Shore-man.html?nav=5011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958691 | 509 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Earthapprentice is a organization in Michigan, USA promoting solar cooking wthrough workshops on cooking and construction of solar cookers. The group was founded by Benjamin Brown. He began teaching in 2002, and has trained over forty participants so far. Primarily he teaches construction of CooKits.
Recent news and developmentsEdit
- February 2013: - Benjamin Brown, of EarthApprentice, Solar Cooking in Michigan (SCM), continues to raise awareness of solar cooking potential in the north country by speaking on and demonstrating solar cooker technology. This year's presentation focused on the Jim LaJoie’s All Season Solar Cooker. SCM also encourages donations to Solar Cookers International. The Willard G. Pierce and Jessie M. Pierce Foundation, the charitable arm of PCCEI, graciously responded to SCM’s program by providing a grant to Solar Cookers International. SCM also sent a Villager Sun Oven to Haiti in conjunction with a Kiwanis Aid Program and First Congregational Church of Charlotte, Michigan. Besides an advocate for solar cooking globally, Benjamin and his family frequently use their solar cookers at their home in Michigan, including a successful challenge to prepare every meal with solar cooking for the month of April last year. Read more at EarthApprentice update 2012 | <urn:uuid:68cfde54-5e32-4487-9f70-f715efe70670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Earthapprentice?oldid=58121 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913458 | 264 | 1.695313 | 2 |
When transferring files from one computer to another, it sometimes changes the page layout of the book. The most common problem is called text re-flow. Re-flow is the sliding or shifting of text and pictures from the page that you had them on to a different page. Different font settings for various printers are usually the cause of this shifting, but there are other software reasons also. Sometimes the typist may insert several hard returns to finish a page and move to the next chapter instead of using a hard page break at the bottom of the page. Hard page breaks are inserted by positioning the cursor at the bottom of the page and pressing the Ctrl and Enter keys together. It is highly recommended that this be done when you reach the end of a chapter or want some extra white space at the bottom of a page. Hard page returns are not necessary when submitting a PDF file because PDFs won’t re-flow.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
It was one year ago that I started this blog. I had several people suggest to me that I record many of the tips that I have learned over the 30+ years that I have worked on family histories. So from those suggestions came these helpful tips. My passion is to help people record and share their life stories; therefore my hope is that this blog has been helpful to you.
Keep reading and I’ll keep writing.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
If your book is done in columns or with a small page size, then it is usually better to hyphenate words. Your right hand margin will be more even and your page layout will look better. Most word processors will automatically hyphenate words for you, but you need to proofread your book carefully to be sure that the hyphen didn’t end up in an unfortunate place. There are a few words that when split in the wrong place make two separate words, like ‘the-rapist’ and ‘thin-king’. While these “howlers” could be funny to some people, they could be upsetting to others. It is better to be safe than sorry, so look for the hyphenation howlers before you approve that final proof copy.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
In laying out your pages, avoid creating paragraphs which start on the last line of a page or which finish on the first of the next. These isolated lines of text are called ‘widows and orphans’. The solution to this problem is to set your word processor to control the number of lines on a page so as to push the text forward (turn on the widows and orphans feature). You can also move the paragraph to the next page manually, but do this last thing before you publish the book. It will leave an extra-large gap at the bottom of a page but that will look better than an isolated single line of text. | <urn:uuid:b70e8c3b-023a-4926-a791-34106cf1da7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fhpublishing.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957929 | 592 | 2.234375 | 2 |
NAME: JOHN GRZINICH
PROJECT NAME: EQUAL and DISTANT LINES
John Grzinich is a sound and video artist from
the US who lives, works and travels extensively in Europe.
Since the early 1990s John has worked with sound as an abstract
medium; this includes music compositions, building of instruments
and the construction of installations. Over the past two years he
has been working with digital video and have experimented with the
integration of both video and sound. John is now helping coordinate
the activities of the MOKS media lab.
INTERVIEW IN SIRP CULTURAL WEEKLY ABOUT POSTSOVKHOZ3
the new border to Moostonia
a spontaneous sound action with the sculptures
the engineer at work
cushla gives a listen | <urn:uuid:88c3ecbe-4ba4-44aa-b05a-ba5ecbe75441> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moks.ee/arhiiv/PostsovkhoZ/PS3/jgrzinich.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909651 | 169 | 1.53125 | 2 |
He lavishes praise on Sarmila Bose's Dead Reckoning. 'As all good history tends to do, it complicates and contradicts the heroic narrative of national struggle.' Her book - I've just started reading it and it is wonderfully well written - challenges the conventional Bangladeshi nationalist account of the killings amid which the nation was born. She suggests that the massacres by the Pakistani army and its sympathisers were nothing like as bloody as often recounted - and that the killing of Bengali Hindus and of Urdu-speaking Biharis by advocates of Bangladeshi independence were much more substantial that previously imagined.
The other article is Amit Chaudhuri's Diary in the London Review of Books - a chronicle of the final demise of 34 years of Communist-led state government in India's West Bengal. Communist dominance was an indirect consequence of Partition. Bengali Communists won the loyalty of East Bengali refugees - not their only 'vote bank', in Indian political parlance, but an important one. In the last few days, Communist croneyism has been voted out in favour of the shrill populism of Mamata Bannerjee, West Bengal's Joan of Arc (my analogy not Amit Chaudhuri's).
Reading it all, I pine for Alimuddin Street and Chowringhee and Calcutta's Maidan - and for that sight as you fly in to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport of 'the palm and plantain trees, low houses and ponds'. As they say in the west: 'Oh, Calcutta!' | <urn:uuid:ab0938a5-7e9d-4b0c-9b09-9c6365447040> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.andrewwhitehead.net/1/post/2011/05/the-two-bengals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966515 | 318 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Can Using EMS Systems Alter Natural Muscle Regeneration?
Most people who are dedicated exercise enthusiasts have a very well thought-out exercise regimen. They know exactly when and how they will work out, what muscle groups they will target, the amount of strain they will place upon themselves, their fitness goals, their diet, and just about anything else pertaining to exercise.
That said, there are many problems associated with over-training. Signs of over-training are sub-standard results, possible injury, infection and colds, mood changes, changing sleep patterns and poor performance.
Today, many fitness experts posit that these problems are not a sign of over-exertion. Rather, they are a sign of under-recovery. By under-recovery, these researchers mean that devout exercisers are not allowing their body enough time to recuperate because they are not taking enough breaks between periods of strenuous exercise. These break periods are critical because they allow muscles to reinvigorate and regenerate -the tiny tears in the muscle need to repair and reform to allow increased strength and fitness..
These experts are recommending that serious athletes develop a recovery plan in addition to an exercise plan. This recovery plan is just as important as the exercise itself, and will greatly benefit and athlete’s health and well-being.
Electro Muscle stimulation, or EMS, is one of several effective methods to encourage muscle regeneration. EMS works by pulsing a low level of electricity through a targeted muscle or muscle group. Typical EMS systems cost several hundred dollars and consist of a main unit and many electrodes wired to it. To use an EMS, the electrodes are applied to the body in targeted areas.
EMS is often used as a strength builder. In addition to a normal workout it can be quite effective. To use EMS to encourage muscle regeneration, you should set the unit a low intensity and high frequency. Doing so will improve blood circulation to a specific area. Using EMS as an aid to regeneration is particularly successful because it enables you to target specific muscle groups. After you have exerted these groups, you can apply EMS and accelerate the regeneration and recuperation process.
However, EMS alone is not the best way to recuperate. Exercise experts highly recommend combining EMS recuperation treatments with one or more different recuperation methods. Here is a quick rundown of a few of those methods.
It is crucial that large amounts of water or electrolyte beverage be consumed during and after a strenuous workout. Glycogen is used at a higher rate when athletes don’t hydrate adequately. This results in increased fatigue and a slow recuperation process.
During and after a workout, blood flows to muscles at a much higher rate than normal. This increased bloodflow (up to 50%) will continue for as many as three hours after the workout is over. During this time, the body is primed to ingest nutrients. Both carbohydrates and proteins are necessary. These nutrients will help an athlete maintain his or her energy level and better regenerate muscle tissue. Waiting longer than three hours after a workout to eat can greatly increase recuperation time.
Stretching targeted muscle groups before and after a workout is essential for safety, performance and recuperation. Athletes are highly recommended to learn the best and most effective stretches for muscle groups they exercise in a given workout, and to rigorously use them. | <urn:uuid:5120616e-cc25-4b90-9f18-6d86357d4ab2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sleepsogood.com/blog/can-using-ems-systems-alter-natural-muscle-regeneration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952668 | 689 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Friday, February 19, 2010
From the Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. -- The office of New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg says the 86-year-old Democrat has stomach cancer.
Spokesman Caley Gray says doctors for the nation's second-oldest U.S. senator found B-cell lymphoma of the stomach. His office says the tumor is "curable" and will require treatment over the next few months.
Dr. James Holland of New York City's Mount Sinai Medical Center says Lautenberg will receive six to eight chemotherapy treatments. The doctor says he expects a "full and complete recovery."
Lautenberg was taken to the hospital Monday after his office said he fell. The office said Tuesday the senator was treated for a bleeding ulcer.
More details are here.
Senator Lautenberg is expected to introduce the new version of his Kid Safe Chemical Act shortly. Watch his opening remarks at the recent Senate hearings on TSCA reform here on YouTube.
Biomonitoring studies routinely demonstrate that the human body has become a receptable for a variety of chemicals. Whether these are large scientifically robust analyses such as those conducted by the Center for Disease Control or less robust studies in which a handful of mothers or environmental ministers are checked for a laundry list of chemicals, the fact is that there are many chemicals that are virtually always found in our bodies. But does it really mean anything?
Ah, that's the $64,000 question (or perhaps with inflation, the $64 billion question).
An article published in the February 15, 2010 edition of the New York Times discusses this issue as it relates to the ongoing debate about reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The one thing that is clear is that "presence of a chemical in the body does not necessarily mean it will have an effect." This is repeated by the chemical industry whenever an environmental or health advocacy group publishes a report based on the analysis of a handful of people. And it is absolutely true. Both Henry Falk (of the CDC) and Linda Birnbaum (of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) concur that our ability to measure tiny amounts of chemicals in our bodies has far outpaced our ability to understand what the presence of these chemicals means relative to effects...or the lack of effects.
But others argue that the very presence of so many chemicals in the body is enough to take action.
Aye, and there is the rub. What action is appropriate?
Clearly we are in a situation in which we must make decisions even with uncertainties in our knowledge. So it seems that the focus of TSCA reform should be on collecting the information necessary to reduce that uncertainty and provide greater confidence in decision-making. The results of biomonitoring studies can inform the prioritization process under the new TSCA (or Kid Safe Act) by identifying chemicals that can be given a closer look. But biomonitoring can't be the only prioritization mechanism since we can't adequately measure all chemicals in the Inventory (roughly 85,000 of them). And new chemicals are put on the market every day. So there will be testing of new chemicals, and at the very least, of existing chemicals that have been identified as priorities for further work by their presence in the body, their widespread use, their high production volumes, or their persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) properties.
Do we need the new law to require biomonitoring of every new chemical? No. Do we need some sort of biomonitoring, such as the CDC program? Yes. Do we need a way to identify new chemicals to look for in biomonitoring studies? Yes. Will we have to make decisions based on uncertainty? Yes.
The bottom line is that biomonitoring will play a role in prioritizing chemicals for closer review, but we can't get lost focusing on biomonitoring as an end in itself. The key is to reduce risk, not merely document exposure.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Climate change and sustainable energy seems to be one of the most polarizing issues on the planet right now, and Al Gore seems to be a focal point around which much of that polarization is based. Those who love him may read this book just because of that; those who hate him may be predisposed not to read it. That would be a mistake. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should read this book.
The book, of course, is “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” Published in November of 2009, the book takes an honest look at the unsustainability of our current energy usage, and the ways we can become more sustainable. After identifying the issue, Gore takes us through a series of chapters, each of which deals with our sources of energy. The chapters include a look at our current reliance on oil, natural gas and coal; solar power; wind energy; geothermal energy; biofuels; the possibility of carbon capture and sequestration; and finally “the nuclear option.” For each energy source he gives a very readable and visually appealing overview of the current state of the technology, the advantages of each, the drawbacks of each, and the political and technological obstacles to taking fullest advantage of each. He also provides some ideas for future enhancements.
The book then goes into discussions of “living systems” such as the role of forests (and deforestation), soil, and population as related to climate change and energy usage. These are often overlooked in the debate but extraordinarily important. He also has a section on “how we use energy” in which “less is more” and the need for a super grid. The penultimate section is a thorough discussion of “the obstacles we need to overcome.” This section focuses on the need to change the way we think, the need to accurately and honestly put a true cost on carbon, and, of course, the political obstacles. While there are obviously many technological challenges still to be faced, it is clear that the real inhibition to innovation is the lack of political will, and in many cases, the downright political obstructionism. Removing these hindrances will allow America to use our full ingenuity to keep jobs in America and be on the forefront of innovation and energy self-sufficiency.
Gore ends the book with two chapters on “The Power of Information” and the fact that how we proceed is “Our Choice.” We need to “go far quickly” if we are to outcompete other countries that are not holding themselves back and if we are to correct our energy trajectory before it is too late.
To reiterate my lede, people seem to either love Al Gore or hate Al Gore, but it would be a serious mistake to pass up this book. It manages to treat a highly technical topic in a way that is accessible to the public. And it does it in a way that is highly enlightening as well as informative. If you hate Al Gore and don’t want to buy the book, then suck it up and go borrow it from the library. Cover it with a paper bag if you have to, but read it. This book is way too important to miss. Our collective energy future depends on us learning and moving forward.
Other global warming and climate change articles can be found here.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
As people following this blog no doubt have noticed, biomonitoring seems to be playing a significant part in the discussions for reform of the Toxic Substances Chemical Act (TSCA). California always seems to lead the pack when it comes to making changes that protect the environment, but the current recession has caused some problems for the watershed biomonitoring program already signed into law in 2006.
Like many states hard hit by the recession, California has recently had to furlough some staff at the California EPA, which along with the California Department of Public Health, administers the biomonitoring program and that has meant a delay in issuing a mandatory report to the state legislature on the status of the program. But the furloughs seem to be more of the tip of the iceberg, the mass of which is related to the overall deficiency in funding for the program.
The realities of the economy are that money is tight, especially with the state and federal agencies that are responsible for administering the various human and environmental health protections. Evidence seems to show that the economy is picking up and that 2010 will be a better year for most industries, including the chemical industry, but government agencies are likely to see continued cost containment for quite some time. The ramifications of this are two-fold. First, the recovering, though still fairly weak, economy may be used as an excuse not to "put additional regulatory burdens on industry." But it also demonstrates why industry, and not governments, should be responsible for demonstrating the safety of chemicals and products put on the market. Currently the system requires EPA to find significant harm, something they can't easily do given TSCA's lack of requirement to provide test data. The new system will almost certainly require test data, or other relevant and defensible data, to be submitted before new chemicals go on the market and to keep existing chemicals on the market.
The testing issue raises some additional questions related to animal welfare and the extrapolation of animal data to human effects. I'll try to address this aspect in future posts. Let me know if there are specific questions or issues that you would like me to discuss.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
"Mind Disrupted" is a report recently released with the results of a biomonitoriting project sponsored by the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI). The project involved "twelve leaders and self-advocates from the learning and developmental disabilities community" who "stepped forward to have their bodies tested for the presence of a set of known or suspected neurotoxic or endocrine disrupting chemicals."
Results indicated that "sixty-one distinct chemicals were detected in the participants." All 12 participants tested positive for at least 26 of the tested chemicals, including bisphenol A, mercury, lead, PBDEs (brominated flame retardants), PFCs (perfluorinated compounds), perchlorate, and organochlorine pesticides. The report then goes on to evaluate possible connections between exposure to these chemicals and various learning and developmental disabilities.
The report concludes that TSCA needs to be updated to:
"reflect 21st Century science - including the importance of critical windows of development, mixtures of chemicals, and low-dose exposures - to ensure current and future generations reach their fullest potential."
They also suggest that federal chemicals management be modernized to do the following:
1) Take immediate action on the worst chemicals
2) Require basic information for all chemicals in teh market and for those intended to be developed and marketed
3) Protect the most vulnerable from exposure
4) Use the best scientific methods
5) Hold industry responsible for demonstrating chemical safety
6) Prioritize environmental justice and protect low income, communities of colar and indigenous communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution
7) Enhance government coordination between agencies
8) Promote safer alternatives by implementing the principles of green chemistry
9) Ensure the "right to know" by requiring labeling of chemical ingredients in products.
Other TSCA related posts (click here and scroll for articles)
Monday, February 15, 2010
One of the areas under discussion for TSCA reform in the United States is how to deal with nanotechnology. In short, nanomaterials are really really tiny versions of some common chemicals that are already on the TSCA Inventory, and thus theoretically already considered "existing chemicals." But EPA announced last month that they are planning to issue a series of rules to better regulate nanomaterials.
Now the European Union is getting into the act. Actually, they have been working on this issue for some time and had sponsored a forum called the "FramingNano Project" under the auspices of the EU's 7th Framework Programme. The group is about to publish its recommendations in a new report, a draft of which can be read here. The FramingNano project focused on environmental health and safety, ethical and legal issues, institutional and regulatory control, communications, and international harmonization. They called for the establishment of a nanotechnology governance platform that would both provide technical advise and help make decisions on appropriate actions moving forward.
Back in the US, the new TSCA law - or Kid Safe Chemical Act if it retains the previous Lautenberg offerings - will undoubtably mention nanomaterial control specifically. Whether as a separate Title or not, it is clear that nanotechnology is a growing field of new chemistry and as such imbues a rising public concern similar to the way GMOs were introduced created a public backlash. Look for there to be data requirements triggered by the nano-sized nature of the chemical, even if the chemical composition itself has been on the market already. | <urn:uuid:c0f16b35-8093-44e0-b712-ca532652d772> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thedakepage.blogspot.com/2010_02_14_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96053 | 2,692 | 2.09375 | 2 |
NEW ORLEANS — With siblings set to coach against each other in the Super Bowl, it would be tough to argue the Harbaughs are not America's first football family.
Monday those Harbaugh brothers — John and Jim — exercised their right to strongly disagree with the nation's chief executive. With all things in play during Super Bowl week, President Barack Obama's comments to the New Republic magazine were the reason.
In the February issue of the magazine, Obama was quoted as saying if he had a son, he would have to "think long and hard" about letting him play football. Obama, a high-profile Bears fan, also added: "I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won't have to examine our consciences quite as much."
Asked for his thoughts Monday, 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said: "Well I have a 4-month old, almost 5-month old son, Jack Harbaugh, and if President Obama feels that way, then there will be a little bit less competition for Jack Harbaugh when he gets old. It's still early. Like I said, Jack is only 5 months old. He is a really big kid. He has an enormous head. We don't have a 40 (time) on him yet, but his wingspan is plus one, and as soon as he grows into that head, he is going to be something. It's early, but expectations are high for young Jack."
After the Ravens arrived in New Orleans on Monday, Baltimore coach John Harbaugh was asked for his reaction.
"I don't agree with that. I like Jim's comments," John Harbaugh said. "Jim said little Jack is going to be playing football. It's one less kid to compete against. So I like that comment.
"Football is a great game. And anybody who's played the game knows what a great game it is, what it provides for young people, what it provided for people like me. I think it's a huge part of our educational system in our country and it's going to be around a long time."
John and Jim Harbaugh are the first brothers to coach against each other in the NFL's title game.
Their father, Jack, was a longtime college assistant who went on to be the head coach at Western Michigan and Western Kentucky.
Jim Harbaugh played collegiately at Michigan before a 14-year NFL career. John Harbaugh played at Miami (Ohio) before he started his coaching career.
Pass the remote. Folks certainly like their NFL football on the tube. The league was more than happy to release the Nielsen data for the period of Sept. 1, 2010, through Sunday. It shows that 135 of the 247 shows reaching at least 20 million viewers were NFL games.
That immense total included 103 regular-season games and 32 playoff games.
In second place? "American Idol," with 39 shows to reach at least 20 million viewers.
The most telling statistic on the list? That would be the fact that one episode of "The Big Bang Theory" tied with one NBA Finals game.
Number to note.There are more players from Washburn University on the rosters of the two Super Bowl teams — two, Ravens cornerback Cary Williams and 49ers linebacker Michael Wilhoite — than from any football-playing university or college in Colorado.
Former Buffs cornerback Jimmy Williams is a Ravens reserve, while Clark Haggans, who holds Colorado State's sack record, is a reserve linebacker for the 49ers. | <urn:uuid:296c29c2-7271-4571-8d40-5894aad3bf4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_22469553/harbaugh-brothers-take-president-barack-obama-over-football | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985657 | 769 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Sheila Metzner installation at The Visual Arts Museum
Three more days to catch the retrospective of Sheila Metzner’s work at the Visual Arts Museum at The School of Visual Arts.
Metzner, who began photographing in the mid-1970s, has always been resolutely her own person whether her work was in fashion or not, and thirty years on her work seems even more distinctive and personal than ever. Working not so much in the Victorian style of photography but in the Victorian, Japonais inflections of Whistler and Sargent, Metzner has mastered most every genre of photography – portraits, floral abstraction, travel, the nude, fashion, urban landscapes, still life, and family pictures – to name a few.
The show contains approximately 100 prints hung salon style and all made by the Fresson printing process - a rare method of color printing that renders characteristically diffused images with remarkable tonal range and color saturation. The process uses layered oil pigments in gelatin and requires between four to seven separate negatives, yielding luminous, glowing colors and a softened, painterly effect. With its chemistry a tightly held secret and production highly limited, Metzner is one of the few photographers in the world who has consistently used the process throughout her career.
Of particular note are the photographs from one of Metzner’s latest series “36 Views of Brooklyn Bridge”, a response to the famous woodblock prints “36 Views of Mount Fuji” by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. Shot in both black and white and color and from numerous vantage points, the bridge dissolves and coalesces before our eyes – as Metzner explores the infinite photographic possibilities.
The one sad note in the show is that it quietly incorporates the photographer’s own memorial to her late husband, Jeffrey, a talented artist, teacher, and art director who died unexpectedly earlier this year. Metzner’s many portraits of her husband taken throughout her photographic career comprise their own loving “Views of a Modern Man” as Jeffrey – always the prototypical New Yorker – subjects himself to his wife’s inspection. His good nature and Sheila Metzner’s complete lack of cynicism are the twin spirits of this unusual and wonderful show. | <urn:uuid:1d346626-22f1-4559-a17a-c212de299f70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pictureyear.blogspot.com/2008/10/sheila-metzner.html?showComment=1231050300000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958555 | 475 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action could affect Princeton
“We hope and expect it will not,” McDonough said in an email, on the possibility that the Court’s decision could impact the University. “However, depending upon what the Court says and how it says it, it could.”
The 1964 Civil Rights Act prevents private institutions that receive federal funding — like the University — from discriminating on the basis of race. If the Court’s decision interprets affirmative action as a violation of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, this could restrict the University’s and its peers’ ability to consider race in the admission process.
McDonough said that the University, along with its Ivy League colleagues and six other private universities and colleges, filed an amicus curiae brief arguing that race is an important consideration in the admissions process.
He added that the University filed the brief in part to protect its own admissions practices.
“The principle that diversity is a compelling interest ... is embedded in our holistic review process, and we believe that the Court should continue to respect our academic freedom to select from among the many thousands of excellent applicants who are qualified for admission,” McDonough said.
Last week, the Court heard arguments in the case in which white Louisiana State University student Abigail Fisher claimed she was denied admission from Texas’s flagship public university based on her race.
The University of Texas’s current admissions policy automatically accepts all in-state applicants in the top 10 percent of their high school’s graduating classes regardless of race or any other consideration. If an applicant is not in the top ten percent of her class, as was Fisher, she is considered among a pool of other applicants where race is one of the considerations.
Under this “10 percent plan,” whites compose 50 percent of the class and the remaining 50 percent is composed of minorities.
An amicus brief submitted by 37 other private colleges — including Amherst College, Tufts University and Williams College — expressed concern as to the potential of the Court’s decision to impact their admissions policies as well.
“A decision condemning Texas’s admissions procedures might well be taken — depending on how it was written — to confound and restrict amici’s effort to assemble diverse student bodies,” the brief read.
McDonough and the general counsel representatives of Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Yale comprised the coordinating committee that drafted and submitted an amicus brief to the court in August on behalf of the large “amici” group of the 14 elite private institutions. The coordinating committee worked with outside counsel Seth Waxman who was the former Solicitor General during the Clinton Administration.
Waxman did not respond to a request for comment.
The Fisher case has sparked many amicus briefs that side with the University of Texas and argue that the Court should not retreat on its previous recognition of the benefits of ensuring a diverse student body through considering race in admissions.
In addition to the briefs submitted by the Ivies and the liberal arts colleges, briefs were submitted by 17 U.S. senators, 66 members of congress, Teach for America, 57 Fortune 100 companies and nearly 1,000 other individuals or institutions.
Seventeen briefs were submitted in support of petitioner Fisher.
The brief submitted by the University notes that neither Princeton nor any of its amici colleagues’ admissions policies use race or ethnicity as the sole factor in the decision to admit a student. Moreover, the brief adds that none of the amici reserve slots in an admissions class for individuals of a certain race so that no candidate is admitted or rejected on the basis of his ethnicity or race.
“It is worth noting that in our brief we underscore the distinction between our individualized, holistic review of the whole applicant and how the applicant would contribute to fulfilling the educational mission of the institution and mechanistic proposals like the Texas 10 percent Plan which are impracticable for us, particularly since we receive applications from far more applicants who are qualified by objective measures than we could ever hope to admit,” McDonough said.
In the previous two college admissions affirmative action cases in which the Supreme Court deliberated, the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in 1978 and the Grutter v. Bollinger case in 2003, the University submitted an amicus brief in favor of race considerations in admissions.
The University’s brief turned out to be influential in the Bakke case. Then-Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. found that the plan outlined in the brief was constitutionally valid while quotas to fill minority seats in an admissions class were not.
In his decision supporting affirmative action, Powell quoted an article by former University President William Bowen GS ’58 that said a large amount of meaningful learning occurs because of interaction between people of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.
The brief that was most recently submitted by the University and others includes a quote from the 2005 Opening Exercises Address given by University President Shirley Tilghman.
“The reason [the Admission Office] took such care in selecting all of you — weighing your many talents, your academic and extracurricular interests, your diverse histories — was to increase the likelihood that your entire educational experience, inside and outside the classroom, is as mind-expanding as possible,” the brief quotes Tilghman as saying.
In the 2003 affirmative action case, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the swing vote in the 5-4 decision to uphold the University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race in admissions. Justice Elena Kagan ’81 will recuse herself due to a potential conflict of interest since she formerly served as the dean of Harvard Law School. It is expected that Justice Sonia Sotomayor ’76 will vote in favor of keeping race a consideration in college admissions. | <urn:uuid:1db12233-2904-4e4d-aa63-4f7a7ed715c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/10/15/31509/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961418 | 1,225 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Here at Altogether Digital we have an SEO team made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and this means that the metaphors we use to explain how we think the search engines work can be very varied.
In my case, it means that I often think of the algorithms as being the engines' attempts at replicating a human brain, in so much as they try to predict what a human is likely to find useful; whilst my colleague Wilson recently explained that he thinks of the first page of the search results as being akin to streets in a town, in that you get more custom if you're on the high street (the 1st page) than you do if you're down some back-alley (page 3 and beyond).
It was whilst we were chatting about these things that we came up with a way of explain to, often reluctant, clients why they should not be scared to link out of their sites. I thought I'd share it here so that:
When people create content on a site they will, if they are concerned with SEO, think about how to drive links into that content. But often the idea of linking out from that content to external sites will be something that they would never consider.
"We'll lose traffic," they'll say. "People will click off and never come back," will be the refrain you hear. But as soon as you start thinking about the results pages as streets, and the algorithms as an attempt to replicate human thought, you realise that it makes complete sense.
Let's imagine that the engines try to rank pages based on what they think a human would want to see. If there are two pages, both equal in terms of all on-page issues and link popularity, they will, in my opinion, be more likely to rank a site or page which links out to other quality, relevant content. Why? Because users don't want to be sent to a cul-de-sac.
If an engine was to send me to a page which had lots of lovely information, but which left some of my questions unanswered and didn't link out to other sources, I would be forced to go back and search again, because the page I was sent to was the equivalent of a cul-de-sac. And this might mean that I decide that the results I was served with weren't that great, so that next time I was looking for information, I might try a different search engine. The result? Less revenue, shares drop, no more planes for Larry & Sergey.
However, if your page provides avenues (i.e., links out) to other sources that might answer the questions that your page couldn't, then I will be left with a general feeling of contentment. "Gosh," I'll be thinking, "didn't that engine provide me with a wonderful resource." And the result of this would be that the engine would be more likely to reward your page with a higher placement for making it look so good.
On top of this, there is another reason why providing links to other sources is likely to boost your SEO; by making your page a hub of information, it's more likely that others will link to you, rather than to several different pages. Just look at Wikipedia; as a one-stop shop for anyone looking for info on a subject, it attracts thousands & thousands of links (although not that many from SEOmoz, of course).
Whilst many may scoff at this seemingly unscientific way of assessing SEO, I've found that it's essential because it never hurts to think in ways that clients can relate to, or to remember that at the end of the day, the engines want what they think is best for their users.
Ciarán is the SEO & Social Media Director at UK online marketing agency Altogether Digital. And yes, he knows that there's only two links out of this post.
SEOmoz doesn't provide consulting, but our friends at Distilled still do. Rock on!
Copyright © 1996-2013 SEOmoz. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:0e2bf1e2-c9d3-4721-a2a1-7b682b46d39a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/if-google-is-a-users-satnav-dont-let-your-site-be-a-culdesac | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981735 | 830 | 1.671875 | 2 |
If they say "beauty is pain," then the beauty of achieving long, luscious locks is becoming more and more painful for many women.
Hair extensions have become the must-have accessory of celebrities and starlets on the red carpet and in magazines.
Now more and more women are following suit and using the extensions at home and work. Some as young as 19 are experiencing the dangerous side effects that come with trying to transform one's natural hair with hair pieces that make their hair longer and fuller.
"We have patients who are in their early 20s come in after wearing hair extensions for six months or one year, and they actually have bald spots," Dr. Eric Schweiger, a New York City dermatologist, told "Good Morning America."
Doctors say people particularly at risk for damage from hair extensions are those with already thin or weak hair, or with a pre-existing medical condition, like anemia.
Hair extensions, in which hair is attached onto a person's existing hair or scalp by either weaving, gluing or clipping it on, may cause little damage to some women but, for others, the hairpieces can cause nightmarish results.
Twenty-two-year-old Maya Ramos of Delray Beach, Fla., experienced the dark side of hair extensions firsthand after she began using clip-on extensions to make her shoulder-length hair longer and fuller.
Just three months after her extension adventure began, Ramos saw signs of trouble.
"My hair was really falling and falling," she told "GMA." "I was shedding a lot of hair in the back toward the extensions."
The damage caused by the extensions, which she described as "heavy" and "uncomfortable," was so severe that Ramos feared the worst.
"I was freaking out," she said. "I thought I was going to lose my hair by the time I was 30."
Concerned, Ramos sought the help of a hair loss expert.
The specialist diagnosed Ramos with traction alopecia, a form of gradual hair loss caused primarily by a pulling force being applied to the hair. Within a year of quitting the extensions, Ramos' hair, much to her relief, had grown back.
Not so lucky is Chioma Odimegwu of New York City. Odimegwu is considering a hair transplant at the age of 25 after six years of using hair extensions resulted in permanent hair loss.
Odimegwu began using 14-inch glue-in extensions at the age of 19. When the extensions caused her hair to thin, she had a professional stylist apply tie-on extensions to cover the hair loss.
The new extensions worsened the problem, and Odimegwu's hair loss spiraled out of control.
"When I took (the new extensions) out, my whole head of hair was very, very thin," she told "GMA" of her post-extensions appearance.
Odimegwu tried a host of doctor-recommended products, including female Rogaine, in an effort to re-grow her hair,and worked to cover her hair loss in other ways.
"I wear lots of hats," she said. "And really fat headbands."
Ramos and Odimegwu are not alone. Even celebrities are experiencing difficulties related to hair extensions.
"Nothing destroys your hair faster than hair extensions," Jennifer Aniston, whose own shag-style cut in the '90s sparked a worldwide hair craze, told Harper's Bazaar magazine in a 2006 interview. "I decided to have a couple of extensions, never knowing you end up with 400 things in your hair that cause your hair to break off." | <urn:uuid:f2519349-d5e6-4557-8c2c-5e4a3b0d9c28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hair-extensions-beauty-trend-dangerous-beauty/story?id=14731624 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980839 | 758 | 1.570313 | 2 |
In this shape modeling exercise we take a look at modeling a fancy doorknob handle.
(Please excuse some issues caused by my sinus allergies. :p )
The point of these videos is not to model a complete object but to rather focus on different shapes and issues that you may encounter while modeling. So, essentially, these are exercises.
Hopefully, these videos will help you better understand how to approach modeling certain shapes, and what tools are available in Blender to make things easier.
Download the blend file, reference image, and texture file. | <urn:uuid:472821c9-7a35-42b6-a82f-7900f4111682> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com/2010/05/shape-modeling-exercise-series-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918313 | 114 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Bedding Down With The Devil in Indonesia
Dispatches From The Edge
Sept. 28, 2010
Bedding down with the Devil is the only way one can describe a recent decision by the Obama administration to resume contact with the Indonesian military’s (TNI) most notorious human rights abuser, the Special Forces unit, Kopassus. Following a July meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates lifted the 1999 ban on any contact with the unit.
The Indonesian military has a long record of brutality toward its own people, starting with the massacre of somewhere from 500,000 to 1 million Communists and leftists during a 1965 military coup. That massive bloodletting was followed by a reign of terror against separatist groups in Aceh and West Papua and the invasion of East Timor. In the latter case, the UN estimated that as many as 200,000 died as a direct result of the 24-year occupation, a per capita kill rate that actually surpasses what Pol Pot managed in Cambodia.
But, even by the brutal standards of the TNI, the 5,000-man Kopassus unit has always stood out. It kidnapped and murdered students in 1997 and 1998, made up the shock troops for the Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, and ruthlessly suppressed any moves toward independence in West Papua.
West Papua is the western half of New Guinea that Indonesia invaded in 1969.
“Working with Kopassus, which remains unrepentant about its long history of terrorizing civilians, will undermine efforts to achieve justice and accountability for human rights violations in Indonesia and Timor-Leste [formally East Timor],” says John M. Miller, national coordinator of East Timor & Indonesia Action Network (ETAN).
The Obama administration’s rationale for lifting the ban is that U.S. contact with Kopassus will serve to improve the unit’s human rights record. “It is a different unit than its reputation suggests,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morell told the New York Times. “Clearly, it had a very dark past, but they have done a lot to change that.” In any case, he said, “the percentage of suspicious bad actors in the unit is tiny…probably a dozen, or a couple of dozen people.”
The aid to Kopassus appears to violate the Leahy Law that prevents the U.S. from training military units accused of human rights violations. “Kopassus has a long history of abuse and remains unrepentant, essentially unreformed, and unaccountable” U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) told the Times.
No one in Kopassus or the TNI accused of human rights violations has ever been tried or removed from their position. “We regret this development very much,” Poengky Indarti of the Indonesian human rights group Imparsial told Reuters. “There is still impunity in the Indonesian military, especially in Kopassus.” She added, “We are confused about the position of Barak Obama, Is he pro-human rights or not?”
According to ETAN, Kopassus—sometimes called Unit 81—helped organize the murder of five Australian journalists in Balibo on the eve of Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor. Kopassus is also accused of a 2002 ambush in West Papua that killed three teachers, two from the U.S. According to Australian intelligence, the ambush was an effort to discredit the Papuan liberation movement.
There is also suspicion that the attack was aimed at blackmailing mine owners into paying protection money. From 2000 to 2002, Freeport McMoRan paid the TNI $10.7 million in protection money, but the company shut down the payments shortly before the ambush.
No one in Kopassus has ever been disciplined for the unit’s role in organizing nationalist militias to terrorize the East Timorese into voting against independence. The TNI financed and led militias’ killed some 1500 people, displaced two-thirds of the population, and systematically destroyed 75 percent of East Timor’s infrastructure.
It was Kopassus’ involvement in forming and directing the militias that was responsible for the U.S. decision to stop military training for the unit.
And, rather than improving Kopassus’ human rights record, U.S. training appears to have had the opposite effect. The “worst abuses” by the Indonesian military, according to Ed McWilliams, a former U.S. State Department counselor in Jakarta from 1996-99, “took place when we [the U.S.] were most engaged.”
According to Karen Orenstein, former Washington coordinator of ETAN, “History demonstrates that providing training and other assistance only emboldens the Indonesian military to violate human rights and block accountability for past injustices.”
This pattern is not confined to Indonesia. A recent study by the Fellowship for Reconciliation found that Colombian army units trained by the U.S. were the troops most likely to be associated with human rights violations.
“There are alarming links between increased reports of extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian army and units that receive U.S. military financing,” John Lindsay-Poland told the Inter Press Service. Lindsay-Poland is a research and advocacy director for the Fellowship and an author of the two-year study.
Called “Military Assistance and Human Rights: Colombia, U.S. Accountability, and Global Implications,” the report examined 3,000 extrajudicial executions by the Colombian military. “We found that for many military units, reports of extrajudicial executions increased during and after the highest levels of U.S. assistance,” Lindsay-Poland told IPS.
The U.S. “School for the Americas” has trained numerous Latin American leaders associated with human rights abuses and death squads.
ETAN points out that Maj. Gen. Hotma Marbun, a senior Kopassus commander, has just been appointed regional commander in West Papua. Marbun was a highly placed officer during a particularly bloody period in East Timor from 1983-86, and was also involved in military operations in West Papua in 1982 and 1994.
Human rights organizations are reporting that the INF has stepped up its counterinsurgency operations in West Papua, including numerous sweeps aimed at “separatists.” The Indonesian military tends to describe any West Papuan who objects to Indonesia’s military occupation as “separatists.”
Some 22 non-governmental organizations from Indonesia, Australia, Germany, Britain, Timor-Leste, and the Netherlands have written a letter to President Yudhoyono protesting the imprisonment of scores of Papuans arrested for peacefully demonstrating or expressing their opinions. Some of these activists have been sentenced for “rebellion” under the criminal code that goes back to the Dutch colonial period.
According to the NGOs the use of the criminal code to imprison dissenters is a violation of the Indonesian constitution that guarantees citizens the right to “freedom of association and expression of opinion,” and the right to right to “seek, acquire, possess keep, process and convey information by using all available channels.”
Sentences have ranged from three to 15 years, and human rights groups say that the prisoners have been mistreated.
More than 50 members of the U.S. Congress recently sent a letter to President Obama stating that the Indonesian government may have committed “genocide” against West Papuans. “Genocide is usually difficult to document since leaders are often reluctant to state their intentions to destroy another nation, race, or ethnic group,” the letter stated. “Even still, in 2007 Col Burhanuddin Siagian, who was then the local commander said, ‘If I encounter elements that use government facilities, but still are betraying the nation, I will destroy them.’”
Members of the congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses are prominent in the group of 50. The Congress members urged President Obama to meet with representatives of the West Papua during his upcoming November visit to Indonesia and to make the island “one of the highest priorities of the American administration.”
West Papua groups have called for an “international dialogue” on the current situation, and Komnas Ham, the Indonesian government’s official human rights commission, recommends withdrawing military forces from the island to encourage an atmosphere for talks.
In the meantime, ETAN and the West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAC) have asked the Obama administration to reject Indonesia’s new ambassador to the U.S., Dino Djalal. The groups claim that Djalal has been a tool for the Indonesian military and that he blamed the violence in East Timor on the Timorese. ETAN and WPAC say that Djalal was “a dogged critic of international journalists and human rights organizations who sought to report these atrocities.”
Why is the U.S. bedding down with these thugs?
According to the New York Times, Indonesian “officials dropped hints that the unit [Kopassus] might explore building ties with the Chinese military if the ban [against training] remained.” With the U.S. taking a more aggressive stance Asia—the recent U.S.-South Korean war games, and the immense pressure the Obama administration put on Japan to let it build a new Marine base in Okinawa come to mind—the U.S. clearly saw a Chinese incursion into Indonesia as a threat.
Of course, there might never have been a Chinese offer. Indonesia learned long ago that all one had to do to open the U.S. aid spigot was to become chummy with Beijing.
The U.S. has a long and sordid relationship with Indonesia’s military. According to documents uncovered by George Washington University, the U.S. fingered leftists for military death squads during the 1965 coup. During the Ford administration, then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesia the green light to invade East Timor. And the Americans acquiesced with Jakarta’s torpedoing of a UN-sponsored referendum on independence following Indonesia’s 1969 invasion of West Papua.
It looks like we are about to once more bed down with some pretty awful characters. | <urn:uuid:002f4986-70bb-4040-ad36-43833ae28537> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-obama-administration-indonesia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95294 | 2,188 | 1.640625 | 2 |
This essay was, in some ways, provoked by Bill Mousoulis’s article “Is Your Film Language Greek? Some thoughts on Greek-Australian filmmakers”, (1) in which he poses the question of whether the film language used by Greek Australian filmmakers is Greek. I would argue that a different question needs to be posed – are the eyes of Greek Australian filmmakers Greek? The issue is as much about how a filmmaker “sees” as it is about the language they use. The film language a filmmaker uses is influenced by how they “see”, and how they “see” is influenced by the context in which they live and work. Greek Australian filmmakers, like all filmmakers (and artists practising in all the art forms) of a non-English speaking background, are part of a minority culture in Australia. It is from this point that discussion should start.
While the current representation of Greek Australian filmmakers in the film industry may be “more than fair” in terms of the demographic representation of Greeks in Australia, and while it may be higher than that of Italo-Australian filmmakers, (2) the situation needs to be analysed further in order to consider the impact (if any) of this representation.
Greek or even Greek Australian (3) subject matter has not been explored in any feature film made by a Greek Australian except for Head On (Ana Kokkinos, 1998) and presumably The Wogboy (Aleksi Vellis, 2000), a film unseen by this author. But it has been explored or used as a starting point in other formats (shorts, documentaries) by a few Greek Australians. While I do not necessarily believe that Greek Australian filmmakers should confine themselves to Greek Australian subject matter in all of their work, I do believe that the stories of Greek Australians, particularly Greek migrants, need to be told so that these become part of Australian culture. Sneja Gunew, referring to migrants in Australia asked “where are our histories, our writings?” (4) I would ask the same, with regard to films: “where are our stories, our films?”
Head On, while it does tell such a story and while, admirably, it uses Greek Australian actors to do so, negates any positive effect of purely “telling the story”. Besides being a film with a number of redundant scenes (several in need of pruning) and problems with authenticity, it is a film which presents and perpetuates ethnic stereotypes (as did Only the Brave [Ana Kokkinos, 1994]) in art-house style. The subservient Greek mother, the overbearing patriarchal Greek father (this type was taken to an extreme in Only the Brave in which the Greek father sexually abuses his daughter and thus “causes” the tragic ending), the young Greek Australian woman who wants to liberate herself from her family’s and her culture’s oppressive expectations, and the cocky, young Greek Australian man.
The essay/documentary film Levantes (Fionn Skiotis and Lisa Horler, 1998) presents its “story” free of any historical context and without complexity. Anyone without any knowledge of Greek and Turkish history would have a great deal of trouble placing the narrator (who is in fact, Pontian [a distinct Greek cultural group]) in a historical context and therefore understanding the journey he, and by extension, Greece and Turkey as nations, go on.
Unlike Mousoulis, I do not regard these filmmakers as “edgy”. (5) Rather I view them and their work as somewhat “safe” as they present Greek Australians and Greek Australian issues in ways that, generally, the Anglo-Australian community sees them and would prefer to see them. These filmmakers do not see with Greek eyes nor do they challenge. Instead, they see through the eyes of the dominant culture and interestingly, they see their own cultural heritage (in Skiotis’s case, part of his heritage, as I understand that one of his parents is of a Greek background) through such “eyes”. I am not suggesting that Greek Australian filmmakers should present romanticised pictures of the “Greek Australian experience”, nor do I think that “seeing through Greek eyes” is a simple matter. However, I find it puzzling that, as Mousoulis points out, a number of Greek Australian filmmakers work with themes of assimilation, displacement and racism, but they do not tackle Greek subject matter. Is it because doing it this way is more palatable to the viewing public? Is it because it is easier to obtain financing and later, distribution for these films if they do not concentrate on Greek Australian subject matter? (It would be interesting to explore whether the difficulties Nick Giannopoulos has stated he faced in looking for financial support for The Wogboy(6) were partly to do with the subject matter.) Or is it because these filmmakers, on one level, are attuned to these themes because of their own experiences as members of a minority culture, while on another, are not quite comfortable with them?
Greek culture and Greek Australian culture are not homogeneous (as of course, no cultures are), but paradoxically, the two Kokkinos films I have mentioned and Levantes would have us believe that they are. Adrian Martin contends that “our national cinema offers an extraordinarily distorted view” (7) of Australian suburbs. This is the case with regard to Greek Australian life, which, in the eyes of some filmmakers, seems to be frozen in a particular period of Greek Australian history (if this is, in fact, an accurate view of that history) and space these filmmakers “want to be anywhere but”, like the filmmakers to which Martin refers.
Fortunately, a number of other films present a rich, layered view of Greek Australian culture and life, though unfortunately, these have not enjoyed the level of exposure that the aforementioned films have.
Anna Kannava’s Ten Years After….Ten Years Older (1986) is an honest, moving work, which focuses on an individual’s experience as a migrant. It allows the viewer to go along with the narrator as she returns to her country of birth and think and feel with her as she ruminates over memories, family, identity and loss.
Similarly, Two Homelands (Michael Karris, 1979) offers the same opportunities, this time through the documentation of a concert by Savvas Christodoulou. Karris lets Christodoulou’s lyrics and poetry speak for themselves. The director intercuts concert footage with photographs and images, which, handled differently, would appear clichéd, but handled by Karris, magnify the poignancy of the concert and experience with which it is concerned. The film is even more poignant given that the concert was held in 1978, a time when there were very few such events and when many of the children of the ’50s wave of migrants to Australia were starting to deal with issues of ethnic identity in a society which was struggling to come to grips with its cultural diversity.
Tim Spanos’s The Little White Boat (1998) is interesting as it draws on a traditional Greek folk song and uses footage of a funeral in Greece and more recent footage of an older Greek woman. The older woman singing the story throughout the film and the funeral footage prods the viewer out of their comfort zone (particularly if they can understand the lyrics!), though shots of a young woman in Greek national costume are a bit awkward.
Alkinos Tsilimidos’s short documentary Man of Straw (1988)follows a Greek male gambler around the racetrack. You can’t help but laugh in some scenes, but the laughter is two-edged as it underlines the pathos of this man’s life. There is something affectionate about the way Tsilimidos handles his material which elicits a good-natured response from the viewer.
Then there is the issue of “Hellenic sensibility”. I prefer a definition of sensibility that is broader than the one used by Mousoulis. (8) “Hellenic sensibility” or any sensibility based on ethno-cultural terms, is not based purely on intellectual factors. It encompasses the culture as it is lived now, the history of that culture, societal issues, religion, the arts, etc. It also needs to include an individual’s experience of that culture, particularly when that culture has been transplanted from the country/ies of its origin to another country where it becomes a minority culture and is affected, inevitably, by this and by the migration or refugee experience. The latter is directly relevant in the case of Greek Australian filmmakers (and filmmakers of any minority culture in Australia) because it is one of the defining factors in the relationship between a filmmaker and their material, particularly when that material involves explorations of cultural identity. The combined perspectives on all of these factors contributes to one’s sensiblity and hence colours the ways in which one “sees”.
The films about Greek Australian life that are genuinely interesting to me as a Greek Australian and as a film-lover, demonstrate a kind of relationship between the filmmaker and their material that is different from that of the films I consider flawed. Both Kannava and Karris are “closer” to their material, so “close” that it seems to be an integral part of them. In contrast, Kokkinos and Skiotis, and to a lesser extent Spanos, are at a distance from their material and I would say, of the former two, in conflict with it. Mousoulis states that “Greek-Australian filmmaking begins in the ’70s with substantial assimilation already in place”. (9) Greek Australian filmmaking, reflecting and influenced by the context in which it takes place, has continued from the ’70s to the present with a much more subtle form of assimilation still intact. This assimilation has contributed primarily to the skewing in Greek Australian filmmaking away from diverse, real representations of Greek Australian culture towards work that is largely tired and reduces this culture to one, flattened dimension.
- Senses of Cinema, Issue No. 1, December 1999. “Is Your Film Language Greek? Some Thoughts On Greek-Australian Film-makers” by Bill Mousoulis.
- I make a distinction between “Greek” and “Greek Australian” because there are differences between the two.Greek Australian culture is different from Greek culture in that the former has been affected directly by the migration of Greeks as a group to and their settlement in Australia. So,”Greek Australian” refers to whatever relates to the experience of Greeks in Australia and “Greek” refers to anything relating to Greece.
- Prof. Gunew, S., “Situating Multicultural Literature: Ethnicity/Race/Gender”, in Dounis, K., (ed.) Greek WomenWriters from Sappho to SAPPHO, Conference Proceedings 1992, RMIT, p. 35
- Mousoulis, op. cit, p. 3
- Schembri, J., “Wogs on Film”, The Age (EG), 18/2/2000, p. 3
- Martin, A., “Where Australian film lets us down”, The Age (News Extra), 12/2/2000, p. 4
- Mousoulis, op. cit, p. 3
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August 26, 2012
The African diaspora intellectual gets a two-second mention in reporter Jina Moore’s recent admonition to Western journalists to, “tell the Africa story differently”–or better yet, tell Africa’s stories. Note the plural form. Moore bemoans journalism’s contribution to the dominant image of Africa as suffering from, well, everything. Her solution to this persistent and persistently warped narrative: nuanced story-telling and, she asks that journalists take a leap and re-imagine Africa.
What isn’t needed, she adds, is what many African diaspora intellectuals and activists, among others, have suggested: “taking the mic away from foreigners” altogether. It’s a curious non-option, made even more so by the poverty of her rationale. But I suppose it’s no more curious than the fact that Moore’s essay, provocatively titled, The White Correspondent’s Burden, essentially decries racism and white supremacy without ever mentioning those words. This do-si-do dance of the colorblind is fascinating, and, absurd. An essay calling for an end to the erasure of complexity from African life, erases, too.
read more »
July 13, 2012
President Martelly unveiled the foundation stone for the Caracol industrial park, November 2011 (Haiti Liberte)
After reading Deborah Sontag’s massive New York Times article about the Clinton-brokered South Korean industrial park in northern Haiti, it took me some time to come up with the appropriate reaction. The article reads like a pump-‘em-up speech for opening night of the Left Forum. Nothing against the annual conclave of leftists; I’d be equally wary if the article tacked the other extreme towards CPAC’s party line.
The Times story is the standard Left pitch of global capitalists teaming up with self-serving governments to exploit the little people. It’s a perfect rendition, actually. Too perfect (as is this rebuttal). But it seems Sontag was more interested in maintaining the Left’s narrative than in fairly reporting on the Caracol project.
read more »
June 27, 2012
Haiti may get some attention from U.S. media during the 2012 election season. Utah mayor and Brooklyn-born daughter of Haitian parents, Mia Love, is supposedly on track to become the first black Republican woman in Congress. I say, supposedly, because even if the media and some Republicans are excited by the novel rising star, Love’s up against a six-term Democrat who’s also a fiscal conservative. Caution is in order, and definitely more than the media will exercise for a black, Mormon Republican woman who has said she wants to take apart the Congressional Black Caucus from the inside-out. Love’s politics aside, what caught my attention a couple of months ago was the extent to which her Haitian immigrant identity is integral to how she sells herself to voters. She mentions her parents’ influence quite a bit, specifically their aversion to handouts.
“[My father] said: ‘Mia, your mother and I never took a handout. You will not be a burden to society,’ ” she said with a stern smile. “ ‘You will give back.’ ”
I’m not taking a huge leap when I say that the subtext here is one with which Caribbean and African blacks are intimately familiar: “we” are not like black Americans.
read more »
June 13, 2012
A Le Nouvelliste article about a Gros Morne mango plant, closed by order of the US, is being circulated online as an example of the US delivering, according to the mayor, yet another “slap to the Haitian people.” I tend to focus on foreign coverage of Haiti but I’m writing about this LN article (read the English version on Defend.ht) because I want to encourage readers to demand the quality information they deserve about a field as critical to Haiti’s development as economic news–and this article ain’t it.
As an outsider, I learned early on that a defining quality of The Haiti Conversation is the frequency and normalcy with which rumor and hearsay is deployed to support fossilized political points of view.
read more »
June 11, 2012
Support journalism done by Haitian journalists. Above, one training sponsored by Solidar’IT (Frederick Alexis).
It’s been nearly two years since I visited Haiti and a year since I’ve written about it on this blog. In a perfect world my silence here reflects how often I’ve thought about my time in the country, its problems and of course, this Develop Haiti-diaspora-aid news idea. In a perfect world.
Back then, I used to look ahead to what news coverage about Haiti would be like once the world and its money inevitably moved on. I see diaspora as key to developing Haiti because unlike the native-born, the world has a short attention span and ‘two-years-post-quake’ can’t make the coin jingle like ’6-months-post-quake.’ With barely enough bright spots to dimly light a dark room however, the English language information on offer generally sucks. The reason is simple: very few people if anyone with a stake in Haiti’s development (diaspora, NGO, business, donors, etc) demand better information.
read more »
May 8, 2011
Recently I walked out of When the Drum is Beating, a new Haiti doc that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. I fumed on Twitter but later that night I dropped in on the after-party at a hotel bar for the doc’s stars, visiting members of a 62-year-old orchestra from Cap-Haïtien, the Septentrional. By Flatbush, Brooklyn standards the party would’ve been a flop but as far as artsy-intellectual Manhattan gatherings go, it wasn’t too bad either. “There’re a lot of newcomers to Haiti here tonight,” was how one enthusiastic Haitian mingler described the crowd. Makes sense. Much of the doc came across like it was made for a liberal sensibility that’s shocked-just-shocked by deprivation.
When the Drum is Beating is about the band and the history of Haiti from slavery through the 2010 earthquake. That’s a lot, too much, and it shows. Thank God then for the archival footage (rare stuff, to hear a 1915 Marine narrating the US’s arrival), some poignant interviews and the festival scenes. As a concert-goer says during fet chanpet, “When Septen plays I’m rich, when they stop I’m poor.”
read more »
March 23, 2011
Last week journalist, Michele Mitchell Tweeted me to ask who or which aid organizations are doing a good job in Haiti. I didn’t want to Tweet back, “I dunno,” without explaining so here goes.
As vital as international NGOs can be, they’re not first on my mind when thinking of what works in Haiti. In truth I’d rather brainstorm, innovate and build long-term programs that strengthen the country, i.e. job creation, investing in entrepreneurs, strategic economic development, public-private partnerships, bolstering public sector capacity. But INGOs operating on a charity or short-term aid model dominate Haiti’s landscape so (shrug) unfortunately they dominate The Haiti Conversation, too.
I can’t really answer Michele’s question though because, well, how would I gauge who’s doing a good job? read more »
March 14, 2011
I really, really wanted to like Mac McClelland’s one-year anniversary article, Aftershocks: Welcome to Haiti’s Reconstruction Hell. Good writing aside however—and the fact that these guys and many of these guys dug it—I have a problem with a 6,000-word piece of journalism that holds no specific office or official to account for Port-au-Prince’s misery upon miseries:
“Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape,” [MINUSTAH soldiers] say, shaking their heads. “A lot of rape.”
That’s like there being a decade-long rape epidemic in New York City and a reporter not asking any public official, why? Followed by, what are you doing about it? Followed by, why aren’t you doing anything about it? — Snow wasn’t removed on time after a huge storm this holiday season and within hours every New Yorker knew the name of the head of the department of sanitation. No reporter would’ve covered that story without answering the main question: “Who f%$ked up?”—and that’s just snow. The same news gathering standard should apply to rape.
read more »
February 13, 2011
Like other first generation Haitian-Americans, Melissa Martelly had been itching to use her nursing skills on the ground in Haiti. Below, Martelly, who also has a masters in international peace and conflict resolution, writes about becoming an unlikely activist and her first trip back to Haiti since the earthquake.
Haitian-American nurse Melissa Martelly caring for one of her many patients in Croix-des-Bouquets, September 2010
I never thought that I would want to dedicate my life to developing Haiti but January 12th was my wake up call. Although I was born in the United States I’ve been visiting Haiti since I was a child. Last September was the first time that I was there to help my people. Imagine: thirty-five seconds transformed me into an activist who now works to end Haiti’s history of poor governance, class division and social inequality.
I am a registered nurse and I had been trying to get on the ground since the earthquake. All doors were shut. To this day I don’t understand why international development organizations would not select a Creole-speaking Haitian-American health care professional to provide immediate assistance.
read more »
December 18, 2010
Haitian diaspora gathering in Washington, DC, March 2010 -- was that the last one?
Editor’s Note: You require transparency from us but none from yourselves. That’s the charge leveled at USAID by Liberia’s finance minister (and a couple of other people), at a recent Brookings Institution panel on the lack of transparency among aid organizations. Haiti’s finance minister probably feels the same way. As poorly as Haiti ranks on the corruption index the US ranks near the bottom in international aid transparency. And what comes out of this panel is that while we’re great at measuring other governments’ corruption, we apparently suck at competently measuring ourselves, the donors. Read on for the Liberian minister’s edited remarks, which also raise the question, is the Haitian diaspora lobbying Congress to improve USAID?
Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, minister of finance, Liberia I concur fully with the assessment … that aid transparency is a necessary condition for effectiveness…. Liberia is a highly aid-dependent country. I don’t want to go through the history of civil war, the destruction, and the reconstruction efforts. As we speak we receive more flows to the country through aid than even our domestic revenue. [And] although the amount of [aid passing] through our budget [had] been very insignificant–around 2-5 percent–it has gradually gone up to 15 percent. We are hoping that as we improve our country’s systems, more donors can use them.
Now, [however]… we have a situation where most donors want to use parallel [NGO] systems [and not] government systems. [But] the parallel systems [have to] give us better development outcomes … otherwise, the moral justification of using the parallel system does not exist.
read more » | <urn:uuid:7264ae8f-b3bc-4bfc-90cb-50d024123d0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://develophaiti.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945865 | 2,586 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Submitted by Tom Peters on April 30, 2010 - 9:12am
Earth Day has been around for 40 years now, but none of those 40 days have been particularly memorable for me. It's just functioned as an annual nudge to think a little more concertedly than usual about the general state of the environment and the flat-footed oversized state of my sole – my carbon footprint. On Earth Day this year, however, I attended PALS Day in Moline, Illinois, sponsored by the Prairie Area Library System, and heard a memorable talk by Tracie Hall, a librarian from GoodSeed Consulting. Although Hall mentioned Earth Day in passing, her talk focused on the ecological health of libraries and community-based, transformational organizations. Her conclusion: Libraries are in trouble and need to change. Read More »
Submitted by Daniel A. Freeman on April 26, 2010 - 9:46am
As anyone who had a Friendster account knows, Web 2.0 technologies are often a short spark rather than a slow burn. The same is true of institutions like libraries when they take the initiative in implementing these technologies are part of their online presence. While there are certainly libraries that have been successful in implementing blogs or a presence on Facebook, the web is littered with inactive library blogs, lifeless virtual library community and Facebook pages that are out-of-date.
Submitted by Cindi Trainor on April 21, 2010 - 12:35pm
Modern digital cameras, whether small hand-held models or digital SLRs, often have more modes and options than the average picture-taker needs, but knowing a bit about how modes work can improve photos.
As explained in the previous post, three measurements work together to ensure a properly-exposed photo: ISO, shutter speed and aperture. Most cameras have various modes that enable photographers to give weight to either shutter speed or aperture, while allowing the camera to dictate the other measurements. If you aren't yet comfortable experimenting with aperture or shutter speed, you can try using some of the automatic modes. Ever wonder what those little icons on the settings dial mean? Read More »
Submitted by Daniel A. Freeman on April 20, 2010 - 11:04am
We're happy to announce that the April 2010 issue of Library Technology Report, "Gadgets and Gizmos: Personal Electronics and the Library" is now available for purchase!
TechSource blogger and renowned library technology expert Jason Griffey has assembled a concise, practical and clear guide to the present and future of gadgets, and the potential they have for you and your library. Read More »
Up until recently the world of bibliographic record supply has been fairly stable. The suppliers, practices and workflows currently used by libraries in their cataloguing and acquisition processes evolved twenty or so years ago and have changed very little since.
Over the last couple of years we have seen the beginnings of possible change in this area. Open Library launched with the mission to provide an openly available page for every book. (Taking a preview look at their new interface at upstream.openlibrary.org, it is clear that they are expanding that to include a page for every author and subject.) Then, the recently acquired by PTFS, LibLime entered the field with their ‡biblios.net service offering low-cost cataloguing and record sharing service. More recently still Sky River launched its service offering a alternative services to incumbents such as OCLC, claimed to be of lower cost and higher quality, with no restrictions on record reuse.
All this has been happening against the background of OCLC going through very public issues around its record reuse policy. Read More »
Submitted by Jason Griffey on April 9, 2010 - 9:13am
With the launch of the iPad and the development of desktops like the Lenovo c200, I'm starting to think that we need to stop thinking in terms of the size/resolution of the screen and positioning when doing web design. Instead, we need to really start thinking about digital objects, and how we physically interact with them. Read More »
Submitted by Michael Stephens on April 8, 2010 - 8:44am
I worked at SJCPL for almost 15 years and will always have a special place in my heart for public libraries. The first time I attended PLA was in 1996 - newly graduated from IU with my MLS and fired up about this weird new thing we had--the World Wide Web. Attending the 2010 Public library Association meeting - once again in Portland, Oregon - made me realize how far we've come in just 14 years. That's a lifetime in Internet years! Read More »
Submitted by Marshall Breeding on April 6, 2010 - 12:43pm
This column appears in the March 2010 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter. To read more from Marshall Breeding on mobile library technology and other facets of the library automation industry, you can purchase this issue or subscribe to Smart Libraries Newsletter at http://alatechsource.metapress.com/content/p61u1704g93v/offerings.
Mobile technology suddenly seems to be all the rage in library technology. The March issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter includes several stories of new products or services that aim to deliver library content and services to users with mobile devices. Read More »
Deciding on a web conferencing service to use for your library or library-related organization is a little like deciding on a new ILS, only writ small. There are lots of features and systems out there, but the financial stakes are much smaller for a web conferencing service than for an ILS. I’ve been using web conferencing software for over six years, but recently I had the opportunity to engage in an informal, unplanned “bake-off” between two web conferencing services, comparing how they performed in a real-life situation.
Submitted by Kate Sheehan on April 1, 2010 - 8:50am
I’m pleased to report that I’ve found an easy way to beat jet lag – stay on the opposite coast for thirty-six hours only and try not to sleep too much. If my PLA experience is any indication, it works pretty well, so long as you don’t mind being completely exhausted – I didn’t even change the time on my watch.
I wish I could offer a full report on PLA, but my experience was something of a whirlwind, punctuated by Voodoo donuts, a lovely Oregon pinot noir, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. I made it to the Top Tech Trends (TTT) panel, (good thing, since I was on the panel) which was PLA’s first Top Tech Trends presentation.
Read More » | <urn:uuid:f2b97f3d-10a9-49fb-839c-41ba97d548cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alatechsource.org/archive/201004?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950788 | 1,394 | 2.265625 | 2 |
SOOPA encourages Special Olympics athletes to become Certified Oficials
五月 31, 2011
The Special Olympics Officials Program for Athletes (SOOPA) encourages Special Olympics athletes who have mastered a sport to become certified officials. Just as a retired professional athlete might eventually become an official in his or her sport, the Special Olympics Officials Programs for Athletes enables Special Olympics athletes to do the same.
Athletes as Officials
SOOPA pairs an athlete with an experienced Special Olympics official to complete the certification process through a sport’s national governing body (NGB) or international sports federation (ISF). Since SOOPA began in 1991, athletes have attained certifications through International Softball Federation (ISF), Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIBA), International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA), among others.
Expanding Their Skills
In addition to officiating Special Olympics competitions, certified athlete officials are also eligible to officiate competitions sponsored by the sports governing body through which they are accredited. The SOOPA program provides an avenue for athletes to expand their social skills, increase community involvement, and build self-esteem. In addition, since SOOPA participants are certified by a sport’s governing entity, the program creates new employment opportunities.
FIFA Gets Involved
Recently, former Fédération International Football Association (FIFA) referees and Special Olympics supporters Mario Sanchez of Chile, Javier Castrilli of Argentina, and Felipe Ramos Rizo of México conducted a football official certification in Mexico, where Special Olympics Mexico athlete Javier Soto, was certified. Soto will join six other athletes from Paraguay, Chile, and Bolivia to officiate the 2011 Copa America in Paraguay.
To learn more about SOOPA, watch this video.
About Special Olympics in North America
Your Donation Matters
Special Olympics transforms athletes’ lives through the joy of sport. Help us make a difference.
Volunteer Near You
Volunteering with Special Olympics is fun and very rewarding, for both the athlete and the volunteer! | <urn:uuid:7129c3a7-12bc-43e5-8b82-fc105e2afbe8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.specialolympics.org/RegionsPages/content.aspx?id=17847&LangType=2052&Region=SOEE&RegionName=Europe-Eurasia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916455 | 433 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Reviewed by Giovanni L. (age 8) and Isaias D (age 7)
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs illustration will appear here.
They had never been upstairs. They promised not to talk about the monster. Giovanni liked this book. He thought it was a little scary. Isaias did not think it was scary, but his favorite part was when the cat?s shadow appeared and the mice heard MEOW. Giovanni?s favorite part was the next part when the mice went slipping, sliding and tumbling down the stairs. He liked the way those words sounded. The next day the mice?s grandfather asked the young mice do you want to play in the yard or visit your cousins in the cornfield. The mice said they wanted to play in the yard near the acorn tree. Upstairs was too scary! | <urn:uuid:2a480a59-001b-4ab2-bc51-c809be24a23f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spaghettibookclub.org/review.php?review_id=5290 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988778 | 173 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The majority of the elderly in a society of ignorance know well the helplessness and difficulty that old age brings but, in spite of their recognition of the fact, they do not take the lesson from it, and do not temper their attachment to the life of this world. Even though they have come so near to their death, they keep the thought far from their minds. They see their friends dying one after the other, but still act as if death will not come upon them. Rather, they save to secure their future. They fear some day having none to take care of them, or of running out of money, and therefore store food, clothing and funds. But, though they are afraid of finding themselves in dire circumstances, they never think about the Afterlife. They do not consider there to be any need to prepare for the world to come. However, a human being’s true existence is in the next world. That is the one he should prepare for. Allah relates us the following in the Qur’an:
The life of this world is nothing but a game and a diversion. The Hereafter is better for those who fear Allah. So will you not use your intellect? (Surat al-An‘am, 32)
Believers, who believe this truth with certainty, will experience old age in a very different way. They have already lived their lives in the hope of gaining Allah’s favor. The further time passes, the more eager they are to meet the Hereafter and, by the will of Allah, to live their lives in the eternity of Paradise. Due to their hopeful expectation, they are joyful, contented and morally upright. They do not cause problems for those around them; on the contrary, they help to solve those problems, telling others about the moral teachings of the Qur’an, and helping them attain the kind of character that will be pleasing to Allah. Even if they become physically feeble, they remain mentally active, and try to be of benefit to their community.
This moral uprightness gains for them great love and respect from their community. Because they teach moral rectitude to those around them, and are morally upright themselves, they are always treated with respect. In the Qur’an believers are enjoined to be respectful towards those who are advanced in years. In the Qur’an, Allah says:
Your Lord has decreed that you should worship none but Him, and that you should show kindness to your parents. Whether one or both of them reach old age with you, do not say “Ugh!” to them out of irritation and do not be harsh with them but speak to them with gentleness and generosity. Take them under your wing, out of mercy, with due humility and say: “Lord, show mercy to them as they did in looking after me when I was small.” (Surat al-Isra’, 23-34)
We have instructed man to honor his parents … (Surat al-‘Ankabut, 8)
We have instructed man concerning his parents. Bearing him caused his mother great debility and the period of his weaning was two years: “Give thanks to Me and to your parents. I am your final destination.” (Surah Luqman, 14)
Worship Allah and do not associate anything with Him. Be good to your parents and relatives and to orphans and the very poor, and to neighbors who are related to you and neighbors who are not related to you, and to companions and travelers and your slaves. Allah does not love anyone vain or boastful. (Surat an-Nisa’, 36)2012-01-21 02:25:11 | <urn:uuid:1adf63b7-0faa-44c6-a27e-2ed673e34274> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harunyahya.com/en/Character-Types-Of-The-Unbelievers/102044/Their-Attachment-for-This-World---The-Character-of-Elderly-Men-5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97824 | 768 | 2.5 | 2 |
Bangkok (UN Information Services) – China’s economy will report a moderate slowdown in growth in 2008, but remained underpinned by strong domestic demand and government social spending despite a slowing United States economy, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
In its Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2008, ESCAP said it expects an easing in growth to 10.7 per cent from 11.4 per cent in 2007 – the fastest for China in 13 years – as a result of a slowdown in exports and government measures to cool growth.
“Investment continues to be the main driver of growth, remaining resilient despite government cooling measures and with support from low real interest rates,” ESCAP said. “A slowdown in exports and the government’s measures to cool the economy are the main reasons for the moderation.”
Other factors expected to underpin growth are domestic demand, rural consumers increasing their spending power, and rising consumption through higher government spending on social welfare by way of the government’s “harmonious society” initiative.
ESCAP downplayed any significant impact on China’s economy resulting from a downturn in the United States due to the sub-prime credit crisis. “In a worst-case scenario – where the United States economy goes into a recession – the impact on China will not be as great as on other Asia-Pacific countries,” it noted. “Due to its blistering pace, China’s growth will be resilient but will slow.”
On trade, China witnessed increasing exports to the European Union in 2007, a shift which compensated for a steady fall in exports to the United States – China’s second largest export market. China has also witnessed a boom in trade with Africa.
Also, Chinese and other Asia-Pacific investors are playing a key role in supporting developed nations through the recent financial turmoil. “The shifting balance of financial power is also clear in the dramatic rise in the overseas investment of Chinese and other Asia-Pacific corporations,” ESCAP said.
Growth has also come in service exports which globally rose by an average 16 per cent over 1995-2006. “China had the best performance in transport services exports of all Asia-Pacific countries, growing at 34 per cent per year over 2000-2006,” it said.
China is facing an increasing challenge from inflation. In 2007, inflation rose dramatically” to 4.8 per cent – the highest in a decade, and three times the 1.5 per cent reported in 2006.
Chief inflationary concerns lay in higher international oil and food prices. “Rising food prices are a bigger inflationary concern than oil prices because food accounts for a far higher proportion of consumer spending. Food price inflation particularly hits low income households,” ESCAP said in the Survey.
ESCAP also warned that the fast paced growth was also coming at an increasing cost to the environment. “The destabilizing effect of growth on the environment is becoming more apparent. Air pollution, especially in large cities, is increasing the incidence of lung disease,” ESCAP said, adding that the loss of arable land to manufacturing is also raising concerns.
ESCAP pointed to the government’s pledge to eliminate export tax rebates for 553 highly energy-consuming and resource-intensive products, such as cement, fertilizer and non-ferrous metals.
Another major challenge for China has been in growing income inequalities, considered among the highest in the world. “A major part of China’s income inequality is interprovincial inequality, mirrored by inequality in human resource development across economic and social indicators,” ESCAP said. The differences have been sharpest between coastal and western provinces.
To reverse the trend, China in 1999 introduced its western development strategy, “Go West.” The policy is designed to provide priorities for infrastructure construction, environmental protection, industrial upgrading, human capital accumulation, science and technology research, and opening the provinces to foreign direct investment.
ESCAP noted evidence had pointed to “somewhat encouraging” trends in reducing the gap in gross domestic product per capita between the regions. “In 2005/2006, three quarters of the western provinces experienced higher growth than the majority of coastal provinces,” it said.
Development of the western provinces and improved infrastructure was also leading to increased regional ties with China’s neighbours. Xinjiang is evolving into China’s gateway to Central Asia, while Tibet has experienced rapid growth in exports to neighbouring countries. Guangxi has seen a rapid boost in cross-border trade with Vietnam, while Mongolia and the Russian Federation both lifted trade with Inner Mongolia.
Further information on the Survey can be found at:
For more information, please contact:
Hak-Fan Lau, UN Information Services, ESCAP
Tel.: +66-2-288-1866, Mob.: +66-84700-1147
Ari Gaitanis, UN Information Services, ESCAP
Tel.: +66-2-288-1862, Fax: +66-2-288-1052 | <urn:uuid:66b6939f-b696-4ec8-92f4-09999028baa5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unescap.org/survey2008/press/country/china.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931385 | 1,067 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Birds, Reptiles, and Small Mammals
Dr. Darice Henry-Ford has special training to care for your birds, ferrets, mice, rats, Guinea pigs, hamsters, chinchillas, hedgehogs, rabbits, lizards, snakes, frogs, turtles and other exotic pets.
There are many conditions that can be avoided with regular vet checkups, a healthy feeding regimen, and careful setup of housing.
Many common mistakes in feeding and cage setup create serious, life-threatening conditions. Early intervention is key to enjoying your unique family member with a long, healthy lifespan, and Dr. Henry-Ford can help you provide the best care and service in Helena.
Each type of bird is unique and requires specific housing, foods, and safe handling, such as the Red Tailed Hawk being handled by a falconer pictured above.
Dr. Henry-Ford has experience and training for handling these special patients. She understands the their unique needs and has the training necessary to care many types of birds, including birds of prey or other wild birds. Dr. Henry-Ford also cares for domesticated birds such as geese, ducks, parakeets, macaws, budgies and many others.
Even tiny guys like this hamster need special food, bedding, and housing to prevent serious illness.
This rat is prepped for surgery to neuter him. A special circulating water bed keeps him warm while he is under anesthesia and careful dosing of pain medication allows him to heal after surgery in comfort.
Many lizards suffer metabolic problems due to improper lighting, diet, and housing. They can develop deep tissue infections from injury or cancerous growths. Their ability to respond to infection is slow, and will often contribute to a delay in catching the problem before it becomes irreversible.
Observing small changes in appetite, movement, and attitude may help prevent problems from getting out of control. Also, remember to look at feet and toes regularly for signs of problems or injury.
Consult your veterinarian before problems develop. Prevention is better than trying to undo problems created by improper care.
This lizard, a Savannah Monitor, injured her right foot and developed a severe, debilitating infection. Dr. Henry-Ford removed the infected area and placed her on antibiotics to help her recover and heal this foot. Early intervention is important to prevent progression of infection.
Ferrets are commonly afflicted with some very serious diseases that can result in hair loss, itchy skin, weakness, weight loss, diarrhea and vomit, and should be seen by a veterinarian right away. Young ferrets commonly ingest foreign bodies, as well. Ferrets should be vaccinated to prevent infectious disease, and Dr. Henry-Ford can help you determine if your ferret should be vaccinated.
Rabbits make great pets, but require special nutrition. It is common to feed only alfalfa pellets, but this can lead to intestinal and nutritional problems. In addition to other foods, daily access to grass hay can go a long way to keeping their intestinal tract moving well. Nearly all the important diseases seen in rabbits can be attritbuted to improper diet and feeding practices. | <urn:uuid:14fbab05-386e-44d0-ad1c-74d5f286fcaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alpineanimalclinic.com/index.php/services-and-topics/birds-and-exotics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947864 | 645 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The work by Theo Watson and team has been one of those magical technological revelations that makes people say “oh – that’s what that’s for.”
Say computer vision or tracking, or show the typical demo of what these can do with interaction, and eyes glaze over. But make them work as puppetry, and somewhere deep inside the mechanisms by which us human beings interact with our world, something lights up.
With iteration, that first proof of concept just gets better. Theo writes to share that he and collaborator Emily Gobeille made a second version of the project. In “Puppet Parade,” the Interactive Puppet Prototype 2.0, the barrier between digital realm and human gesture gets a bit thinner.
But don’t just watch the edited demo – see what it looks like in action below, and a brief visual look at how the system works. (Bonus: Theo wrote the tools on which the whole system was based – and shared them with a well-connected global community of hackers via his open source library.)
Description and credits:
Puppet Parade is an interactive installation that allows children to use their arms to puppeteer larger than life creatures projected on the wall in front of them. Children can also step in to the environment and interact with the puppets directly, petting them or making food for them to eat. This dual interactive setup allows children to perform alongside the puppets, blurring the line between the ‘audience’ and the puppeteers and creating an endlessly playful dialogue between the children in the space and the children puppeteering the creatures.
Project page: design-io.com/?p=15
Here’s the live version, unedited, for a better feel of what this project is like in person.
Note the interaction on two planes. (Kyle McDonald, another superstar of the Kinect community, points to this element in comments on Vimeo – thanks, Kyle.)
And for a peek behind the curtain, you can also see the tracking that drives the interaction:
Filip at Creative Applications goes into greater technical detail, in terms of libraries used and other specifics. Two particular tips: motor control allows the system to adjust to different heights, and the depth of field benefits from the use of two cameras. | <urn:uuid:06eacfa8-7308-4c62-9199-623ae4b717a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://createdigitalmotion.com/2012/01/for-kids-and-grown-up-kids-digital-puppetry-with-kinect-openframeworks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930234 | 473 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Learn to cook Thai, Indian, Mexican, Italian or Sushi – best cuisines of all over the world.
We will show you how to prepare great steak, fish and sea food or seasonal specialities as asparagus or strawberries. We’ll teach you how to work with knife and principles of cooking. We’ll take you on excursion to Greek or Italian sweets and other delicacies.
We are cooking with Chefs who are obsessed with what they do and they are happy to share their passion with our clients.
Our cooking courses are for everyone, who likes to try new things and explores new tastes, spices, exotic ingredients or unusual combinations of tastes. Beginners are welcome as well as experts, who like to try something new and exotic and most of all – have a good time.
Choose from our cooking courses
- Czech cuisine for foreigners
- ALL YOU CAN COOK!
- Asia, wok
- Czech cuisine
- Chinese cuisine I.
- French cuisine
- Beef meat
- India cuisine
- Italian cuisine
- Mexican cuisine
- Molecular cuisine
- Kids cooking courses for 590 CZK, 1 adult accompaniment for free
- Pralines I., II.
- Fish and seafood
- Freshwater fish
Cooking courses on Facebook
Actual cooking courses can be also found on our page Chefparade.cz on Facebook. Become our fan to see what's new in our cooking school.
For all permanent visitors of our courses the motto is : „Collect points!“.
You get 1 point after each absolved course or spending at least 590,- czk in our shop.
Get 50% discount for course of your choice or 250,- CZK credit for the purchase in our shop for 5 collected points. Get course for free or 500,- CZK credit for the purchase in our shop for 10 collected points.
We have some gifts for 50 Participans who collect 10 points first. | <urn:uuid:e4c7263a-12e8-4011-9d10-9d523092ea14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chefparade.cz/en/cooking-courses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908113 | 411 | 1.515625 | 2 |
J.C. Penney sets goal to reduce energy use 20% by 2015
Plano, Texas J. C. Penney Co. announced an environmental goal to reduce facility energy consumption 20% per gross square foot by 2015 through increasing energy-efficiency improvements and driving a company culture that advocates and practices conservation.
Over the past decade, the company said it has invested more than $130 million to improve the energy efficiency of its existing stores and logistics centers by installing advanced metering technology, building control systems, lighting retrofits and high-efficiency heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems.
In 2009 alone, these combined efforts resulted in a year-over-year elimination of approximately 80 million lbs. of greenhouse gas emissions by reducing energy use across comparable stores.
The company has taken an inclusive hands-on approach to addressing the company’s environmental impact. In 2004, J.C. Penney launched an associate awareness and engagement program, now referred to as EMPowered, which encourages and educates every associate to seek out innovative ways to save energy.
Associates are regarded as environmental stewards who are actively involved in helping to reduce the company’s overall emissions by curtailing unnecessary energy usage. Through EMPowered, J.C. Penney stores designate an “Energy Captain” who takes responsibility for monitoring energy-usage levels, identifying opportunities for improvement and promoting energy-saving efforts throughout the facility. J.C. Penney logistics centers employ similar initiatives using associate-based “Green Teams.”
“To become a more sustainable business, we needed to involve our 150,000 associates whose individual actions and habits can have a profound effect in achieving energy conservation every day,” said Myron E. (Mike) Ullman, III, chairman and CEO of J.C. Penney. “A true commitment to environmental progress begins with an organization that is willing to take the necessary steps toward a cleaner environment.” | <urn:uuid:8a5d6660-543d-4319-b52d-a0698da6189b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.chainstoreage.com/article/jc-penney-sets-goal-reduce-energy-use-20-2015?device=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943545 | 403 | 1.96875 | 2 |
TAMPA - The gritty details of how a bullet pierces a heart. The scientific causes of gunshot residue. The tedious process of analyzing shell casings.
This is what the real CSI is about, and jurors at the manslaughter trial of a retired school bus driver got an all day taste of what crime scene investigators do at work every day.
Trevor Dooley, 71, is accused of shooting 41-year old Daniel James at a park in Valrico in 2010. Prosecutors said Dooley was angry that a young skateboarder was riding around on a basketball court, and James intervened, leading to a struggle. During the fight, Dooley's handgun discharged, shooting James in the heart.
James' eight-year-old daughter witnessed the whole incident.
Dooley's defense attorney maintained that the shooting was an act of self-defense, and that his client is covered under Florida's 'stand your ground' law.
During testimony, a crime scene expert explained to the jury how both Dooley and James had clear signs of gunshot residue.
"When you've been shot, and you've been shot at close range, your body is engulfed in gun smoke," said Daniel Radcliffe, a crime scene technician who works at the Daytona Beach office for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
State attorneys also called on a forensic toxicologist to explain the details of what happened to the bullet after it was discharged from Dooley's gun.
"It caused two holes in his heart," said Mary Mainlaind, and FDLE crime scene expert. She was asked how fast a bullet that traveled through someone's heart would lead to cardiac arrest.
"In seconds," Mainland said.
While police investigators were establishing Dooley's connection to the crime scene and that he was the likely shooter of James, prosecutors are expected to call more witnesses to clarify the conflicting stories of exactly what led to the deadly confrontation.
Dooley's defense argued that their client was assaulted by a younger, stronger James and was in fear for his life.
Prosecutors said that Dooley initiated the confrontation, and became angry when James demanded to know why Dooley was flashing his firearm in a park with children and was swearing in front of kids.
Testimony is expected to continue through Friday.
Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Jurors in the Jodi Arias trial said they couldn't come up with a unanimous decision when deliberating life or death as of noon Wednesday. | <urn:uuid:8d9c9940-ab33-43ed-894c-7fd28fc0db1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/testimony--gunshot-residue-all-over-trevor-dooley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978862 | 527 | 1.570313 | 2 |
About Archie Schools
- There are 2 K-12 schools in Archie, MO, including 2 public schools. Archie public schools belong to one districts, Archie R-V School District.
- There are 1 Archie elementary school, 1 Archie middle school, 1 Archie high school and 2 Archie preschool schools.
Contact Education.com with questions or feedback about SchoolFinder.
Please note, if you wish to speak to someone at the school, you must contact the school directly. | <urn:uuid:b172fe4f-06ec-4230-a47d-e42945f30779> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.education.com/schoolfinder/us/missouri/archie/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938288 | 97 | 1.875 | 2 |
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Greyhound Station Gulag
FEMA camp survivor: Businessman Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Syria, stands outside the New Orleans Greyhound station that was converted into an open-air detention center following Katrina. Zeitoun was imprisoned under FEMA jurisdiction after being arrested for "trespassing" on his own property.
New Orleans resident Abdulrahman Zeitoun was with three friends in the living room when the looters came. Like most of the armed criminal gangs afflicting the city in Katrina's wake, the marauders who confronted Mr. Zeitoun wore government-issued costumes.
Before the day's end, the Syrian-born U.S. citizen -- who had spent days paddling through the flooded streets in a canoe, rendering what aid he could to people trapped in their ruined homes -- would be confined in a makeshift detention camp modeled after the notorious facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
No formal criminal charges were filed against Zeitoun. When he protested the denial of his due process rights and rudimentary decencies of living, he was told by the guards that he was under the jurisdiction of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) -- which meant that he was somebody else's problem.
If it hadn't been for an encounter with a Christian missionary ministering to the prisoners -- a man Zeitoun believes was sent in literal answer to prayer -- it's likely that he and at least one of his friends, a fellow Syrian-American, would still be prisoners of the Department of Homeland Security.
Zeitoun was raised in the Syrian coastal town Jableh as part of a financially successful and well-regarded family. After migrating to New Orleans, Zeitoun found work with a local building contractor. Blessed with a strong work ethic and uncanny entrepreneurial instinct, he created a small house-painting business that quickly grew to include ownership of several rental properties -- including the house from which he was kidnapped under the color of government "authority" the morning of September 6, 2005.
Just before Katrina hit the city, Zeitoun sent his wife Kathy and their four children to stay with friends in Houston. He remained behind to safeguard the house, look after the rental properties, and help wherever he could. On several occasions while he was rendering aid to stranded neighbors, Zeitoun encountered patrol craft carrying police or military personnel, who were too busy maintaining an intimidating facade to lend assistance.
Prior to his arrest, the only direct contact Zeitoun had with "authority" came in the form of a visit by "rescue" personnel in a government helicopter. At the time, Zeitoun was setting up his tent in the back yard of his home.
After several attempts by the weary Good Samaritan to communicate that he was fine and intended to stay, "one of the men in the helicopter decided to drop a box of water down to him," recounts Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Eggers in his book Zeitoun. He tried to wave them off again, "to no avail. The box came down, and Zeitoun leapt out of the way before it knocked the tent flat and sent plastic bottles everywhere." The government employees, having "helped" the resident by demolishing his shelter, flew away to impart similar assistance elsewhere.
While Zeitoun was helping his neighbors, the police -- including the officers who would materialize in his living room to arrest him on suspicion of "looting" -- were helping themselves to whatever they wanted.
New Orleans Police Officer Donald Lima, who was part of the team that arrested Zeitoun, spent much of his time as a government-licensed looter and swapping the plundered property with National Guard units.
"In exchange for gasoline, Lima and other New Orleans police officers broke into convenience stores and took cigarettes and chewing tobacco," recalls Eggers. "A majority of the National Guardsmen, Lima said, chewed tobacco and smoked Marlboros, so this arrangement kept both sides well supplied. Lima considered the looting a necessary part of the mission." The gasoline was needed for official business, he maintained, as well as "to power his home generators."
When Guardsmen couldn't provide him with gas, "Lima siphoned fuel from cars and trucks. His throat was sore from all the gas-siphoning he did after the storm, he said."
Ralph Gonzalez, an officer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, also took part in Zeitoun's arrest. He was among the out-of-state officers who arrived five days after the storm. "We thought we were in a third-world country," he told Eggers, which is why he and his fellow cops spent most nights cowering in a secure location while the people they were supposedly serving and protecting were being preyed on by armed criminals.
Lima and Gonzalez were two of the six uniformed heroes who eagerly stormed into Zeitoun's property on September 6, arresting the businessman and three friends on suspicion of looting (that is, stealing without official permission) and dealing drugs.
When identification was demanded, Zeitoun complied, but the soldier who issued the demand didn't deign to look at the card. The invaders -- five men and a female National Guard officer -- didn't collect evidence or secure the "crime scene." The four civilians were marched out to a motorboat that conveyed them through flooded streets to an intersection that provided a patch of high ground. Once there, they were surrounded by a phalanx of armed men in body armor.
As two armed thugs performed the familiar profane recital ("Stay there, motherf****r!" "Don't move, a*****e!"), Zeitoun was thrown face-down in the stygian mud and his hands were zip-tied behind his back. A few minutes later he found himself being processed into a makeshift military detention facility at the local Greyhound station.
Insta-gulags -- coming soon to a town near you? The continental United States, as divided into FEMA districts. Just something to think about.
"Camp Greyhound" was described by USA Today as an "outpost of law and order" amid the entropic violence of post-Katrina New Orleans. A more suitable description would be "Gitmo North."
Camp Greyhound, which at one point held 1,200 prisoners, "looked precisely like the pictures ... of Guantanamo Bay," writes Eggers. "Like that complex, it was a vast grid of chain-link fencing with few walls, so the prisoners were visible to the guards and each other. Like Guantanamo, it was outdoors, and there appeared to be nowhere to sit or sleep. There were simply cages and the pavement beneath them."
After being stripped and subjected to a body cavity search, Zeitoun was detained with his friends in one of the facility's "pods." For the next three days and nights, "the pavement would be their bed, their open-air toilet would be their bathroom, and the steel rack would be the seat they could share," continues Eggers.
As Americans of Arab ancestry, Zeitoun and his friend Nasser Dayoob received particular attention from their captors, who insisted: "You guys are al-Qaeda."
In addition to being denied blankets or even a decent sleeping surface, the prisoners -- who included Todd Gambino, one of Zeitoun's tenants, and a man named Ronnie who had sought shelter after the flood -- were bathed in the blinding glare of a floodlight after nightfall.
After the first sleepless night, another prisoner was introduced into the mix, an oddly jovial guy called Jerry. Curiously, Jerry focused most of his attention on Zeitoun and Nasser, and seemed strangely eager to solicit negative opinions about the Bush administration, U.S. foreign policy, and the military.
One didn't have to look for potting soil caked between his toes in order to recognize that Jerry was a plant.
For Zeitoun and the other prisoners, the Camp Greyhound experience was one of constant tedium occasionally leavened with torment. In time-honored fashion, the guards exploited any excuse to inflict exemplary "discipline" on the detainees, most of whom had been arrested for violating curfew or similar petty matters.
"Always the procedure was the same," narrates Eggers, "a prisoner would be removed from his cage and dragged to the ground nearby, in full view of the rest of the prisoners. His hands and feet would be tied, and then, sometimes with a guard's knee on his back, he would be sprayed directly in the face" with pepper spray. "If the prisoner protested," continues Eggers, "the knee would dig deeper into his back. The spraying would continue until his spirit was broken. Then he would be doused with [a] bucket and returned to his cage."
These ritual acts of sadism, Eggers observes, were "born of a combination of opportunity, cruelty, ambivalence, and sport." They were intended to torment the other prisoners, most of whom -- like Zeitoun -- were made nauseous with suppressed rage by the spectacle of helpless men being tortured.
The victims included one disturbed man with the intellectual and emotional capacity of a child who was "punished" because he displayed the irrepressible symptoms of mental illness.
"Under any normal circumstances [Zeitoun] would have leapt to the defense of a man victimized as that man had been," observes Eggers. "But that he had to watch, helpless, knowing how depraved it was -- this was punishment for the others, too. It diminished the humanity of them all."
After three days in the Greyhound station gulag, Zeitoun and his friends were transferred to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center. (Jerry, of course, wasn't with them.) Following another strip-search, Zeitoun and Nasser -- the two Syrian-Americans -- were separated from the other innocent prisoners and confined in a maximum security cell.
For more than two weeks they would be abused, neglected, humiliated, insulted and subjected to a visit from a Gitmo-style "Extreme Repression Force" (ERP). Clad in black riot gear, wielding ballistic shields, batons, and other weapons, the ERP "burst in as if [Zeitoun] were in the process of committing murder," writes Eggers. "Cursing at him, three men used their shields to push him to the wall. As they pressed his face against the cinderblock, they cuffed his arms and shackled his legs."
After heroically subduing an unresisting man -- who by this time was dealing with an infected foot and a mysterious kidney ailment -- the ERP tore apart the cell before forcing the victim to strip and submit to another body cavity search.
While Zeitoun was suffering in Louisiana, his wife and children in Texas were convinced he was dead. He had never been permitted to contact his wife following his arrest, and Kathy wasn't able to find any trace of him. Before Katrina hit, the two of them would occasionally speak about the potentially dire consequences for an Arab-American who found himself in police custody. They were aware of many instances in which "a Muslim came to be suspected by the U.S. government, and, under the president's current powers, U.S. agents were allowed to seize the man from anywhere in the world and bring him anywhere in the world, without ever having to charge him with a crime."
"How different was Zeitoun's current situation?" Eggers reflects. "He was being held without contact, charges, bail, or trial.... Zeitoun did not entertain such thoughts lightly. They went against everything he knew and believed about his adopted country. But then again, he knew the stories. Professors, doctors, and engineers had all been seized and disappeared for months and years in the interest of national security. Why not a house painter?"
On September 19, Kathy's cell phone rang.
"Is this Mrs. Zeitoun?" asked an unfamiliar male voice, mis-pronouncing the last name.
"Yes," Kathy replied in a voice tremulous with dread.
"I saw your husband," the voice informed her. "He's okay. He's in prison. I'm a missionary. I was in Hunt, the prison up in St. Gabriel. He's there. He gave me your number."
When Kathy began to barrage him with questions, the missionary hastily explained: "Look, I can't talk to you any more. I could get in trouble. He's okay, he's in there. That's it. I've got to go."
Deprived of any source of hope except for prayer, Zeitoun had pleaded with God to send a messenger. Shortly thereafter a middle-aged black man visited his cell -- a missionary who was distributing Bibles and praying with the inmates. At no small risk to himself -- remember, we live in an era when defense attorneys who pass along notes from terrorist suspects can be sent to prison themselves -- this man of God honored Zeitoun's request to contact his wife and family.
An American family: Abdulrahman Zeitoun with his wife Kathy and four daughters. Although he can't understand why the girls insist on watching "Pride and Prejudice" several times a week, Zeitoun is just happy to be home.
Ten more days would pass before Kathy succeeded in freeing her ailing husband. After dashing back to New Orleans, she contacted the court to learn where Zeitoun's pre-trial hearings would take place.
"Oh, we can't tell you that," sniffed the functionary on the other end of the phone. "That's privileged information."
"Privileged for who? I'm his wife!" exclaimed Kathy.
"I'm sorry, that's private information," replied the drone.
"It's not private! It's public!" Kathy insisted. "That's the point! It's a public court!"
Zeitoun's courtroom experience followed the same Kafka-inspired script. Charged with "looting" his own house, Zeitoun was given $75,000 bail -- but denied a phone call to arrange for someone to bail him out.
Eventually, with the help of an attorney and a CNN producer, Kathy was able to contact her husband and post bail. His friends weren't as fortunate: Nasser, Todd, and Ronnie were imprisoned for five, six, and eight months, respectively, before the charges against them were dropped.
Once he was free, Zeitoun's health improved immediately. The experience left Kathy with lingering stroke-like symptoms, including a sudden, transitory inability to understand what people say to her. When they visited the house in which Zeitoun was "arrested," they discovered that actually looters -- most likely including uniformed thugs like the ones who kidnapped him -- had stripped the place bare.
While Zeitoun and his friends, along with scores of other perfectly innocent people, were detained on spurious charges, the "forces of order" were running amok in the flood-devastated city.
Dozens of New Orleans's, ahem, finest fled the city. Those who remained made life considerably worse for the productive people who stayed behind. On September 4, New Orleans police officers gunned down refugees trying to flee the city by way of the Danziger Bridge; they then conspired to cover up that atrocity. Armed parties like the one that kidnapped Zeitoun and his friends invaded homes and confiscated firearms from innocent citizens.
In his History of the French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle maintained that human society exists atop a roiling mass of lava that can erupt and destroy everything in its path once the brittle crust of civilization is breached. Those breaches are usually the result of state action. Occasionally -- as was the case in post-Katrina New Orleans -- the state exploits a rupture resulting from a natural catastrophe.
At the slightest excuse those who presume to rule us will treat us exactly as Abdulrahman Zeitoun was treated. Before being kidnapped and imprisoned by the government, Zeitoun never suspected that a potential gulag was lurking inside the local Greyhound station. He sees the world much differently now, as should we all.
Be sure to tune in for Pro Libertate Radio each weeknight from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time on the Liberty News Radio Network.
Dum spiro, pugno! | <urn:uuid:4e57d52a-d884-4559-9ec0-5901898a51a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2010/03/greyhound-station-gulag.html?showComment=1271338808569 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984711 | 3,379 | 2.140625 | 2 |
The ACM has selected Vern Paxson as the recipient of the 2007 Grace Hopper Award for his research on how to measure Internet behavior. His techniques are used to assess new communications concepts, improve network performance, and prevent network intrusion. They provide both the research community and Internet operators with the tools to improve the operation of this increasingly diverse, decentralized communications infrastructure. Paxson is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Senior Scientist with the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) Center for Internet Research, and a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. The award carries a $35,000 prize. Funding is provided by Google.
Paxson's research on Internet measurement brought the scientific process to the measurement of the Internet's behavior and the conditions under which it operates, raising the practice of Internet measurement to a higher level. As a result, the research community is able to evaluate new ideas and technologies and identify problems and priorities that are needed for increased efficiency. In addition, Internet operators are able to alleviate traffic congestion, detect attacks, and improve communications reliability.
Through a series of papers, Paxson's findings revealed the mismatches between reality and the common assumptions made in analytical and simulation models. By combining the extensive collection of data from many locations with sophisticated statistical techniques, he provided a wealth of useful information about the nature of the Internet and ways to improve its operation.
Paxson was named an ACM Fellow in 2006. His 1996 research paper titled End-to-end routing behavior in the Internet won the first "Test of Time" award given by ACM's Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM). The award, presented in 2006, is given to the most influential networking paper published 10-12 years before. His current research continues to focus on Internet measurement as well as network intrusion detection and large-scale Internet attacks. | <urn:uuid:2031f0d9-1787-4dc0-960f-6b83cba884f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/measuring-internet-behavior-garners-grac/206801720 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934125 | 381 | 2.15625 | 2 |
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INSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE, AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE by Douglass C. North
"An outstanding exposition of how and why "institutions" impact economic performance. North takes an expansive view of institutions and explains many puzzles that traditional economic theory cannot."
GOVERNING THE COMMONS by Elinor Ostrom
"A very thorough book on how and under what conditions communities can organize to manage their common environmental resources. Drawing insights from game theory, this empirically rich book argues that reliance on governments and/or markets may not always be the best option to solve collective problems."
MANAGERIAL DILEMMAS by Gary J. Miller
"Drawing insights from organizational theory and organizational economics, Miller demonstrates that simplistic efficiency-based arguments cannot explain key propositions of organizational theory literature."
NATIONAL DIVERSITY AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM Suzanne Berger and Ronald Dore, eds.
"An excellent compendium of articles on whether economic globalization will cause national systems of governance to converge to a single model. Theoretically insightful and empirically rich."
GLOBAL BUSINESS REGULATION by John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos
"A magisterial work examining how and why business regulation has shifted from national to global institutions."
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION by Karl Polanyi
"An engaging analysis of social implications of the transition to market-based economic system in the 19th century. It has very interesting insights to understand the current debates on globalization."
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA by Alexis De Tocqueville
"A fabulous commentary on the American system of governance that existed in the 19th century. Has many important insights to understand how and why many contemporary American governance institutions evolved and function."
THE NEW INDUSTRIAL STATE by John K. Galbraith
"An insightful analysis of the socio-economic implications of the rise of the big corporation and the managerial class."
Aseem Prakash is Assistant Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy at the School of Business and Public Management, The George Washington University. He also serves on the faculty of the Department of Political Science and The Elliott School of International Affairs. Professor Prakash received a Joint Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to his Ph.D., he completed his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and then worked as a manager in the marketing department of Procter and Gamble for three years.
Professor Prakash's research examines governance issues at
the interface of business strategy and public policy in two relate areas. The first component focuses on environmental policy and management issues such as conditions under which firms adopt "beyond compliance" policies, and the impact of public law and institutions on the evolution and efficacy of voluntary codes-of-conduct. His book, Greening the Firm: The Politics of Corporate Environmentalism (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), examines this subject. It focuses on ten cases of "beyond compliance" environmental policymaking within two multinational corporations -- Baxter International Inc. and Eli Lilly and Company.
The second component of Professor Prakash's research examines
the changing nature of international political economy of which economic globalization is both a cause and a consequence. This research focuses on five key questions: is economic globalization a fad, how best to conceptualize it, how did it originate, and what may be its implications, and how to cope with globalization? To systematically examine these
questions, Professor Prakash has recently co-edited three
volumes: (1) Globalization and Governance (Routledge, 1999) focuses on how economic globalization impacts extant governance institutions at multiple levels of aggregation; (2) Coping with Globalization (Routledge, 2000) seeks to understand how governments and firms can cope with
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Circus poster showing seals during circus act. Caption says Trained by Captain Woodward. Every feat pictured above actually presented. $500.00 will be given to anyone producing a similar act. Original poster dates to 1899. Great vintage circus poster available in a number of sizes. Learn More
Vintage map shows the city of New Orleans, and the Mississippi River : Lake Pontchartrain in distance. Bird's-eye view of New Orleans with the Mississippi River in the foreground; prominent building and place names are listed below the image. This beautiful Currier & Ives map dates to 1885. <br /> Learn More
This 1896 circus poster depicts the big combined show of 'The Adam Forepaugh Show' and the 'Sells Brothers Big Show'. Both the artwork and the insistent text of this Strobridge poster of 1896 emphasize the bigness of the show. The thousands of circus-bound people pouring out of the excursion trains clinch the effect. Learn More
Circus poster showing the grand pavillion tents, trains, and other circus items. TITLE: The Barnum & Bailey greatest show on Earth, the world's largest, grandest, best amusement institution. Great vintage circus poster available in a number of sizes. Learn More
Trained pigs were frequently seen on the traveling circuses. An act of trained house cats might have been included more often on the tiny dog and pony shows, but the one illustrated in this circus poster of a huge railroad circus is indeed a rarity. This Barnum & Bailey circus poster dates to 1890s. Learn More
Retro Snapshots offers thousands of old photos, posters and panoramics. Our vintage photos have been digitally restored by professional artists, who painstakingly remove scratches, tears and improve contrast and coloration of all of our vintage photos.
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Undaunted leader of the Mysian band. 620
Phalces and Mermerus their arms resign’d
To young Antilochus; Hyppotion fell
And Morys by Meriones; the shafts
Right-aim’d of Teucer to the shades dismiss’d
Prothoeus and Periphetes, and the prince 625
Of Sparta, Menelaus, in his flank
Pierced Hyperenor; on his entrails prey’d
The hungry steel, and, through the gaping wound
Expell’d, his spirit flew; night veil’d his eyes.
But Ajax Oiliades the swift 630
Slew most; him none could equal in pursuit
Of tremblers scatter’d by the frown of Jove.
ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH BOOK.
Jove, awaking and seeing the Trojans routed, threatens Juno. He sends Iris to admonish Neptune to relinquish the battle, and Apollo to restore health to Hector. Apollo armed with the AEgis, puts to flight the Grecians; they are pursued home to their fleet, and Telamonian Ajax slays twelve Trojans bringing fire to burn it.
But when the flying Trojans had o’erpass’d
Both stakes and trench, and numerous slaughtered lay
By Grecian hands, the remnant halted all
Beside their chariots, pale, discomfited.
Then was it that on Ida’s summit Jove 5
At Juno’s side awoke; starting, he stood
At once erect; Trojans and Greeks he saw,
These broken, those pursuing and led on
By Neptune; he beheld also remote
Encircled by his friends, and on the plain 10
Extended, Hector; there he panting lay,
Senseless, ejecting blood, bruised by a blow
From not the feeblest of the sons of Greece.
Touch’d with compassion at that sight, the Sire
Of Gods and men, frowning terrific, fix’d 15
His eyes on Juno, and her thus bespake.
No place for doubt remains. Oh, versed in wiles,
Juno! thy mischief-teeming mind perverse
Hath plotted this; thou hast contrived the hurt
Of Hector, and hast driven his host to flight. 20
I know not but thyself mayst chance to reap
The first-fruits of thy cunning, scourged by me.
Hast thou forgotten how I once aloft
Suspended thee, with anvils at thy feet,
And both thy wrists bound with a golden cord 25
Indissoluble? In the clouds of heaven
I hung thee, while from the Olympian heights
The Gods look’d mournful on, but of them all
None could deliver thee, for whom I seized,
Hurl’d through the gates of heaven on earth he fell, 30
Half-breathless. Neither so did I resign
My hot resentment of the hero’s wrongs
Immortal Hercules, whom thou by storms | <urn:uuid:fc5f559c-acd3-4d4f-911f-bb5ae9aadc49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/16452/190.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907399 | 687 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Im thinking that maybe instead of explaining how im doing things, I should explain WHAT im trying to do.Task
-Remote wireless sensor modules take periodic (10 min) measurements, which are send over XBEE radios, eventually going into SQL databases/GUI's etc.
-Transmitted data consists of ints/string/floats of varying sizes. Total payload size is roughly 40-50 bytes (/10 min)
-The base (PC) of the network runs a JAVA program for receiving/decoding the XBEE packets (API mode for those interested, using the XBEE API on both Arduino as well as PC side)Current solution
Current solution is to convert and concat all data to a string, perform getBytes() and fill the XBEE payload (uint8_t) with these bytes.Why use String?
There are a number of reasons for me to use String. Note that although experienced with Arduino, Im no wizard or something
-Easy to add info (in String format) and easy to concat the arrays
-Easy to extract the bytes and populate payload
Because the payload is of type uint8_t type, it can be filled simply by the String.getBytes() method. Manually inserting ints in the array is even pointless, Id have to convert them to individual bytes, and decode/convert everything on the other side again.
-Easy to send and decode the float measurements.
In my JAVA programming experience, I've had the "pleasure" of reading out sensor registers which stored floats in their original 4 bytes, and had to decode them manually. This was quite frustrating, with the endian and signed/unsigned nature of the bytes involved. Somehow the built in methods didnt work....
Now with Arduino, instead of adding the four bytes to the payload, I just convert the float to String, sdend over the char, and decoding becomes easy at the JAVA side, or even unnecessary (as SQL querys are String as well).
Additionally, the dtostrf(float,dec,min.width,string);
method gives the opportunity to trim the floats and specify decimals.Alternative?
Im sure there are alternatives, but I wouldnt know them (yet), and as this concerns a prototype, im happy it works the way I want it to. If you guys have any suggestions, you're welcome. Ive learned to program mainly in JAVA (LabView before that
), so quite high level. Although Im confident I can program what I want and need on Arduino, the really lower stuff like malloc...I know what it does and could work with it given some time, but I dont fully understand all the possibilities and limitations.
So lets say that, going by previous comments, I fix the payload array length. Knowing I send over 40-50 bytes only once every 10 minutes, what changes are really worth it, if at all?
I appreciate your thoughts. | <urn:uuid:6e5cbcb4-b376-4e2e-aa57-bf77911e38e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=126834.msg954427 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928559 | 617 | 1.976563 | 2 |
For the casual viewer of the major party political conventions, the ritual presence of religious leaders (who open and close each night’s events with prayer) may be lost. But the candidates and leadership of both parties are aware of the importance of invoking religion at political conventions: two-thirds (67 percent) of voters – including 66 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of independents, and 78 percent of Republicans – say that it’s important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs.
Last week, former Mass. governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Convention largely embraced Romney’s Mormon faith, following a well-worn civil religion approach that made general references to God and faith while avoiding the potentially controversial specifics of Mormon theology that clash with his evangelical voter base. This week, as President Obama takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention, he faces a different, but also serious, challenge about how to address his faith while he makes his case for another four years as president.
Like Romney, Obama has faced some challenges on the faith front. As Daniel Cox and I noted in a recent chapter on Obama’s faith in “Religion and the American Presidency,” Obama made his entrance to the national stage with a speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention that was full of religious language, such as traditional biblical allusions (“It is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper -- that makes this country work”) and references to contemporary Christian music (“we worship an awesome God in the blue states”). This speech was also remarkable because it broke through at a time when the “values voters” movement was on the rise and Democrats were being lambasted for being perceived as unfriendly to religion.
As a senator in 2006, Obama also delivered a stirring, personal speech about the role of faith in both his private and his public life at a Sojourners/Call to Renewal conference.Commentators rapidly seized on the historic nature of the speech. In a column titled “Obama’s Eloquent Faith,” E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post called it “the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy’s Houston speech.”And during the 2008 campaign, the Wall Street Journal noted that the race was shaping up to be an unusual one “in which the presumptive Democratic nominee is talking more openly about his Christian beliefs than the Republican candidate.”
But in the home stretch of the 2008 campaign and as president, Obama has had the somewhat strange challenge of managing both the aftermath of a very public falling out with his Christian pastor and persistent false rumors that he is Muslim rather than Christian.
As president, Obama has mostly limited references to his faith to official occasions such as the National Prayer Breakfast, Easter or Christmas. On these occasions, he has delivered genuine and theologically specific remarks about his belief in Jesus Christ, the power of prayer, and even the significance of the agony of the crucifixion. Earlier this spring, the president also cited the Golden Rule as part of his evolution toward endorsing same-sex marriage. But the data suggests that, despite the genuineness of his faith and the eloquence with which he can express it, President Obama is not convincingly connecting with a significant number of Americans on the issue of his religious faith.
After nearly a full term in office, fewer than half (49 percent) of voters correctly identify Obama as Christian. Around 1-in-5 (17 percent) voters continue to incorrectly say that Obama is a Muslim, up from 12 percent in 2008 (12 percent). Most strikingly, about 3-in-10 (31 percent) voters say they are unsure of his religious beliefs. Other questions confirm this identification problem: only 38 percent of voters report that Obama’s religious beliefs are similar to their own, despite his membership in the United Church of Christ, one of America’s oldest Christian denominations.
This dearth of knowledge about Obama’s faith could have an impact on his ability to sway the nearly 6-in-10 (58 percent) independent voters who care about presidential candidates’ religious beliefs.
Perceiving Obama’s religious beliefs to be different from one’s own is a significant independent predictor of holding unfavorably views of Obama, even holding other relevant characteristics constant. Americans who say Obama holds somewhat or very different religious beliefs than their own have, on average, a 72 percent probability of viewing the President unfavorably, while those who said his religious beliefs were somewhat or very similar had on average just a 13 percent probability of viewing the President unfavorably.
Obama’s campaign speech is, in this sense, an opportunity to clearly spell out his deep connection to his Christian faith. But his challenge is, in many ways, greater than Romney’s. While Romney needed to connect his Mormon faith primarily to an evangelical constituency, Obama must talk about his faith in a way that connects with a wide swath of religious groups that constitute the Democratic Party base – mainline, black, and evangelical Protestants; Catholics; Jews; Muslims; Buddhists; Hindus; and others – along with the religiously unaffiliated, an increasingly politically important group. But he’s successfully threaded that needle before. He could borrow a page from his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, where, he used theological concepts and language to conjure a national vision that included religion as a unifying, rather than divisive, force.
This week, Obama has the opportunity to remind Americans, once again, of his strong religious faith. He has little to lose by choosing to weave the rhetoric of civil religion into his acceptance of the Democratic nomination. And if he can remind the substantial minority of American voters who are not aware of his faith that he is, in fact, Christian, he will have much to gain. | <urn:uuid:3dc6465a-6e6e-43c0-a3de-b9a86226ca79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/figuring-faith/post/president-obamas-faith-challenge-at-the-democratic-convention/2012/09/06/ea688c80-f83c-11e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97296 | 1,216 | 1.921875 | 2 |
A large earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010.
Image courtesy of the USGS.
Haiti Earthquake January 2010
News story originally written on January 13, 2010
A major earthquake causing widespread devestation and extensive loss of life struck the nation of Haiti on January 12, 2010. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.0. Haiti is on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea.
The island of Hispaniola lies along the boundary between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. There are several geologic faults running through the region. The earthquake occured in an area called the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone.
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NASA's instrument Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aboard Japanese Advanced Earth Orbiting Satellite (ADEOS) has provided the most recent image showing the total ozone concentration. Ozone is a...more | <urn:uuid:7ccb0e5b-532b-4d30-9101-08909b431e2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.windows2universe.org/headline_universe/earth_science/haiti_earthquake_jan_2010.html&edu=high | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929076 | 508 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Discovered: Exercise reduces breast cancer risk, Facebook is better than sex?, parents aren't careful enough about kid allergies, and it just takes two degrees of warming for bit climate change.
- Exercise reduces breast cancer risk. What sounds like an easy way to cut back one's risk of the disease is actually a lot harder than it sounds. Those who exercised 9 to 17 hours per week, meaning more than one hour per day, reduced their breast cancer risk by 30 percent. Looking at 3,000 women those who exercised during their 20s and 30s, were less likely to develop the disease during menopause. Science thinks it might have something to do with excess fat, which can feed a tumor. Like we said, 9 to 17 hours might sound doable, but we can't really imagine fitting that in -- that's pretty much a two hour a day minimum. [Reuters]
- Facebook is better than sex? Hmm, this sounds suspect, but a recent study found our brains emit similar happy chemicals when we share things online as when we have sex. "Humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary rewards such as food and sex," write the authors. We get the connection and all, but, readers, you tell us: Is Facebook sharing really better than a physical moment with another human? Like any human interaction should feel better than posting a thing on the Internet. Science, tell us it isn't so. [CBS]
- Kids are having many allergic reactions because of parent neglect. Parents, you gotta be more careful with your kids with allergies. A new study has found that 11 percent of allergic reaction in children happen from a parent feeding their kids the food -- on purpose. "Intentional exposures to allergenic food are typically reported in teenagers, who tend to take more risks or who might be embarrassed about their food allergy," explains researcher David Fleischer. "What is troubling is that in this study we found that a significant number of young children received allergenic foods from parents who were aware of the allergy." Guys, this seems avoidable. [NIH]
- It takes just two more degrees of warming to cause a big climate change. With just two more degrees of global warming, sea level will rise 1.5 to 2 meters, which is enough to cause major damage to at least one beloved city. "As an example, for New York City it has been shown that one metre of sea level rise could raise the frequency of severe flooding from once per century to once every three years," explains researcher Stefan Rahmstorf. However, not to freak you out, these estimates are a little dubious. "Of course it remains open how far the close link between temperature and global sea level found for the past will carry on into the future," says Rahmstorf. "Despite the uncertainty we still have about future sea level, from a risk perspective our approach provides at least plausible, and relevant, estimates." [Potsdam] | <urn:uuid:2b1d55ba-85aa-440e-894b-fd72b9abf571> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/exercise-reduces-breast-cancer-risk-facebook-better-sex/53909/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968429 | 619 | 2.484375 | 2 |
The Macademia oil that’s harvested today comes directly from the nuts in the trees. The oil is exceptionally rich in natural tocopherols, which is vitamin E, and it also contains, phenolic acid, carotenes, phenols squalene, and essential fatty acids. The Moroccans also did a little experimenting and discover that the oil was great for restoring the shine to dry, brittle hair, and it helped nourish the skin so the oil became a valuable commodity in that culture, and it is still an important therapeutic remedy in that part of the world.
When macadamia oil and argan oil are combined and used in hair products the results are nothing short of fantastic. Macadamia Hair Products combine those two important oils and produce hair rejuvenation and maintenance products that are hard to compete with in this ever expanding hair care products industry.
The components in both oils produce some interesting benefits that start with intense nourishment. The hair is ultra-smooth and shiny when the non-greasy and instantly absorbed Macadamia Natural Hair Oil is applied to the hair. The oil extends the life of color treatments and it has natural built-in UV protection, plus drying time is reduced by at least 40%.
The Macadamia Natural Hair Product line includes Deep Repair Masque, which is a hair reconstructor that helps repair damaged hair. The Healing Oil Spray infuses moisture and shin into the hair and Rejuvenating Shampoo adds moisture and protects dry and damaged hair. The Moisturizing Rinse is a daily conditioner that detangles the hair and leaves it more manageable and easier to style.
The Nourishing Leave-In Cream is a texturizing conditioner for unruly hair. The Oil Infused Healing Comb is a must-have product that blends the Macadamia healing oil treatment with specially formulated resin and it becomes the ultimate detangler. The Oil Infused Brush is another unique item in the product line that has healing oil and the special resin to detangle long unmanageable hair.
The Macadamia Natural Oil line offers two unique oils in one, and they are both filled with chemical constituents that have healing as well as natural hair treatment qualities. That combination is hard to find in the crowded world of hair products | <urn:uuid:c074130c-a7ab-409b-b091-8db5a2a9ff70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cleopatraschoice.com/deodorants.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957509 | 467 | 1.625 | 2 |
Complete CAE (Workbook with Answers, Workbook Audio CD, CD-ROM)
English | 2009 | PDF, MP3, NGR | 96 kbps, 32 KHz | 94 Pages | 140 MB
Complete CAE is a new course for the 2008 updated CAE exam. Informed by the Cambridge Learner Corpus and providing a complete CAE exam paper specially prepared for publication by Cambridge ESOL, it is the most authentic exam preparation course available.
Complete CAE combines the very best in contemporary classroom practice with first-hand knowledge of the challenges students face. There are exercises to help students avoid repeating the typical mistakes that real CAE candidates make, as revealed by the Cambridge Learner Corpus. This topic-based course covers every part of the CAE exam in detail, ensuring that students are fully equipped to tackle each part of every paper. In addition, the accompanying free CD-ROM enables students to focus on their own particular areas of difficulty and work at their own pace. The Workbook with answers with Audio CD contains extra practice corresponding to the units of the Student's Book. The accompanying CD contains all the audio recordings for the Workbook exercises. | <urn:uuid:97b48fd0-2249-4e7d-9c2e-9998f24b1370> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.downeu.org/ebook/321048-complete-cae-workbook-with-answers-workbook-audio-cd-cd-rom.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906412 | 237 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Chester Alan Arthur
Arthur, Chester Alan, 1829–86, 21st President of the United States (1881–85), b. Fairfield, Vt. He studied law and before the Civil War practiced in New York City. In the war he was (1861–63) quartermaster general of New York State. In 1871, President Grant appointed him collector of the port of New York. Although Arthur was a loyal party man and a believer in the spoils system, he administered this office honestly and efficiently. President Hayes, bent on civil service reform, displaced Arthur in 1878, thus defying Senator Conkling and the New York Republican machine. At the Republican national convention of 1880, Garfield was nominated for President, and the Conkling "Stalwarts," who had supported Grant, were placated by the nomination of Arthur for Vice President. Garfield's assassination soon after his inauguration made Arthur President. He came into office handicapped by a record in machine politics and grave doubt as to his ability and integrity, but his administration proved honest, efficient, and dignified. He effectively supported the civil service reform act of 1883, vetoed a Chinese exclusion bill that violated a treaty with China, and vigorously prosecuted the Star Route trials, in which several prominent Republicans were found guilty of swindling the Post Office Department. Serious illness kept Arthur from actively seeking renomination in 1884.
See biography by T. C. Reeves (1975).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
More on Chester Alan Arthur from Infoplease:
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies | <urn:uuid:ebd3ef92-255a-478a-a743-5676b2385bc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/arthur-chester-alan.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956472 | 346 | 2.75 | 3 |
|LESSON 13||*June 20 - 26|
Read for This Week's Study:
Mark 16:15, 16; Luke 24:46, 47; John 14:6; Eph. 4:11-15; 2 Pet. 2:1-3; Rev. 14:6-12.
"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15, NIV).
|Mission is not an old-fashioned
word associated with tropical helmets and six-year terms in isolated places
around the world. The term mission refers to a core aspect of the Christian
life. "The words mission and missionary come from Latin words meaning send
and one sent. . . . The English Bible usually uses the noun apostle, which
also comes from the Greek word that means one sent. . . . Thirty-nine times
the Gospel of John says that Jesus was sent by God. Thirty-nine times, then,
Jesus is defined in that book alone as a missionary or apostle."--Jon L.
Dybdahl,"Missionary God--Missionary Church" in Erich W. Baumgartner, ed.,
Re-Visioning Adventist Mission in Europe, (Berrien Springs, Mich.:
Andrews University Press, 1998), p. 8.
We, as followers of Christ, are fellow-missionaries with Jesus. As He was sent to this world, so we are sent to represent Him and to preach the three angels' messages to every person. The longer we are here, however, the greater the danger of our becoming inward-focused, seeking to maintain our structures and institutions at the expense of what we are called to do, which is to preach to the world the present-truth message that God has given us.
The Week at a Glance:
Mission is the heart of the church. The destiny of people, far and near, is at stake. Mission is not one among many programs of the church. It is the very reason for its existence. Each Christian is called to be a missionary.
*Study this week's lesson to prepare for Sabbath, June 27.
People Will Be Lost, Unless . . .
Theologians through the ages have debated whether or not God eventually will save all people. Some say God's love guarantees that, eventually, no one will be lost. Others say that people who have never heard of Christ will get an opportunity to come to believe after death. Others again defend various alternative theories. The problem with theories, however, is that often they try to explain everything when, in fact, we must simply be content with what God has revealed to us. There are questions to which we do not know the answers. But we know that He is totally just in what He does and, at the same time, limitless in His love. He also has made clear that people have a free will and that it is possible to be lost. In the end there will be a separation between those who are saved and those who will face eternal death. And we know also that the gospel must be preached as quickly as possible to as many people as possible.
What do the following texts tell us about the importance of preaching the gospel to the whole world?
1 John 5:11, 12
John 3:16 is one of the best known texts in the Bible. " 'God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life' " (NIV). The text speaks about the love of God, which found expression in the sending of His Son to this earth. It promises eternal life to all who believe in Him. But it also clearly points to the alternative. Those who do not listen to the gospel call and refuse to accept Christ will perish. The decision as to who will perish and who will receive eternal life is not ours. We may be in for some real surprises when we see the roll call of the saved. Without overriding people's will, God will do everything possible to reduce the number of those who will perish. And-amazingly enough-He has, in His wisdom, given us a role in that process.
|What is your own role in the church's mission? How seriously do you take the call to reach others with the gospel? What more could you do?|
The Great Commission
The command to take the gospel to the entire world is found in all four Gospels, as well as in the book of Acts. They show, of course, clear parallels, but there are also some significant differences. One needs to read all versions to form a complete picture of everything that is implied in the "Great Commission."
Read the passages in which the "Great Commission" is recorded and note how they complement each other. What are the specific details in each of these passages?
Matt. 28:19, 20
Mark 16:15, 16
Luke 24:46, 47
The gospel is to be preached "to all nations." According to General Conference statistics, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is now proclaiming its message in more than 200 countries. This means that there are only a few countries in which our church does not have an official presence. Among these are several large ones: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen; most of the others are small, with less than one million inhabitants. So, one would be tempted to conclude that the Adventist Church almost has "finished the work." That, however, would be false. For even though we must give thanks to our Lord that our church continues to grow rapidly in many parts of the world and that many new territories constantly are being entered, the challenge is still enormous. When the New Testament speaks about "nations," it uses a word that would be more correctly translated as "people groups" or "ethnic groups." Our work, therefore, is not completed until all people groups have been reached. There is considerable debate about how many such people groups exist. The number quoted by specialists varies between some twelve thousand to more than twenty thousand, depending on the definition one uses. But, whatever definition is used, several thousand of these people groups have not yet been reached.
|Think about all the unreached people in your own community, whatever their ethnic background. What difference has your existence made in reaching them? What does your answer tell you about yourself and your role in the mission of the church?|
A Witnessing Church
What special message is to be proclaimed by God's people in the time of the end? Rev. 14:6-12. What is your understanding of that message? Paraphrase it in your own words.
The passage in which we find the messages of the three angels is found in a context that clearly focuses on the end of time. It is immediately preceded by a vision of the "firstfruits" (vs. 4) of the redeemed and followed by a vision of the "harvest" (vs. 15) of all the saved. It is important to know what these messages entail. But also we need to understand who these "angels" who bring this "eternal gospel" (vs. 5, NIV) are. The fact that the word angel in prophecy is a symbol for human messengers, leaders, and church members is also underscored by Ellen G. White: "The angels are represented as flying in the midst of heaven, proclaiming to the world a message of warning, and having a direct bearing upon the people living in the last days of this earth's history. No one hears the voice of these angels, for they are a symbol to represent the people of God who are working in harmony with the universe of heaven. Men and women, enlightened by the Spirit of God, and sanctified through the truth, proclaim the three messages in their order."--Life Sketches, p. 429.
Just as in the "Great Commission," we find in the opening statement of the three angels' messages a strong emphasis on the challenge to take the gospel to every person on earth. Yet, a great danger that we face, especially the longer we are here, is shifting from the missionary mode to the maintenance mode. We can easily lose sight of our mission to witness to the world and focus more on protecting and sustaining our own institutions. When that happens to us, or the churches or institutions we represent, then we are losing the reason for our existence.
|Think about this potential problem, that of focusing more on self-preservation than on mission. How does this happen? How can we recognize when it does, and what can we do to keep us from falling into this trap?|
It is not so difficult to agree with the statement that the church must be mission-minded. But who is the church? The church is not primarily an organization; rather, it is individuals who are, without any exception, called to be witnesses.
Why should we be confident that we can be witnesses of our faith? 1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 4:11-15.
Not all of us have the gift of preaching or teaching. But we all have been gifted in some way so that we can be what we are called to be-disciples always prepared to talk about the hope that is ours (1 Pet. 3:15).
What is the ultimate resource for those who are willing to witness of their faith? John 14:26; Acts 1:4, 8; 2:1-4.
The fact that Christ has promised the presence of the Holy Spirit to His followers and that we can receive spiritual gifts does not mean that it is not necessary to make any preparations or to undergo any training. The apostles were disciples who for more than three years underwent the most intensive training possible. Likewise, disciples today must be intentional about receiving training for Christian witness, and the church must make it a priority to constantly prepare relevant training materials and opportunities to equip the members for their task. But training alone will prove insufficient. God's people today need the presence and endowment of the Holy Spirit if they want to be successful in their outreach to others.
One simple truth, however, will always remain: You cannot give what you do not have. Unless we make sure that we have a living relationship with God, we cannot hope to lead others to that same experience.
What is a vital condition for all who want to be witnesses of their faith? 2 Pet. 3:18.
A church that responds to its calling will be a growing church. But growth should not be limited to numerical growth. Individually and corporately we must be "growing in grace" if our witnessing truly is to be productive.
|What's your understanding of what it means to grow in grace? How can you tell if you are? What criteria do you use? Share your answers in class on Sabbath.|
Sharing the Lord
There is no doubt that sharing the message of the crucified and risen Christ, who is now our Intercessor with His Father, also implies a faithful teaching of the important doctrinal truths that God has revealed in His Word.
How important is it to teach and adhere to sound doctrine? Titus 2:1, 2 Pet. 2:1-3.
If we want to believe in the God of the Bible and have decided to follow Christ, we will want to know as much as we can about Him, about His character, and about what He expects from us. We try to summarize what we learn in the Bible in a series of doctrines and teachings. To some people, doctrinal statements are no more than irrelevant mental baggage. That is a tragic misunderstanding. Without sound doctrines our faith soon will become unfocused and shallow. Rather than growing in our faith, we eventually will discover that our faith becomes less and less meaningful. Unsound doctrines often will point us away from Christ, to ourselves or to something else that supposedly can contribute to our salvation. When we fail to ground our faith in sound biblical teaching, we are in grave danger of straying from the center of our faith: Jesus Christ our Lord.
What is to be the centerpiece of all our preaching and witnessing? 1 Cor. 1:23, 2:2.
Think about some of the false teachings that exist in the Christian world: eternal torment in hell; the predestination of some people to be saved and others to be lost; the belief that Jesus Christ was not divine but merely a great man. How could these and other false teachings negatively impact our understanding of God and the plan of salvation?
|For various aspects of the mission challenge for Seventh-day Adventists,
individually and corporately, see Jon L. Dybdahl, ed., Adventist Mission
in the 21st Century (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald® Publishing
Association, 1999). See also Ellen G. White, "God's Purpose for His Church,"
in The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 9-16.
"The church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men. It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world. From the beginning it has been God's plan that through His church shall be reflected to the world His fullness and His sufficiency. The members of the church, those whom He has called out of darkness into His marvelous light, are to show forth His glory. The church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ; and through the church will eventually be made manifest, even to 'the principalities and powers in heavenly places,' the final and full display of the love of God. Ephesians 3:10."--Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 9.
| As a class, talk over your answer to the final question
on Wednesday. What are the different understandings of what it means to grow
Take a good look at your local church. Where is the main emphasis? Is it on the church itself, and ministering to the needs of the congregation itself, or is it on mission and on witnessing? How do we strike the right balance; that is, how do we disciple those who have joined us, while at the same time not neglect the call to reach all people? Where does your church stand on this topic, and in what ways can you help the church improve where it needs to?
How do we as a church protect ourselves from many of the dangerous theological trends that constantly are seeking to infiltrate and pollute our teachings? At the same time, how do we remain open to growing and advancing in new light that can help us better understand our Lord and our mission?
|The gospel of Jesus Christ must be preached in all the world. This is the responsibility of all who call themselves disciples. All of us have received certain relevant gifts, and all of us have the promise of the Spirit to further equip us. The preaching of the gospel should be based on sound doctrine, but everything we proclaim must be rooted in the One whom the gospel is all about.|
|I N S I D E Story|
|The Stranger on the Bus
by BENJAMIN D. SCHOUN
One family in the country of Azerbaijan is convinced that the stranger they encountered on a bus was no ordinary passenger.
Gunel's family was mourning the loss of her grandfather. One day Gunel's mother boarded a bus to visit her grandfather's grave. As she sat crying quietly, a woman sat down beside her. She comforted Gunel's mother by telling her that God is good, that Jesus will come again, and that there is hope for the future. The woman told her about a church she could visit to learn more about these things. Gunel's mother thanked the woman for her kind words.
A month later, Gunel's mother saw the woman on the bus again. The woman again encouraged her and gave her the address of the church. Gunel's mother was so moved by the experiences that she asked Gunel to go with her to visit the church on Saturday morning to see what it was like. The two women stood near the church, hesitant to go inside, for they had never been to a Christian church. A church greeter standing saw the two women and crossed the street to invite them in. Inside they were welcomed warmly with hugs and kisses.
After the service, Gunel's mother asked members about the woman she had met on the bus. She described her in detail, but no one recognized the woman from the description. The pastor, who knew all of the Adventists in the city, listened to the description and finally concluded that no such person attended the church. "I think you've met an angel," he told Gunel and her mother.
Gunel's mother continued attending the Adventist church. She studied the Bible diligently and was baptized. Later, Gunel and her brother and sister also were baptized. Now they hold a small group meeting in their home. Many of their friends abandoned them when they left their traditional religion, but they are firm in their faith. Gunel is studying to help Adventist World Radio produce radio programs in the Azeri language.
The family has never seen the woman on the bus again.
Your mission offerings support outreach to Azerbaijan and all of Central Asia through Adventist World Radio and personal evangelism. Thank you.
GUNEL (left). Benjamin D. Schoun is president of Adventist World Radio.
|Produced by the General Conference Office
of Mission Awareness.
email: email@example.com website: www.adventistmission.org
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Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
The passion of the teacher is often the inspiration for a student. This lively book illuminates how economics affects all walks of life, whether in the marketplace, voting booth, church, family, or any human activity. Boettke believes that economics is not merely a game to be played by clever professionals, but a discipline that touches on the most pressing practical issues at any historical juncture. The wealth and poverty of nations are at stake; the length and quality of life turns on the economic conditions individuals find themselves living with.
So teaching and learning economics are high stakes ventures. Along the way he introduces us to major thinkers: from Smith, Say, and Bastiat of the Classical School, to Neoclassical and Austrian scholars (Menger, Mises, Hayek, Kirzner, and Rothbard) on to New Institutional economists (Alchian, Coase, Demsetz, North, Ostrom and Williamson) and Public Choice theorists (Buchanan, Tullock, and others). This engaging and reasoned book is a must-read for economists, students, and everyone else who wishes to better understand economics.
Find the book at the Independent Institute.
Read a detailed summary of the book at the Independent Institute.
Read the review by Jeffrey Tucker at Laissez Faire Books.
Read an article by the Cobden Centre on Prof. Boettke and Living Economics at cobdencentre.org. | <urn:uuid:2b84d0c8-d263-4047-bfba-dbe8a367d88d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mercatus.org/publication/living-economics-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908033 | 305 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany is a book by Friedrich Engels, with contributions by Karl Marx. The book was written as a "series of articles about Germany from 1848 onwards." The project was first suggested to Karl Marx by Charles Dana, one of the editors of the New York Daily Tribune, in early 1851. The series first appeared in the Tribune between October 25, 1851 and October 23, 1852. It marked the beginning of regular contributions by Marx and Engels to the New York Daily Tribune that continued for a decade.
Revolution and Counter-Revolution is an account of what happened in Prussia, Austria and other German states during 1848, describing the impact on both middle-class and working-class aspirations and on the idea of German unification. Events in Austria and Prussia are discussed, along with the role of the Poles and Czechs and Panslavism, which Engels was against.
Also discussed is the Cologne Communist Trial, in which the defendants were acquitted after some of the evidence was shown to have been crudely forged. An appendix gives a history of the Communist League, which existed well before Marx and Engels joined it.
- Note 1, contained in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 11 (International Publishers: New York, 1979) p. 629.
- "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany" contained in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 11 p. 4.
- Richard Kluger, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune (Alfred A. Knopf Pub.: New York, 1986) p. 17. | <urn:uuid:7824a05b-a3f3-4455-91fe-c27622215d74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_and_Counter-Revolution_in_Germany | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951017 | 345 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Global school-based student health survey (GSHS)
The Global school-based student health survey (GSHS) is a collaborative surveillance project designed to help countries measure and assess the behavioural risk factors and protective factors in 10 key areas among young people aged 13 to 17 years. The GSHS is a relatively low-cost school-based survey which uses a self-administered questionnaire to obtain data on young people's health behaviour and protective factors related to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among children and adults worldwide.
To access information on the GSHS, to read about where the survey has been implemented, or to review specific results from a country, please click on the appropriate links below and right.
The key topics addressed by the survey are:
- Alcohol use
- Dietary behaviours
- Drug use
- Mental health
- Physical activity
- Protective factors
- Sexual behaviours
- Tobacco use
- Violence and unintentional injury | <urn:uuid:ad9b03a0-d0ff-4aa7-af94-6bc02b12cdbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.who.int/chp/gshs/en/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923304 | 191 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Newton Aduaka's award-winning Ezra, told through the eyes of a young boy in Sierra Leone, illuminates one of the most harrowing consequences of war: the recruitment of child soldiers.
Born in Eastern Nigeria, Newton Aduaka and his family moved to Lagos in 1970 at the end of the Biafran War. In 1985 he left for England to study engineering, but discovered cinema. He graduated from the London International Film School in 1990, and in 1997 established Granite Film Works. In 2001, Aduaka's debut feature film, Rage, became the first wholly independently financed film by a black filmmaker in the history of British cinema to be released nationwide. It opened to critical acclaim. He has made many short films as well.
Between 2005 and 2007, he co-wrote, directed and executive-produced Ezra, his first non-independently funded film, for Arte France. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at several film festivals, including FESPACO, Durban, Amiens and Balafon, and was an official selection at Sundance and Cannes.
"Remembering the Biafra war and its transformative effect on his life, he reminds us, 'Africa should go forward, but we must look backwards so we don’t forget.'"Ethan Zuckerman, My Heart's in Accra | <urn:uuid:afe38293-dc78-472a-83a8-8550683a6394> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ted.com/speakers/newton_aduaka.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968658 | 281 | 1.96875 | 2 |
By PBN Staff
PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island’s birthing hospitals have ended the practice of distributing free infant formula to postpartum women at hospital discharge, the first state in the nation to do so.
That milestone will be celebrated at a news conference scheduled for Nov. 28 at the R.I. Statehouse, featuring First Lady Stephanie Chafee, Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts, Dr. Michael Fine, director of the R.I. Department of Health, and Marsha Walker, co-chair of Ban the Bags, a national campaign to stop formula company marketing in maternity hospitals
Mothers who breastfeed have a lower risk of some diseases, including breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and type 2 diabetes. Breastfeeding during infancy helps to prevent children from becoming overweight or obese during childhood and later in life. Furthermore, breastfeeding results in significant cost savings for families, the health care system, and for employers. Multiple studies show an association between the distribution of free commercial formula bags and decreased breastfeeding rates.
In October, Landmark Medical Center and Memorial Hospital joined Kent, Newport, South County, Westerly, and Women & Infants hospitals in eliminating the distribution of formula bags and enabled Rhode Island to claim the honor of being the first state to do so, R.I. Health Department officials said. | <urn:uuid:441584d1-c8a4-4c31-b6cf-8815e6a91613> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pbn.com/RI-eliminates-formula-distribution-to-new-mothers,62790?category_id=137&list_type=most_commented&sub_type=stories,packages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926653 | 272 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Endeavour, along with Discovery, Enterprise and Atlantis, became a museum piece after NASA ended its 30-year shuttle program in July 2011. All four shuttles have been permanently retired from service.
Named for the first ship commanded by British explorer James Cook, Endeavour rolled out of an assembly plant in Palmdale, California, in 1991 at a cost of $1.7 billion. It was the baby of the shuttle fleet, built as a replacement for Challenger, which had exploded shortly after its 10th launch.
Over the next 20 years, Endeavour flew some of the highest-profile shuttle missions, covering nearly 123 million miles in 25 flights. It flew a Spacelab mission and numerous International Space Station assembly missions and rendezvoused with Russia's Mir Space Station.
The science museum is already trumpeting the arrival of the shuttle, saying on its website that it is building a new addition to its facility and plans to begin displaying Endeavour on October 30. | <urn:uuid:852da7d2-ed60-433f-a67f-0efecef2adef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmur.com/news/national/Endeavour-s-last-ride-a-trip-through-L-A/-/9857926/16959918/-/item/1/-/3gvmr2/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972354 | 204 | 2.75 | 3 |
(October 1966, Volume III, Number 2)
***BOOK REVIEWS: MORPHY AND MARS***
By MARTIN MORRISON, Oakland
En Passant Editor
The Chess Players, FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1960. 533 Pages, $4.95 (hardbound), Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications (Crest). 608 pages, $.95 (paperbound).
Not since Paul Charles Morphy's death in 1884 has any writer attempted a full-sized biography of him. That this great chess player, perhaps the greatest chess player of all time, should fail of having a biographer probably results from a lack of information concerning the latter part of his life. Mrs. Keyes has therefore decided to enhance Morphy's fame (as the "Author's Note" states) "through a thoughtful and comprehensive novel, the work of a writer who will make use of all known facts about the protagonist, and who, when straying into the field of fiction will try to correlate the real with the imaginary in such a way that the connection between the two will seem not only possible but plausible."
This goal Mrs. Keyes comes very close to attaining. The novelist's thorough research into the first twenty or so years of Morphy's life (during which he achieved his greatest chess victories, including those over Adolf Anderrson for the world's championship) coupled with her skill as a descriptive writer, artfully produce the plausible fiction for which she strove. In writing on Morphy's succeeding years, however, for which biographical material is scarce, Mrs. Keyes tries to compensate for this lack by suppositious extending a childhood infatuation of Morphy's for a certain Charmian Sheppard into this later period and by amplifying it to a point far beyond what is possible, not to say plausible, on the basis of a few facts available.
With the exception in the latter part of the book, Mrs. Keyes manages to keep her romantic leanings to a minimum. Her descriptions of setting are skillfully done, beginning with Morphy's early life in New Orleans, through his later years in Paris while working for the Confederacy (another supposition by the novelist, which is, however, much more plausible). Morphy's life is comprehensively covered, and the writer displays a deep understanding of the man who accomplished much as a classical scholar and chess player early in his life, but later fails in his undertakings and suffers a mental breakdown, from which he never completely recovers. All in all, the book is one which every chess player should be encouraged to read for a basic appreciation of America's only world's chess champion.
The Chessman of Mars. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS. New York: Ballantine Books, 1963. 220 pages. $.50 (paperbound).
This reviewer must admit that he did not expect much when he began to read this fifth book of the Martian series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who is undoubtedly more well known as the author of the Tarzan series. He expected a mediocre adventure story which may or may not have lived up to the flyleaf's prophesy of "startlingly graphic prose, vivid, which color and excitement, seething with actionů"
To be sure, the plot was adventurous. Princess Tara of Barsoom, while in her exotic aircraft, is swept by a violent storm to a distant area of Mars. In her quest to reach home she falls in first with the Bantoomians, who are of two kinds: headless rykors and bodyless kaldanes. After a narrow escape from these, she is captured by more humanoid Martians, the Manatorians, and is set up as the prize in an exciting game of Martian chess, jetan, which the Manatorians play to the death with living men as pieces.
This reviewer was pleasantly surprised to note, however, that the author seems to introduce two higher levels, a psychological and a philosophical, a circumstance thereby paralleling one of the great books of comtemporary English literature, William Golding's Lord of the Flies. On the psychological level, Gaham, a Martian warrior, is first rejected as a suitor by the princess before the storm, but later turns up to be her preserver throughout their adventures, though she does not recognize him. By means of this "Ovidian metamorphosis" he is able gradually to win her over and to turn her selfishness to love. On the philosophical level, many themes are presented. For example, the kaldanes in Bantoom believe that the mind should be logical and free of emotions. One theme is the gradual realization by one of the kaldanes that this theory is false. Another theme is the resolution of conflict to peace and the antithesis between the goal of peace and the constant strife. However, pleasant as it is to see deeper themes at work, their presentation lacks artfulness, and their development is crude. Truly Burroughs is not a Golding.
In fact, the novel is imaginative and worthwhile reading for its many minor subtleties. It is only too bad that Mr. Burroughs writing presents such major imperfections. The novelist, by the way, has appended the complete rules of Martian chess "for those who care of such things." | <urn:uuid:5b238d00-443a-48dc-8c72-3f17d149864d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chessdryad.com/articles/ep/art_01.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967154 | 1,122 | 1.804688 | 2 |
- Fashion casual shoes are for girl
- Made of confortable material, durable enough for your child daily wearing
- Lightweight, stylish, and most important, they are comfortable to wear
- The casual shoes can be worn at any occasion
- A fashion accessory for child, express their has never been so easy
- The design is very reasonable and feels comfortable when wearing
- It is certainly a great gift for your child
- Material: Leather
- Your child will love this casual shoes, they are made of high quality material, durable and comfortable enough for your child daily wearing
- This pair of Girl Sports Shoes is designed with bowknot, dot pattern & round nose that looks so beautiful for your little princess
- Made of high quality, this pair of Leather Girl Shoes is great for little ones, and convenient for parents
- Outfit your little girl with these absolutely adorable soft sole Round Nose Girl Shoes. The tread is perfect for all styles, providing maximum traction for ultimate performance
- Good for healthy foot development, this pair of Girl Sports Shoes will surely make your children stand out from the crowd
How to Measure a Toddler's Feet for Shoes:
When a child starts walking, it's time to get her first shoes. Ideally, toddlers just learning to walk go barefoot or in stocking feet which helps strengthen their leg muscles. But she'll need something to protect her little feet while playing outside, and sometimes you just want your toddler to look extra cute in tiny shoes. A shoe that fits well is really important for a growing child, so you should measure her feet before buying new shoes.
- Put the child's socks on. The socks should be thick so she'll be able to wear the shoes with any socks, and this will give her a little extra room to grow.
- Have the child stand up. You cannot get accurate measurements for length and width if the child is not standing.
- Make sure the child doesn't curl her toes. Toddlers often curl their toes when having their feet measured because it tickles.
- Measure the foot along the side, from the heel to the tip of the big toe. Measure both feet and use the longer of the two measurements when buying shoes.
- Take measurements in both inches and centimeters, if possible. Inches will have to be converted into US shoe sizes, and European brands of shoes are measured in centimeters.
- Try the shoes on the child before buying them, if possible. Shoe sizes vary from brand to brand, so a toddler may wear a 4 in one brand and a 4½ in another. Stay with one or two brands once you know how their sizes run to make future online ordering easier.
- Leave the child room to grow. Children's shoes can be pretty expensive, and toddlers grow really fast. Stick your pinky finger inside the shoe along the child's instep. The shoe should be snug but not too loose around your finger.
How to Fit Toddler Shoes:
Toddlers grow a mile a minute, and making sure that their shoes fit properly is an ongoing task. It is important for the development and comfort of your toddler's feet that their shoes are the correct size. In order to keep their feet in good shape and find shoes that fit well, you need to measure your toddler's feet and let them "test drive" shoes for a while before purchasing them.
- Measure your toddler's feet each time you buy shoes. In order to get a good fit, you need to measure each foot. If one foot is larger than the other, you must size the shoe according to the larger foot.
- Try both shoes on your toddler. You may know how long the shoe should be because you have measured both feet, but you must make sure that the width is correct, as well.
- Make your toddler stand up when trying on shoes. You won't be able to tell if the shoes fit properly unless they are standing up.
- Leave space between your toddler's longest toe and the end of the shoe. Too much room can cause the shoes to pop off the child's feet, but not enough room can cause the toes to rub against the front of the shoes. The length of your little finger, or your child's thumb is a good distance to shoot for.
- Let your toddler walk around the store for a while before purchasing new shoes. If your toddler complains about the fit of the shoe or is walking funny, you should try on another pair to see if they seem more comfortable.
Are Toddler Shoes Safe?
Safety is an important issue for parents of children of all ages, though particularly for toddlers, whose adventurous and unassuming spirit may get them into more trouble than other age groups. Tots need not wear shoes around the home, but if he is walking outside or on rough or cold surfaces, it is time to introduce him to shoes.
- If shoes are too big, they may cause your toddler to trip and fall, and shoes that are too small can scrunch her toes and prompt them to become misshapen. ParentingToddlers.com suggests looking for a proper fit in the back of the shoe, so that it does not move against her heel as she walks. Shoes should be able to slip on and off, but should not fall off by themselves.
- Small decorative items may easily become detached from shoes and pose a choking hazard. Make sure that all elements, such as buttons and buckles, are securely attached to shoes before purchasing and placing them on your toddler's feet. Avoid laces, which may come undone and cause him to trip. Buy lightweight shoes, as heavier ones may make it more difficult for him to walk.
- Expert Insight
- A GoodHousekeeping.com article suggests that parents select shoes with supportive arches and styles that completely cover the toes. Although flip-flops or other sandal shoes may be appropriate around the pool or at the beach, select more durable shoes for longer walking trips
- 1 x Pair of Round Nose Girl Sports Shoes
Spec Condition New Type Sport Shoes Material Leather Gender Girl Features Features Fashion casual shoes are for girl
Made of confortable material, durable enough for your child daily wearing
Lightweight, stylish, and most important, they are comfortable to wear
The casual shoes can be worn at any occasion
A fashion accessory for child, express their has never been so easy
The design is very reasonable and feels comfortable when wearing
It is certainly a great gift for your child
Packaging Package Included 1 x Pair of Round Nose Girl Sports Shoes
If the order has not been shipped; please contact DinoDirect Live Support for order cancellation.You will get your refund within 24 hours.
If the order has already been shipped; you may return the item to us postmarked within 30 calendar days of delivery. Before that, please contact our Live Support to inform that.
In that case we will refund you the payment excluding actual shipping fees already incurred.
If the item is defective, please contact DinoDirect Live Support and send an email to us at firstname.lastname@example.org attached an image or video file clearly showing the defect of the product. And we will give you a response within 24 hours whether we will resend the item or refund the payment to you for compensation.
For customization, please consider carefully before ordering.Because we do not accept return and replacement.
|Unit Price||USD$ 26.01||USD$ 25.65||USD$ 25.29||USD$ 24.94||USD$ 24.61|
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DINODIRECT has a team of professional designers, who are all experienced in European and Western design and lead the latest trends in Europe and the United States wedding market design. Our designers are also experienced in customizing dresses; we can do whatever you ask to do on your dresses like Lace and beading. You can tell us your ideas on your dresses and we would like to help you make your ideal wedding dress. We will give you the design in 48 hours with all the unique and charming details.
100% Made to Measure Dresses
DINODIRECT.Produces tailor-made dresses to suit your needs. We ensure that all dresses are 100% handmade. Once you provide the accurate measurement of the details (See our measurement guide) to us, we will immediately start working on your wonderful, unique wedding dress.
DINODIRECT.com’sdresses are made of best material. DINODIRECT hires only the best dressmakers and experienced designers in china, who use the finest production techniques to create your dress.
The Best Price
DINODIRECT.com’s prices are a lot lower than retail prices. With the decades experience in wedding industry, we can offer you all kinds of dresses with the most reasonable prices. Our price varies from US$100-US$800 for some of the highest quality dresses found online.
Speedy Delivery Times
DINODIRECT will ship out your dress as soon as possible. It takes you about 30 days from the day you place your order to the day you receive it.
Q: Are the dresses made by your own factory?
A: DinoDirect has our own factory with over five years’ experience in making dresses.
Q:Is the price on your website real price, why it is much cheaper than market price?
A:Dinodirect manage our business with lower overhead than a retail store or a company. We needn't employ many different departments, and needn't pay the much fees for advertising, renting a store, asking other team for alteration etc. We are the one of largest professional wedding factory in China, and our clients can order dresses from our factory directly. Since we do not have to accommodate for these costs, we can pass the savings onto our customers.
Q: How to make sure the quality?
A:DINODIRECT.com’s dresses are made of best material. DINODIRECT hires only the best dressmakers and experienced designers in china, who use the finest production techniques to create your dress.We ensure that all dresses are 100% handmade.
Q:How do I place my order in this website?
A:You can view the catalog in our website. If you find anything you want to buy just take it to shopping cart and then go check out.
Q:How do I use the search option of your site?
A: You can search by color, by designer, by occasion, by dress type, by price, or by style number. You can search all those categories at once and even sort by price and popularity once you've filtered your dresses.
Q:Can you customize the size of my dress?
A:Absolutely – if our standard sizes don't work for you, we can make you a custom-sized dress for free,When you ordering, you’ll need to check the tab for “Custom size”,then fill in your size. Getting professionally measured is best, but if you want to do it yourself be sure to read our measuring guide first. Avoid common mistakes by doing the following:
1.Ask someone else to measure for you
2.Take measurements while wearing undergarments similar to what you’ll wear with the dress
3.Provide a bust measurement from the fullest part of your chest, not your bra size!
Q:Can I order this dress in a different style/fabric/length?
A: Of course you can. You can click" Custom Size" and then leave your request in "Item Remarks". We will make your dress by your request.
PS: Some dresses do not have “Item Remarks” Tag.
Q: If I buy 2 or more dresses at the same time, do I need to pay postage for twice or more?
A: If you order 2 or more dresses including accessories from our website and we can send them together to same address, you just need to pay for postage once.
Q: How will my item (s) be shipped?
A: All shipping information is outlined in our shipping page.
Q: How long is the delivery time?
A: Usually it takes 7-15 days to make wedding dresses and 1-2 days to check your dresses. The shipping time also differs in shipping methods. The fastest shipping - expedited shipping takes 5-6 days for the shipment. The standard shipping takes 5-9 days. The super saver shipping takes 15-20 days for the shipment. The sooner you place an order, the sooner we start preparing your dress. Thank you.
Q: Will my dress exactly match the color I see on your website?
A: There might be a slight difference between the actual dress’s color and what you see in the photo depending on your computer monitor’s display settings.
Q:Can I make changes to my order after I have paid for my order?
A:You can change your order within 48 hours after you have paid your order, by contacting DinoDirect Live Support and send an email to us at email@example.com, if more than 48 hours, we could not change your order any more.
Ensuring your order number is included.
Q: What should I do if the size doesn’t fit me perfectly?
A:If your size fluctuates or you want to modify the dress slightly, we always leave a few inches in the seams so that your local tailor can easily make alterations as needed. Dresses generally have a margin of 1 inches on either side of a seam. Flower detailing, beading or belts/ribbons may limit ability to let a dress out.
Q:How do I upgrade my shipping?
A: Simply respond to your confirmation email with the method you would like to change it to.
Q:How to Preserve my Dress?
A: In order to prevent the dress distorting and yellowing, you can choose professional dust bag to restore.
Q:What should I do if I have forgotten my password or my password does not work?
A: In our register page, please click “forgot my password”, you will receive an email. There will be a link in the email, click that link and reset your password. If you don’t receive the email, please check it again in your spam mail. Please contact with our Customer Service online if you don’t receive it indeed.
Bought this item on05-14-2011
- Other Thoughts: I am always concern about wearing comfortable shoes, these shoes are so cute and look good with any oufit, soft, girly and stylist. I love them.
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Bought this item on05-19-2011
- Other Thoughts: Comfortable and practical summer play shoes. They were my 10yr old daughter's play shoes, so that's saying alot!
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Mary C. Scott
Bought this item on06-09-2011
- Other Thoughts: Good for everyday Summer, and can be worn in water sports/activities, too. Cute pink color.
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Bought this item on06-15-2011
- Other Thoughts: I bought these for my 7 yeard old daughter. She loves them. I like that they are easy to put on, and they have great traction.
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Bought this item on04-27-2011
- Other Thoughts: This shoe is perfect for the price! Cute, a little shimmery. I wish the sizing were more specific, my 8-month old has a BIG foot and will probably not be able to wear these much longer. These are good for her stage now (cruising like crazy), so I like them a lot. She's only worn them a couple of times, so I will update if something goes wrong. So far, so good!
Was this review helpful? | <urn:uuid:d3eabd1d-3780-45ae-bf1a-ba2252d60d9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dinodirect.com/sports-shoes-round-nose-girl-dot-leather.html | 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 | 0.936478 | 3,319 | 1.625 | 2 |
Do you ever think, or say aloud, “I wish I had more time”? Well this month we all have an extra day-an extra 86,400 seconds- to do something special for ourselves and for others.
Every four years we receive this extra day (February 29th) to make up the difference between the 365-day calendar year and the actual duration of Earth’s orbit of the Sun- which is 365.2422 days. Like every day, it consists of 86,400 seconds that are rare and unique and will never exist again. I like that it is an occasion to reflect on this great life and the great people with whom we share this experience. Jim Evans said, “If you don’t think every day is a great day, try going without one.” No person can know for sure if they may be among the approximate 155,500 people for who today will be their last day.
Mitch Albom’s thoughtful novella called For One More Day explores the philosophical idea of having the luxury of spending one more day with a loved one who has passed. I read this book years ago with a box of tissues at my side, grateful for a storied reminder to be conscious of the blessings of important relationships. This story resonates because relationships are one of the essential elements that contribute to our sense of well-being and life fulfillment.
If you want to spend some time giving attention to, and reflecting on, your couple relationship, the Couple Checkup provides a great platform for you to do so. If you do not have the time for such an in depth evaluation of your relationship, take just a few moments of the “extra” day this month to discuss this question with your partner: “If you were guaranteed only one more day, how would you spend that time”? | <urn:uuid:20ce641e-f865-407a-8083-413a9db38a56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prepareenrichblog.com/2012/02/one-more-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956497 | 383 | 1.640625 | 2 |
On my train ride back home yesterday, I read a short paper on collecting slugs by our colleagues Klee & Scheppat. In the very first paragraph they give a brief explanation of where to look for slugs and include this sentence (italics mine):
In these areas you can be successful in little valleys facing to the north with creeks up to rocky fields (even above the timberline), where the evening dewondenses.Dewondenses? I seriously thought that may have been a word that hadn’t yet entered my vocabulary. However, a subsequent search in the dictionary failed to come up with anything even remotely similar. A Google search did find dewonden in some Dutch sentences. Taking into account the authors’ nationality, I even checked the German dictionary, but to no avail.
Finally, the obvious truth revealed itself. The original sentence must have been:
...where the evening dew condenses.I have recently written about snails taking advantage of nighttime dew. Now we know slugs also come out when everything is dewovered. | <urn:uuid:40c19857-4b74-45c8-b5a1-d74231f288ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://snailstales.blogspot.com/2008/12/go-look-for-slugs-when-there-is.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952165 | 223 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Q&A: Bug Spray Safety
Are bug sprays dangerous?
For decades, DEET, a chemical developed in 1946, was the only insect repellent endorsed by the CDC. However, its odor, which is repelling to humans as well as mosquitoes, plus concerns about its safety (it has been linked to neurological problems, especially in the very young and the very old), has made alternatives all the more attractive.
Fortunately, the CDC has given the nod to two other insect repellents.
One is a chemical called picaridin, which has been used in Australia and Europe since the 1980s but was only cleared by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2000. Picaridin appears to be as effective as DEET but it smells better and is less irritating to the skin. You’ll find this ingredient in several popular brands of insect repellants. The other is oil of lemon eucalyptus, which the CDC claims offers protection similar to chemical insect repellents.
Lemon eucalyptus isn’t the only natural ingredient that works. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine compared a number of products and found that of all botanical insect repellents, a soybean-based product called Bite Blocker worked best. Buzz Away, which contains citronella, eucalyptus, lemongrass, and other herbs, also has proven benefits.
I recommend that you try any of these natural products first and resort to the chemicals only if the botanical versions don’t work. All of them are available through online retailers and in some health food stores.
Insect repellents aside, it’s been said that taking 100 mg per day of thiamine (vitamin B1) helps some, although not all, people repel mosquitoes. On the other hand, wearing perfume, drinking beer, and eating Limburger cheese attracts them. Let me know how these safe, natural options work for you.
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Amongst the many nonsenses parading as economic theory these days, the notion of tax competition is probably the most corrupting
, especially when it is being touted by an official from a tax haven which specialises in providing offshore mechanisms for tax evasion. Philip Bailhache is Bailiff of Jersey. He is unelected and has no authority to speak on political issues at international fora. His family law firm specialised in offshore tax avoidance. He is quoted in the Jersey Evening Post (9 October 2006) saying: "Lip service is paid to tax competition, but the instincts of larger countries too often rebel against it."
This type of talk goes down a bundle amongst tax avoidance practitioners in tax havens like Liechtenstein (where he uttered this nonsense), but Bailhache should be exposed for the charlatan he undoubtedly is.
The theory of competition originates from the micro economic theory of the firm. In theory large numbers of small firms compete to provide goods and services to the public. Competition helps to stimulate innovation, improve productivity, prevent companies from colluding to fix prices, and generally strengthens the efficiency of market mechanisms. In reality, of course, markets are frequently dominated by large companies which do not compete either on price or on the quality of their output, but the theory of competition marks out something worth striving for. Tax competition, on the other hand, distorts markets by subsidising capital, rewarding the larger players (who are better placed to use offshore tax avoidance vehicles) and undermining Ricardian theory of comparative advantage. Not that Bailhache will know anything about such issues.
Trying to apply competition theory to nation states, however, throws up all sorts of issues:
- What evidence is there to support the view that tax competition between nations will stimulate improvements in the efficiency of providing public services, rather than simply forcing cut-backs and inefficient privatisations?
- How can large nations which invest heavily in infrastructure, education, training, research and development, and public welfare, protect their tax revenues from predatory nations which offer businesses and rich individuals the opportunity to free-ride (in the economic sense) by parking their incomes in offshore companies?
- What mechanisms exist to ensure that the public benefits from tax competition, when in practice the only beneficiaries are shareholders who probably live in totally different jurisdiction and probably pay no tax themselves?
- What can be done to prevent tax competition from shifting the tax burden away from capital and onto to labour and consumption - as has been happening over the past three decades?
- What rules need to be enforced to prevent tax competition from eroding the tax base of developing countries, which are already starved of tax revenues?
In practice there is no evidence that tax competition is helpful in any way whatsover, and plenty of evidence that it is harmful. Oxfam
has calculated that tax competition (and related tax avoidance by multinational companies) cost developing countries $50 billion annually. That was back in the late-1990s, since when the situation has deteriorated.
Of course, the fact that governments do not compete against one another to provide defence, health, education and other public services to their citizens has not inhibited prominent economists from supporting the concept. Milton Friedman ( a leading member of the Chicago Boys who advised Augusto Pinochet during his dictatorship) is quoted on one right-wing website (funded by offshore banks) saying:"Competition among national governments in the public services they provide and in the taxes they impose, is every bit as productive as competition among individuals or enterprises in the goods and services they offer for sale and the prices they offer."
The rich love this, but according to FT columnist Martin Wolf (a leading proponent of globalisation theory): "The notion of the competitiveness of countries, on the model of the competitiveness of companies, is nonsense."
In practice, competing on tax is akin to competing on dismantling environmental protection. It makes no sense and will only benefit those chasing short term profits at the expense of the future.
Under increased pressure from multilateral agencies and donor countries, some of the world's poorest nations have succumbed to pressures to compete by offering wholly ineffective tax holidays. The recent deal struck between the Mittal steel company
(a dominant player in that industry) and Liberia, serves to illustrate the point. In addition to negotiating special terms to undermine that country's labour regulations (who benefits?), Mittal has also negotiated a 5-year tax holiday and a further special treatment which enables Mittal, not the Liberian government, to determine what tax rate will be payable on profits generated once the tax holiday terminates. It is hard to see what benefits will accrue to Liberia even after the tax holiday expires, but why should a dominant company be subsidised in this way?
Philip Bailhache is a lawyer by training. He has no qualification as an economist and no experience in life beyond the narrow confines of a tax haven. He was brought up with all the privileges and arrogance of his upper middle class background and private education. He has never had to confront the harsh realities of poverty, unemployment, discrimination and alienation. In chastising major nations for seeking to protect their tax revenues from predatory tax havens, he reveals both his ignorance of economics and the true nature of his politics (despite being an unelected Crown appointment, Philip is a deeply political animal). Like many lawyers engaged in the tax avoidance industry, he belongs to the hard-right of the political spectrum and promotes Jersey's role as vehicle for profiteering from promoting tax dodges for the wealthy and the powerful.
So here's a challenge to Philip Bailhache: Let's see whether your ideas can survive critical scrutiny from real experts. Provide answers to the above questions and I will have them published in the next issue of Tax Justice Focus
, which as it happens will have tax competition as its principle theme and me as its guest editor. | <urn:uuid:157592ae-0993-4854-850f-b03788e8b3a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://taxjustice.blogspot.jp/2006_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96907 | 1,198 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Bio not provided
At first glance, NDAA appears to be a good idea IF it was in fact Constitutional and we lived in a "perfect world" with the federal tiger secured within the cage designed for it by the states via the Constitution. I do hope that there are Constitutional laws that can be used and/or passed to protect citizens and defend the Constitution from people who have loyalty to causes that are incompatible with the Constitution and are threats to citizens and the Constitution. So far this hope appears to just that without very much satisfaction.
3 months ago on February 19, 1942: A Black Stain on American History
Yes, Congress should only pass laws that are constitutional and the Supreme Court should strike down unconstitutional laws and unconstitutional procedures that deliver iinjustice. Sorry to be a little off subject but justice as often delivered in lower courts to defendants is so lacking in honesty that bigger problems with the Supreme Court seem not to matter when local injustice in the courtroom is the elephant in their house. My main point: why are not all juries required to be handed the written words of the Law that the defendant has been charged with violating which would keep the prosecutot and/or judge from rewording the law to make the law as presented to the jury to fit the agreed on or alleged actions of the defendant? Also which state(s) have the best procedures for allowing a defendant to effectively represent himself in lower/magistrate/summary court cases? "Been there, received that (recently)" firstname.lastname@example.org
1 year, 1 month ago on Did the Founders expect the Courts to Declare Laws Unconstitutional? | <urn:uuid:07fa20af-2f3d-4e09-94a6-ea54ebca19e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.livefyre.com/profile/4017153/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968309 | 331 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Walter Koeniger (American, b. Germany, 1881-1943)
Winter Scene, date unknown
Oil on canvas mounted
35 x 37 in.
Walter Koeniger was born in Germany and came to the United States around 1910. He became a member of the Woodstock, New York, artists’ colony in 1912. Koeninger lived in New York’s Catskill Mountains and spent his thirty-year career sketching and painting frozen water scenes around his home. He is known for his paintings of snow-covered landscapes and used fresh, glowing colors to convey the crisp, vigorous mood of his settings. | <urn:uuid:e1557341-7efc-4ffc-b96b-78e8c7b8b770> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hplibrary.org/print/winter-scene?size=_original | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984178 | 130 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Arizona health network building statewide information exchange
The Health Information Network of Arizona (HINAz) and OptumInsight are teaming up to create a state-wide health information exchange (HIE).
HINAz will implement a HIE platform from OptumInsight, formerly Axolotl Corp., to allow the sharing and exchange of clinical data from all available sources across the state, officials from the two organizations said.
HINAz is an Arizona not-for-profit organization that grew out of the work of Southern Arizona Health Information Exchange and Arizona Medical Information Exchange. The two entities joined together to build a more comprehensive HIE for Arizona.
Oracle releases platform for building health insurance exchanges
Bottom line on whether health information exchanges can succeed
HINAz has become a collaborative effort of major health care entities - including health plans, hospitals, large group practices, business leadership, consumers and local administrations in Arizona.
Current health reform policies call for states to build health information exchanges to electronically move clinical information among disparate health care information systems. Additionally, health reform legislation calls for states to build health insurance exchanges to make it easier for consumers to shop for individual health plans.
“Health information exchange is a rapidly evolving concept,” said Dr. Kalyanraman Bharathan, interim CEO of HINAz. “HINAz intends to be in the forefront of that evolution with carefully thought-out, planned growth that places the community’s needs and priorities first,” Bharathan said.
OptumInsight will be a significant partner in helping HINAz evolve with, and perhaps be ahead of, the rest of the nation in developing a statewide and comprehensive HIE, Dr. Bharathan added.
The Axolotl HIE solution, a standards-based, secure and interoperable platform, will provide the connection capability across disparate health information systems and physician electronic health records (EHRs). The platform will connect all participating HINAz health care providers and existing “HIE ecosystems” within Arizona for electronic exchange of patient data, according to OptumInsight officials.
The HINAz exchange will enable authorized health care providers to automatically access complete clinical information about their patients to determine what medications are prescribed, what X-rays or other tests have been ordered, known allergies and other conditions. Physicians can view this information quickly and easily in the Axolotl Virtual Health Record (VHR). The goal is to reduce medication errors, duplication of tests and improve the quality of care, OptumInsight officials said.
Physicians not already using EHRs can quickly connect to the state exchange using any certified EHR, Axolotl EMR Lite or Axolotl EHR, both certified by the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of National Coordinator Authorized Testing and Certification Body.
Initially, HINAz's main function will be to provide information to emergency departments and urgent care centers so providers can quickly access the patients’ clinical information and provide more educated and timely services. As the use of EHRs increases among clinicians, and trust in the safety and security of HINAz increases, the goal is to be able - with patient consent - to perform additional functions that further the promotion of safe and high-quality care.
Axolotl's SOA platform, community-wide Master Patient Index, EdgeServer, Interoperability Hub, Community Virtual Health Record and EHR solutions, are all provided as software-as-a-service.
Rutrell Yasin is senior editor for Government Computer News. Follow him on Twitter: @Yasin36. | <urn:uuid:2f8d4ef5-90a3-4b4b-8f0d-8813860e605c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gcn.com/articles/2011/09/28/arizona-health-information-exchange.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909173 | 746 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Mobile Internet Era At HandBy Reuters | Posted 03-19-2008
Google has seen an acceleration of Internet activity among mobile phone users in recent months since the company has introduced faster Web services on selected phone models, fueling confidence the mobile Internet era is at hand, the company said on Tuesday.
Early evidence showing sharp increases in Internet usage on phones, not just computers, has emerged from services Google has begun offering in recent months on Blackberry e-mail phones, Nokia devices for multimedia picture and video creators and business professionals and the Apple iPhone, the world's top Web search company said.
"We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage," Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. "We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.
The growing availability of flat-rate data plans from phone carriers instead of per-minute charges that previously discouraged Internet use, along with improved Web browsers on mobile phones as well as better-designed services from companies like Google are fueling the growth, Waddell argued.
Google made the pronouncement as it introduced a new software download for mobile phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software that conveniently positions a Google Web search window on the home screen of such phones.
Similar versions of the search software which Google introduced for Blackberry users in December and certain Nokia phones in February have sped up the time users take to perform Web searches by 40 percent and, in turn, driven usage.
The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches on Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access, and getting to Google.com. By making a Google search box more convenient, mobile phone users have begun using the Internet more, the company said. "We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people," Waddell said.
Google's mobile plug-in software lets users customize their phones to feature Google mobile services instead of relying solely on software features network carriers have pre-installed on the devices. "Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow," Waddell said. "Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage."
Microsoft expects to have sold 20 million Windows Mobile devices by the end of its fiscal year in June, which together with Blackberry and Symbian-based phones represent upward of 85 percent of the Internet-ready smartphones sold in the world.
Users of phones based on software from Research in Motion, Nokia's Symbian-based phones and now Microsoft Windows Mobile can download the software at mobile.google.com/.
Google officials said in August that they had seen a similar surge in usage of Google.com via mobile devices following the launch of the Apple iPhone last year. The iPhone offers a full-featured Internet browser unlike many phones.
Waddell said Google had seen iPhone users perform as many as 50 times more Web searches on these computer-phone devices as users of standard mobile feature phones typically do. | <urn:uuid:d212680c-5b31-4be5-92bd-59d91ef4aa75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cioinsight.com/print/c/a/Past-News/Mobile-Internet-Era | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943097 | 634 | 1.523438 | 2 |
While pharmacological effects of ketamine on task-induced fMRI BOLD signals have been studied extensively
, this is the first randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover study demonstrating changes in resting state functional connectivity in response to ketamine administration in healthy subjects. As our key finding we report a marked reduction of resting state functional connectivity between functional nodes of the default mode network (PCC) via the dorsal nexus (DN), pregenual anterior cingulate (PACC), and medioprefrontal cortex (MPFC) in healthy subjects 24 hours after ketamine administration compared to placebo. The term „dorsal nexus” was created recently by Sheline and colleagues (2010) to describe a functional node in the bilateral DMPFC with dramatically increased resting state connectivity to three important functional networks - the CCN, DMN, and AN - in patients suffering from major depression
. In our study, we aimed to model and identify ketamine-associated adaptations in healthy subjects within neural circuits that are relevant to the pathophysiology of MDD. Thus, the observed decrease in functional connectivity via the DN following ketamine administration in healthy subjects might have some implications for its therapeutic action in MDD patients. In light with the peak of ketamine's antidepressant effect 24 hours after intravenous administration
, our findings suggest that this effect may be mediated by reducing the hyperconnectivity of the DN as shown here. Importantly, this action differs from previously reported effects of acute administration.
Antagonism at NMDA receptors has been shown to induce behavioral and neuroplastic changes in animal models relevant to certain aspects of the pathophysiology of depressive disorders
. The changes in resting state connectivity that we observed 24 hours post-infusion might thus result from adaptive changes in neuroglial glutamatergic throughput, neuroplasticity and information processing in specific neurocircuits. In strong support for such a glutamatergic mechanism of action a recent study reported a direct relationship between aberrant resting state functional connectivities and glutamatergic imbalance in depressed patients across distinct functional networks
. This supports our hypothesis that glutamatergic modulation by specific drugs like ketamine exerts its antidepressant effects via reconfiguration of resting state functional connectivity.
The psychophysiological relevance of reducing functional hyperconnectivities within and between resting state networks like the DMN or the AN is given by their involvement in circumscribed aspects of the depressive psychopathology. Regions of the DMN commonly show the greatest activity at rest and decrease their level of activity during goal-directed tasks
and are thought to be involved in self-referential processes such as introspection, remembering, and planning
. In patients with major depression, a failure to normally down-regulate activity within the DMN during external stimulation was found
, with increasing levels of DMN dominance being associated with higher levels of maladaptive, depressive rumination and lower levels of adaptive, reflective rumination
. Thus, the reduction in functional connectivity between anterior (PACC/MPFC) and posterior parts of the DMN (PCC) that we observed after ketamine administration in healthy subjects may have implications for antidepressant treatment in terms of a reduction of the increased level of DMN dominance (s. ).
Proposed hypothetical model of ketamine-associated changes in functional connectivity.
Moreover, the sgACC as a critical hub of the AN plays an important role in emotion processing and the pathogenesis of mood disorders and has become a promising target for deep brain stimulation in patients with severe, refractory depression
. A number of structural, metabolic and functional abnormalities has been identified in the sgACC of MDD patients
. Resting state sgACC functional connectivity with the DMN was significantly greater in depressed subjects and correlated positively with the length of the current depressive episode
. As proposed by Sheline et al. (2010) an attentional shift with increased self-focus might interfere with task performance in the CCN through increased resting state DMN connectivity with the DN
. The hot-wiring of the sgACC to those systems might further explain its maladaptive contribution to negative self-monitoring and reduced task-performance in MDD, given its role in the regulation of visceral functions and sad mood
. Compared to the reduction in DMN to DN connectivity after ketamine administration in healthy subjects, the reduction of AN to DN connectivity was less pronounced reaching statistical trend-level only and has therefore to be considered preliminary. The absence of a pre-existing hyperconnectivity of the sgACC to the DN in healthy subjects might explain the limited dynamic range in terms of a reduction in functional connectivity in our study, while this mechanism may become relevant in a clinical population (s. ).
Our findings suggest that intravenous ketamine in healthy subjects affects primarily the DMN (PCC) connectivity via the DN and PACC/MPFC one day after infusion. We could not find any focal change in connectivity to the CCN following ketamine administration and contrary to resting state studies with serotonergic and noradrenergic antidepressants including citalopram and reboxetine
, functional connectivity of the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala remained unaffected by ketamine. Hence, the circumscribed effect of ketamine on DMN connectivity to the DN supports the hypothesis that effective antidepressant treatment involves systematic alterations in connections among higher-order functional networks via nodes such as the DN. However, those putative implications for MDD have to be regarded as preliminary since the results reported here are based on healthy subjects. Apart from this limitation, our aim of addressing systems level mechanisms of ketamine's antidepressant action is reflected in our elaborate study design including a 24 h post-infusion interval, appropriate dosage and duration of the ketamine infusion, and the selection of seed regions that are relevant to MDD. Therefore, our findings may serve as a model to elucidate potential biomechanisms of drug action in the absence of any pre-existing homeostatic dysregulation as part of the disease process, medication status, or comorbidity. In a next step, the explanatory power of our observation has to be further confirmed in a randomized-controlled clinical trial in MDD patients receiving ketamine. Moreover, our results do not allow any conclusions to be drawn for the action of ketamine on the healthy human brain in general or in the context of ketamine as a model for schizophrenia.
In conclusion, we report a reduction of functional connectivity in networks that play a critical role in the pathophysiology of MDD in healthy subjects 24 hours after receiving an antidepressant dose of ketamine. Based on those findings we raise the hypothesis that reducing functional connectivity of the dorsal nexus reflects underlying molecular mechanisms relevant to the antidepressant efficacy of ketamine. Whether this circuit-level glutamatergic effect is likely to be associated with reversing aspects of emotional and behavioral dysregulation has to be further investigated in a clinical study involving MDD patients. This is in further support of the notion of using ketamine as a research tool into the neurobiology of mood disorders and to delineate potential biomarkers and action mechanisms of antidepressant treatment response. | <urn:uuid:65562abd-651b-4590-8a7b-a9a716710e0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC3461985/?lang=en-ca | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921117 | 1,468 | 1.507813 | 2 |
I always wondered exactly what a cold frame was when I first heard the term. I will try to get an official definition below from Wikipedia, but here is what I would define it as:
So I got close off the top of my head…..anyways, why would you want to add a cold frame?
- Extend the growing season
- Allows you to grow crops that would otherwise not do well in your area due to the shorter growing season
- Start Seedlings in the dirt
- Satisfy that early spring itch to plant something
- Easy to Use
- Can serve a double function of being a raised bed
- Nice project to do with the kids
- Can be made out of materials that many people have laying around
- Very versatile/ flexible design
These are just a few reasons that I can think of to build and use a cold frame. We look forward to using our new one and seeing what other benefits that we discover along the way. | <urn:uuid:1270cb3f-f627-4bbb-8484-71721a71f850> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heritagebreedfarms.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/advantages-of-a-cold-frame/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964939 | 197 | 1.703125 | 2 |
LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets are a prescription medicine that is used along with a low-fat diet. It lowers the LDL ("bad") cholesterol and triglycerides in your blood. It can raise your HDL ("good") cholesterol as well. LIPITOR can lower the risk for heart attack, stroke, certain types of heart surgery, and chest pain in patients who have heart disease or risk factors for heart disease such as age, smoking, high blood pressure, low HDL, or family history of early heart disease.
LIPITOR can lower the risk for heart attack or stroke in patients with diabetes and risk factors such as diabetic eye or kidney problems, smoking, or high blood pressure.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets are not for everyone, including anyone who has previously had an allergic reaction to LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets. It is not for those with liver problems. And it is not for women who are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant.
If you take LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets, tell your doctor if you feel any new muscle pain or weakness. This could be a sign of rare but serious muscle side effects. Tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and all medications you take. This may help avoid serious drug interactions. Your doctor should do blood tests to check your liver function before starting LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets and during your treatment if you have symptoms of liver problems. Tell your doctor if you have diabetes. Elevated blood sugar levels have been reported with statins, including LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets.
Common side effects are diarrhea, upset stomach, muscle and joint pain, and changes in some blood tests.
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Need help paying for your Pfizer medicines? Pfizer Helpful Answers® may be able to help, regardless of your insurance situation. Learn how at www.PHAHelps.com
The health information contained herein is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace discussions with a healthcare provider. All decisions regarding patient care must be made with a healthcare provider, considering the unique characteristics of the patient.
The product information provided in this site is intended only for residents of the United States. The products discussed herein may have different product labeling in different countries. | <urn:uuid:fd6857f2-6250-44aa-b431-a533c41660dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lipitor.com/sitemap.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913176 | 530 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Using .bashrc with Terminal
I got a question from a user today that was pretty interesting. Boiled down, it was “I’ve set up a .bashrc file with my preferred settings. It works fine in XWindows with xterm, but is being ignored by Terminal. Why?”
This has to do with how the bash shell handles different shells. If you read the bash man page (‘man bash’), in the section on startup files, it explains which files are read when. The tricky part is that there are two types of shells: “login” shells and “non-login” shells, and bash reads different files depending on the type of shell.
A “login” shell reads ~/.profile but not ~/.bashrc
A “non-login” shell reads ~/.bashrc but not ~/.profile
A new Terminal window in OS X starts a “login” shell and hence reads ~/.profile but not ~/.bashrc
The situation is reversed for xterm (running under X11 in OS X).
What should fix it is to set up a .profile file to that sources your .bashrc file like this:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
That way, you don’t have to worry about making changes to .profile; Terminal will just get the changes from .bashrc. For what it’s worth, this is an issue with several Unix-based OSs. | <urn:uuid:1d3671c8-46c1-43f7-83c8-2f9b9b3a8c3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/using-bashrc-with-terminal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929272 | 310 | 1.695313 | 2 |
It seems Google+ and Facebook have started some sort of “cold war”, with Google preventing a former employee (now with Facebook) to add more people to his circles, and Facebook blocking Google+ ads on its social network, while media and social media experts start showing their preference by publishing either too positive or too negative articles about G+. Some independent forums also are not liking some form of censorship in G+.
While the new “War of the Roses” goes on, I was wondering how Google plus is affecting – or may be affecting- current and forthcoming marketing efforts.
While some sources say that a good number of companies are in line waiting to build their company pages on Google+, I was thinking of those whose marketing dollars have been invested in Facebook already:
- Is there any risk companies should evaluate when deciding about their social media marketing dollars?
- Are there countries where Facebook-based marketing campaigns could be at risk?
- are there countries whose Facebook campaigns are “safer” and not impacted by a migration of fans to G+?
In order to answer these questions, I started comparing some figures about Facebook users growth by Country, and compared the last two weeks of June (before G+ was launched) with the first two weeks of July (when G+ was launched).
Interesting enough, in the past two weeks, while Google got 10 million new registered users since its launch, Facebook’s new users grew less than the previous 2 weeks. As shown in the picture above (SocialNetConomy, 2011), out of the 213 Countries where Facebook is present, new users registrations declined by some 3.4 million during the past two weeks.
Which Countries got the biggest decline?
The figure below represents the top 20 countries in Facebook (those with the majority of users, regardless of the Internet penetration in that Country). Top 20 countries decline, in terms of new Facebook registrations as a total, is slightly over 2 million.
Some countries slowed down more than others – and there is some confirmation in the recently launchedunofficial Google+ statistics website.
Data show a vast majority of countries experienced a slowdown – between 0.2 % and 1.3% of their overall Facebook users base for the top 20 countries. The table shows the difference between the number of new users registered in the June 15-June 30 (2011) timeframe, minus the number of new Facebook users registered in the the past two weeks (July 1- 15, 2011, after G+ launched).
The table shows the top 10 “declining countries” (additional data are available on request).
Suggestions to marketers investing on Facebook:
We are still at the beginning of G+ vs Facebook, but surely something more to consider on the marketers’ plate is how to keep people engaged on the platform they invested on. This could also be a good reason for Facebook to get closer to those brands whose pages may be keeping their fans on Facebook and that may keep Facebook growing. It could be a win-win if thhey manage to get closer to each other and become more “social”. | <urn:uuid:e347f70d-3bcb-4708-90f1-283bd40305fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://socialnetconomy.com/2011/07/16/facebooks-new-users-decline-after-the-launch-of-google-while-fighting-in-a-new-war-of-the-roses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958212 | 638 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A prominent group of northern Virginia business leaders recently sent the Governor and the entire Virginia General Assembly a tersely worded letter to remind the Republican leadership that the welfare of Virginia depends on a robust economy and not on their social agenda. Governor McDonnell ran on a "jobs" platform, and over the next decade, the northern Virginia region will have over 600,000 jobs to fill. About half will be brand new jobs, most in the information and technology sector, and half will be needed to replace an aging workforce. According to the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, we are going to need substantial changes in education and housing policies and a dramatic infusion of funds for our aging infrastructure if we are going to attract the workers we need here to fill all those jobs.
While northern Virginia leaders in the business and academic communities focus on the critical disconnect between the workforce we have today and the kind we will need in a decade, the Governor and the Virginia General Assembly are staging a cultural revolution in Richmond that will have economic consequences for our region and beyond for years to come. They are carrying us back to an old Virginia that most people in our region never knew or would like to forget.
The disconnect includes a $65 million cut in the Governor’s budget to the northern Virginia "cost to compete" funds – the money designated to attract and keep professional staff in our more expensive region. His signature education initiatives included restoring pension funds he previously cut while diverting General Funds from education to transportation. The Virginia Senate thwarted his bill to dramatically change teacher tenure, reducing both job security and faculty cohesion, but he wants it restored.
The Governor’s transportation proposals are transparently thin at a time when our construction fund is almost entirely depleted to pay for necessary maintenance. His solutions: naming rights for roads, more tolls, and getting local governments to levy taxes so state legislators can remain true to their "no taxes" pledge. Making transportation a priority and not funding it is a big disconnect too if your goal is job growth and economic prosperity.
The business leaders who sent the letter to the Governor know that if you are not willing to fund education and transportation, you are not seriously pro-business or pro-jobs. If your agenda is social issues, you will not attract the workers you need. And with fewer than a dozen bills out of over 2500 introduced, this legislature has changed the image of Virginia for years to come.
Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads share the majority of the state’s population and commercial base, and should have the votes to drive an economic agenda that promotes sensible education and transportation policies. But many of our urban legislators, including local Fairfax delegates Dave Albo, Barbara Comstock, and Tim Hugo, are complicit in the "nothing for something" legislative and budget agenda that the Governor and his fellow partisans have proposed. And despite McDonnell’s admonition to these delegates not to overreach, they wasted no time in doing so.
Thanks to their votes, Virginians will find it harder to vote, but easier to buy guns. With calls for limited government, this legislature pushed for legislation so hostile and intrusive to women’s privacy and health care that it made national headlines. Our state officials are pro-kids and family unless you are gay. They are pro-science but short change the K-12 education funding to train future scientists. Poverty is rising, so programs for poor families are being cut, putting the next generation’s workforce at risk.
In short, if you don’t look like you would fit nicely in a Norman Rockwell painting, you might not fit in here. Our area business leaders understand that the Virginia others see may not be so inviting for many of the talented potential workers we must attract to remain competitive.
The irony is that Governor McDonnell might have created a lasting legacy of accomplishment with real transportation solutions and education programs that acknowledge the significant challenges we face to prepare for a competitive international workforce and economy. Instead he is tethered to zealous and reactionary true believers who are writing his legacy for him. Virginia is becoming a vision free zone. All the proposed tax credits and giveaways will not lure businesses here if potential workers find a small minded culture reminiscent of that intolerant, provincial Virginia we thought we had overcome. | <urn:uuid:12e890a9-9edc-4a08-9611-44dca2a847cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcleanconnection.com/news/2012/mar/07/marching-onward-past/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954304 | 867 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Centra Care physicians have reported that cases of pneumonia have nearly doubled from this time last year.
Last year, Centra Care says they reported 53 cases in the first two weeks of 2012, while they've seen 125 cases already in 2013.
Pneumonia is a relatively common infection of the lungs, but it can be dangerous, especially for young children, pregnant women and people with chronic health conditions such as asthma or heart and lung disease.
Centra Care physicians advise the public to practice flu and pneumonia prevention:
- Wash your hands with soap and water frequently and keep your hands away from your face.
- Regularly cleaning countertop surfaces helps prevent the spread of pneumonia causing germs.
- Stay away from people who have the flu, especially if you are at high-risk for developing flu-related complications, such as pneumonia.
- The flu is a common cause of pneumonia, so getting both pneumonia and flu vaccines are an important way to help prevent pneumonia, particularly if you are in the high-risk category.
Read more at Centra Care's website. | <urn:uuid:f50cb024-7c14-4833-afb5-1e87edfba4ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Centra-Care-reports-pneumonia-cases-on-rise-in-Central-Fla/-/1637132/18174354/-/14wx0gi/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952796 | 220 | 3.28125 | 3 |
What if cookies are disabled in a user's browser?
Posted 06 May 2010 - 03:43 AM
I tested my application with cookies disabled in my browser, which led to a problem:
I could not log in anymore, as the PHPSESSID is saved in a cookie.
Does anyone have a solution for this kind of a problem, or does Yii handle this case in some way?
I thought that maybe the session could be stored on the server, but then I would always have to keep
the PHPSESSID in the url, which is not such a good solution in my opinion.
Posted 06 May 2010 - 06:49 AM
Posted 10 May 2010 - 07:55 AM
I tried to use this useTransparentSessionID, but it doesn't work so easily.
My main config for session:
'session'=>array( 'class'=>'CDbHttpSession', 'autoStart'=>true, 'connectionID'=>'db', 'sessionTableName'=>'Session', 'useTransparentSessionID'=>true, 'cookieMode'=>'none' )
I have also overridden the CApplication, and in the Application::init() function I'm using:
$this->session = $this->getSession();
Now, the problem is, that when I want to log in, the PHPSESSID is sent in the URL, but the wrong PHPSESSID
is appended to the login form as a hidden input field. This because somehow there are two different session IDs in the database, and the other is used in the url and the other is appended to the login form.
I could log in once, but that was just a coincidence.
My question is: doesn't Yii append the SID automatically to all urls? I thought it would because of the useTransparentSessionID? Is there some conflicts with the DbHttpSession? If I want this to work, I would have to append to every single url the SID by hand, which is not an option for me.
Any help here?
Posted 10 May 2010 - 09:18 AM
So again: Try with a basic configuration first. Maybe even without Yii at all and then enhance it step-by-step. It's a long time, since i used transparent sessions but i remember getting it work can be tricky. | <urn:uuid:c42991fa-4445-4449-9642-a90e612ae9fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php/topic/9119-what-if-cookies-are-disabled-in-a-users-browser/page__pid__45264 | 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 | 0.921963 | 497 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Climate Change is coming to Pennsylvania, and with 24% of our families struggling -- GREEN JOBS is that pathway out of poverty that many of our residents need!
In today's world, it's almost impossible to go through the day without seeing an advertisement for an environmentally friendly florescent light bulb or notice a green organic ready-to-eat meal in the freezer section.
With all of these changes coming so quickly, there are a lot of questions:
Can being green help me in my every day life? Isn't it more expensive to be environmentally friendly? What does 'green collar' mean, exactly?
What are Green Jobs?
"It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment." –Phil Angelides, chair of the Apollo Alliance
A GREEN COLLAR JOB IS A FAMILY-SUPPORTING CAREER TRACK JOB THAT DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTES TO PRESERVING OR ENHANCING ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY.
GREEN-COLLAR JOBS RANGE FROM LOW-SKILL ENTRY-LEVEL POSITIONS TO HIGH-SKILL, HIGHER PAID JOBS.
GREEN-COLLAR JOBS INCLUDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVANCEMENTS IN BOTH SKILL AND WAGES.
Green-collar jobs can’t be outsourced, and are within reach of lower-skilled and workers!
EXAMPLES OF GREEN-COLLAR JOBS:
-Installing solar panels
-Repairing alternative fuel vehicles
-Refining waste oil
-Manufacturing wind turbines
-Conducting energy audits
-Constructing transit lines
-Building Green Rooftops
To read more on green collar jobs, CLICK HERE.
What Can a Greener World Do For Me and My Family?
Green is Good for the Economy
When you look around, it's obvious that the economy has seen better days. Gas prices are up. Food prices are up. Unemployment is up. People are concerned about what the results of abusing our environment for so many years will ultimately be. It has become increasingly clear that fostering a green economy can help to solve several of these ails.
Several organizations have begun projects to provide training and jobs to low income families. Participants learn how to install solar panels, manage gardens, weatherize buildings, among other jobs. These organizations are creating jobs that help the environment and the community.
To read more about what Pennsylvania's economy stands to gain from a green economy, CLICK HERE.
Green is Good for You
It's no secret that healthy eating helps you live longer, feel better, and have more energy. Through programs designed to help inner city communities grow and sell organic food, more people have jobs and access to low cost high quality fruits and vegetables.
To learn more about this program in inner city Chicago like this CLICK HERE to watch a video.
Green is Growing in PA
Climate Change is coming to Pennsylvania, and 24% of our state's families struggle with poverty -- GREEN JOBS is the pathway out of poverty that many of our residents need, from Reading to Dubois to Erie to Allentown!
If you are interested in learning about what people and organizations in Pennsylvania are doing to go green, CLICK HERE.
Read the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan -- and see how many ways green jobs could be coming to Pittsburgh!
And small towns can benefit from green jobs too!
Or for more resources on the movement CLICK HERE | <urn:uuid:5b5728e6-cbf8-401e-b690-ef847e5a9658> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theleague.com/pa/green-jobs-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91736 | 752 | 2.515625 | 3 |
You've seen the "emo cut" before. It's that odd, lopsided haircut that makes kids look like they're trying to cosplay as Tim Burtonesque version of Dr. Blight from Captain Planet. Well not only does it look a bit silly, but according to to the director of the Optometrists Association of Tasmania, the haircut could lead to amblyopia - better known as lazy eye.
"I have to wonder how they don't get a stiff neck," she said. "I have seen lots of fashions come and go, but this is probably the only hairstyle in my forty years of hairdressing that could be a health hazard."
Anderson and Hogan's apocalyptic vision of a future filled entirely with half blind, stiff-necked teens with stupid haircuts picking aimlessly through the ruins of civilization, occasionally bumping into each other, seems unavoidable at this point, but The Mercury did give the opposition a fair hearing.
Unfortunately this is a literal extreme case scenario, as MSNBC reports:
But pssssh, who reads MSNBC for fair analysis and reports of the news?
"The story would only be true if you had somebody young enough, and if that person never looked out of that eye -- if it was blocked 24-7. The reason it's false is that you don't have that constant deprivation."
Full article here: http://www.escapistm...n-Your-Eyesight | <urn:uuid:3a268b65-c250-4ec1-adbb-6f2b4459b1ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://emo-corner.com/forums/topic/56779-emo-hair-can-possibly-destroy-your-eyesight/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975653 | 297 | 1.789063 | 2 |
This book evaluates the reputation of the coelacanth, presenting up-to-date accounts of the structure of fossil coelacanths, and suggests a family history to show that there have been subtle but significant changes in coelacanth history.
This book provides the first complete and scientific account of the taxonomy and evolution of this group of fishes. The author considers the traditional view that coelacanths are the nearest living relatives to tetrapods as incorrect, and contends that they are far more primitive than first thought.
History of the Coelacanth Fishes is available to order from our co-publisher Springer Distribution Centre Ltd. For details of how to contact them, please visit Publishing partners.
Peter Forey is a researcher into fossil fishes at the Natural History Museum, London. | <urn:uuid:68a940ba-a48c-401d-a0e4-c8f73a48d9c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nhm.ac.uk/print-version/?p=/business-centre/publishing/books/fossils/coelacanth-fishes/history-of-the-coelacanth-fishes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917704 | 164 | 2.75 | 3 |