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Today we devote the second of our “Super Tuesday” Fun with Highways articles to the state of Ohio. Although the state is often known for its agricultural and industrial heritage, we choose to focus on its major urban centers here. Although not originally intended as such, it could be called “fun with bridges.”
We begin near Cleveland, the state’s largest metropolitan area. I-90 comes in from the east along the shore of Lake Erie. At “Dead Man’s Curve”, the highway makes an abrupt and rather angular turn to the south to become the Innerbelt Freeway along the edge of downtown.
The above view shows old and new aspects of the city’s skyline. The Terminal Tower is the classic deco skyscraper from the early 20th century is visible in the distance. The highly geometric and sleek Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a contrast along the waterfront. In between, the Key Tower, the tallest in Ohio, combines elements of both.
I-90 intersects with the northern terminus of I-77 at a rather complicated interchange before continuing across the Cuyahoga River on the “Innerbelt Bridge.”
The bridge crossings over the Cuyahoga in Cleveland are numerous, and perhaps define the city as much as the skyline, if not more. Even the image above showing the Innerbelt Bridge carrying I-90, we see several others. There is a low-lying rail bridge crossing underneath at an angle. It is one of many low bridges that can be raised for water traffic on the river. I believe this one is no longer in use and is permanently in the raised position.
The most iconic of the many crossings is the Detroit-Superior Bridge carrying US 6 and US 20 across the river into downtown. The name seems a little odd, as we’re not in Detroit and Cleveland is on Lake Erie rather than Lake Superior. But it connects Detroit Avenue with West Superior Avenue and thus the name is quite appropriate. It rises high above the river and is quite picturesque against the downtown skyline.
Looking towards the lake from this bridge, one sees how closely packed the crossings are, and the diversity of shape, height, function, and level of disuse. In the picture below, we see the blue bridge carrying a major freeway, State Highway 2, beyond that a rail bridge, and in the front the ruins of the older Detroit Avenue viaduct.
The viaduct, like the unused rail bridge shown above, are quite interesting as artistic subjects, and even qualify as “hyperart” as described in conceptual artist Akasegawa Genpei in his book Hyperart: Thomasson (you can find out more about it here). Thus, it should not be surprising that I would very much like to visit this part of the city for artistic inspiration, to explore the bridges both in use and abandoned, as well as other places along in this industrial riverfront section of the city known as the Flats.
Cleveland has actually long served as a magnet for artists interested in urban and industrial landscape, so this is nothing new. Indeed, the city has seen the same cycle of others where rundown or neglected neighborhoods attract artists in search of low rent and inspiration, and then the costs of living rise. But it still seems to have much to offer and I hope to get the chance to visit soon.
We depart Cleveland continuing on I-90, and then switch onto I-71 to journey diagonally across the length and breadth of the state. It winds through the suburbs, crossing many other highways before intersecting our friend I-80, which runs across the state as the Ohio Turnpike. The Ohio Turnpike is familiar from numerous cross-country trips, with the rolling hills and suburbs giving way to a much straighter road over flat terrain and farmland as one heads west. But in this instance, we continue south on I-71 towards Columbus, the state’s capital and largest city.
Columbus is in the middle of the state, and without much to get in the way it has developed the “standard” set of ring roads we see in many cities around the world: an outer beltway (in this case, I-270) and an inner belt around the downtown (a combination of I-70, I-71, I-670 and State Highway 315).
Looking at the Ohio State House, it initially looks like something is missing: the dome that is ubiquitous on so many seats of government. It appears as if it has been shaved off. In actuality, this is part of the design, an older Greek Revival design that predates the current Capitol dome in Washington, DC, that was then used subsequently in most states.
Columbus does have its bridges as well, including the Lane Avenue Bridge which includes some classical elements in its otherwise modern design.
And of course I would be remiss if I did not mention Ohio State, as I have several friends who are devoted lifelong fans due to their connections to either the university of the community.
Leaving Columbus, we continue southwest on I-71 to Cincinnati.
[Photo by Rdikeman]
One stop we must make while in the city is to the Contemporary Arts Center. The CAC is perhaps most famous for its exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1990 that still resonates in discussions of “controversial art” (though honestly Mapplethorpe’s photographs themselves don’t seem that controversial anymore, I have seen on multiple occasions in recent years). But the museum is more recently known for its building with fragmented geometric sections designed by architect Zaha Hadid; and for programs that feature architecture and design.
The city is home to the Cincinnati Art Museum. It is a relatively conventional art museum with a wide-ranging collection, but it does include yet another piece by Mark di Suvero for us to encounter is this series. Atman is another large red metal outdoor sculpture, but without the typical rounded element.
Cincinnati lies along the state’s namesake river, which forms the border with Kentucky to the south. As such the city has its own set of bridges, though nothing to approach the density of Cleveland. The most interesting perhaps is the John A Roebling Bridge. One can see many of the elements that Roebling would ultimately use in New York for the Brooklyn Bridge.
Another Cincinnati Bridge that has been in the news is the Brent Spence Bridge, which carries I-71 together with I-75 south into Kentucky. The bridge is featured prominently in the city skyline image above. It also one of the 15 bridges labeled by the Federal government as “structurally unsafe”, which sounds quite bad (indeed, President Obama used it as a backdrop for a speech about rebuilding our infrastructure). The bridge itself made the case in 2011 when chunks of concrete fell from the upper deck to the lower deck. Proposals are currently being considered for a replacement. | <urn:uuid:f186b425-e69b-4945-9c53-2ac281a96242> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ptank.com/blog/tag/I-71/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969416 | 1,447 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Be a Successful Business Owner with these Financial Planning Tips
In today’s still unstable economy, it is just as important for a small business owner to have a financial plan as only to focus on cash flow, revenue and company earnings. If you do not take care of your finances, this will not enable you to reap the rewards of a successful business.
So here are some tips to for an effective financial planning:
Concentration is the key. Though jumping at every opportunity that comes across your path is a good philosophy, bear in mind that opportunities often could become wolves in sheep’s clothing. So, avoid getting side-tracked. Your business is not a circus, where juggling multiple ventures will lead to your success. But rather, this will spread you thin and limit both your effectiveness and productivity. It’s better to do one thing perfectly, than things poorly.
Avoid deferring your taxes. Business owners usually tend to love the idea of deferring taxes. But, with the high likelihood that the direction of taxes over the long term will be going up, consider that if you’re successful in growing your business, you’ll only end up paying higher taxes on a bigger number. Even if tax rates stay the same, deferring your taxes, it is estimated that you’ll ultimately end up paying 10 to 20 times more in taxes over a 30-year period., So, make sure to pay your taxes up front.
Do what you know and love best. Starting a business simply because it seems sexy or boasts large hypothetical profit margins and returns will usually tend to failure. So, before you start your business, make sure to learn and be familiar with the business you have chosen to build and what it entails. Make sure also that the business you have chosen is what you love. By choosing a business built around your strengths and talents, this will bring you a greater chance of success. Take note, creating a profitable business is not all and ends all. It’s also important that you’re happy managing and growing your business day in and day out. If your heart isn’t in it, you will be doomed to failure.
Don’t invest to save. Saving and investing are not the same thing. There is a big difference. The money you have in savings is money you don’t want or can’t afford to lose while the money you invest tends to be subject to loss. There are a good number people today that make the practice of investing in order to save. And as a result, they tend to have no idea what their nest egg will be worth when they plan to tap into it. So, avoid putting money you can’t afford to lose into stocks, real estate or other traditional investments. Before making an investment, make sure to ascertain within yourself if it’s acceptable and if you could afford that your money won’t grow for 20 or more years.
Be open to learn under fire. There’s nothing, even a business book or business plan, that can predict the future or fully prepare you to become a successful entrepreneur. There is no such thing as the perfect plan. Though, you should not jump right into a new business without any thought or planning, don’t also spend months or years waiting to execute. It is when you’re tested under fire that you’ll learn to become a well-rounded entrepreneur. So, make sure that you are open to learn from your mistakes and never make the same mistake twice. | <urn:uuid:a0f91580-5a75-45ff-8eae-0ec446b850e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cashadvance.com.au/blog/be-a-successful-business-owner-with-these-financial-planning-tips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954852 | 731 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The following special sessions are being organized as part of the contributed program. The organizer(s) for each session have discretion over the content. If you would like to have a paper which you are submitting as part of the General Papers session(s) considered for included in one of the following special sessions, please contact the organizer(s) by March 15.
Math Circles & Math Teachers’ Circles: Mathematical Problem Solving for Students and Teachers
Organizer: David Scott (firstname.lastname@example.org)
A Math Circle is a gathering of students and mathematicians engaged in mathematical problem solving. Math Circles are relatively new in the United States but are an established institution in some countries in Europe. Hosting and supporting a Math Circle is one way a community can contribute to raising the mathematics proficiency of its youth. Math Teachers’ Circles are Math Circles for math teachers of grades K to 12.
There are a variety of ways a Math Circle can be organized. They have been held on college campuses and in the target community; some work with fourth graders, others with high school students; some focus on students who are well above grade level in mathematics, others target the general student. What is consistent in a Math Circle is that the mathematics presented is interesting and challenging. The overriding objective is to build greater student interest and proficiency in mathematics.
This session will demonstrate some of the problems and pedagogy in good problem solving that is the hallmark of a Math Circle. It will present resources for those interested in exploring Math Circles, and will show how Math Circles and Math Teachers’ Circles can be effective in a number of different settings.
Games can be fun to play and interesting to analyze mathematically. They can be used in the classroom to get students’ attention while tangentially introducing a new topic. Even for very familiar games, there are many open questions still to answer. This session provides an opportunity to explore many aspects of games and the mathematical theory associated with them. Talks ranging from a formal analysis of combinatorial games, to the use of existing games to explore mathematical structures, to ways to incorporate the study of games into instruction are invited. | <urn:uuid:3dd3a8bf-e7c0-4916-a77f-56ba1330940f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.willamette.edu/cla/math/PNWMAA_2013/special/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945578 | 449 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Mai Khao Beach
Located just north of the airport is Mai Khao beach, an incredibly long and deserted stretch of sand.
There is no tourist development here except for the JW Marriott Resort & Spa. Mai Khao is the longest beach on the island and also the most deserted. If you really want to get away from it all this is the beach for you.
Mai Khao is part of the Sirinath National Park, which also includes Nai Yang and Nai Thon, the next beaches along to the south. The area was declared a national park in 1981 to protect the Olive Ridley Sea Turtles that lay their eggs here from November to February.
Many kilometers of deserted beach characterize Mai Khao where there is little tourist business. The water is fine for swimming during the dry season; the rainy season brings big waves and strong currents that are dangerous. This lonely beach is another area where sea turtles come to lay eggs. It is also home to what the Thais call a sea cicada, which is a form of marine life.
An endless stretch of fine sand; the only real getaway on the west coast of Phuket. Aside from the JW Marriott Phuket Resort and Spa, the area is largely undeveloped with only a few bungalow operations and a campground on the beach. Take a stroll and watch the crabs scuttle, swing on a hammock under the trees or enjoy a refreshing swim. | <urn:uuid:2e75f44f-fb9f-491d-8749-89e9ecd9a5f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beachthailand.com/thailand-beaches/phuket/mai-khao-beach.htm | 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 | 0.955236 | 300 | 1.8125 | 2 |
updated 06:50 pm EDT, Wed August 24, 2011
Steve Jobs ends reign at Apple
Apple on Wednesday upturned the technology industry with word that Steve Jobs had resigned as CEO of Apple. He will remain Chairman of the Board and, after he "strongly recommended" the role to directors, has had COO Tim Cook take his CEO position. No reason was given for the departure, though Apple stressed that Jobs would still have input at the company.
"Steve has made countless contributions to Apple's success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple's immensely creative employees and world class executive team," Genentech Chairman and Apple board member said. "In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration."
The surprise exit follows an indefinite medical leave and may be a strong indication that Jobs doesn't believe he can return to full-time work at the company. He had surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004 that is believed to have at least temporarily taken care of the issue, but complications forced a leave in 2009 and left him a frail condition that prompted the most recent absence.
Tim Cook is expected to be a safe replacement for Jobs. As COO, he has often been credited with turning around the company's operations and cutting back product launch times from several months to just weeks. He has also been credited to mastering the supply chain and getting the company an edge in flash memory, aluminum construction, displays, and other technology that others had previously ignored.
In making the recommendation, Jobs acknowledged that there was not just a succession plan in place but that Tim Cook was the frontrunner for the plan. Some had speculated that alternatives such as Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, and even Jonathan Ive were candidates. Apple is known to have an Apple University that not only trains executives in skills but inculcates the philosophy Jobs wants to put forward in replacements.
Jobs is by far the most successful leader of the company. Most of his success came after his return in 1997, when he refocused the company. The iMac almost single-handedly saved the company's fortunes and was followed by a string of major successes, including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, as well as numerous definitive Macs. The growth was fast enough that Apple now often has the largest stock market cap of any company in the world and is wealthier on a more absolute sense than its long-time rival Microsoft.
Update: Steve Jobs has posted his full letter.
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you. | <urn:uuid:3d3c5c35-cbfe-4d6a-ba6b-d0264f68c518> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/08/24/steve.jobs.ends.reign.at.apple/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98473 | 690 | 1.539063 | 2 |
According to background information in the article, approximately 80 percent of India's one billion population uses Ayurveda, a medical system that originated in India more than 2000 years ago and greatly relies on herbal medicine products (HMPs). Ayurveda's popularity in Western countries has increased. Because Ayurvedic HMPs are marketed as dietary supplements, they are regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which does not require proof of safety or efficacy prior to marketing. Herbs, minerals and metals are used in Ayurvedic HMPs. Recent reports of serious lead poisoning associated with taking Ayurvedic HMPs were the impetus for the current study.
Robert B. Saper, M.D., M.P.H., formerly of Harvard Medical School, Boston, (currently with the Boston University School of Medicine) and colleagues examined Ayurvedic HMPs manufactured in South Asia and sold in Boston-area stores in order to examine their heavy metal content. From April to October 2003, the researchers purchased 70 different Ayurvedic HMPs at stores within 20 miles of Boston City Hall. Concentrations of lead, mercury and arsenic were measured in the samples. The potential amount of daily metal ingestion, estimated by using manufacturers' dosage recommendations, was compared to U.S. Pharmacopeia and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulatory standards.
The researchers found that 14 (20 percent) of the 70 HMPs contained lead, mercury and/or arsenic, and that if taken as recommended by the manufacturer, each of these could result in heavy metal intake above the published regulatory standards. Lead was found in 13 HMPs; mercury in six HMPs; and arsenic in six HMPs. Half of the HMPs containing pote
Contact: Gina DiGravio
JAMA and Archives Journals | <urn:uuid:32258587-a599-4995-b55c-5407874a5401> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/Some-herbal-medicine-products-contain-potentially-toxic-amounts-of-heavy-metals-1373-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960622 | 384 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Duane Hanson and His Works
A traditional model for sculptors have been human figures. These figures would glamourize, and epitomize physical beauty. Duane Hanson (1925-1996) chooses to do otherwise. He depicts contemporary American people in his work. His highly realistic figures mirrors the grotesque, the mundane, the monotonous, and the vulgarity characterized by American society.
To create his realistic figures, Hanson first has his model shaved of body hair. Vaseline is then applied; a silicone rubber mold over that. The rubber takes five to ten minutes to hold up, and after that, plaster, reinforced with hemp fibers, are applied. The plaster is removed and repaired so that polyvinyl acetate (mixed with oils paints and paraffin in order to produce a flesh-like and flexible surface) can be poured into the plaster mold. The vinyl dries overnight and when the plaster is taken off, a highly detailed model (of a leg, for example) is created. The bod... | <urn:uuid:430b66e4-cb4b-4f7b-b79f-1a93a104ae51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eduessays.com/Essays-y50372.htm | 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 | 0.949146 | 209 | 1.539063 | 2 |
As your cat ages, he will most likely devote more time to finding snuggly warm places to nap and less time chasing fuzzy balls across the floor. Although it can sometimes be a challenge, it is essential for your cat’s physical health and mental well being to keep active. Making small changes in your cat’s daily routine or environment can make the difference!
Your older cat will look forward to playtime if the sessions are divided up into shorter sessions and spread out over the course of the day. High-speed acrobatics will be a thing of the past, so choose toys or activities that will still provide mental stimulation, but not require the stamina or agility of an Olympic athlete. Control how high the feather “bird” flies or how fast the laser light “mouse” scampers across the floor so that your kitty can still delight in the thrill of the chase and the glory of the capture-without injuring himself.
If your kitty’s vision isn’t as sharp as it used to be, toys that have a little a bell will help him follow them across the carpet and encourage him to chase after them. Catnip is a great way to get your kitty to “kick up his heels.” One little pinch rubbed on a soft toy and your cat will be so delighted, he won’t even notice he is exercising his legs!
Place your kitty’s favorite treats across the room or at the top of the steps. Most cats won’t even think about those few extra steps if it means a tasty reward at the end!
On days when your kitty is not up to frolicking across the room, a well placed bird feeder outside the window can provide enough interest to keep him from sleeping the day away.
Encourage your kitty to explore his favorite spots or reach that special patch of sunlight by providing stairs or ramps as a stepping stones.
With a little understanding and love, the golden years can be rewarding for both you and your cat. | <urn:uuid:1cee1ce3-d0d7-4f47-95d7-002e9fd2197a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://animalfriendsinc.blogspot.com/2011/04/lives-six-to-nine-tips-for-keeping.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94765 | 424 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Successful or not, we’ve all got one thing in common in life: there’s something we’re not happy with. There’s something we regret. There is something between us and our dreams. Then how can it be that some people are "living the dream?"
I think it’s as easy as moving past the regrets – find a way around, over, or through them, and get your dream. Who’s living your life? Who gets to decide what’s possible, and what’s impossible? It’s YOU! At the end of the day, there are few things that are actually impossible; just things that require a lot of sacrifice to attain. You want A? You’re going to have to do B, C, D, and E first. Are you up to the task? How badly do you want it?
Stop finding reasons that your dreams won’t work, and instead start finding ways in which they will. If you get stuck, don’t get discouraged; just go into a holding pattern. The way forward will emerge soon enough. There’s always a way forward. Want to accelerate your progress toward your dream? Start listening to people who are already living your dream. They weren’t born into that lifestyle! They were just like you once, and had to find a way into their dream. Stop listening to people who tell you it can’t be done.
There’s an old expression – "Whether you believe you can do it, or believe you can’t, you’re right." There’s no faster way to destroy a dream than to live in the mode of fear and regret. Cast those voices out and believe in your dream. You’ll be surprised how many opportunities you’ll find to advance it. Live life today. Don’t wait to start living – enjoy life now. Celebrate the moment. Anticipate the future. Dream. | <urn:uuid:5f53db9e-9dc1-40b4-8257-8aef54efaaa5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ontheroadwithlewisandclark.com/dreams/cancel-regrets-dream | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940782 | 421 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Colbert was wrong.
On Saturday, Stephen Colbert was a featured speaker at the White House correspondents' dinner. The monologue he delivered at the podium became the talk of the town, as it were. The mainstream news organizations refused to talk about it much, but it was all the rave in liberal blogs. Crooks and Liars, for example.
Yet, Colbert was wrong.
He was not wrong in what he said. In fact, I found little in what he said that I disagreed with. However, the context in which he said it was not appropriate.
The event in question is one in which reporters and the President himself gather for an enjoyable and entertaining evening. This was designed as a peace dinner in a relationship between the White House and a press that is generally hostile (until recently). It would not exist except under a banner of true.
Colbert violated that truce.
For an analogy, consider the Olympic Games. This is an event where people are supposed to come together in peaceful competition of the best athletes from each country. We can imagine two countries at war, both of which send competitors to the Olympics. We can also imagine that some of those competitors are members of the military of their respective countries.
Now, imagine that the members of one country's team attacks and kills members of the other team. Recall, these nations are at war. Back home, these individuals would be shooting at each other. Let's also stipulate that the attacking nation is in the right when it comes to the war back home. None of this mitigates against the fact that it is wrong -- it is completely inappropriate -- for any country to carry its conflicts into the Arena, and to launch an attack against the representatives on the other country.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the [event], like the Olympics, is a place where potential adversaries agree to put down at least their sharpest weapons and to get together in peace. Just as with the Olympics, it is good that people do this from time to time, particularly if it helps to promote the peace. As such, Colbert violated the rules of participation.
Colbert was wrong.
I do not know if he was intentionally wrong. He might have thought that his material was appropriate and discovered only later that it was not. Or, he might not have tried. Or, he might have felt that this was an excellent time to attack some people that he has wanted to attack to their face. I cannot say which description is the most accurate. Yet all of these options are consistent with his actions being wrong, They only diverge on the question of, "How wrong?"
Truth to Power
The Liberal blogsphere is using the term "truth to power" to praise Colbert for his actions. Ultimately, this supports my point. This phrase refers to the willingness of an individual to tell somebody in power what he or she does not want to hear.
The very use of the concept "truth to power" makes it plain that Colbert acted inappropriately for this setting. If this was a Presidential press conference, it would have been legitimate to attack Bush for his record. However, this was an event specifically designed with the intention that it NOT be a press conference, and to which the President could go without being made to feel uncomfortable.
If it is accurate to say that Colbert's presentation was an example of speaking truth to power, then it is accurate to say that Colbert's presentation was not appropriate for this particular venue.
More important, I suspect that most of the liberal blogs out there praising Colbert would recognize just how inappropriate it was if the situations were reversed -- if this turned into a rant from Dennis Miller, for example, against a Democratic President. Liberal bloggists from one end of the country to the other would point out how the event is supposed to be neutral ground, and this right-wing nut job violated the rules in order to score some cheep points.
(And, no doubt, right-wing bloggers would speak about the virtue of speaking truth to power -- demonstrating perfect hypocrisy in doing so, and doing so without a twinge of conscience, since partisans operate on the principle that one who is promoting the party can do no wrong.)
Indeed, there is evidence of this. In 1996, Don Imus made a similar type of attack on Clinton. Liberals condemned him for his rudeness. However, they do not call Colbert rude. Indeed, they praise him.
This is the typical partisan double standard. It is yet another example of the type of morality that governs those who are devoted to a party – that no act is wrong if the party benefits. “It’s only wrong if the other guy does it.”
It would be nice to have a party that one can point to as the party of principle. However, it does not seem to be realistic.
There is one context in which Colbert's skit would have been fitting. It could have been presented as an act of civil disobedience. There are things that needed to be said to the President whose lust for power is beyond the measure of any previous President, and a media that has sat aside and done nothing through all of his trangressions and usurpations. It would have been fitting for Colbert to have said, "I know that this is supposed to be a truce between the two factions, but there are things that my conscience requires of me."
If he had done this, then he could have broken the rules without condemnation. Like the sit-ins during the civil rights days, and Ghandi's civil disobedience, it is sometimes necessary to (non-violently) break the rules to accomplish important tasks. This could have been one of those instances. However, Colbert's act was not an act of civil disobedience. His violation has no such defense. | <urn:uuid:4b29302d-ab0e-4a91-a0ed-11ab6d35a366> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2006/05/colbert-was-wrong.html?showComment=1147111740000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987153 | 1,189 | 1.929688 | 2 |
The mysterious respiratory disease that has swept greyhound
racetracks across the country and also afflicted pet dogs is a type
of flu — an influenza strain that jumped from horses to dogs,
researchers reported Monday.
Such a rapid jump into a new species is rare; the
flu usually evolves into new strains more gradually. But genetic
tests of sick dogs found their disease almost identical to the H3N8
influenza strain that afflicts horses, scientists at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and University of Florida discovered.
Moreover, they found evidence of widespread infection
in race dogs around the country and in pets of various breeds in
Florida and New York.
Since this is a new virus for dogs, they are unlikely
to harbor a natural immunity to it. There are no reports of people
sickened by the new canine flu, which is genetically different from
human flu strains — and from the bird flu that has in Asia.
The results were published online Monday by the
journal Science. This new dog illness made headlines earlier this
year as greyhound racetracks closed to control outbreaks. Veterinarians
struggled to tell if the illness was a new variant of kennel cough
or an entirely new disease. The CDC researchers counted outbreaks
at 14 greyhound tracks in six states from June to August 2004, and
at 20 tracks in 11 states between January and May 2005.
It's not clear how dangerous the new canine flu
is to dogs. Some die, others experience only a fever and cough,
but a large number show no symptoms at all, the researchers report.
While most attention has focused on racing dogs, the researchers
tested 70 dogs of various breeds with respiratory disease in Florida
and New York pet shelters and veterinary clinics. Some 97 percent
showed antibodies to the new canine flu strain.
Tests of blood stored by racetracks suggests the
new flu strain began infecting dogs sometime between 1999 and 2003,
well In 2004, AKC's Compliance department conducted over 5,000 inspections
of dog kennels, individual breeders, and pet stores. | <urn:uuid:526ab9c6-1933-4723-b05e-1ba92559c2cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sammamishkennelclub.com/barker/oct2005/influenza.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952351 | 443 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Manufacturer: Antec Inc.
Antec was founded in 1986, in Fremont, California. Today the company has offices in the United States and the Netherlands, and its distributors are active in 27 countries of this world. The company specializes in PC cases, PSUs and cooling systems, paying much attention to noise reduction. Besides that, they make modding accessories like highlight lamps or shining fans.
Antec system cases are popular, but among a small category of users – due to their not-very-low price.
The manufacturer positions this model as a SOHO File Server, and it is actually a redesigned Chieftec DX-01. The main difference is noticeable on the front panel where there are two new indicators that are supposed to be used as SCSI LED or Message LED.
Antec logo is found on the cover of the connections unit at the front. One more difference is the air filter on the front panel. You can extract it through the hole at the bottom of the plastic front panel.
Inside, the case is perfectly identical to the Chieftec DX-01 model, so there’s no sense in repeating the description.
An Antec True430P PSU is mounted in this system case. Besides the power connector and the power-on button, the rear panel of this PSU carries a 4-pin Molex connector. There’s an extensive selection of internal power plugs: five Molex connectors, two power connectors for floppy drives, two power connectors for SATA drives, two connectors for +12v system fans, and a signal connector for monitoring the rotational speed of the PSU fan. The plugs themselves are all colored black, which is unusual since connectors of one type usually differ from other types in color. The plugs are also hard to see against the background of the black cables.
Besides a pack of screws, a power cable and rails for 5.25” devices, you receive a user manual.
As for ventilation, this case is equipped with three 80mm system fans that have a rotation speed of 2800rpm and exhaust air to the outside: two are located at the rear panel and one fan is on the left panel. The fans all have a pair of 4-pin power connectors (female/male) like the connectors of CD-ROM drives and are all attached to the appropriate connectors of the PSU.
I first performed my tests with the standard fans, and then I added two 80mm fans (3000rpm speed) to take air in: one on the front panel of the case and another into the bottom basket of hard disk drives.
The results of my tests are presented below:
Although having one fan more, this system case performs worse than the Chieftec DX-01. This is probably because the speed of the fans the case comes with is lower than the speeds of the additional fans I install in my tests. Thus, if you’re using this system case I recommend you to comply with the following conditions: hard disk drives in the bottom basket only (HDD3, HDD4, HDD5); an extra fan is in the same bottom basket; your applications don’t use the disk subsystem intensively. | <urn:uuid:e3d652a4-8f50-4e4e-8d3a-643458353195> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cases/display/ws-cases_8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937802 | 650 | 1.65625 | 2 |
05 Feb 2012: Institute of Ideas & Unilever Debating Matters Global Development Debates
Students come together in special showcase event at Unilever to debate global development
At a time of great anxiety and confusion about the future direction of the world, there are important debates to be had about how to improve our lives – from how to employ science and technology to best effect, to different models of economic growth. In the midst of economic turmoil for many countries, rapid growth for some and slow or even negative growth for others, the seventh billionth person joined the human population. Some have celebrated the scientific and social advances that have enabled the human race to thrive on its ingenuity and capacity for innovation, whilst others are concerned about the destructive aspects of humanity in relation to the depletion of natural resources and pollution that threatens the sustainability of existence as our population continues to grow.
But which way now? Many have questioned the sustainability of the Western economic model, raising questions about short-termism, consumerism, a narrow pursuit of profit to please the markets, and the wisdom of measuring prosperity in terms of GDP. On the other hand, the drive for growth and the emphasis on innovation and renewal required to achieve it, deliver important benefits for human existence. The evidence and arguments are complex, contradictory and difficult – but need to be worked through and debated vigorously. The Institute of Ideas and Unilever Debating Matters Global Development Debates will provide six schools with the opportunity to do just that.
Miguel Pestana, Vice-President Global External Affairs at Unilever says of the event:
“Unilever is proud to support this Debating Matters special event as a means of helping to raise awareness and encourage debate of complex issues which confront our society and with which we as a business also seek to grapple with on a daily basis.”
Six specially invited teams from schools from London and the Home Counties will debate the following motions:
- Supermarkets are bad for local communities
- Governments should stop supporting the biofuels industry
- Social media is rejuvenating political protest
- Population growth and rising living standards are unsustainable
Invited guest judges from business, media, arts and science will be challenging the debaters to think deeply about the issues the debates pose, and to rise to the challenge of thinking about the world around them.
Tony Gilland, director of Debating Matters, said:
“We are delighted to be partnering with Unilever to provide this opportunity to sixth-form students to debate these pressing questions. By examining the complexity of these issues, and getting behind the media headlines, we hope all involved will develop a more thorough appreciation of these debates. Good luck to all the teams.” | <urn:uuid:81ccb0a6-36c4-47b1-a3aa-23f08293c86d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.debatingmatters.com/news/news_article/institute_of_ideas_unilever_debating_matters_global_development_debates/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941747 | 555 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Tomorrow's Emerging Markets Today
Mongolia is a landlocked country bordered by Russia to the north and China to the east, south and west. With an area of more than 1.5 million square kilometers, it is the world’s 19th largest country. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, is located in the north central part of the country and features Mongolia’s only international airport. The southern third of Mongolia is dominated by the Gobi Desert that continues southward into China.
Mongolia is expected to be one of the world’s fastest growing economies from 2010 to 2012 according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF forecasts that the real GDP growth of Mongolia will amount to 24.8% in total during 2010-2012, driven largely by advancements in the mining sector. The economy is dominated by agriculture and mining, which provides circa 60% of export earnings. According to a March 2010 Economist Intelligence Unit article: “Mongolia is looking forward to a period of unparalleled economic growth over the next decade as major mining projects finally move forward. Observers realistically talk of GDP doubling in the next five years and even quadrupling in a decade.” Entry of global giants like Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe in the mining sector is expected to lead to strong growth across multiple segments of the economy. Mongolia has rich mineral resources and exploitation of these resources is increasing rapidly. There are over 8,000 deposits of 440 different minerals in Mongolia. The government has targeted a number of strategic deposits to be the core focus of Mongolia’s mining industry.
The emerging Mongolia stock market experienced rapid growth in 2010 with the MSE Top 20 index up 110% for the year. In addition to mining growth (Tavan Tolgoi up 270% in 2010), there are large domestic companies that are growing at a rapid pace, such as APU, the largest Mongolian beverage producer, up 161% in 2010. In an effort to modernize the stock market and integrate international exchange management, the government has appointed the London Stock Exchange to advise on the development and privatization of the MSE, involving comprehensive reforms and upgrading of the MSE, including modernization of market rules and operations and expansion of tradable asset classes. This is expected to increase the efficiency and transparency of the stock exchange and boost international investor confidence.
Since 1991, Mongolia has been working to implement a comprehensive economic reform program aimed at moving the country towards a free-market economy. Ruled by a legislature, a directly elected president, and a prime minister elected by the parliament, one of the primary objectives of this program has been to encourage foreign investment to stimulate economic growth and several laws have been adopted in that regard.read more
Join the APIP Team
We seek to inspire enterprising and imaginative people with unparalleled opportunities for professional and personal growth. Our employees come from diverse ethnic and educational backgrounds and have been challenged early in their careers with unique opportunities and responsibilities. Our management training is a very hands on experience giving young people a chance to move quickly into higher levels of responsibility.read more | <urn:uuid:a6c9896f-fee3-48ce-ac68-d2a4fae732ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apipcorp.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954241 | 632 | 1.90625 | 2 |
'Out of control' piracy set to cost world £9bn by 2015
Crime at sea is ever more lucrative: in East African waters, pirates pocket 150 times the national wage
Somali pirates are earning more than 150 times their country's national average wage in what has become a multimillion-dollar business, a new study reveals.
Experts believe that pirates in the East African country – the most dangerous point in a rising tide of piracy at sea – earn up to $79,000 a year. It is a stark contrast to the average annual income in Somalia of $500.
The study, by the political and economic intelligence consultancy Geopolicity, has been prepared for delegates ahead of an international piracy conference that starts in Dubai tomorrow. It is one of the first attempts to map the economics behind piracy.
The results, revealed exclusively to The Independent on Sunday, highlight the magnitude of the problem, with attacks at record levels and huge financial rewards set to swell the ranks of pirates. What began as an attempt to protect local waters by vigilante Somali fishermen in the mid-1990s swiftly developed into piracy that now extends to some 2.5 million square nautical miles off Somalia's coastline, an increase of one million nautical miles from two years ago, according to the study.
Somali piracy was worth $238m last year and is set to rise to $400m by 2015. The costs of piracy could virtually double in that time – from $8.3bn in 2010 to more than $15bn (£9.1bn) by 2015.
The continued growth of piracy, fuelled by organised and armed gangs using "motherships" to enable them to attack further afield, could see the numbers of pirates, estimated to be at least 1,500, rise by up to 400 a year.
Peter Middlebrook, head of Geopolicity, said: "Pirates are the very essence of rational profit maximising entrepreneurs." He predicted that incidents would "expand substantially beyond Somali waters – given the rising income disparity between pirates and non-pirates".
Pirates are part of a complex "piracy value chain" ranging from financial backers to accountants and arms dealers. "The risks of piracy spreading beyond the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, off the Somali coast, and in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore and beyond are substantial," warned Dr Middlebrook.
A United Nations source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "Research like this is vital, but we urgently need a comprehensive study so that we can have a united approach based on shared intelligence. There are international working groups working on specific subjects of piracy, but nobody seems to know what exactly is going on."
Amid mounting concerns that piracy is out of control and in danger of spreading, this week the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will announce a $17m donation to the UN-backed international coalition the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, according to UN sources.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs, said: "We must all urgently double our efforts in the current international response. Global efforts are not producing the results we are all aiming for."
Somali pirates, typically armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, have become increasingly violent in recent months, killing and injuring dozens of hostages.
Piracy has soared in the past five years, from 276 incidents in 2005 to 445 in 2010. Attacks for the last quarter were at an all-time high, according to statistics from the International Maritime Bureau. There were 142 attacks between January and March – 97 off the coast of Somalia – up from 35 in the same period last year. Pirates seized 18 vessels worldwide, capturing more than 340 hostages in attacks in which seven crew members died and 34 were injured.
Maritime unions are threatening to boycott certain trade routes. In February, the International Chamber of Shipping reversed its long-held position against armed security, and now suggests that it could be an option.
Gay couple beaten in park urge MPs to moderate language on gay marriage
Strewth mate. Aussies wave goodbye to Britain as it becomes too pricey to stay
World news in pictures
X marks the spot: The find that could rewrite Australian history
Oklahoma tornado latest: At least 91 feared dead including 20 children as massive storm rips through school
- 1 Tottenham to smash pay scale with £150,000-a-week contract in attempt to tie Gareth Bale to club
- 2 Austerity has hardened the nation's heart
- 3 Gay couple beaten in park urge MPs to moderate language on gay marriage
- 5 Top A&E doctors warn: 'We cannot guarantee safe care for patients anymore'
BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
£115 - £150 per day + negotiable dependant on experience : Randstad Education ...
Negotiable: Progressive Recruitment: Quality Inspector - West Midlands - 3 Mon...
£21000 - £36000 per annum: Capita Education Resourcing Permanent Team: Looking...
£120 per day: Randstad Education Luton: KS1 Teacher required to cover PPA in a... | <urn:uuid:24473464-faef-4d19-9b1b-efd8bd35e522> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/out-of-control-piracy-set-to-cost-world-1639bn-by-2015-2269013.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943474 | 1,087 | 1.859375 | 2 |
It was written by the priest Father Joseph Mohr and the melody was composed by the Austrian headmaster Franz Xaver Gruber. In 1859, John Freeman Young (second Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Florida) published the English translation that is most frequently sung today.The version of the melody that is generally sung today differs slightly (particularly in the final strain) from Gruber’s original, which was a sprightly, dance-like tune in 6/8 time, as opposed to the slow, meditative lullaby version generally sung today. Today, the lyrics and melody are in the public domain.
The carol was first performed in the Nikolaus-Kirche (Church of St. Nicholas) in Oberndorf, Austria, on December 24, 1818. Mohr had composed the words two years earlier, in 1816, but on Christmas Eve brought them to Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and guitar accompaniment for the church service.
In his written account regarding the composition of the carols, Gruber gives no mention of the specific inspiration for creating the song. According to the song’s history provided by Austria’s Silent Night Society, one supposition is that the church organ was no longer working so that Mohr and Gruber therefore created a song for accompaniment by guitar. | <urn:uuid:beaf08d0-2679-424d-8293-c72c52e110c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://elev8.com/528335/behind-the-hymn-silent-night/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976296 | 274 | 3.390625 | 3 |
In the market for discount genetic testing? Want to share your genetic markers with friends? No? You might soon be alone.
Last week, I got an email from the mega-discounter Groupon advertising 68% off a “DNA Self-Discovery Kit.” The company, ConnectMyDNA, allows Groupon users to send in a cheek swab and receive back information on their genetic markers and how those markers compare to people around the world (what they call a “Gene RingTM”).
The big selling point: sharing results with friends on social media and making new connections to people with similar genetic markers. ConnectMyDNA’s website says, “You can use your Gene Ring™ as your personal badge anywhere you’d like—on your business card, email signature, or you can even create a cool T-shirt!”
This all seems fairly harmless. But I wonder if sharing genetic information will represent the next step in the race to the bottom of privacy expectations. People already regularly disclose extensive medical information related to illness, recovery, and injury on Caringbridge, Facebook, and public blogs. As genetic tests come down in price and become more commercially available, will genetic information be next? How will law and ethics respond to protect family members who share genetic information or shield those predisposed to disease from discrimination in this context? Today, genetic screening raises ethical issues and contention among family members at risk, for instance, for hereditary breast or ovarian cancer. Tomorrow, sharing one’s genome with Facebook friends, twitter users, and the public may be the norm. | <urn:uuid:6971abb0-9813-4b65-8ebb-b2d470f39dce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/01/09/genetic-testing-as-social-networking/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915881 | 330 | 1.90625 | 2 |
When it comes to their January plans, most graduate students have similar items on their to-do lists: Put in time in the labs, work on the research or writing of their dissertations, and maybe catch up on sleep.
For hundreds of students in Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, however, January included more than a few items — like financial-planning seminars, classes about the history and politics of chocolate, and workshops on answering tough questions in job interviews — that fell outside the intersession box.
The events were part of the third annual January @ GSAS, a series of more than 80 classes, seminars, and workshops designed to give students an opportunity for professional development and social interaction, and a chance to explore interests that fall outside their areas of study.
For second-year public health student Allegra Gordon, who took part in the “Chocolate, Culture and the Politics of Food” class, the session was a valuable chance to interact with students she might otherwise never have met.
“It’s very special because I go to school across the river, so I don’t have that many opportunities to come here,” she said. “Here, in this class, I am having conversations with people on topics that are interesting to me, and that are related to what I do, but we are coming at it from so many different perspectives. It’s exciting to me. I wish we could have classes like this throughout the year.
Led by Carla Martin, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of African and African American Studies, the class explored the chocolate-making process, from how and where cacao is grown to how it is made into chocolate, as well as the continuing labor rights abuses associated with the industry.
The sessions also included an opportunity for students to taste-test a variety of the sweet stuff, from traditional candy-store chocolate to artisanal bars made by local chocolatiers.
“There is a dark side to the industry, and the farmers who are growing a lot of the cacao we eat are often in the most fragile position,” said Martin. “That understanding has definitely driven the choices I make. I now mostly eat chocolate that is fair trade, which is today largely associated with high quality.”
The classes also covered a host of professional development topics — from how to write fellowship proposals to how to answer difficult questions during job interviews — while others helped to reinforce students’ research skills, with workshops on quantitative analysis techniques and reference tools.
With as many as 300 students attending, the workshop dubbed “The Impostor Syndrome: How to Feel as Smart and Capable as Everyone Seems to Think You Are” was the largest, and helped students deal with a fear — remarkably common among high-achieving people — that they don’t measure up against their peers.
Another 100 students and postdocs attended a workshop on business applications of the Ph.D. The workshop, which focused on applications in the natural and social sciences, was run by two Harvard alumna, Karen Hladik, Ph.D. ’84, and Mia A.M. de Kuijper, M.P.A. ’83, Ph.D. ’83, who have long track records in the financial industry and in corporate leadership.
Other classes, such as the personal finance session sponsored by the Harvard University Employees Credit Union (HUECU), were focused on giving graduate students the practical skills they would need throughout life.
“My goal is to help you understand what is important to you, and what your approach to money is,” said Thomas Murphy, HUECU’s director of student services. “Understanding that is 90 percent of setting a financial plan.”
In addition to discussions of how to make and stick to a budget, the workshop included information about how to use credit and debit cards, understanding credit scores, and the importance of reviewing credit reports. It also offered students some broad guidelines for investing.
“It may be difficult to do, but these financial plans are really a plan for how to get where you want to be,” Murphy told students. “Living without a budget is like operating a car without a steering wheel. You’ll get someplace, but it’s not going to be where you want to be.”
Students also could attend professional development classes and workshops, including one led by Merce Crosas, director of product development at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), and former graduate students on how to create and manage online identities.
“One of the first things an employer or collaborator will do when you contact them is Google you,” Crosas said. “You want to make sure that the most relevant information about you shows up in those results.”
For the students who took part in the classes, the January term was a welcome break from their usual routines, as well as a stimulating opportunity to study subjects they might otherwise not have had the time to explore.
“If I wasn’t here, I would be in my office, working,” said Andrew Littlejohn, a first-year Ph.D. candidate studying social anthropology, during a break in the class on chocolate. “I think this is a great opportunity to do something that’s really interesting. It’s a break in one sense, but it isn’t a break where you just veg out in front of the TV. It’s a break where you learn something.” | <urn:uuid:f8b7a1ac-e201-4f76-80d1-2a63025fe81e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/02/from-imposters-to-chocolate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974412 | 1,171 | 1.828125 | 2 |
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.
These are Replicant Roy Batty’s last words in the futuristic Blade Runner. Like many moments in the film, Batty’s final hurrah makes us question the difference between humans and robots.
In the future, machines may start spouting poetic last words and appearing like they feel emotions. Once this happens, it will be even more confusing to nut out what makes us human.
An important part of humanness is being intelligent and even more fundamentally having the ability to think. In 1950, mathematician Alan Turing posed the all important question “Can machines think?” After quickly realising that it’s tricky to come up with definitions of “machine” or “think” he came up with a different problem – it was a game, in fact.
Turing proposed that a machine would be intelligent if it couldn’t be distinguished from a human. So, he created an “imitation game”. In the game, a judge communicates with both a human and a machine by writing questions using a computer screen. Based on the answer, the judge – or interrogator – has to pick the human and the machine. If the judge can’t do it, the machine is considered to be intelligent.
Have machines passed the Turing test?
The Loebner prize claims to be the first formal implementation of the Turing test.
Every year, people enter the $100,000 winning prize with “chatterbots” that attempt to trick judges into thinking that they are human. It’s a grueling process for the bots as their potential intelligence is interrogated for 25 minutes. And while technology has leapt and bounded in the past fifty years – no one has claimed the prize.
The prize’s founder, Hugh Loebner, told New Scientist Magazine in 2011, a chatbot has only seemed more human than a human once in the competition’s history – but that happened when one human volunteer decided to behave like a chatbot, skewing the results.
Paul Marks, technology correspondent at New Scientists Magazine was a judge of the competition in 2011, and called the entrants “extremely disappointing”. Apple’s Siri doesn’t come close to passing the test.
Is the Turing test any good?
One of the best “chatterbots” around is the Cleverbot. In 2011, the bot was put to a “Turing-like” test in India, which only involved 4-minutes of questions. After checking out the bot, participants rated the “humanness” of its responses. Cleverbot was considered around 59 per cent human, while – curiously – the humans were rated just 63 per cent human.
That might seem like we are getting close to passing the test. But, Cleverbot works by scanning through a database of its previous conversations and picking a clever response. I’m no philosopher on intelligence – but I don’t think that’s it. This is why many believe that the Turing test is a cheat, and not a real test of humanness or intelligence.
Why is it so hard to pass the Turing Test?
Humans are complicated beasts. The brain has around 90 billion neurons, and tens of trillions of synapses. We still haven’t unraveled how it all works, making it incredibly difficult to replicate in a computer.
Consider the relatively easy question – can you bring me the large cup? This is actually quite tricky for a computer to understand. The machine must know the shape of a ‘cup’, and the definition of large, as opposed to being a small cup which bigger than a tiny cup. Humans naturally understand these things, but nothing is intuitive for computers – not yet, anyway.
It seems we will have to wait some time for the romantic words of Batty to be uttered spontaneously from a robot. There is so much to discover about human intelligence, before we impose it onto wires.
In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to know when a chatterbot, with its cache of stored appropriate answers, will confuse a judge into thinking it’s human.
Not very sporting to fire on an unarmed opponent. I thought you were supposed to be good. Aren’t you the “good” man? C’mon, Deckard. Show me what you’re made of.
For more information | <urn:uuid:0265acca-6cda-4423-803b-48f198ff718b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wendyzukerman.com/2012/07/testing-turing-can-machines-think-yet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950763 | 978 | 2.875 | 3 |
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006>p>I have been using a pattern called the Pseudo User Pattern that many have used over the years.
Basically, it allows users to get through the maximum amount of work without forcing them to signup or login to your application.
Behind the scenes the notion of a User is abstracted and you may be talking to a true user (with a real id) or a pseudo user (with a cookie id).
When do we use this?
Shopping carts were one of the early implementors of this pattern. I remember early systems that made you create an account and login, before you could start adding to your cart. How many people are going to do that?
It is far better to let people get stuff in their cart and signup/login later.
This is probably the more common case. Let users use your site as much as possible, and only have them login/register when really needed.
More than just waiting to login
The pattern is more than just letting someone have a session and get them to register/login later. For a lot of actions you may not need them to do this. You could personalize a bunch of favourite stock tickers without having a full on account. At this point the settings are tied to that cookie (so if the cookie is damaged, the user goes online elsewhere this information is lost). Once useful, the user can then register to make sure that their settings are saved.
Where does Ajax fit in?
So, how does this fit into Ajax? Ajax allows us to really easily prompt a user to register/login at any point, anywhere on the page. Instead of taking the user away to another page and trying to get them back, we can do a small popup, login, and done. You are never taken away from the main area on the site.
It may not make sense to delay actions all of the time. You should not make your users do too much work just to get to a point where you force them to register/login as that will upset them and cause them to go elsewhere. This is the balance.
Posted by Dion Almaer at 12:36 pm | <urn:uuid:e87e457e-9095-49f8-9af8-9e06620068d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ajaxian.com/archives/pseudo-user-pattern-and-ajax | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960362 | 447 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Towering cliffs made this region relatively inaccessible. More recently, they have deterred overbuilding. The state of development here contrasts with Crete's resort-clad north coast and is "conducive to better environmental quality, cultural integrity and aesthetic appeal."
Here is a representative sampling of additional anonymous comments from the panelists. They are not necessarily the views of the National Geographic Society:
"Pockets of hope in a sea of damaging tourism development."
"One of the most well-preserved destinations in Greece. Social and cultural integrity are both high. While its built heritage is in average condition, its aesthetic appeal is amazing."
"The south coast of Crete is relatively inaccessible. It therefore attracts fewer visitors than the north coast. Development is on a smaller scale and the place retains a laid-back atmosphere. Environmental quality, socio-cultural integrity and aesthetic appeal are all strong."
"Less development than in north makes for better environmental quality."
Shop National Geographic | <urn:uuid:d6910760-0bdd-4ff7-8abb-70c4d8ebef07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/coastal-destinations-rated/doing-well/greece-crete/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942091 | 199 | 2.015625 | 2 |
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This is a very minor point, but one which had been grating me for a while. I apologize for asking a relatively trivial question, but nevertheless hope that it is suitable for MO since it should have a definite answer.
In Mumford's books, for instance Curves on Surfaces or Red Book, there is thing called "prescheme" which looks like a scheme, and scheme is something else.
But this terminology does not seem to be used elsewhere, and if at all is the case, prescheme seems to be something cruder than scheme.
I will be grateful for clarifications regarding this terminology. "Curves on surfaces" is a nice book, but whenever I pick it up I find myself wondering about this without any avail. | <urn:uuid:23ae1654-1064-43ac-87fa-3c0b7b39a6e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathoverflow.net/questions/11327/preschemes-and-schemes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965427 | 155 | 1.5625 | 2 |
26/09/2006 | by Onboard
…and track freshies where you never thought you would
They are heckled by some. They are banned at many places. They have equipment that breaks down often and they always have to carry a Swiss Army Knife at all times to MacGyver-it together on regular basis. Reminds us of snowboarders in the early days, doesn’t it?
But even if you are among the hecklers, feel free to read this short brief on snowboarding’s latest sibling and possibly closest relative: kiteboarding on snow, aka snowkiting. You’ll want to do this because they are already blasting airs bigger than us – 5 seconds of hang time is stock – and tracking freshies in places we can’t go, such as a field or a lake nearby your house.
Of course, it was invented by the French. It takes an ingenious mind to invent the idea of launching a huge piece of cloth in the air with the purpose of being dragged quite uncontrollably behind it. As they did it on water at the time, the Hawaiians soon took notice and developed it into what kitesurfing is today, a massively popular sport on beaches all over the world. Then the French took it back and developed kiteboarding on snow – snowkiting. Although the brightly coloured kites are less common over snow than over water, you are still very likely to encounter them this winter. The movement is gaining ground rapidly at the moment, another parallel to snowboarding in its early days.
A key feature of snowkiting is that it is scary and enjoyable at the same time.
A key feature of snowkiting is that it is scary and enjoyable at the same time. For it to work, you not only need snow, there also needs to be at bit of wind. For both, it would be true to say that the more the better, but the wind can – depending on the size of the kite and the rider – actually get too burly. The skill level matters but even experienced riders get in trouble occasionally when a gust catches them. So although it may look like an easy ride from a distance, you can be sure that even though a kiter might be sporting a wide grin he also has butterflies in his stomach. After all, he’s now connected some aspects of his life to unpredictable Mother Nature by a set of 25-metre lines.
But yes, there is some security incorporated into the equipment, although as the sport is young all of the brands have their own idea of what is a safe system. They all have their pros and cons, but some of them are pure crap too and seem to add more danger than they take away. Another side of this is that as they all work differently: you have to learn a new system each time you try out a new kite, and you won’t have time to think about what you are doing when shit happens. You have to know where to pull your release instinctively when you suddenly find yourself being dragged and bounced in a cloud of snow at, say, 75km/h.
If you are an average snowboarder, you have all the board skills you need already.
While we’re stuck on the equipment side of things, it’s good to know there are two distinctively different kinds of kites: Foils and LEIs, or Leading Edge Inflatibles to be correct. The first kind is basically just a big piece of foil-like material, very much like a small version of a parachute with 4 lines connected to it and attached to a control bar. These work well over land, but once crashed in the water they aren’t much good. The latter kind is what the Hawaiians developed and they can be re-launched in case of a crash in the ocean. These are more rigid, generate more power, and can be flown over land too – except if you crash them hard enough, the tube within them bursts. There is also an ‘in-between’ kind of kite called Closed Cell. They become partly inflated during the flight and they have more in common with Foils than with LEIs. Also some older kites are flown using 2 lines only, you’ll want to stay away from those because they give you no option of de-powering the kite.
For those who weren’t scared off by the safety talk or bored by the equipment details, here are some useful facts about snowkiting:
- Snowkiting is a lot easier than kitesurfing. You need less wind, you can stop at any time and place, and holding an edge on a snowboard is a lot easier. If you are an average snowboarder, you have all the board skills you need already, like being able to go fakie.
- Unless you know how to kitesurf, you’ll want to get a Foil rather than a LEI. They pack in a small knapsack and rig in almost no time (without using a pump, something that can be a hassle on a windy mountain). They are also a lot safer as you can collapse them into a lifeless piece of cloth at any time. LEIs on the other hand maintain their shape on the ground and can pull the rider after a crash. Brands specializing in Foils include Ozone, Flexifoil and Flysurfer.
- As you may have guessed already, there is no need to be in a ski area or resort to snowkite. Anywhere there is snow and a wide-open space is good. Frozen lakes are excellent for beginners for example. Just stay clear of power lines, lift lines, buildings and other kite boarders. Epic snowkiting locations are Hardangervidda in Norway and Col Du Lauteret in France – but anywhere there’s snow and fairly steady wind will suffice. And yes, it is possible for snowkiters to travel uphill, if the wind is blowing in the right direction.
- Some geeks are using kites to traverse across vast distances, like on skis across Greenland and the North Pole, but don’t put too much emphasis upon such things. Most people find the fun with kites lies in riding and jumping very much like on a snowboard.
- The world’s best snowkiter over the past years is a former pro snowboarder from the south of France, Guillaume Chastignol. After top placings in the halfpipe at both X-Games and the Nagano Olympics, he’s taken his incredible, smooth style to new heights using a kite.
- You’ll get up to speed a lot faster if you go with an experienced rider the first couple of times. To learn about setting up and flying a kite on your own takes a lot of patience, so it’s a lot faster and more comfortable when riding to have someone help you rig and launch the kite at the beginning. Most snowkiters you meet will be happy to help you out for a few minutes with this, but if you feel the need to ask a gazillion questions, perhaps paying for a weekend course is a better option.
Although the purpose of this article wasn’t to turn you into a snowkiter, it’s hard not to point out the advantages of it in an article like this. So keep in mind that it’s both hard to learn as well as expensive before you set yourself up. Most of you reading this will probably have more fun in the ski areas on your snowboard. Snowboarding is, after all, what it’s all about for most of us. But ‘to each his own’, as the ancient put it.
Anders Hagman is a Swedish former pro snowboarder who snowkites occasionally, although not at the level of Guillaume. Quite a few of his mates are following in his tracks too for some reason… | <urn:uuid:7f70f7ef-1921-4aad-95bf-663db1e7ff38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onboard.mpora.com/features/go-fly-a-kite.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968828 | 1,665 | 1.539063 | 2 |
While the discussion of marijuana policy may be noticeably absent from the current dialogue in the presidential race, one prominent Democratic Party member is not backing down on his push to reform his state’s marijuana laws.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has redoubled his efforts to decriminalize the possession of marijuana in public view after state legislators failed to act on the measure before the end of this year’s session. Amid discussions of a pay increase for legislators, Governor Cuomo told reporters this morning that, “I would not even consider, even consider a pay raise, unless the people’s business was being done in a thorough, responsible way.”
Included in his definition of “the people’s business” is the decriminalization of marijuana he had championed earlier in the year, along with an increase in New York’s minimum wage.
There have been talks about the legislature reconvening for a special session in the state after election day and before the start of next year’s session in January, but the governor made clear he would not sign off on their desired pay raise without action on these reform efforts.
“I understand they may have an interest in a pay raise. I’m interested in a people’s agenda and that’s what the session would be about,” stated Gov. Cuomo.
It is refreshing to see such a prominent sitting politician stand up for sound marijuana reform. New York’s current failed policy has cost the state around $ 75 million a year to arrest about 50,000 people for small amounts of marijuana, 85% of whom were people of color. This policy disproportionately targets the most vulnerable in our society and we applaud Governor Cuomo for taking a strong stance on this important issue. We can only hope other elected officials take notice and follow suit.
UPDATE: New York City Council Member for Council District 8, Melissa Mark-Viverito, has released a statement applauding the Governor’s action:
I commend New York Governor Cuomo for urging the State Legislature to adopt what he calls ‘The People’s Agenda,’ which includes an end to unjust small-quantity marijuana arrests, before they consider a potential salary hike for legislators.
I strongly support this principled act of leadership in the face of a hostile Republican State Senate which in the last session blocked legislation to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view. This inaction has led to thousands more unjust stop-and-frisk arrests of young men of color when they are told to empty their pockets during stops. Enforcement of this policy costs the city an estimated $ 75 million each year.
The new law would make marijuana possession merely a violation, like a traffic ticket, and not a crime that the police can arrest people for committing. Since there are currently over 50,000 annual stop-and-frisk arrests for small-time marijuana possession in NYC, this will dramatically reduce the unjust criminalization of our youth. Earlier this year, the New York City Council passed a resolution in support of this legislation, which I sponsored, and Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly have voiced their support of these reforms. The Commissioner even issued a directive to officers intended to slow down the number of marijuana arrests. Still, it is essential to codify this policy change at the State level, and I thank Governor Cuomo for taking this issue so seriously. – Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito ( )
Note: This story was featured on The Colbert report last night. You can view the segment. You can view more press coverage . | <urn:uuid:853801ba-fd6d-44f3-a84a-1d72ee668c6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legalbuds.net/governor-cuomo-no-pay-increase-for-legislators-until-they-decriminalize-marijuana/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962817 | 731 | 1.75 | 2 |
Song of Solomon 1
(1:1) "The song of songs, which is Solomon's."|
The author claims to be Solomon. He isn't. The Song of Solomon (aka "The Song of Songs") was written (forged)
several hundred years after Solomon died (if he ever lived, that is).
(1:2) "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth: for thy love is better than wine." A fitting beginning for a pornographic poem.
(1:3) "The virgins love thee."
(1:4) "We will run after thee ... we will remember thy love more than wine."
Song of Solomon
The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the
kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured
forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his
chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love
more than wine: the upright love thee.
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of
Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me:
my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the
vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest
thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by
the flocks of thy companions?||
If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the
footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.||
I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.||
We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.||
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my
(1:13) "He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts."
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.||
Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.||
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.||
The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir. | <urn:uuid:9d9b6555-df09-4aeb-914a-41afc3bd6627> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/sofs/1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911496 | 622 | 2.390625 | 2 |
As with so many other types of criminal investigation, forensic geology began
with the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes series
between 1887 and 1893. He was a physician who apparently had two motives: writing
salable literature and using his scientific expertise to encourage the use of
science as evidence.
In 1893, Hans Gross, an Austrian forensic scientist, wrote the book Handbook for Examining Magistrates, in which he suggested that perhaps the dirt on someone's shoes could tell more about where a person had last been than toilsome inquiries.
It was only a matter of time before these ideas from an author of fiction and criminalists' handbook would appear in a courtroom.
A century later, the use of geologic materials in criminal and civil cases is commonplace. Public and private laboratories for analyzing soils and related materials include the FBI laboratory in the United States, the Central Research Establishment in Great Britain, the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto, the National Institute of Police Science in Japan and many others.
Forensic geology studies vary in scope. A common type of investigation involves
identifying a material that is key to a case for example, examining pigments
in a painted picture or material in a sculpture when authenticity or value is
at issue. Identification is also important in questions of mining, mineral or
gem fraud to determine if the material is what its sellers claim it to be (see
story). And identification of fire-resistant safe insulation
on a person or individual's property may provide probable cause for further
Beyond identification, forensic geologists can also look at the origin of particular material. Here the examiner needs a broad knowledge of the geology and the best geologic and soil maps to answer questions. For example, if the soil on a body does not match the location where the body is found, from where was the body moved? Similarly, examiners can compare two samples, one associated with the suspect and the other collected from the crime scene, to see if they had a common source: Does the soil on the suspect's shoe compare with the soil type collected at the crime scene, for example?
Another new developing area of forensic geology is its use in intelligence work. A person, for example, may claim to have never been to a particular location, but is then found with rocks from that spot, thus linking the individual to a geographic location. Remember the outcrop you saw behind Osama bin Laden on TV after September 11. What was the location? A geologist who has done field work in the area would be able to locate that outcrop, and that actually happened: Geologist John Shroder was able to identify the region where bin Laden had been sighted in Afghanistan in 2001 (see Geotimes, February 2002).
Geologic evidence rarely provides a unique solution for which the geologic mind cannot imagine another possibility. But there are some exceptions, as illustrated by the following two cases.
Murder and the pond
The murder of John Bruce Dodson produced one of the most interesting cases in the entire history of forensic geology. Here, the geologic evidence is unequivocal in that it tied the suspect directly to the crime and eliminated the suspect's alibi. Most importantly, the investigator of the crime recognized the potential importance of the geologic evidence and arranged for the examination of that evidence. The testimony of the forensic geologist was critical to the prosecution of the case.
A pond lined with bentonite in the Uncompahgre Mountains of western Colorado revealed key geologic evidence that incriminated Janice Dodson in the murder of her husband, John Bruce Dodson. Courtesy of Bill Booth.
The case began on Oct. 15, 1995, when John Dodson was found dead while on a hunting trip with his wife of three months, Janice. The scene was a crisp autumn morning high in the Uncompahgre Mountains of western Colorado.
At first glance, it appeared to be a hunting accident. However, the autopsy revealed two bullet wounds to the body and one bullet hole through John's orange vest. Western Colorado District Attorney Frank Daniels points out in his book on the case, Dead Center, that if there had been only one bullet, there never would have been an investigation and the death would have been ruled an accident.
The investigation showed that the Dodsons were camped near other hunters, one of whom was a Texas law enforcement officer. He responded to Janice's frantic call that her husband had been shot. She was standing about 200 yards from the camp in a grassy field along a fence line. The officer determined that John was dead and started the process of getting help.
Prior to calling for help, Janice had returned to her camp and removed her hunting coveralls, which were covered with mud from the knees down. She later told investigators that she had stepped into a mud bog along the fence near camp. Investigators found a .308-caliber shell case approximately 60 yards from the body. In addition, they found a .308-caliber bullet in the ground on the other side of the fence, which created a direct line from the location of the case to the body to the bullet.
Janice's ex-husband, J.C. Lee, was also camped three-quarters of a mile from the Dodsons. Janice knew the site was his favorite camp location. He naturally came under suspicion. However, Lee was hunting far away from camp with his boss at the time of the shooting. Most importantly, Lee reported to investigators that while he was out hunting, someone had stolen his .308 rifle and a box of .308 cartridges from his tent.
Winter comes early at 9,000 feet in the Umcompahgre, and little more could be done at the scene. However, investigators Bill Booth, Dave Martinez and Wayne Bryant returned during the summers of 1996, 1997 and 1998 and searched for the rifle and other evidence. They tried to search every place a weapon could have been hidden. They combed the entire area, including ponds, with metal detectors in hope of finding the rifle; it has never been found.
During the final search of the pond near Janice's ex-husband's camp, Al Bieber of NecroSearch International (a nonprofit consulting company for law enforcement agencies) commented that the mud in and around a cattle pond near Lees camp was bentonite, a clay that someone brought to the pond to stop the water from seeping out of the bottom. That evening, Booth and Martinez were camped near the crime scene. They were discussing the evidence in the case when investigator Booth said, "The mud." He was referring to the dried mud that was found on Janice Dodson's clothing. If Janice had obtained the rifle from Lee's camp, she would most likely have stepped or fallen into the bentonite clay that drained across the road from the cattle pond.
Remembering Janices statement that she was returning to camp on the morning of the crime and stepped into a mud bog near her camp, Booth and Martinez decided they needed to obtain dried mud samples from the bog near the Dodsons' camp, the area around a pond nearby the camp, and the human-made pond and runoff near Lee's camp.
Booth and Martinez packaged the dried mud from each location and sent the samples along with the dried mud that had been recovered from Janices overalls to the laboratory section of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in Denver, where it was examined by Jacqueline Battles, a forensic scientist and lab agent.
Battles is a highly respected forensic scientist with considerable geologic training, who, like many of the others in the profession, got her early training with Walter McCrone. She concluded and later testified to the fact that the dried mud found on Janice Dodson's clothing was consistent with the dried mud recovered from the pond near Lee's camp. The dried mud that had been recovered from Janice's overalls was found not to be consistent with the mud bog or the pond near her camp. This was a breaking point in the case that allowed Booth and Martinez to put Janice Dodson in her ex-husband's camp around the time his rifle had been stolen. There are no other bentonite-lined ponds in the area and no bentonite deposits.
Booth and Martinez went to Texas and served an arrest warrant on Janice. She was extradited to Colorado, tried in court and convicted in the murder of John Bruce Dodson. The jury understood the results that followed Booth's insightful "mud" exclamation. Janice is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Colorado's state prison for women. The mud samples collected from Janice's clothing are still in the sheriff's office evidence room, where they have been since 1995.
Slicks and sands
A recent case does not fit the pattern of most soil evidence, but clearly illustrates the contribution being made by forensic geologists. Washington State Patrol Forensic Geologist Bill Schneck became involved in the investigation into the serious illness of a small child caused by arsenic poisoning. The suspected person was absolved when an examination of the child's house revealed a number of mineral specimens left in the house and the yard by a former occupant who was a mineral collector. Many of those specimens were arsenopyrite, an iron arsenic sulfide. The child had been eating and chewing on the material. This case is a good reminder that lead is not the only material that can cause health problems in children.
A case that illustrates many of the issues comparing soil and related material
occurred in Canada a few years ago. The body of eight-year-old Gupta Rajesh
was found alongside a road outside of Scarboro, Ontario. The back of his shirt
had a smear of oily material, and the preliminary conclusion was that he was
the victim of a hit and run accident, with the oily material coming from the
undercarriage of a vehicle. But examination of the oily material and the particles
suspended in it by forensic geologist William Graves of the Centre of Forensic
Sciences in Toronto told a different story.
Investigators had collected samples of oily material on the floor of an indoor
concrete parking garage where a suspect, Sarbjit Minhas, parked her Honda automobile.
Analysis of the samples showed that the sand and other particles within the
oil from the victim's clothes and the parking garage were similar. Analysis
of the oil from the victim's shirt and garage floor showed them to be both similar
and different from oil collected on the floor of 10 other garages in the area.
Particles in samples from the victim's clothes and the suspect's parking place provided considerable information. The sand from both samples was sieved, and subsamples produced of the various size grades for the two samples. When compared after the oil had been removed, the color of each pair of subsamples was identical. Additionally, the heavy minerals in both samples were similar, and three distinct kinds of glass were found in the two samples: amber glass, tempered glass and lightbulb glass. Each of the different glasses was identical in refractive index value (the amount a ray of light bends when passing through the glass into another medium). Small particles of yellow paint with attached glass beads were found in both samples. This type of paint is often found on center stripes of highways and reflects light.
Graves concluded that there was a high probability that the body of Gupta Rajesh had been in contact with the concrete floor of the garage at the place where the suspect parked her car. Interestingly, the same oil and particles were found in the suspect's Honda. Whether the oil and particles on the victim came from inside the vehicle or the floor of the garage, the presence and distinctiveness of the samples still strongly associated those two areas with the victim.
Minhas was tried in the Superior Court of the Province of Ontario in November 1983 and convicted, with help from testimony by Graves.
This case illustrates an important concept in the presentation of soil evidence and perhaps all physical evidence, except DNA. We have become awed and impressed by the high probabilities that result from DNA evidence. Some people expect that other types of evidence should have similar statistical information.
But in the Minhas case, we see a conclusion based on at least 10 different materials and observations. Because we do not know the probability of a tempered glass fragment, a particular group of heavy minerals, or sand of the same color being on a particular parking place in a concrete garage in Scarboro, Ontario and in all likelihood we will never know a frequency statistic cannot be generated. A useful database of sands, particles, glass, oils and heavy minerals would be too difficult to generate. Additionally, it may not apply to any one specific case because of the variability of mineral particles the very distinctiveness that makes geologic materials such good evidence.
Thus, we rely on the skilled and honest examiner to reach a conclusion expressed in words rather than in numbers to inform the jury or judge so that they can reach a verdict. In this way, the expert is a teacher, instructing the judge, attorneys and jury in the basic concepts and premises that allow them to do the work they do. The triers of fact must be schooled in the methods of production of the evidence (how light bulb glass is made, for example), the procedures used to analyze it, and what makes the evidence significant. That understanding will lead the courts to an appreciation of unquantifiable evidence and give the jury a basis for weighing its significance.
Geologic evidence will continue to be developed and presented in courtrooms around the world. The quality of evidence collection and examination will improve, and new methods will be developed. The results will be to the benefit of justice.
a forensic geologist
For students interested in taking a class in forensic geology or entering the field, the pickings are slim. Only a few colleges in the United States offer forensic classes specific to geology, partly because, as one professor puts it, "it's pretty hard to teach geology 101 in an hour."
With the recent surging popularity of forensic science TV shows, however, forensic geology classes are becoming more readily available. Forensic scientists must have a wide breadth of scientific knowledge as well as a firm grasp of microscopy, so forensic geologists suggest that students take classes in all the sciences as well as criminal justice classes.
More specifically, suggests Wayne Isphording, a forensic geologist and geology professor at the University of South Alabama, students who are interested in becoming forensic scientists should take classes in physics, chemistry (especially analytical or instrumental chemistry), biology, math, multivariate statistics and of course, he says, a lot of geology.
Isphording has spent the last 39 years teaching a plethora of different geology classes while also working as a forensic geologist on many criminal and civil cases, including a recent groundwater pollution case where the offender was identified by forensic analysis.
Last fall marked the first time that Isphording taught a forensic geology class prior to that, he had simply included forensics in his geoscience courses. Over the years, in his hydrology, optical mineralogy and geochemistry classes, among others, Isphording has taught "the practical side" of the science, always bringing into the classroom cases he has worked on so that "students see how the science applies" in the field. And this, he says, is the way to get a student truly interested in the coursework.
Jack Crelling, a petrologist and forensic geology professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, agrees that bringing in specific forensic cases is the best way to gain a student's interest. He starts each semester with real-life cases involving the geoscience topics he'll cover in the course, involving everything from rock and mineral characterization, to sand and soil analysis, amber identification and diatom analysis. The primary objectives of his course, he says, are to get the students to develop the skills to "critically observe, and to teach a little geology too." Crelling also teaches students a bit about evidence collection, courtroom testimony and ethical issues, and introduces students to some of the technologies used by the forensic geologist: scanning electron micrsocopy, x-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, to name a few.
For both Crelling and Isphording, most of the students that take their forensic geology classes are not geology majors, nor usually even science majors. At Southern Illinois University, the forensic geology class fulfills a general education requirement for nonscience majors. And because of the "coolness factor" of the topic and how popular forensic science is today, Crelling says, he gets a lot of nonscientists taking the class for the requirement. Isphording's class is filled with criminal justice majors, who usually have little if any scientific background. However, both professors say that they break the class down to a very simple level, just teaching the necessary basics of microscopy and geology. For students interested in delving further into the science and both professors says they've captured several students' interest in geoscience Crelling and Isphording suggest starting at the very beginning, Geology 101, and progressing into mineralogy and other courses from there.
Geochemist Tim Ku's forensic geology course at Wesleyan University in Connecticut is also very popular among nonscientists. In the first semester he offered the course, 11 percent of the student body expressed interest in taking it. He keeps the class small, however, to ensure that everyone has full access to microscopes. Most of the class, he says, is based around microscopy because these instruments, especially polarized light microscopes, "are very useful for everything in the forensic world."
Students at most schools can take a lot of heavy science classes, Isphording says, that involve a lot of microscopic use. And that is the best way to prepare for a future in forensic science. Students can always go to a graduate school where they'll learn more specific techniques, and can enter programs such as that offered by the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago, the foremost forensic teaching program in the country, Ku says.
Besides learning microscopy, Isphording adds, students just need to get a very broad and strong science background. The more they know, he says, the easier it will be to testify in court and not get "torn to shreds by the attorneys" something students better be prepared for once they enter the field. | <urn:uuid:abf9e160-4411-407a-9790-07d246abdaf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geotimes.org/jan05/feature_forensicevidence.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969943 | 3,785 | 3.625 | 4 |
FAITH UNITED METHODIST CHURCH SAINT CHARLES, MISSOURI 63301 - 1107
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FAITH PRESCHOOL/EXTENDED DAY PROGRAMS
Faith Preschool – Monday/Wednesday/Friday
If you are looking for a curriculum based Preschool for your child we have a great program for 3, 4, and 5 year olds. Our Preschool is designed to give each child the best experience possible in a safe educational environment.
Our three year old program teaches the fundamentals of the school day. They have centers using a variety of manipulatives from painting, writing, cutting with scissors, etc. This is a ½ day program which meets Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. A monthly tuition fee is charged.
Our four year old ½ days program(9:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m) will prepare a child for kindergarten. We have weekly themes including numbers and letters. Essential school skills such as writing, cutting and gluing are practiced on a regular basis. We focus on listening skills and following directions. A monthly tuition is charged.
Our Pre-Kindergarten program is designed specifically for the older four year old child and those children who are already five but not ready for kindergarten. Traditional preschool skills are covered: cutting, writing, gluing, calendar, predicting and graphing simple ideas while working with letters and numbers are taught in a whole group environment. This is a full day program starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 3:00 p.m., on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A monthly tuition fee is charged.
Extended Day: This is a stay and play program for children attending our ½ day programs. It operates from 12:00 p.m. until | <urn:uuid:e0e17bc4-72c4-40ca-82f4-4a1ffe421141> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://faithumcstcharles.org/preschool.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938202 | 397 | 1.5 | 2 |
Every morning of the World Economic Forum, CNN interviewed a bundled-up CEO with the dramatic, snowy “Magic Mountain” of Davos, Switzerland, in the background. The question was always the same: “When will this crisis be over?” They had a whiteboard where each CEO would write an answer: 2009 … 2010 … 2011 … later.
But on an unusual plenary panel at Davos, titled “The Values Behind Market Capitalism,” I suggested CNN had the wrong question. Of course we all want to know the answer to that one, but a much more important question is, “How will this crisis change us?” How will it change the way we think, act, and decide things, how we live and how we do business? Yes, this is a structural crisis that clearly calls for new social regulation. But it is also a spiritual crisis that calls for new self-regulation. We seem to have lost some things and forgotten some things—like our oldest and best values.
We have trusted in “the invisible hand” to make everything turn out all right and believed that it wasn’t necessary for us to bring virtue to bear on our decisions. But things haven’t turned out all right and “the invisible hand” let go of some things, such as “the common good.” The common good hasn’t been very common in our economic decision-making for some time now. And the situation has spun out of control.
If we learn nothing from this crisis, then all the pain and suffering it is causing will be in vain. But if we can learn new habits of the heart, perhaps that suffering can be redemptive. If we can regain our moral compass and find new metrics by which to evaluate our success, this crisis could become our opportunity to change.
There were other sessions at Davos on these subjects, as there always are. Social entrepreneurs and innovative philanthropists discussed new patterns of social enterprise—where capitalism is in service of big ideas and big solutions, not just making money. In the past, the session was held in a small room, not the big Congress Hall, and it wasn’t full. As in the global economy, social conscience was a sidebar to business. This year the sidebar hit the main hall of discussion and was at the center of how participants talked about the way we do business.
TONY BLAIR, who was also on the “values panel,” told me afterward that were it not for this deep crisis, Davos wouldn’t be having such a discussion and wouldn’t have included somebody like me (a religious leader). But the “spiritual” conversations (sometimes quite pastoral and almost confessional) that followed over the course of the next few days were, for me, a real sign of hope.
The economic tide going out has not only shown us who was swimming naked, as Warren Buffett put it, but it has also revealed that no “invisible hand” is behind the curtain guiding our economy to inevitable success if we look out only for our own self-interest. It is a sobering moment in our lives when we can see our own thoughtlessness, greed, and impatience writ large.
With some of the world’s brightest minds, boldest leaders, and most innovative entrepreneurs gathered in one Swiss retreat, it seemed like a good place to find some new answers.
SO WHAT ARE some of the moral lessons to be learned now?
First, relationships matter. The relationship between employer and employee has collapsed from one of mutual benefit to “whatever you can get away with.” It wasn’t so long ago that people knew their bankers and bankers knew the community they were in. Those relationships collapsed completely with the rise of mortgage-backed securities that make it virtually impossible to figure out who is tied to whom and how.
Second, “social sins” also matter. The excess and opulence of the 1920s that preceded the Great Depression had not been seen again until the excess and opulence that immediately preceded our current depression. This is not a coincidence. When wealth comes to those who fail to add value to our economy, that “social sin” will soon find the sinners out. When we create a cultural habit of spending money we don’t have for things that we don’t need, a disaster isn’t far away. And history shows that an increasing gap between the rich and the poor is a prime indicator of imminent collapse.
Third, our own good is tied up in the common good. When the only business concern is the bottom line, then business quickly becomes a race to the bottom. When we recognize that the common good is our own good and that civil society, business, and government can work in concert and not in competition, then we can create business that is not only just but sustainable. Some have accused Jesus of sounding like he was igniting class warfare by his call for us to care for “the least of these.” In our present context I hope we can learn that caring for the poor is not just a moral duty but a part of our own “enlightened self-interest.”
For example, almost half of the world’s population, 3 billion people, lives on less than $2 a day—virtually outside of the global economy. Maybe this crisis will help us decide it’s time to bring them in.
The last century has seen the creation and distribution of goods, services, and ideas with unprecedented efficiency and volume. But with these great advances, the moral weight of our decisions becomes greater than ever before. We need to determine whether the purpose of business is only to turn a profit or if it could encompass something more. We face great challenges that need even greater ideas to overcome them. We have big obstacles that need even bigger vision to see past them. Will our business community transform itself to meet those challenges, or are they just waiting to get back to business as usual? The key will be whether the right questions are asked and if the common good is part of the answer. | <urn:uuid:9131c103-8683-4fc4-a5b3-1602e16eb4d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sojo.net/magazine/2009/04/value-davos?quicktabs_top_magazine_articles=1&quicktabs_web_extras=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963991 | 1,274 | 1.765625 | 2 |
As One World Trade Center squeaked up another floor today to become the tallest skyscraper in the nation, here is an MS-Paint-enhanced look at what our Massive Buildings say about us.
Well, possibly not. It depends on whether you consider an antenna part of the building or not.
Read full article >>
Thirty-eight years ago Monday, the World Trade Center opened its doors. At the time, the grandiose structures known as Building 1 and Building 2 were the tallest skyscrapers in the world. New Yorkers' reaction to the towers were mix... Read Post
The World Trade Center will once more tower over the City of New York on Monday, taking its spot as the highest point on Manhattan’s iconic skyline. This afternoon, winds and weather permitting, the first steel column of One World T... Read Post | <urn:uuid:14863567-f578-417e-844f-de3710c0ff27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://regator.com/p/255865421/alexandra_petri_as_one_world_trade_center_becomes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947907 | 173 | 1.851563 | 2 |
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The Christian version is the familiar one and widely believed in. A recent poll found that while only 36% of Americans believe that the Bible is literally true as handed down by God, over 55% believe that the apocalyptic scenario pictured in the Book of Revelations is likely to be taking place in the Middle East. This irrational interpretation of current events can be explained by several factors.
One of the bitterest complaints against both sides in the Iraq war is that religion has been a prime cause. When Pres. Bush proclaimed that the war on terror represented a clash of civilizations, he implicitly meant Christianity versus Islam, a view reinforced by his further claim that he was guided by God in his decision-making. No one supposes that a universal God spoke to him. It was specifically a Christian God. Even Judeo-Christian would be a stretch. The Bush administration came into office hard on the heels of a massive push by Pres. Clinton to bring about a Mideast peace accord, an effort that was dropped immediately as the incoming president more or less cut Israel loose.
If the pundits and pollsters are right, the American public has tuned out the Iraq War. It’s become a foregone conclusion that the conflict will grind on until at least Jan. 2009 when a new president takes office. The anti-war movement has been completely blocked, and grass-roots efforts against the war have become more or less futile. In realistic terms war remains a stubbornly unchanging policy controlled by the right wing. Does that mean that the rest of us — the vast majority who oppose the war — are left without options?
I think it’s possible to leapfrog beyond Iraq to consider the prospects for peace in the future. There is more hope on the horizon than people realize. Certain trends in the present could well become much stronger in the near future.
Since 9/11 there has been a pervasive sense of anxiety in the world, and at the same time a search for spiritual answers. Is violence an aspect of human nature that can be cured, or are we caught in an endless cycle of violence that will never end? One of the most optimistic answers to that dilemma came from Buddha more than two thousand years ago. In the light of what he taught, I wanted to post my thoughts about the Buddhist solution and what it means for you and me as we seek to live in a troubling world.
It feels discomfiting and eerie to have plunged so deeply into the realm of the shadow, which is what happened last week. In mythic and psychological terms, the “shadow” is a place of darkness in each of us — and in society as a whole — where we hide feelings we are too weak or afraid to face. The news this week was almost a catalog of the shadow’s contents: sexual humiliation for Eliot Spitzer, panic and financial ruin for Bear Stearns, dread of death in the Atlanta tornado and the crane collapse in midtown New York City. Beneath the surface of each event, unconscious turmoil magnifies their meaning. They are shared events, and thanks to the mass media, they are felt in ever widening circles. Whole parts of the world, like China and the Middle East, feel ominous. | <urn:uuid:1564352c-8c4c-49ce-9c92-cf0f97651470> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.chopra.com/wordsdeepakarchives?page=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963092 | 676 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Katherine Paterson has taken us to Terabithia and back and in the process has become one of the most beloved children's authors of all time. Often asked which books she recommends, Katherine enlisted the help of her grandchildren to compile a wonderful list of books for kids of all ages. She also revealed the top five books she would take to a desert island.
What are your all-time favorite children's books?
Preschool (These Are Books They Still Remember Fondly)
The Bunny Planet
By Rosemary Wells, published by Viking Juvenile
The Island of the Skog
By Steven Kellogg, published by Picture Puffin books
A-Hunting We Will Go
By Steven Kellogg, published by Morrow from HarperCollins Publishers
The Mysterious Tadpole
By Steven Kellogg, published by Penguin Group
By Margaret Wise Brown, published by HarperCollins Publishers
By Jan Brett, published by Penguin Group (USA)
The Little Polar Bear
By Hans de Beer, published by North-South Books, Inc.
Mrs. Wishy Washy
By Joy Cowley, published by Penguin Group (USA)
Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel
By Virginia Lee Burton, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Blueberry Pie Elf
By Nancy Thayer, published by Purple House Press
By Martin Waddell, published by Candlewick Press
15 books in a series children really like | <urn:uuid:5bf9aa71-2923-436d-a617-932850ee47c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Katherine-Paterson-Childrens-Reading-List/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928715 | 297 | 1.664063 | 2 |
DAR Library Shelving Improvement Project Successfully Completed
The DAR Library is excited to announce the completion of the shelving improvement project resulting in 80% more storage space in the library balconies. The shelving project is part of a greater mission to increase accessibility to books and resources in the DAR Library's collection.
Construction began in early 2006 on the library's upper balconies. Rolling bookshelves that help to increase the shelving capacity were installed on the three upper balconies. The project enabled the DAR Library to shift select materials previously located in the stacks on the main floor to the more spacious shelving in the upper balconies. In turn, the main floor has now gained more free space.
In addition, Library staff are working steadily to decrease the number of duplicate books in the collection. These steps are being made to ensure the DAR Library has space for newly published books as they become available and the collection can continue to grow at a healthy rate.
Before construction began, engineers inspected the DAR Library and guaranteed the structural soundness of the upper balconies. Since the 1960s, steal beams have reinforced the balconies. The area was originally used to hold seats when the room served as the original auditorium for Continental Congress.
Thanks to a generous bequest to fund the shelving project, and to the patience of library researchers as well as the DAR Library and Genealogy staff during the construction, the DAR Library collection can continue to grow and provide outstanding resources and services to the membership and the public. | <urn:uuid:6f3a2a03-4396-495d-ac53-7bf56fe94582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dar.org/library/researcher.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957404 | 306 | 1.828125 | 2 |
|Two-thirds of future cancer cases will be in developing countries|
Joint action needed to promote prevention, improve cancer care
Washington, D.C., February 3, 2012 (PAHO/WHO) — Cancer cases are projected to increase by more than two-thirds worldwide over the next 20 years—from 12.7 million in 2008 to 21.4 million by 2030. However, an estimated 30–40 percent of these cases could be prevented, say experts at the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) and the Union for International Cancer Control.
Nearly two-thirds of the projected cases will occur in low- and middle-income countries, according to WHO. That means that prevention is important for people living in wealthy and poorer countries alike, and all countries need to invest now in better health care to cope with the growing burden of cancer patients.
“We’ve seen a lot of progress in cancer care and cancer survival in higher-income countries over recent decades,” said PAHO Director Dr. Mirta Roses. “But in lower-income countries, the cancer battle is still in its early stages. We need to step up the fight now, before cancer and other chronic diseases overwhelm our health systems.”
On Feb. 4, World Cancer Day, PAHO/WHO and the Union for International Cancer Control are teaming up under the slogan “together it is possible” to raise awareness of the growing burden of cancer and to spur action toward more prevention and better treatment of the disease.
“If every person, organization and government does its part, we can reduce premature deaths from cancer as well as other noncommunicable diseases by 25 percent before the year 2020,” said Dr. James Hospedales, PAHO senior advisor on chronic diseases. “This would be an enormous impact, and it’s possible to achieve.”
In the countries of the Americas, cancer is currently the second-leading cause of death (after cardiovascular disease), claiming over 1.1 million lives each year. Leading cancers in the region are lung, prostate and colorectal cancers for men, and breast and cervical cancer for women.
Cancer is a growing problem in the Americas and worldwide for several reasons, chief among them aging populations and changing lifestyles that increase the prevalence of risk factors.
The top risk factors for cancer are:
In addition to the 30–40 percent of cancers that can be prevented by reducing these and other risk factors, another 30 percent of cases can be cured or put into remission through screening and early detection followed with effective treatments.
“Investments in both prevention and better treatment are essential if countries are to successfully meet the growing cancer challenge,” said Hospedales.
An example is cervical cancer, caused by HPV and which claims the lives of some 25,000 women each year in the Americas. Cervical cancer has a disproportionate impact on poorer countries and population groups, with death rates seven times higher in South and Central America than in North America. Yet it is highly preventable through proven cost-effective interventions including HPV vaccines as well as screening and treatment for early and invasive cancer. The World Cancer Day 2012 campaign calls for joint efforts between governments, nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations to promote action and investments in areas including tobacco control, promotion of healthy lifestyles, cancer screening and early detection, and improved cancer treatment services, as well as palliative care when cure is not possible.
Last September, the United Nations hosted a special High-level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs), which has helped boost awareness of and action on cancer throughout the Americas. PAHO has created the Pan American Forum for Action on Non-communicable Diseases as a partnership platform to unite various sectors of society to work together in the fight against cancer and other NCDs.
PAHO was established in 1902 and works with all the countries of the Americas to improve the health and quality of life of the people of the Americas. It also serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization | <urn:uuid:09e114af-d415-4aa1-ba11-56e0551ab889> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://new.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6406&Itemid=1&lang=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942585 | 863 | 2.921875 | 3 |
20 March 2003
Santa Fe, NM-based CleanAIR Systems received an order for its recently introduced PERMIT™ FBC diesel particulate filter system for underground mining vehicles. The ordered filters will be installed on 30 diesel-powered units in an underground coal mine in Alabama.
The PERMIT™ FBC filter system uses a catalyst, which is applied to the ceramic filter substrate, and a platinum/cerium additive (fuel borne catalyst—FBC) supplied by Stamford, CN-based Clean Diesel Technologies (CDT). The filter reduces PM emissions by over 85%. Due to a combined affect of the catalyst and the additive, the filter can passively regenerate at temperatures as low as 300-325°C. The catalyst also decreases emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbons.
The additive will be introduced to the fuel using automatic dosing equipment also supplied by CDT.
The CleanAir filter system has passed tests by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), which confirmed the ability of the system to reduce particulates by 85% with no increase in emissions of nitrogen dioxide.
The Platinum Plus FBC is registered with the US EPA for use in on-highway diesel fuel. Additive EPA registration is also required by MSHA for use in underground mines. | <urn:uuid:f5e98f22-9109-4d56-beb0-3ab439e531a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dieselnet.com/news/2003/03cleanair.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939571 | 262 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Geothermal energy continues to be a primary focal point for renewable energy sources and recent developments by the likes ofLockheed Martin and others are showing potential for oceans to be another viable option for geothermal technologies.
The concept is not new, but the application is. The general field is referred to as Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) and designs are being tested now in tropical areas.
One of the big concerns around tapping into the ocean for energy is that our processes can take away needed heat from the fragile oceanic environment. If not careful, we could upset the delicate balance in the ocean and – in a worst case scenario – wreak havoc. Using new techniques, the technology is now much more safe and requires far less energy to power a turbine.How Does OTEC Work?
Instead of using water-based steam to drive a turbine, the Lockheed Martin (LMC) version uses ammonia, which evaporates around 20 degrees Celsius. The waters in the tropics are about 75 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface and 3,000 feet below are about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. That 35 degree difference is all that is needed to evaporate ammonia and then re-condense it into liquid form.
This entire process is in a closed loop. What that means is there are no by-products or exhaust. OTEC is a completely clean source of energy.How Much Energy Are We Talking about?
If all goes as planned, one OTEC facility can generate more than enough energy without affecting the ocean’s ambient temperatures. Estimates are 3 to 5 terawatts with no affect to the ocean and zero emissions, and that’s just using tropical regions as a launching point for OTEC.
With energy production in the range of 15 terawatts per year globally, OTEC can make a significant impact. And these estimates are based on a few OTEC facilities in tropical regions only. When you expand the technology, the energy production opportunities start to get really exciting.
While applying OTEC principles in a different way, even Dayton, Ohio is getting into water-based geothermal energy. The region sits on an aquifier that holds the temperature below the surface at a steady 55 degrees Fahrenheit. During the summer water pumped in to cool the buildings. The winter months use the water for heat. The result is a 40% reduction in heating and cooling costs.Base Power
Many other types of renewable energy sources are intermittent. When the wind stops blowing, clouds cover the sun, or water levels don’t surge; solar, wind, and hydro systems stop generating power. OTEC may be a huge boon to the base power – energy production 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While other energy sources can produce more energy during their peak output times, OTEC can keep a steady supply of energy coming to prevent shortages.Bottom Line
The only cost involved with OTEC is installation and maintenance. James Klett of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory says:
“I think this is a case where if we build it they will come. If we can build a power source that doesn’t require fuel and only requires maintenance, then we won’t have to worry about the price of fuel going up and down. The price of energy generated by an OTEC plant will be tied to the cost of maintenance—and if we come up with cheaper ways of maintaining the plant, the price of the OTEC energy could actually go down, and hopefully be competitive with conventional power plants.” (ORNL.gov)
As the technology hopefully proves to be viable, automated maintenance systems have been discussed requiring human intervention only on a seasonal basis.Other Applications
And the technology has applications far beyond extracting energy from our oceans. The advances by LMC can be put to use in traditional turbine systems for dramatically improved energy production.
The upcoming months will be exciting to watch as a test center is being built in Hawaii for a full-tilt environmental study of the technology. | <urn:uuid:0541dfac-d277-4260-894a-a0b6d2c4c5ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.renewablesb2b.com/ahk_india/en/portal/index/news/show/be16567eb72049e4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920282 | 807 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Florence Nightingale was far more of a politician than a nurse. Her actual active nursing taking up far less time than the many years of lobbying and campaigning which followed.
She opposed the professionalisation of nurses and refused to believe that contagious bacterium caused diseases like Typhoid which were rife among the soldiers in the military hospitals, like the one she worked in Scutari during the Crimean war. Her hospital was in actual fact sited over a sewer, she believed that some illnesses were caused by miasma or bad air.
Mary Seacole was on the other hand, at total odds to this. She was in the firing line despite her advancing middle age tending to the dead and dying where they lay.
The fact that Mary Seacole was so overlooked is a testament to the racism and attitudes of the Victorian upper classes…and a tragedy.
Nursing, particularly nursing in the UK has been saddled with an outmoded model of part servitude part ‘angel’ ever since. In fact, international nurses day (May the 5th is on the anniversary of Flo’s birth).
Personally I’d far rather remember Mary Seacole. The RCN website or offices may be able to help you with further info?
2007-04-12 13:26:29 on I can’t take it anymore.
Report him to the police or social services if there are minors in these images-because that’s abuse.
If they are over the age of consent then you have some hard decisions to make about whether you want him around (and around your daughter). Although there’s a wide range of sexuality out there, all of us have our limits in terms of what we are prepared to accept. Bestiality (because animals can’t consent!) is likely to be one.
Obviously he’s got some issues in terms of the abuse he experienced as a child, his Tourette’s may affect his control but he needs to seek help with this at least.
It’s one thing knowing what to do but that won’t make it any easier for you, good luck and take care. | <urn:uuid:328fb141-e2c7-4910-a71a-777df21f06a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://help.com/user/55443-lanterneroug/replies/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976037 | 453 | 1.859375 | 2 |
In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Tutbury like this:
TUTBURY, a village, a parish, and a sub-district, in Burton-upon-Trent district, Stafford. The village stands on the river Dove, near the North Staffordshire railway, 4½ miles NW by N of Burton-upon-Trent; was once a market-town; and has a post-office‡ under Burton-upon-Trent, a r. station, and fairs on 14 Feb., 15 Aug., and 1 Dec. The parish comprises 4,001 acres. Real property, £11,232. Pop. in 1851, 1,798; in 1861, 1,982. Houses, 407. The manor belongs to the Queen. Berkeley Lodge, Needwood House, and East Lodge are chief residences. ...
T. Castle was a Mercian fort; went, after the Norman conquest, to H. de Ferrars, and was then rebuilt; passed to the Crown in the time of Henry III.; was again rebuilt by John of Gaunt; became the prison of Mary Queen of Scots in 1568-9; was visited by James I. in 1619, 1621, and 1624, and by Charles I. in 1636; was garrisoned for the Crown at the commencement of Charles' civil wars, and visited by him both before and after the battle of Naseby; was taken by Brereton in 1645, and dismantled in the following year; seems to have occupied an area of about three acres; and is now represented by considerable ruins, including gateway and part of walls and towers, surrounded by a deep dry moat. A Benedictine priory was founded in 1080, and made a cell to Peter-super-Divam in Normandy. Upwards of 100,000 ancient coins, supposed to have been lost in 1321, were found in the Dove in 1831; and some of them are now in the British museum. There are cotton and corn mills, and a large glass manufactory. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value, £286.* Patron, Sir D. Mosley, Bart. The church belonged to the priory, is chiefly Norman, and was restored in 1867. There are three dissenting chapels, an endowed school with £47 a year, and charities £624. The impostor Anne Moor, who pretended to live without food or drink, was a native.The sub-district contains 7 parishes, 2 parts, and an extra-parochial tract. Acres, 27,211. Pop., 6,797. Houses, 1,439.
A Vision of Britain through Time includes a large library of local statistics for administrative units. For the best overall sense of how the area containing Tutbury has changed, please see our redistricted information for the modern district of East Staffordshire. More detailed statistical data are available under Units and statistics, which includes both administrative units covering Tutbury and units named after it.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Tutbury in East Staffordshire | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
Date accessed: 22nd May 2013
Click here for more detailed advice on finding places within A Vision of Britain through Time, and maybe some references to other places called "Tutbury". | <urn:uuid:451898b3-6f58-433d-b18f-45f9ac47635b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/place_page.jsp?p_id=8586 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964739 | 707 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Smith County Fire Marshal Jim Seaton said the fire sparked at 6:50 p.m. when an electricity transformer on company property blew, sending sparks flying.
He said some sparks landed on stacks of bounded cardboard, which were sitting underneath a pole shed temporarily before they were to be recycled.
Seaton said firefighters operated machinery to break the bundles apart to extinguish the flames more effectively.
An 18-wheeler in the area sustained paint damage, and a trailer loaded with tires also was damaged, Seaton said.
Oncor turned off electricity to the building as firefighters battled the blaze. Seaton said he was unsure whether the plant was in operation and what the amount of damage would be.
The fire was across the parking lot from the main building, and the building was not damaged.
As of press time firefighters were still battling the blaze.
Red Springs, Winona, New Chapel Hill and Dixie volunteer fire departments were on scene, along with the Smith County Sheriff's Office and Fire Marshal. | <urn:uuid:bdf03813-3d4d-44cb-99e4-8a657d9f3b00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20130107/NEWS08/130109853/-1/NEWS1202 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976792 | 207 | 1.5 | 2 |
December 2012 Gardening Calendar
November 27, 2012 | 1289 views | Post a comment
This is an occasional column available to all users. Watch for Calvin Finch's weekly column, South Texas Gardener, every week in the Wilson County News. Subscribe today! https://wilsoncountynews.com/subscribe-today.php?
It is not too late to plant cyclamen, primula and petunias for winter color. Primula and cyclamen do best in the shade. Plant pansies and their cousins, the violas and johnny jump-ups, in the sun.
If you receive a dish of forced paperwhites as a holiday gift, move them to the flower garden or shrub border after you are finished with them in the house. If you don’t like the fragrance, that may mean you transplant them to the garden immediately!
Paperwhites naturalize in the South Texas landscape. Select a spot where they will get full or partial sun and plant them so the bulbs are covered. Do not remove the leaves until they brown naturally. As long as they are green, they are producing nutrients for the bulbs so that they can regrow next winter.
Paperwhites can even be planted in the lawn under deciduous trees if you are willing to let the foliage brown each year before mowing. Paperwhites provide green foliage and bloom in December or January each year. They are also deer-proof!
In the vegetable garden, plant onions (look for the new Texas Legend variety) and spinach transplants. If the tomatoes have made it through November, be ready to remove all full-sized fruit before the next freeze forecast. They will ripen in the house.
Consider a live holiday tree in a container. After you use it for the holidays, it can be planted in the landscape in full sun. Among those varieties that are sheared for use in the house and that can be planted outside, deodar cedar, Aleppo pine, Italian stone pine and Japanese black pine are most likely to prosper. Arizona cypress is usually not sheared, but it sometimes has an attractive enough natural shape to serve as a holiday tree and then can be planted outside.
The Virginia pine and loblolly pine are acid-loving trees that won’t last in the landscape. Afghan pine (P. eldarcia) likes alkaline soil but is susceptible to a killing fungal dieback.
Sheared rosemary makes a good holiday tree for apartments or other locations requiring a small plant. They can then be placed outside in a container or in the ground in full sun.
December is a good month for planting other trees and shrubs, as well. Do not give specific trees and shrubs for holiday gifts unless you know for sure what the recipients want and need for their landscape. A better gift is a gift certificate from your gardener’s favorite nursery. With a gift certificate, they can select their own plants and pick up the gift when they have time to plant it.
If tulips are one of your favorite flowers, locate some pre-chilled bulbs at the nursery or buy them on the internet. They should be planted on or about January 1. Plant them in a sheltered location to protect them from the wind. They can be planted in morning sun.
You may also still be able to find bluebonnet transplants. Plant them in full sun for April blooms. Watch for caterpillars, and do not overwater them.
The American goldfinches should arrive this month. Attract them with thistle seed. Cardinals like safflower seed or sunflower seed. Suet blocks will attract the insect eaters including wrens, woodpeckers, blue jays, starlings and even some warblers.
Calvin Finch Ph.D. is a Horticulturist and Director with Texas A&M Water Conservation and Technology Center.
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‘Where does your water shed?’ (May 1, 2013) | <urn:uuid:2f0c1c59-73e7-40b7-8d78-4fc55bb0d53d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wilsoncountynews.com/article.php?id=47532&n=agriculture-today-december-2012-gardening-calendar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944957 | 1,866 | 2.21875 | 2 |
The 7 Most Famous Solar Eclipses in History
California photographer Phil McGrew captured this image of the moon covering the sun's face from Pyramid Lake, Nevada. The solar eclipse occurred May 20, 2012, and was visible over much of the western U.S.
CREDIT: Phil McGrew
At 3:35 p.m. ET today, people living in the northern edges of Australia should be able to view a total solar eclipse, the last one until 2015.
But since ancient times, people have viewed the moon completely blacking out the sun for mere minutes — the entire eclipse, as the moon's shadow moves across Earth, can take hours, as it will today — as omens that indicate an impending miracle, the wrath of God, or the doom of a ruling dynasty. (See webcasts of today's solar eclipse.)
Here are some of the most famous eclipses in history.
One of the earliest solar eclipses recorded, the Ugarit eclipse darkened the sky for two minutes and seven seconds in 1374 B.C. Mesopotamian historians in Ugarit, a port city in Northern Syrian, recount that the sun was "put to shame" during this total eclipse.
Early Chinese Eclipse
In 1302 B.C., Chinese historians documented an epic total eclipse that blocked out the sun for six minutes and 25 seconds. Because the sun was a symbol of the emperor, an eclipse was seen as a warning to the leader. After an eclipse, an emperor would eat vegetarian meals and perform rituals to rescue the sun, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. [Fiery Folklore: 5 Dazzling Sun Myths]
In 763 B.C., the Assyrian empire, which occupied what is now Iraq, the sun was completely eclipsed for five minutes. Early records from the period mention the eclipse in the same passage as an insurrection in the city of Ashur, suggesting that the ancient people linked the two in their minds.
The Crucifixion of Jesus
The Christian gospels say that the sky was darkened for hours after the crucifixion of Jesus, which historians viewed either as a miracle or a portent of dark times to come. Using astronomy, later historians have used this mention to pinpoint the death of Christ. Some historians tie the crucifixion to a one minute 59 second total solar eclipse that occurred in the year 29 C.E., while others say a second total eclipse, blocking the sun for four minutes and six second, in 33 C.E. marked Jesus' death.
Birth of Mohammed
The Koran mentions an eclipse that preceded the birth of Mohammed. Historians later tied this to a total eclipse that lasted three minutes and 17 seconds in 569 C.E. The sun also disappeared for one minute and 40 seconds after the death of Mohammed's son Ibrahim. But the world's first Muslim didn't believe that eclipse was a sign from God. Instead, according to Islamic texts called the Hadiths, Mohammed proclaimed "the sun and the moon do not suffer eclipse for any one's death or life."
King Henry's Eclipse
When King Henry I of England, the son of William the Conqueror, died in 1133, the event coincided with a total solar eclipse that lasted four minutes and 38 seconds. A history by William of Malmesbury recounts that the "hideous darkness" agitated the hearts of men. After the death, a struggle for the throne threw the kingdom into chaos and civil war. [See Total Solar Eclipse Photos]
While the ancients viewed eclipses as signs of great acts of God, physicists viewed the 1919 solar eclipse as a triumph of science. During 1919's epic eclipse, in which the sun vanished for six minutes and 51 seconds, scientists measured the bending of light from the stars as they passed near the sun. The findings confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as a warping of space-time.
MORE FROM LiveScience.com | <urn:uuid:200ec0fd-2f77-4558-9442-5dad4018f449> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.livescience.com/24743-famous-solar-eclipses-history.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29 | 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 | 0.93712 | 813 | 3.609375 | 4 |
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Significant progress has been made in civil service reform noted the former President of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker who chairs the privately sponsored Commission on Public Service.
Volcker, a 1951 graduate of the Kennedy School (known then as the Littauer School for Public Administration), spoke at an alumni refresher and reunion event that includes panel discussions and presentations by scholars and public leaders.
It is a very difficult challenge, Volcker said "to break out of the rigidities of the civil service, but still have the accountability necessary," alluding to archaic rules of hiring and firing as well as the huge challenge of attracting, motivating, and retaining the quality of people necessary for government to function effectively.
"There have been some good models," Volcker said. Many of the traditional "obstacles" were removed in order to create the new Department of Homeland Security. "It is a large department that has paralleled what we were thinking of," he said of the Commission's proposals. He added that the new agency is bringing together many different functions and has an overriding objective.
Volcker said federal agencies that have been given flexibility have made substantial improvements. "The IRS got it," he said, noting its successful reforms. "The SEC didn't get it," and look what happened there, he quipped, alluding to recent corporate governance scandals.
America's role in the world post-Iraq war was the focus of a Forum panel discussion following Volcker's speech. Kennedy School Dean Joseph Nye opened the discussion by arguing that the United States is "not well suited to empire," a predicament that could undermine post-war efforts. "We are really good at kicking down the door and beating up a dictator," he said, "but we are not good at building a democracy in Iraq or elsewhere."
Academic Dean Stephen Walt, citing the ongoing challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and the Middle East, noted that the "United States now has an extraordinarily full plate in terms of foreign policy."
John White, lecturer in public policy, analyzed the state of American military might post-Iraq war, commending its flexibility, operational integration, and technological superiority, but he warned the overall strategy in Iraq will fail if the U.S.-led coalition is unable to secure a stable and meaningful peace in Iraq.
Providing a fresh perspective of the so-called "Islamic World," Brenda Shaffer, research director of the Kennedy School's Caspian Studies Program, said the term was an anachronism since states in the region do not behave solely on cultural or religious concerns. A more realistic assessment, Shaffer said, would provide many more options for the U.S. to consider when crafting policy in the region. | <urn:uuid:a4704579-f2ae-4800-8dd2-1bacae4c83df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/alumni/progress-in-civil-service-reform-alumni-reunions-and-refresher | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975384 | 560 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Prince Charles supports Habitat for Humanity Guyana
Sheila George, Chairperson of HFHG, at the time of receiving the check.
On Wednesday April 20th, the British High Commission handed over a check from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation to Habitat for Humanity Guyana (HFHG). Sheila George, Chairperson of HFHG, who received the check on behalf of HFHG says that her organization “is indeed very privileged to have had this kind of response from the Prince. It is an indication that Habitat is really touching the hearts of people far and wide, and that they endorse the work that HFHG is doing to assist families desperately in need of better housing. “
As soon as the Prince found out about the deplorable conditions on the East Coast due to the recent floods, he wrote to His Excellency, President Bharat Jagdeo, that he wished to make cash contribution to assist in the flood recovery program. After consultation HRH agreed to make the contribution to HFHG to assist in their flood damage relief operations.
The floods were a massive blow to HFHG, an organization which prides itself for constructing low-cost, durable homes with low-income families to help them escape poverty housing. Habitat halted the construction of its traditional house in the coastal areas and a team from HFHG’s national technical subcommittee has been investigating and assessing the damage to houses in the coastal area with a view to providing assistance. Based on the findings, the technical team headed by engineer Mel Sankies has recommended an entirely new design on stilts that would not allow the lower portion to be enclosed as a bottom flat. Architect Sheldon Williams noted, “We’ll be moving the building a minimum of three feet up from the grade level (or centre of the road), in locations where the flooding is more severe the height will increase. That area under the house can then be used for storage, for housing pets and that kind of thing.”
HFHG considers itself fortunate to have received the Prince’s gift at this time, since the extensive assessment, the research and implementation of the new design are all costs that HFHG could not have foreseen in this year’s budget.
The housing need in Guyana is for over 50,000 houses. Over 250,000 people live in substandard housing conditions. According to the 1999 UNDP report on living conditions in Guyana 36.3% of the population live in absolute poverty, 19.1% in critical poverty
Habitat for Humanity Guyana —a non-profit organization—has built over 300 houses on the East Coast Demerara, Georgetown, the East Bank Demerara, the West Demerara and Linden. Habitat relies greatly on donations and volunteers to help construct simple and affordable houses for poorly sheltered families. Families pay for the houses at cost using long-term mortgages at no interest or profit to the organization. | <urn:uuid:b8c209f3-645f-401a-9a55-bab1329b06fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.habitat.org/lac/noticias/2005/05_06_2005_price_charles_hfhguyana.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952872 | 619 | 1.734375 | 2 |
EJToday: Top Headlines
EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.
"PARIS -- Will Brussels try to give bees a break? In a case closely watched on both sides of the Atlantic, European officials plan to vote Friday on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of pesticides that had been implicated in the decline of global bee populations."
"The rotting bodies of about 6,000 pigs in a river that supplies tap water to Shanghai has drawn attention to an ugly truth -- China's pig farms are often riddled with disease and one way or another, sick animals often end up in the food chain."
"Whole Foods Market, the grocery chain, on Friday became the first retailer in the United States to require labeling of all genetically modified foods sold in its stores, a move that some experts said could radically alter the food industry."
"Crop-friendly snowfall will be moving from the Northern Plains into the central and eastern Midwest overnight Monday and Tuesday, leaving up to an additional six to eight inches of snow, an agricultural meteorologist said on Monday."
"The decline of wild bees and other pollinators may be an even more alarming threat to crop yields than the loss of honeybees, a worldwide study suggests, revealing the irreplaceable contribution of wild insects to global food production."
"PLAINVIEW, Tex. — After two years of drought, people are starting to leave this parched West Texas town."
"The antipoverty group Oxfam has come up with a scorecard that evaluates the impact that the supply chains of behemoth food companies have on water consumption, labor and wages, greenhouse gas emissions and nutrition."
"WICHITA -- Years of drought are reshaping the U.S. beef industry with feedlots and a major meatpacking plant closing because there are too few cattle left in the United States to support them."
"High levels of a dangerous toxin found in bagged dog food on a grocery store shelf in Iowa have highlighted the prevalence of a problematic mold in last year's U.S. corn crop, as state and federal officials work on limiting the food safety concern."
A surge in the use of fungicides is bringing higher crop yields; but experts warn that there is not enough monitoring of the emerging fungicide contamination of streams -- and that not enough is known about the health consequences.
Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case testing the reach of GMO companies' market power based on intellectual property claims -- and while environment and health are not immediately before the court, a case that could have wide impacts on both.
"The searing U.S. drought of 2012 devastated the nation’s corn crop, pushing yields down in some states to their lowest levels in nearly 30 years. According to recently-released numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were among the hardest hit Corn Belt states, with yields at 28-, 26-, and 22-year lows, respectively."
"U.S. farmers will plant crops this spring under the shadow of a persistent drought that grips prime farmland from the mississippi river to the rocky mountains, with grain supplies already tight from drought losses in 2012." | <urn:uuid:399a18a0-a56a-4af2-afd0-c304aec18d24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sej.org/headlines/list/*/105?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944263 | 738 | 1.539063 | 2 |
To read reviews of books for 3rd-6th graders, check out the kids from Hart Upper Elementray School, in Hart, Michigan.
To read reviews of books for middle and high school readers, visit the classroom of Nancy Steineke of Andrew High School in Tinley Park, IL. We also recommend the Read-a-Latte page written by kids at Lake Forest High School, in Lake Forest, IL.
You can also submit your own book reviews for our growing file. You may do this as an indvidual reader or as a class project.
Just send us our short reviews as Word files, and we will add them in when we update the website. For guidelines on format, length, etc, just read some of our other kid reviews. Be sure to include the title and author of the book, as well as the name, school, and grade level of the reviewer(s). Teachers, if you have any questions, just drop us an e-mail. We look forward to reading your reviews here! | <urn:uuid:3fa63596-f045-4ae7-81ed-f0407c27f014> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.literaturecircles.com/kids.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951517 | 213 | 1.90625 | 2 |
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Welcome to Washington Court House City Schools
TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE
The mission of the Washington Court House City Schools is to create an environment that develops within our students the skills, attitudes, ethics, and knowledge necessary to become contributing, responsible members of our community.
Nearly 200 years ago, the tradition of excellence in education began as the Washington Court House City Schools commenced in a one room log cabin school house in 1814. Today, we are proud to occupy four brand new, beautiful “state of the art” Federalist style buildings, namely Washington High School, Washington Middle School, Belle Aire Intermediate School and Cherry Hill Primary School. Our dedicated team of administrators, faculty and staff continue to provide the young people of this community with an excellent educational foundation that enables them to become productive and successful citizens. This rich tradition has graduated doctors, lawyers, teachers, business executives, military officers and professional athletes – just to name a few. Nothing in the community elicits its pride and respect more than our schools and our students. From academics to the arts to athletics, the tradition of excellence is alive and well in the Washington Court House City Schools.
District Profile from the 2011-2012 School Year Report Card
Enrollment – 2321
Designation - Excellent
Excellent Buildings – Washington High School, Washington Middle School, Belle Aire Intermediate
Population – 14, 162
City area- 5 square miles
1 hour to 3 cities of Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton
Parks, bike/walking trails, pools, YMCA, shopping
Washington Court House City Schools
306 Highland Ave.
Washington Court House, Ohio 43160
Keith Brown, Superintendent
District webmaster: firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:e0d39bef-2b84-42c1-9a92-f75e38e6a963> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wchcs.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900565 | 364 | 1.5 | 2 |
In exchange for their blessing to revise Williamsburg and Greenpoint zoning laws to encourage new luxury apartment developments in 2005, they city promised community leaders that public parks and 3,500 of units of affordable housing would be built. Seven years later the city is struggling to keep up its end of the bargain, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Some 800 affordable units have been developed and another 330 are scheduled for construction. But only 18 months remain in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s term and residents concerned with the effects of gentrification feel that time is running out for the city to deliver on its promises.
“They made these commitments, and as a result we rezoned the last large swath of industrial waterfront,” City Council member Stephen Levin said. “The community wants to know and I want to know, ‘What’s the plan?’”
The city argues that it spends more on parks in that neighborhood, $315 million, than it does anywhere else. Ironically, the Journal noted, that’s because the same luxury apartment buildings the city encouraged through the rezoning are now raising real estate prices and preventing the government from fulfilling its promises by making land acquisitions more costly.
Still, residents of those buildings are angry, too. “That [new parks] was a big selling point […] I still hear brokers walking around, and you’ll hear them say, ‘And this is going to be a park,’” said Alexandra Broenniman, a local mother of two. [WSJ] | <urn:uuid:1ce31806-33b2-48f2-92ca-5043d68c53cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://therealdeal.com/blog/2012/06/14/citys-failed-housing-and-park-promises-anger-north-brooklyn-residents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963537 | 320 | 1.710938 | 2 |
International Women’s Day: Have We Come a Long Enough Way, Baby?
Though women have significant leaps, activist Hibaaq Osman says the road ahead for many women across the globe is long and winding.
Whether you call the bustling city of Manhattan home like BettyConfidential, or dwell thousands of miles away in a small town, March 8 is an exceedingly important day for us all. International Women’s Day (IWD) has garnered significant attention from its formation in the early 1900s, especially after the terrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
Though we’ve come quite a long way since the days when managers herded young women into factory buildings and locked the exits, much still needs to be done. According to findings by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women in the United States earn 23 percent less than men for comparable work. Meanwhile, raped women in Afghanistan –like the teenaged Gulnaz –are being arrested for adultery.
That’s where Karama steps in. Headed by prominent women’s rights activist Hibaaq Osman, the Cairo-based organization aims to end violence against women, particularly those in the Middle East and North Africa. A group from Karama, which means “dignity” in Arabic, convened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from February 27 through March 4, 2012 to urge authorities to support Middle Eastern women. Osman was at the front and center, spearheading these discussions.
Boasting achievements that have prompted former President Bill Clinton to offer his congratulations, you know this leader of three women-focused organizations means business.
Osman told us in an exclusive interview at the March 2, 2012 delegation addressing women’s rights and the Arab Spring that women aren’t at the forefront of leaders’ minds, but rather, “in the middle.”
“But how can you not invest in us?” she asks. “We are the backbone of society. Studies show that when women prosper, so does society. If you invest in women, you invest in family. When I go to my own country in Somalia and I give support, I am supporting a family. The women buy shoes for the children and make sure they go to school. If I give it to a man, I know from experience he will go out and enjoy life with his friends. The point is that women are responsible for society –we are the center of society.”
And increasingly, oppressed women are demanding that their voices be heard. The Arab Spring, also fittingly known as the “Arab Uprisings” or the “Arab Awakening,” has been raging through the Middle East and North Africa since 2010. As of February 2012, these protests have been responsible for the overthrow of four oppressive regimes in these regions.
“We need each other,” Osman explains. “We need to learn through networking, talking to each other, and communicating with each other. Everyone from the East to the West today is talking about freedom and dignity and justice. But we need to make sure there is an outlet on the international level and solidarity. They still need the outside support.” | <urn:uuid:9c695738-76df-419a-843a-fd2846f4e302> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bettyconfidential.com/ar/ld/a/international-womens-day-have-we-come-a-long-enough-way-baby.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971466 | 667 | 2.359375 | 2 |
I have been reading a lot of discussion on pre-increment and post-increment in this forum, but still I have not been able to clearly understand the program flow logic for pre and post increments. I have attached a detailed discussion describing the way the increment operator works from the sun java forum site. Could someone tell me the step-by-step logic flow for a pre and post increment operator. Question 1 - My first question is regarding the code attached below which deals with i=i++ My understanding is that the sequence is as follows - 1. The full expression to the right of the "=" operator has to be evaluted first. 2. My earlier understanding was that post-increment means the variable is incremented after complete execution of the statement and before control moves to the next statement. But here, the value of i is inserted before start of expression evaluation. So i set to 0. 3. i++ has to be evaluated before assignment because ++ operator has higher precedence. Thus i gets incremented to 1. 4. This is where I get hazy. Does he mean that the incremented value of i which is now 1, is not assigned to the i on the left hand side of the "="operator, but instead stored in a temporary memory location as 1. The original value of i is located by Java (which is 0) and is assigned to i. So, i remains at 0, but the temporary storage has a value 1. So, what happens to the temporary storage......is it just dropped and the value lost? Now, when dealing with pre-increment, the same 4 steps are - 1. The full expression to the right of the "=" operator has to be evaluted first. 2. The value of i will be plugged in after the increment......what does it mean? How will i be incremented when it has no value. 3. A pre-increment too has higher precedence than a = operator, so ++i has to be evaluated before assignment because ++ operator has higher precedence. Thus i gets incremented to 1. 4. In the previous case, I assumed the post-incremented value is stored in a temporary memory location. Here, I assume, the difference would be that, no temporary memory location is used, but instead the actual memory location of i is updated to the value 1. The value of the expression is processed which is also 1, and this value is assigned to the variable i, which is on the left side of the = operator.
Question 2 - This relates to a question put up on this forum a few days back. I am reposting the code -
In the line marked 1, we have x---x/0. Is this expression evaluated as - 1. (x - (--x))/0 or 2. ((x--) - x)/0 Changing this, I left out the divide by zero, and tried to evaluate the remaining expression. I have taken x=5. Hence- 1. (x - (--x)) //answer is 1 2. ((x--) - x)//answer is 1 If the answer is 1, I tried to use the Question 1 logic of pre and post increment, but have failed to understand, how both evaluate to 1. Please explain logic as also relevant to Question No. 1. If I further modify the question (keeping x = 5) to - (x--+--x);//result is 8 But if I change it to - ((x--)-x); (x--+--x);//result is 6 Could someone please explain the above questions.
[This message has been edited by niraj singh (edited March 09, 2001).]
Joined: Sep 29, 2000
You are correct in that the system has a working area that holds what it knows values to be. This is called the scratchpad area or transaction area in some languages. If the variable x=5 then a working area is created for x's value when it is in scope. When the variable goes out of scope the contents of the working area is lost.
When you do x-- you are saying use the value of x for the variable and decrement the working area value for x for the next use. When you say --x you are saying decrement the working area and then assign that value back to x. Let me tackle the second one first. x=5 (x - (--x)) 5 - (now 4) = 1 (x--)- x 5 - (now 4) = 1 working area holds 4 (x--+--x); 5 + (now 3) = 8 4 I got lost on what you were doing for the last part, you have 2 expressions with one result?
"JavaRanch, where the deer and the Certified play" - David O'Meara
Joined: Feb 07, 2001
Hi Cindy, Thanks a lot for clearing up my concepts. My main doubt was regarding the precedence of () and ++, that is whether the parantheses had higer precedence than the ++ operator. The answer to that is that I was confusing precedence with associativity. () is only for associativity. The operands will still have to be evaluated left to right. Niraj | <urn:uuid:789d8662-70e8-416f-9b3b-7583aa2afc6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coderanch.com/t/198136/java-programmer-SCJP/certification/doubts-exponentially-INCREMENTed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944091 | 1,073 | 2.75 | 3 |
DOBSON — Teachers were honored Thursday for their efforts in creating projects in order to help kids learn in a more effective ways.
Surry-Yadkin Electric Membership Corporation honored the teachers with a luncheon and awarded 11 grants totalling $6,250 in Bright Ideas education grants.
The Bright Ideas grant program, sponsored by North Carolina’s electric cooperatives, strives to improve education in North Carolina classrooms by awarding grants to teachers for innovative, classroom-based projects in grades K-12 that would not otherwise be funded.
Since this program began in 1994, the Bright Ideas program has awarded more than $7.1 million in grant money to North Carolina’s teachers to sponsor almost 6,500 projects teaching more than 800,000 students.
Jennifer Collins of Franklin Elementary School was awarded $675 for her project that will foster parent involvement with their children by sending home backpacks filled with activities and books.
Stephanie Bode with Dobson Elementary School was awarded $820 for her project to fund iPads and a weather station at the school.
Shirley N. George with Francisco Elementary School in Stokes County was awarded $425 for her project. She read the names of the kids in her class that were signed on a thank you note.
Jamie Mosley with Gentry Middle School was awarded $700. Greg Nelson accepted the award on her behalf. He said the money from the grant helps them purchase kits and paint for the annual pinewood derby race in which the school hosts to not only teach the kids about science while they are having fun, but to help the school raise money to send disabled or sick children to the Victory Junction Gang Camp. He said students at the school have raised $20,000 toward that goal over the past five years.
Brittany Guy of Meadowview Middle School was awarded $800 to help her teach math and make it “not so boring.” With her grant money she plans to purchase tablets on which the kids will study architecture.
Christy Menear of North Stokes High School was awarded $360 for her project that will help her students, who are older, learn life skills on iPads. Her program will help her students learn things like how to make a grocery list and how much to tip in a restaurant.
Sarah Johnson of Rockford Elementary School was awarded $300 for her project called “Feel the Burn” that will introduce learning through technology.
Melissa Simpson of Rockford Elementary School was awarded $300 for her project that will introduce her students to the pottery of North Carolina. She said the students will each end up making face jugs.
Kelsi Hobson of West Stokes High School was awarded $300 to help her students learn about music.
Paul Clark of the Yadkin Success Academy was awarded $800 for his project to create a greenhouse at the school that will help students learn about using the sun’s energy.
Katy Willis with C.B. Eller Elementary School was awarded $515 for her project that will provide students with a retelling center where the kids can listen to stories with a partner.
“We’re thrilled to award these dedicated educators with Bright Ideas grants,” said Erica Johnson, public information specialist with Surry-Yadkin EMC. “Their creative projects will no doubt help students reach their full potential and spark a high interest in learning for years to come.”
Statewide, the electric co-ops are expected to award more than $620,000 in Bright Ideas grant funding to educators this school year.
“Surry-Yadkin EMC is committed to bettering the communities we serve and we believe there is no better way than through the education of our youth,” Johnson said.
Reach Mondee Tilley at email@example.com or at 719with1930. | <urn:uuid:fbbcbad8-d542-45d6-a759-c365b41ebc56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mtairynews.com/view/full_story/20770512/article-Teachers-awarded-Bright-Ideas-grants | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972173 | 803 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Learning GarageBand with Garrick Chow is a movie-based tutorial designed for people who want to quickly get up to speed with Apple's groundbreaking music-creation software. Whether you're an accomplished musician or have no musical training whatsoever, you'll be recording your own songs within minutes of starting GarageBand. This training begins with an overview of the GarageBand interface and quickly advances to cover topics such as working with Apple Loops, creating and editing MIDI tracks, and recording real instruments. You'll then learn to put everything together by mixing your songs and exporting them to iTunes to share with the world. The exercise files that accompany the tutorial allow you to follow along and learn at your own pace. | <urn:uuid:528ecf95-ff79-4c8d-bc60-42a60336b371> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lynda.com/GarageBand-tutorials/learning/106-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969166 | 138 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians
Brisker, Gordon (Ira)
Brisker, Gordon (Ira), tenor saxophonist, composer/arranger; b. Cincinnati, OH, 6 November 1937. His mother, Flora, was a piano instructor at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and his father, Jack, was a featured vocal soloist at local Jewish synagogs. Gordon started violin lessons at the tender age of four but discontinued due to the fact that he was unsuitably left-handed. He resumed studying at five but this time the lessons were on piano, which continued for four years. Brisker's musical studies were then dormant until his thirteenth year when, invited to a friends house, he was captivated by the look and sound of his buddy's alto saxophone. Shortly after that Gordon commenced clarinet lessons with Eugene Frey, then second clarinetist in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It wasn't long after that that Brisker was given a baritone sax by his father, then switching to tenor about a year later. Gordon played saxophone and clarinet in the Walnut Hills High School concert and marching band, writing his first big band arrangement.
Brisker worked with some local Cincinnati bands while still in high school, including Clyde Trask and Gene Hessler. His first professional job was with Ralph Marterie when about 17. An older friend who was joining the band recommended him and so they went off to Chicago. Gordon was quite excited to be going out of town to play with a name band, but his enthusiasm was short-lived as the lead saxist, Jack Gaylo, who was also the band manager, didn't think he had enough experience playing with sax sections. It was a long train ride back to Cincinnati, Brisker's sorrow somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Marterie had fired the whole trombone section the same week. Years later he worked off and on with the band and Ralph had mellowed a bit. On one gig at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City Don Ellis was in the trumpet section. He and Marterie had a strange chemistry, to say the least.
Several of Gordon's good Cincinnati buddies, including Bill Berry and Alex Cirin, had decided to head for Boston and the Berklee School of Music and he joined them. He made lifelong friends there, especially with Jimmy Mosher, who became his band-boy, main cohort when out with Woody's band years later. Gordon also was at Berklee at a rich period of talented fellow classmates, including Bill Chase, Paul Fontaine, Phil Wilson and Jake Hanna. He didn't stay in school full-time very long but decided to study privately with Herb Pomeroy and Ray Santisi. Brisker wrote charts for Herb's big band and also worked with the band at the Apollo Theater in a sax section, which included Charlie Mariano. In the mid-eighties Gordon returned to teach at Berklee and wrote a good percentage of the arrangements for Herb's smaller edition big band. Herb was kind enough to allow him to photocopy Brisker's arrangements, many of which are still played when Gordon works with the latest version of the big band in Cincinnati.
He's had additional private instruction with Albert Harris, eminent Los Angeles film composer/teacher, Felix Labunski, Professor Emeritus, Cincinnati College of Music (Composition), Joseph Allard, Woodwind Dept., Julliard School of Music, Joseph Viola, Chair, Woodwinds, Berklee College of Music, and Diane Alancraig, former flutist, Philadelphia Orchestra.
Following his early Boston years Brisker returned to Cincinnati to work in a bar called Mother's. Bill Berry was in the quintet, which was led by drummer, Dee Felice. During the months at Mother's during various periods Hal Galper was on piano, Billy Bean on guitar and Gene Roland on a strange euphonium-type of instrument. It was during this time that Gordon left Cincinnati to go on the road with the Al Belletto sextet. At a later period Don Menza and Phil Wilson came on the band.
In 1960 Brisker joined Woody Herman. Also in the band at that time were Don Lanphere, Rolf Ericson, Jimmy Campbell and Jimmy Guinn. He stayed with Woody for 2 and a half years and wrote several arrangements he recorded, including Blues For JP, Lonesome Town, and Free Again. Although Gordon was on the band for that long a time, Woody only recorded one album during this period. He was fortunate to have a solo on the Bill Chase composition, Camel Walk.
After leaving Woody, Brisker moved to NYC with my first wife and two small children, John and Julie. New York was difficult at that time but he worked a bit with Sol Yaged, played behind Tony Bennett and did Gerry Mulligan's band at Birdland. He played with the Louie Bellson Orchestra and was on call with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1964. His first marriage hit the rocks and Gordon left NY for Cincinnati in 1965.
In Cincinnati Brisker met his present wife, Cindy. At that time he was Musical Director for the Nick Clooney television show. Gordon was also playing local clubs, sometimes on piano, and backing singers such as Jackie Paris, Anne Marie Moss and Mark Murphy.
In 1977 Gordon and his wife decided to move to Los Angeles. His first gig was with the LA Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. A short-lived musician's strike sounded the immanent death knoll for that industry. Brisker primarily wanted to be a composer, as woodwind doubling had never appealed to him, but found the local politics alien to his nature. He did play quite a few gigs in LA and learned a lot from the highly accomplished pros who live there. Gordon especially values his years with the Bobby Shew Quintet (1978-1982), playing with Bill Holman's band and working with Dave Pell's Prez Conference. From 1984-85, he was a member of the WUZ - Pop Ensemble of the Boston Orchestra. He also made recordings with Shew and Pell plus a few on his own for Albert Marx' Discovery label. In the late 80's Gordon started traveling with Anita O'Day (1987-1995) and later on became her MD when she parted ways with John Poole, her partner & drummer for thirty years. Brisker worked and traveled with Anita until he left for Sydney in 1995.
The lack of gigs and the political scene in LA caused Gordon to look in other career directions. He entered California State University, Los Angeles in 1989 to get his Master's degree in composition. After getting his degree Brisker started applying for teaching positions. A good friend, Kim Richmond, informed him of an opening at The University of Sydney in Jazz Studies. At first Australia seemed too remote but when things became even more sour in LA Gordon decided to apply for the position. He was accepted.
During the almost six years he spent in Sydney Gordon met a lot of excellent musicians, made some great friends and enjoyed the ambiance and beauty of the country. The great pianist/composer, Mike Nock, also taught at the school. Mike became his mentor and produced two CD's Brisker recorded for Naxos Jazz. Gordon has since become a dual citizen with the US and Australia.
In 2001, mainly due to my wife's need to become a caretaker for her aging parents, he relocated to Cincinnati. Gordon has been writing and playing, with tours to San Francisco (masterclasses at Hayward U. and San Francisco State) and gigs in New England. He will be in LA for work this week and have another East coast tour scheduled for April.
He's been a guest artist at many jazz festivals and clubs, including Dizzy's - Rotterdam, Holland - July 1999; Manly Jazz Festival - Sydney, Australia - October 1999; Bennett's Lane - Melbourne, Australia - June 2000; The SideOn Cafe (with the Mike Nock Trio) - Sydney, Australia - July 2000; Christchurch Jazz Festival - Christchurch, New Zealand - August 2000; The Brasserie - Hollywood, CA - September 2000; Naxos Jazz Party - New York, NY - September 2000; The Blue Wisp - Cincinnati, Ohio - September 2000; The Jazz Bakery - Culver City, California - October 2000; Harry's Quayside Bar - Singapore- December 2000; Melbourne Jazz Festival - January 2001; Press Room, Portsmouth, New Hampshire - August 2002; Barrelhouse Brewery, Cincinnati, Ohio - September 2002; Bennett's Lane - Melbourne, Australia - October 2002; Gilly's, Dayton, Ohio - November 2002 and the 501 Club, Columbus, Ohio - January 2003.
University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, Australia - 1995 - 2001: Teaching Responsibilities: Advanced Ensemble; Arranging/Composition; Jazz History; Ear Training; Improvisation Ensembles; Saxophone; Big Band Other Responsibilities: Recruitment, public awareness/community service, research, program development
Grove School of Music, Van Nuys, California 1988-90: Teaching Responsibilities: Jazz Performance; Ensemble Playing
Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts, 1983-86: Teaching Responsibilities: Arranging I, II; Ear Training Jingle Writing; Listening & Analysis; Count Basie Ensemble; Woody Herman Ensemble; Improvising Skills, Theory I, II
Guitar Institute of Technology (MI) - Los Angeles, California, 1983: Teaching Responsibilities: Arranging; Sight Reading; Ensemble Performance; Improvising Skills
Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, Ohio - 1977: Teaching Responsibilities: Jazz Arranging/ Composition
Clinician in Jazz Saxophone Performance, Improvisation Theory: San Francisco State, San Francisco, California - 2002, Hayward University, Hayward, California - 2002, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia - 2002, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana - 2002, Western Australian Conservatorium of Music, Perth, Australia - 2001, National University of Singapore- 2000, University of Cincinnati - Jazz/saxophone masterclasses - 2000, Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, Ohio - 2000, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand - 2000, Jazz School, Christchurch, New Zealand - 2000, Elder Conservatorium of Music, Adelaide, Australia - 1999, International Association of Schools of Jazz, Santiago de Compostella, Spain - 1999, Rotterdam Conservatorium, Rotterdam - 1999, Canberra School of Music, Canberra, Australia -1999, Christchurch Polytec, Christchurch, New Zealand - 1998, Fullerton College-Idylwild Summer Sessions - 1989-92
Collective Consciousness (1982); About Charlie (1986); New Beginning (1988); The Gift (1997); My Shining Hour (1999); My Son John (2000)
Woody Herman: Woody '63 (1963); Bobby Shew: Outstanding in His Field (Grammy Nominated, 1984), Play Song (1985); Anita O'Day: In a Mellow Tone (Grammy Nominated, 1989)
Television broadcasts and films:
Musical Director: The Nick Clooney Show, WCPO-TV, WLW-TV - Cincinnati, Ohio (1970-1974); The Bob Newhart Show (1979); The Buddy Holly Story (1980); Hunter (1989); Who Did That Music? - Music Library (1994); Killer Tracks - Music Library (1998); Music performed on Television Shows: "All My Children", "Earth Angel", "Family Matters", "Living Single", "One Life to Live", "Guiding Light", "New Attitudes", "House Beautiful", "Get Real", "Drew Carey"
Compositions and Arrangements
"Short Story", "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", US Air Force Band in Europe - 2002
"Farewell Princess", "Witness", "Wozzeck's Dilemma", "Here's Looking at You Kid",
"Impetus", "My Son John" (from sound recording "My Son John") - 2001
"Video-Xtra", "Let's Get Serious", "Catharsis", "These Are The Jokes" (from sound recording "The Gift") - 1998
"One For The Duke", Kendor Music, Delevan, NY - 1998
"Hangin' In", Kendor Music - 1998
"Gone, But Not Forgotten", Warner Bros. Music - 1996
"Off the Back Burner", Warner Bros. Music - 1996
"When I Close My Eyes", Kendor Music, Delevan, NY - 1993
"Two Way Split", (with Dave Black) C.P. Belwin, Miami, Florida - 1992
"Mucho Gusto", ibid
"Bud's Back Here", Neil Kjos Music, San Diego, California - 1990
"Easy Aces", Kendor Music, Delevan, NY - 1989
"Scat", ibid - 1988
"New Beginning", Advanced Music, Glendale, California - 1988
"Estas Fueron Los Noches", ibid
"Waltz For T"-The Rodger Fox Big Band (New Zealand)
The Tonight Show Orchestra - 1984 "Horse Trader", "Claptomania"
Paramount Films - 1979 "French Atlantic Affair". (underscore/orchestration), John Addison, composer
Woody Herman Orchestra - 1962,"Woody, '63, (Phillips Records),
"Blues for J.P.", "Lonesome Town" (arrangements)
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (Erich Kunzel)
"St Regis Affair" (Premier Performance) - 1970
Arrangements for James Brown, Rosemary Clooney, Artie Shaw Orchestra, Louie Bellson Orchestra, Herb Pomeroy Orchestra
"Warm-ups For Saxophone", NAJE Journal, Manhattan, KS - 1980
"Jazz Improvisation and the Inner Person", Sandra Kay Music,
Los Angeles - Jamie Aebersold, distributor - 1993 | <urn:uuid:fefe4a1e-b007-491b-9187-8a268e3724ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jazz.com/encyclopedia/brisker-gordon-ira | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950922 | 2,941 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Carl De Geer (1720-1778)
Baron Charles de Geer (the family is usually known as De Geer with a capitalized "De"; Finspång in Risinge 30 January 1720 Stockholm 7 March 1778) was a Swedish industrialist and entomologist.
De Geer, who came from a family with strong Dutch connections, grew up in Utrecht from the age of three but returned to Sweden as a young man. He inherited the entailed manor and important iron-works of Leufsta (Lövsta) in Uppland from his childless uncle and namesake and substantially increased the wealth of the estate.
Ever since he had received a present of some silk worms at the age of eight, he had an interest in entomology and became a respected amateur entomologist at an early age. His major work was the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des insectes (eight volumes, 1752-1778). He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences already in 1739, at the age of nineteen, and a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1748.
He is buried with his spouse in Uppsala Cathedral. His collections of insects were donated to the Academy of Sciences and now belong to the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. He left a library at Leufsta which, among other things, included the papers of Olaus Rudbeck and an important collection of 18th century sheet music. The Leufsta library was acquired by Uppsala University Library in 1986 after a donation by Katarina Crafoord (one of the daughters of Holger Crafoord, the founder of Gambro).
De Geer was a great admirer of Réaumur. Hence his modelling Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des insectes on Réaumur’s work of the same title. It, too, is in French, similarly in large quarto and with the same decorations. The Mémoires deal with 1,466 species, treating life histories, food and reproduction based on careful, patient investigation and analysis of existing literature. There are 238 copper plates. The descriptions are acutely observed.
In nomenclature de Geer was less progressive; Volume 1 of the Mémoires (1752) was too early to employ the binomial system invented by his fellow Swede Linnaeus. Volume 2 (1771) does not use it, and in Volume 3 (1773) the system is only partially employed. Here the specific name is placed in square brackets and is followed by a long diagnosis in the older style. He also changed many of Linnaeus' names. It seems that this was a concession to usage as in the 1760s and 1770s the Linnean system became increasingly employed, not because de Geer liked the new system. They had differences "not everyone sees things in the same light, and people have the weakness of frequently being too fond of their own opinions" (letter to Linnaeus 16 October, 1772) and "if here and there I am still of a different opinion, I am now, as before, asking you not to take it amiss" (letter to Linnaeus 23 February 1774).
Described Camponotus pennsylvanicus, the first ant in North America. | <urn:uuid:19d2d8b8-c48e-44eb-a858-5d5594144122> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gap.entclub.org/taxonomists/De%20Geer/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967662 | 702 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Last week’s four-part Washington Post feature on Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt in my mind as to whether he and President George W. Bush have committed the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment.
While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first.
Subpoenas from Capitol Hill are flying downtown into executive office buildings like paper airplanes, but the potential for obfuscation and delay is immense, and the danger to the Republic speaks for a more urgent, simpler approach.
As hundreds are killed each day in the misbegotten war in Iraq with no end in sight, the same officials who brought us Iraq—with the vice president in the lead— are salivating for war on Iran.
There is a blizzard of possible charges warranting impeachment, and that is part of the problem. It’s not only outrage fatigue, it is knowing how to sort through what Thomas Jefferson called “a long train of abuses and usurpations” to select the most heinous, when it is difficult to discern which of them most offends our Constitution and the rule of law.
Suggestion: From the most heinous, select just one for which there is ready proof—one not susceptible of the kind of diddling that has been so prevalent in Washington these past several years.
Why not focus on a high crime that the Bush administration has already admitted to, with claims it is above the law and the Constitution: electronic eavesdropping on Americans without the required court warrant.
This charge has the additional advantage of precedent. It was included in the second (of three) Articles of Impeachment voted against President Richard Nixon by a 28 to 10 vote by the House Committee on the Judiciary on July 27, 1974.
That charge was “electronic surveillance of private citizens” in violation of the law and similar illegalities. Impeachment Article 2 stated that for these abuses:
“Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.”
Similarly, as William Goodman, former legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has suggested, pride of place among the various possible charges against those of the George W. Bush administration should be given to the crime of unlawful electronic surveillance; namely, failing to take care that the laws were faithfully executed, by directing or authorizing the National Security Agency and various other agencies within the intelligence community to conduct electronic surveillance outside the statutes Congress has prescribed as the exclusive means for such surveillance.
What makes this a no-brainer is that the administration has proudly admitted to sponsoring an electronic surveillance program that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.
On Dec.17, 2005, a day after the New York Times front-paged an article on the administration practice of eavesdropping on Americans without the required court warrant, administration front man George W. Bush bragged about authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without the court order required by FISA.
The president stated defiantly, “I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaeda and related groups.”
By what authority did the Bush administration ignore the FISA requirement for a court order for such eavesdropping? “The authority vested in me by Congress, including the Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force [and] constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief.”
That these arguments are quite a stretch is clear from the adjectives used by respected jurists to describe them. “Ludicrous” is the one most often applied. “The program appears on its face to violate existing law,” wrote a group of distinguished lawyers, several of whom worked in senior positions in Republican as well as Democratic administrations.
Anatomy of a Crime
While the buck still stops in the Oval Office, it lingers for an inordinately long time with the vice president. And, clearly, that is the way Bush prefers it.
Sen. Bob Graham recalls that when he became chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the president told him, “The vice president should be your point of contact in the White House [and] has the portfolio for intelligence activities.”
And, sure enough, when the chairmen and ranking members were invited to the White House for their first briefing on electronic eavesdropping, they were ushered into the vice president’s office where Cheney chaired the discussion.
One of the authors of the FISA law, longtime NSA director, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (ret.), expressed serious reservations at the flouting of FISA during a New York Public Library panel discussion on May 8, 2006.
“There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn’t do this,” said Inman. He went on to call specific attention to an “extra sentence put in the bill that said, ‘You can’t do anything that is not authorized by this bill.’”
Inman spoke proudly of the earlier ethos at NSA, where “it was deeply ingrained that you operate within the law and you get the law changed if you need to.” As for now, Inman insisted, “What you want is to get away from this idea that they can continue doing it.”
He placed the blame squarely on Vice President Dick Cheney, whose attitude he said was: “We don’t need law. The president has authorized these in the past and can authorize them now.”
Inman added that this attitude explains why there was no attempt to change the law. Whether Bush eventually decides to change course and work with Congress on this issue will depend on “whether the president walks away from the vice president on this issue,” said Inman.
John Dean, no stranger to White House intrigue, also sees Cheney’s hand behind the defiance of inconvenient laws like FISA. Dean’s sources tell him that there is serious doubt that the president and his staff is well informed as to what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it.
Bush may be the “decider,” says Dean, “but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.”
Eminence Grise Behind Eminence Grise
Please welcome David Addington, Cheney’s kemosabe, his main man, his legal adviser of many years, a strong advocate of the “unitary executive” concept invented by the Bush administration to amass power under, well, one executive.
Addington worked closely with Dick Cheney on the Iran-Contra Affair, and played a strong supporting role with those who set out to ensure that no one was held accountable. Addington came in with the vice president as his chief counsel and became his chief of staff as well, after Irv Lewis Libby left.
Addington is the author of the so-called “torture memo” of Jan. 25, 2002—the one signed by then-chief counsel to the president, Alberto Gonzales, calling provisions of the Geneva treaties on prisoners of war “quaint” and “obsolete.”
Assigning a “new paradigm” to the post-9/11 world, that memo advised Bush that he could authorize torture by simply saying that the U.S. would treat prisoners “humanely, as appropriate, and as consistent with military necessity.” This the president did in an executive memorandum on Feb. 7, 2002.
Addington’s legal legerdemain was applied liberally to the issue of warrantless eavesdropping, as well. Most are unaware that Addington earned his spurs while working in the CIA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) under Director William Casey, certainly a kindred soul in terms of respect for the law—national or international.
The so-called “family jewels” released by the CIA last week provide insight into the corrosive effect of folks like Casey and Addington on the professionalism and integrity of those working in the Office of General Counsel.
To be sure, there were liberties taken with law and regulation before Casey, but before Casey and Addington there was also high sensitivity to observing the letter of the law regarding surveillance of Americans. One sees in the correspondence reflections of the ethos of the lawyers I encountered during my 27-year Agency career.
There were abuses like illegal wiretaps, despite admonitions from directors like William Colby against monitoring American citizens. But the correspondence is replete with examples of operations abruptly shut down after an OGC determination that they violated CIA statutory responsibilities.
The documents show, for example, OGC putting the kibosh on radio intercepts made from abroad, but with one terminal in the U.S. Well before the FISA law, Agency officials were particularly uncomfortable with widespread electronic surveillance of American citizens.
As national security blogger Noah Shachtman has noted, it is clear from the “family jewels” material that many in the leadership of the Nixon-era intelligence community were relatively successful in avoiding becoming drawn into the kind of comprehensive, intrusive electronic eavesdropping that would later become a hallmark of the George W. Bush-era intelligence community.
CIA Director Michael Hayden’s timing in releasing the “family jewels” begs interpretation. Without any sense of irony, Hayden told CIA staffers that internal reforms and increased oversight have given the CIA “a far stronger place in our democratic system.” Right.
The post-9/11 warrantless electronic surveillance program he devised as head of NSA, at the direction of Cheney and the president tears that claim to shreds.
Hayden’s followed illegal orders to create an aggressive NSA program skirting strict 30-year old legal restrictions on eavesdropping on American citizens. As NSA director from 1999 to 2005, Hayden did the White House’s bidding in devising and implementing that program without adequately informing Congress—as required by law.
When an unauthorized disclosure revealed the program to the press, Hayden agreed to play point man with smoke and mirrors. Small wonder that the White House later deemed him the perfect man to head the CIA.
Hayden, of course, evidences no outward embarrassment. A whiff of conscience showed through his nomination hearing, though, when he flubbed the answer to a soft-pitch from administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri:
“Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal and that you were ordered to carry it out by the president of the United States?”
Instead of the simple “Yes” that was anticipated, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly—and revealingly:
“I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision...I could not not do this.”
Why should it be such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out.
This is a military officer who had indoctrinated NSA employees with what used to be known as NSA’s “First Commandment”—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on U.S. Citizens; an officer who, like the rest of us, had sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware one must never obey an unlawful order.
That, it seems clear, is why Hayden found it a difficult personal decision. Did the new, post-9/11 “paradigm” – created by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington – trump the Constitution?
President George W. Bush assured us on Jan. 23, 2006, “I had all kinds of lawyers review the process.” Seems so. The same ones who were concurrently devising ways to “legalize” torture and indefinite detention without due process.
No American, save perhaps Admiral Inman who was present at the creation of FISA, knew the FISA law better than Hayden. Nonetheless, the general conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion to satisfy himself that the new, post-9/11 comprehensive surveillance program, to be implemented without warrant and without adequate consultation in Congress, could pass the smell test.
If Addington and Cheney said it was okay, it must be okay. When one of his NSA director predecessors learned what Hayden had agreed to do, he said angrily, “He ought to be court-martialed.” I agree.
Addington’s tenure with CIA lawyers seems to have left a residue of malleability that the George W. Bush administration has found very helpful.
Intercepting Americans communications? Torture? Kidnapping? Extraordinary Rendition? You name it, we can justify it. All this makes things a lot easier for Cheney and Addington to work their will on the bureaucracy.
Another gift from Bill Casey. Not only did he corrupt analysis on the substantive side of the Agency; he also deprofessionalized the operational side, promoting yes-people, such that you end up with the bunch of amateurs caught kidnapping and “rendering” a suspected terrorist in Italy. And the corruption included the Office of General Counsel.
Who is Stepping Up to the Plate?
An African American judge, Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court in Detroit ruled on Aug. 17, 2006, that the surveillance program was unconstitutional (against the Fourth Amendment prohibition on “unreasonable searches and seizures”) as well as illegal (violating FISA).
She emphasized that “the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.”
The government appealed Judge Taylor’s decision, and the surveillance program continues, since the Sixth Circuit Court has granted a stay.
In keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s warning that the only remedy for the kind of situation in which we find ourselves is removal of those responsible, some courageous members of the House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of Dennis Kucinich’s (D-Ohio) bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
I find it highly interesting that seven of the 11 co-sponsors are African-American, with black women leading the way. Seems they have a more highly developed sense of the implications of the oppression that comes of ignoring, breaking, or bending the law.
They have an excellent model in the late Barbara Jordan, D-Texas, an African-American legislator and educator who made such a valuable contribution while sitting on the House Committee on the Judiciary during the hearings on impeaching President Richard Nixon.
I will not soon forget her stirring words on July 25, 1974:
“Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, ‘We, the people.’ It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that ‘We, the people.’ I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision, I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.’
“My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.... [As was said at] the North Carolina ratification convention: ‘No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.’”
Jordan stressed James Madison’s reminder at the constitutional convention that those who “subvert the Constitution” are “impeachable.”
Congressman John Conyers, D-Michigan, also a member of the Committee on the Judiciary in 1974, heard those words. He is now chair of that key committee. Inexplicably, he is now hiding from those words.
Wake up, John. Show some courage.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is a 27-year veteran analyst of the CIA and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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The creative arts are an integral aspect of Boston Trinity Academy’s program where students are encouraged to participate in both the visual and performing arts. A variety of opportunities are included within the Visual Arts academic curriculum and as part of after-school programming.
The Visual Arts curriculum is carefully designed to instruct students in the creative process, while at the same time providing specific skills, tools, and knowledge in a variety of media and artistic genres. The performing arts program includes dramatic productions and choir. BTA recognizes the artistic value of dramatic expression, and strongly encourages students to participate in either the visual or performing arts. | <urn:uuid:03f6da08-92aa-4f20-996c-85f23f103990> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bostontrinity.org/life/arts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945351 | 122 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Expensive, unnecessary and building false dreams - but sending a tween to 'model camp' is not all bad...
The image-obsessed summer camps have a terrible reputation, and often deservedly-so. But OLIVIA FLEMING, who herself went to a model camp at age 11, insists she still uses the valuable life lessons she learned
As an awkwardly tall for my age 11-year-old girl, I had a father who wanted to teach me once and for all how to 'stand up straight'.
His solution? Ship me off to modelling camp, a four-day course that imparts art-mastering lessons on runway walking, make-up application, social etiquette, and camera engagement for teenage girls.
Often seen as a precursor to a bona-fide modelling career, choosing to spend $999 on less than a week of adolescent priming summer activities, far from the realm of typical rough-and-tumble teenage bonding, has the adults watching on in divided opinion.
Summer camp: Four days at Modeling Camp NYC costs $999, which includes industry specific activities, a photo shoot, a portfolio, lunch and a T-shirt
Modeling Camp NYC, returning for its third year this summer after 'rave reviews', is one of many such camps rapidly growing in popularity among pre-adolescents.
Founded and run by former English model, Heather Cole, it aims to 'promote self esteem and self confidence' for the young girls aged 12 to 18 who sign up for the course.
Despite offering the girls a professional photo shoot, final portfolio and meetings with modelling agencies, Ms Cole insists the camp is really about 'life skills, and just walking away with confidence.'
As a pre-prubescent girl who had no interest in modelling and who grew up with a single father, modelling camp was a fast track initiation into the trivial aspects of womanhood.
Instead of rock-climbing, abseiling and archery lessons, I learned how to curl my eyelashes, apply eyeliner with a steady hand, and blend my foundation in such a way to avoid that abrasive make-up to no make-up jaw line.
I learned I should moisturise my body 'every day', to ensure forever youthful-looking legs, hands and feet. I learned the difference between a white wine glass and a champagne flute, and the importance of eating my vegetables for both my health and my skin.
Model camps and 'portfolio packages' are all on the continuum somewhere between 'waste of money' and 'outright scam'
I was taught how to walk down stairs efficiently, but still elegantly, in heels - priceless for someone who is always tripping on flat ground. I also learned how to pull my shoulders back without feeling self-conscious. I learned it was ok to walk tall as a woman.
While the purely aesthetic etiquette lessons may be seen as superfluous for what is essentially a group of children, each test I mastered still resonates
with me 16 years later, especially every time I'm faced with walking down a set of stairs in stilettos.
However while the camp confirmed my suspicions that modelling wasn't a career path I wanted to take, and despite the invaluable and forever ingrained lessons, many girls who sign up to modelling camp do so out of impatient goals that include runways, Vogue photo spreads and lucrative cosmetic campaigns.
At Modelling Camp NYC, which describes itself as a 'boot camp' that teaches teenage girls about the world of modeling through 'a variety of workshops, seminars, photo shoots and challenges with top industry professionals', discussions about the darker side of modelling, such as eating disorders, drug abuse and sexual harassment, are not included in the curriculum, as the New Yorker noted.
Modeling Camp NYC: The course aims to 'promote self esteem and self confidence' for girls aged 12 to 18
Learning curve: Modeling Camp NYC describes itself as a 'boot camp' to teach girls about the world of modeling through 'a variety of workshops, photo shoots and challenges with industry professionals'
One 14-year-old camper named Amanda Anderson said she acquired useful model-career-worthy knowledge, such as how
to make an effective entrance on a fashion runway.
'"You’ve got to go bam!
when you come out" [Anderson] explained, planting a hand on one hip and
jutting it out dramatically,' wrote the New Yorker's Rebecca Mead.
Meanwhile Margaret Rix, 16, from Rye, New York, wore heels that put her 'well over six feet', during the camp's professional photo shoot segment.
Posing wearing an 'extremely abbreviated skirt of her dress', the teenager showed how she had learned to properly extend her legs. 'I feel like my walk has improved tenfold', she said.
While the notion of modelling camps for girls who have a healthy and discerning interest in learning self-presentation skills can be just as effective, and fun, as those camps offering girls the chance to sleep in a cabin, roast marshmallows and participate in scavenger hunts; modelling camps that claim to give girls a leg up in the industry can also exploit both the teenagers who are desperate to become the next Kate Moss, and their parents who give in to incessant begging.
Camp bonding: As well as offering girls a professional photo shoot, final portfolio and meetings with modelling agencies, the camp's founder insists it is about 'life skills, and just walking away with confidence'
Jenna Sauers, a model turned fashion writer for Jezebel, believes modelling camps can be effective lessons in etiquette within a fun context, 'especially if you grew up without a mum to talk to about that stuff', but only if they advertise correctly.
She explained: 'Model camps and "portfolio packages" are all on the continuum somewhere between "waste of money" and "outright scam." The last thing you should do as a would-be model is, independently of any agency, pay one grand "for a portfolio." It's of absolutely no use in the profession.
She added: 'A wannabe model who comes in the door toting professionally shot photographs is no more likely to be signed by any reputable fashion modeling agency than a model without. Agencies prefer to see plain, un-made-up, un-retouched, Polaroid-style digital snapshots.
'I think if a girl has a healthy interest in learning self-presentation skills; that's not something to denigrate... It's the manipulation I think is wrong.'
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More Tamils to be resettled after stalemate
Vulnerable ... female refugees. Photo: Reuters
AUSTRALIA will resettle another 23 Tamil refugees from the group involved in a six-month stand-off on a cargo boat diverted to Indonesia in 2009 at the request of the then prime minister Kevin Rudd.
A total of 38 refugees from the boat, which carried 254 asylum seekers on the way to Australia when it was diverted to the port of Merak, will be resettled here, an Immigration Department spokesman confirmed.
The refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said there are still 100 of the original group waiting for resettlement, who had been stuck in Indonesia for two years.
Advocate ... refugee spokesman Ian Rintoul. Photo: Nick Moir
Australia's refugee intake is capped at 13,750 places a year but is split between boat arrivals and offshore refugees.
The Refugee Council of Australia yesterday welcomed a commitment by the Coalition to guarantee 1000 refugee places for women at risk who applied offshore but criticised that the policy stipulated these places would be at the expense of boat arrivals.
The council's chief executive, Paul Power, yesterday wrote to the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, expressing concern that the policy ''suggests that people seeking asylum in other countries are genuine but those who seek asylum in Australia are not''.
Mr Power said the council was ''bitterly disappointed to see recent opposition statements inferring asylum seekers diagnosed with typhoid represented a public health threat to Australia''.
Under the government's policy, an increase in visas allocated to boat arrivals in any given year restricts the number available to other humanitarian programs. | <urn:uuid:2029c4ab-5dea-4777-b7a6-4b8e517428a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watoday.com.au/national/more-tamils-to-be-resettled-after-stalemate-20120308-1un91.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942352 | 331 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Today’s Spotlight features photographs, taken by Melanie Gonick/MIT, of items made in the MIT Glass Lab.
The MIT Glass Lab is located in the basement of the infinite corridor, in room 4‑003. Extracurricular classes are offered to the MIT community throughout the school year. The lab also hosts several sales during the year, as well as a lectureship and residency. The lab is also involved with special projects. Please explore our site
for more information.
The MIT home page Spotlight showcases the research, technology and education advances taking place at the Institute every day.
What makes it as a Spotlight image is an editorial decision by the MIT News Office based on factors that include timeliness, promotion of MIT's mission, the balance of interest to both internal and external audiences, and appropriateness.
We do welcome ideas and submissions for spotlights from community members, but please note we are not able to accommodate all requests. We are unable to run event previews or promotions as spotlights; for those looking to promote an event, we are happy to include your listing as an event headline on the homepage (when space is available) and you are free to submit an Of Note to the MIT News office. For more information, e-mail the spotlight team.
Request a Spotlight, Of Note or Event Headline, here | <urn:uuid:6ad05479-a19c-4f63-910d-0a940c292f56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.mit.edu/site/date/2006/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965764 | 275 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Nick Bradbury — my friend, co-worker at NewsGator and Sepia Labs, developer of HomeSite, TopStyle, FeedDemon, and Glassboard — starts work at Automattic on Monday.
Congratulations to Automattic on hiring a great developer!
I was a guest on Daniel Jalkut’s Bitsplitting podcast. It was fun! Many thanks to Daniel.
Tom Harrington continues his series of posts on iCloud and Core Data.
addPersistentStoreWithType:etcetera:block for 30 minutes. And keep in mind, this is when iCloud is working normally. This is not an error condition, this is “working as designed.”
He suggests a solution: using two separate databases, one for normal use and one just for syncing, with custom code that shuttles data between the two.
That solution points to what bothers me about the whole thing, which is that this is all too tightly-coupled. Ideally your storage system and syncing system are not the same thing, and you could swap out one for another.
This would allow for flexibility and efficiencies that you can’t get when you just say “here’s my database; please sync it, iCloud.”
Apple and Backend Services for Apps
Imagine Apple announced something that worked like this:
You go to a website somewhere at apple.com and set up a backend for your app.
You create a database for it and a custom https API. You might have to write some code — but it would be in a popular scripting language, nothing weird. All this with a browser-based UI.
Apple provides a client framework for making calls to the server.
Authentication is completely taken care of — the system uses iCloud credentials, and your app doesn’t have to do anything. (It just knows if you’re authenticated or not.) In your app a user never has to sign in or create an account or anything like that.
Everything Apple stores is automatically encrypted. Apple’s server takes care of encrypting/decrypting automatically, so your code (in the client or on the server) never has to deal with that.
Apple’s system provides the ability run periodic tasks (like polling Twitter, App.net, or RSS feeds).
This would be more general than just a syncing solution, but you could use it just for syncing. Or you could add more sophisticated backend services. (You could write an RSS reader with this or something social like Glassboard.)
It would have to cost money, of course.
And you’d have to write code; you’d have to design your syncing system. But it would give you abilities you don’t have with iCloud Core Data syncing, and it would decouple your database and syncing, which is the right way to go.
I’ve mentioned Azure Mobile Services before, which I like because it’s in spitting-distance of an idealized Apple service. I would go so far as to suggest that Apple and Microsoft should partner to provide this service. Play to each company’s strengths.
(Disclaimer: Mobile Services paid me to do some videos for them and has sponsored my podcast.)
Syncing is only part of the future
Even if Apple works out syncing — somehow — that’s just not enough. That just gets us to where we should have been in 2008. The future belongs to apps with more sophisticated services.
And the future belongs (in part) to whoever provides those services. If you’re an iOS or Mac developer, you’d like it to be Apple.
Here’s what should worry folks at Apple: that Google provides something like the above for Android developers. Google obviously has the expertise, and it wants to make Android more attractive to developers.
(Yes, there’s Google App Engine, but I’m imagining something easier.)
Or, put another way: the backend system will become nearly as important as the UI frameworks, and plain-old-syncing isn’t enough.
I wasn’t clear on it completely. So I asked Dave, and he answered.
WWDC sold out in three minutes. (Or less.) I didn’t manage to get a ticket, though I did try.
It was only a few years ago when WWDC didn’t sell out at all. It even had Early Bird pricing.
We have some sponsorship slots open for future episodes of Identical Cousins, the podcast I do with Michael Simmons.
If you might be interested, contact me or Michael. (There’s Twitter info on the site. Or you can email me using brent plus the domain name of the business I own.)
Alex Kessinger estimates the size of market that will pay for an RSS reader.
Small Picture, Dave Winer’s new company, introduced Fargo today. It’s an outliner that runs in your browser and saves to Dropbox. The file format is OPML, so you can edit those documents in other apps (such as OmniOutliner) that support OPML.
Michael and I talk to Nick Bradbury in Identical Cousins 14: Partners in Crime.
I have a whole bunch of invitations to App.net — you can sign up here.
If you don’t know much about App.net, check out the weblog, where they promote third-party apps, link to their podcast, and talk about the APIs they’re building. It would be wrong to call it a Twitter alternative — it’s very much its own thing, and worth checking out.
I’m a fan. Love the vibe. I’m @brentsimmons there.
The Blink fork of WebKit has me wondering about Apple’s and Google’s tactics.
Specifically, I think back to Google’s recent spring cleaning, where it said that the CalDAV API will be available for whitelisted developers only.
I wonder if Apple will be on that whitelist.
Users hear about how great iCloud is and how apps can use it to sync their own data. They quite reasonably wonder why your app isn’t using it. Syncing data is a great idea, Apple gives you iCloud, why aren’t you using it, dammit? But if you did use it, the app would be so unreliable that users would (again, quite reasonably) complain that it was a steaming pile of shit.
Ryan Holiday writes in Our Regressive Web:
Google Alerts, Delicious and RSS were designed in blogging’s early days as innovations to help readers reduce this noise—to help improve their reading experience. But now those gains are disappearing. I feel that the tech press has allowed this to happen.
I had not realized that Google Alerts was having problems. But it doesn’t surprise me.
I wonder if it will go away on the same day as Feedburner, or whether the two will succumb in separate clean-outs.
On Identical Cousins 13 we talk about Google Reader, iCloud, Microsoft, Dave Morin, and Summly and other things. It’s a grab bag.
It’s also our best audio quality. We’re getting the hang of this.
Responding to yesterday’s post, a number of people pointed out to me that it sounded weird if one minute I suggest checking out Azure Mobile Services and the next minute tell developers they should take control of their app’s web services.
I meant no contradiction, but I could have explained better.
When creating web services, you should consider high-level systems, low-level systems, and everything in between, and figure out what makes sense for you.
Here are some — not necessarily all — of the things to consider when choosing:
Does it support iOS, Android, and browser-based apps? (Knowing that you may — may — want to move beyond just iOS.)
Can you create a social component?
Can you add additional services — push notifications, feed-polling, sending email, whatever — to the system?
Can you get aggregate data and learn how people use your app?
Perhaps most importantly: is it possible to migrate to something else (even if takes some work)?
The answer is yes to all of these for Mobile Services. (While the answer is no to all of them for iCloud syncing.)
The answer is also yes if you want to work at a low level — it’s yes if you get a virtual server on Linode and run Ruby on Rails and MySQL.
At some point you have to outsource some things, right? You’re not going to build your own server machine that runs your own operating system in a data center you constructed with hammers and saws that you made.
So you choose what makes sense. And if it can be a high-level system, that’s cool — it will probably save you time and be easier to maintain. But you might have good reasons to choose something medium or low level, and that’s cool too.
The key is this: you need control of the data.
iCloud Core Data syncing is, once again, completely opaque and outside your control. It fits none of the criteria listed above.
Yesterday the Verge posted Apple’s broken promise: why doesn’t iCloud ‘just work’?
Here’s the thing: if you’re a developer, you shouldn’t use iCloud syncing anyway. I’ll explain.
Android and the web
You may think you’ll never want an Android or browser-based version of your app. But are you sure? Really, really sure?
You hope your app will be a hit. (If not, then quit writing it and choose something else.) If it’s a hit on iOS, it could be a hit on Android too — and you can bet that customers will ask for a web app version.
You don’t want to limit the success of your app just because you didn’t want to write your own server.
And even if you’re sure that you’ll never want an Android or web version, is it possible you’d want a Mac version that isn’t sold on the App Store? (Only App Store builds are allowed to do iCloud syncing.)
We’ve been living in a social world for years. But iCloud syncing is not social: it’s per-user syncing.
If you write your own server, you can write the social bits, so your users can share recipes, weather forecasts (look, Mom, it’s going to be sunny on Thursday!), favorite articles, or whatever-it-is your app does.
People expect social.
If you’re writing an RSS reader, you can’t ask iCloud to download feeds.
There are all kinds of services that make sense on the server side. You could do some of them on a client, but at the expense of timeliness and battery life. If it’s a good idea, and you don’t do it on a server, your competition just has to write a server that does it, and your app is finished.
Learning how people use your app
You shouldn’t look at private data.
With Glassboard we made the decision — there was no debate — to encrypt messages in the database, so that we couldn’t see private data.
But we could still look at aggregate data. It was interesting to know how many boards were created each day, how often people used invitation codes, and so on.
There’s no substitute for learning about how people use your app. You can guess how people use your app. You can — and should — get all the feedback you can via email, Twitter, and App Store reviews.
But seeing actual data makes a real difference, because it helps you figure out where your resources need to go.
It used to be expensive to develop, run, and maintain your own server. You’d buy a machine or a few machines, get them installed in a data center, figure out how Apache works, install MySQL, and write a ton of scripts. Perl or PHP scripts, most likely. (Ugh.)
You’d use Subversion (if you were lucky) or cvs. You’d write your own testing system from scratch. You’d write a bash script that copied the files up to the server.
And you’d spend a bunch of money.
Everything has gotten easier and cheaper. These days you’d run services on Amazon, Azure, Engine Yard, or Heroku. Or get a virtual server on Linode. You’d choose from one of the many excellent systems like Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, and Django. You’d deploy via git or Mercurial.
If you can learn Cocoa, you can learn this stuff. (And so much of it is wonderful — you’ll enjoy learning it.)
Tim Wood, CTO of The Omni Group, tweeted the very wise words: Own the Wheel.
Here’s the thing: half the mobile revolution is about designing and building apps for smartphones and tablets.
The other half is about writing the web services that power those apps.
How comfortable are you with outsourcing half your app to another company? The answer should be: not at all comfortable.
Do it yourself.
My Mom has the scoop on goings-on in Newfield, a small town in south Jersey where my family comes from, where my Mom lives, where my grandfather was chief of the volunteer fire department.
The city council wanted — for stupid reasons — to shut down the fire department, which had been serving the town for more than 100 years. The council voted to shut it down before changing its mind. Narrowly.
All I can think about is that this mess marks the passing of the two important groups - those responsible for the original Borough bargain of lower taxes thru volunteerism and the Great Generation that Ever Was. Political/social decision making has passed into the hands of the baby boomers and we are not prioritizing the welfare of the town, state, nation, world above our own petty egos. This is not the legacy past generations wanted us to embrace. | <urn:uuid:76c026dc-95c9-48ab-9beb-5cc74eef7111> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inessential.com/?comments=1&postid=3369 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933296 | 3,043 | 1.53125 | 2 |
A long time ago, I made the decision to not be defined by my job. I was working full time as a web application developer and teaching full time at a technical college. I was putting in around 300 hours a month and getting paid for 180 of them, and I had the epiphany that work was ultimately not the purpose for my life, it was the thing I did to pay for the life I wanted to lead. I had missed too much of my life for work. Years later, I would sum the whole thing up in one of my rants on the old Johnny Incognito web site:
Let’s do a little math, all of which was inspired by my grandfather.
Let’s say you live to be a hundred years old. You die on the day you were born one century before. Forgetting about leap years (because at night figuring out leap years is stupid) that means you’ve lived 36500 days. That’s a good long time.
Just for argument’s sake, let’s just erase the days from the age of 70 as being for most people a time when your body and mind start to deteriorate and you really aren’t living the life we all dream about. We’ll just erase those days and pretend they don’t count, shall we? That leaves us with 25550 days to work with.
And those first 24 years are really years we invest in becoming the person who we’re going to be for the rest of our lives, so let’s cut those ones out of the equation too. That leaves us with 16790 days to work with. Suddenly, that’s not so much.
Now let’s say that we are like most people and work too hard. Lots of times we come home tired, eat some dinner, crash in front of the tube and wait to go to bed. Let’s say we do that four days a week for the remaining years. That leaves us with 7222 days to work with.
Forget yard work. Forget helping a friend move. Forget shopping for vegetables. Forget taxes, dinner with the boss, and dinner at Great Aunt Ruth’s house. You’re down to just 20% of your life to actually enjoy yourself. And you won’t even use that. Chances are that the number of days the average person really enjoys themselves are far less than that.
So what in the screamy blue hell is wrong with us? Why do we spend so much of our life on really unimportant things? Why do we work overtime on a salary, in essence giving our lives away? Why do we invest time in relationships that don’t work? Why do we give our life away by the handful?
When I did that math, it really creeped me out, and it goes along with what I’ve been saying for a while now. Life is too bloody short to just shit away on the unnecessary bits. It’s why I do all the things I do. Life has to mean something, and if we’re ruling 80% of it as being wasted, developmental, or deterioration, that doesn’t leave us with a whole buttload to work with. Work that buttload, baby. Work it for all you’re worth.
Now today I’ve been for a few weeks mulling over my future and trying to get my head around what exactly I want to do and how I’m going to go about doing it. I have plans, but the process of them is daunting. This afternoon I read the following quotation from my friend Jerry Auld‘s book, Hooker & Browne. For the record, it’s a great book about a guy working as a trail guide in Athabasca and trying to come to grips with where his life is heading, and I highly recommend you read it. It even got nominated for the highly prized Boardman Tasker award! I’d give you mine, but Jerry autographed it, so just go order one from his web site. Anyways, the quote:
“See, that’s the power of stories: warriors fight because someone convinces them with a tale. Most people are not motivated by some Valhalla or Elysian Fields anymore, now it’s retirement.”
I’ve got a real problem on my hands. I’m totally not motivated by retirement. Quite honestly, I don’t see myself ever retiring. I’m sure I will at some point, but the idea of retiring at 65 leaves me cold. At 65 I’m hopeful that I’ll have an abundance of knowledge and wisdom that would be a shame to waste on retirement. And what would I do with myself? I plan on living a good long life. My grandfather, mentioned in the long quotation above, died at the age of 99. It was only months before his death that he and his wife finally moved from their apartment to an assisted living facility; before that, they were both operating under their own steam. I cannot imagine what 35 years of living retired would be like. It just seems weird.
In the book, the main character comes up with an idea that we all have two peaks, two things that we strive for, and always one is greater than the other. For me, my peaks are knowledge and contentment. I think knowledge is the greater, but not by much. I have always had a thirst for knowledge, and that hasn’t changed. What has ultimately been making me think of this of late has been the fact that there’s so little knowledge at my present employment (at least in my current role) that I actually feel the desire to achieve. That’s not a knock on the company, they’re great to pay me (and keep me contented in many ways, thus helping with good ole’ peak number 2) but it’s clear that the other peak is just sitting there out of reach, smiling down at me. So it’s time.
I got into the realm of computers on a whim, not because I wanted to do it as a career, but because I knew that I would eventually figure out what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to be broke working lame jobs while I waited to figure it out. It took me more time than others, perhaps, but I feel that the direction I am going to embark in will constantly offer me adventures on my two peaks. It’ll take me a decade of schooling part time, maybe more, but that just means a good climb is ahead.
I don’t care about retirement and I don’t care about Valhalla. I care about climbing those mountains of mine. So what are your peaks? | <urn:uuid:9c7b9b03-3dc7-4fc8-aab8-f11299f08a34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.meddlingkids.org/2010/07/my-two-mountains/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977393 | 1,426 | 1.789063 | 2 |
USA Rugby League
|USA Rugby League|
| Current season or competition:
2013 USARL season
|Sport||Rugby league football|
|Number of teams||8|
|Champions||Jacksonville Axemen (2012)|
The USA Rugby League (USARL) is a rugby league football competition based in the United States. The league was founded in 2011 by clubs that had broken with the established American National Rugby League (AMNRL), plus expansion franchises. The USARL began its inaugural season in 2011.
The formation of the USA Rugby League was announced on January 12, 2011. Seven teams that had previously competed in the American National Rugby League (AMNRL), the United States' established rugby league organization and recognized governing body for the sport, announced they were breaking with the AMNRL to form a new league. The stated reason for the split was dissatisfaction with the governance of the AMNRL; the departing teams were unhappy with the lack of club involvement in the league's decision making. The new league includes its member clubs in its administration.
The departing AMNRL teams were the Boston Thirteens, the Washington, D.C. Slayers, the Fairfax Eagles, the Jacksonville Axemen, the New Haven Warriors, the Philadelphia Fight, and the Pittsburgh Vipers; they were to be joined by two new teams, the New Jersey Turnpike Titans and Kodiak Rugby from New York City. Before the season Pittsburgh and Fairfax became "developmental" teams in the new league outside of the top-tiered competition; Fairfax subsequently suspended operations. The New York team was unable to find a suitable stadium in the city, and instead became the Rhode Island Rebellion. One additional team, Oneida FC, joined the top-tiered competition for the 2011 season.
On January 13, 2011, the USARL announced that Peter Illfield, chairmen of the Philadelphia Fight, would be the league's first Chairman. The league's first event was a rugby league nines tournament in the Philadelphia area on May 28–29, 2011. Round 1 of the regular season championship kicked off on June 4; the Jacksonville Axemen won the minor premiership with the best regular season record. In the inaugural Grand Final on August 27, the Philadelphia Fight defeated the New Haven Warriors to win their first ever national championship.
List of championship titles
|Season||Championship Final Information||Regular Season Premiers|
||New Haven Warriors||Jacksonville Axemen (14 pts)|
||Boston 13s||Jacksonville Axemen (16 pts)|
Season structure
Beginning in their inaugural 2011 year, the USARL season consists of an eight-game regular season, followed by a playoffs series culminating in a Grand Final for the National Championship. The first event of the season was a pre-season rugby league nines tournament. The regular season runs through June and July, with each team playing every other team, and one team twice, in four home and four away games. Teams qualify for the playoffs based on point differential, with a win counting for 2 points, a draw for 1, a loss for 0, and a forfeit for -2. The playoffs consist of a two-round single-elimination tournament in August. The season's top four teams will compete in a semi-final round, with the two winners going on to the Grand Final.
Eight teams played in the USARL's "Top Tier" competition in 2011. These teams include five former AMNRL teams, the Boston Thirteens, the Jacksonville Axemen, the New Haven Warriors, the Philadelphia Fight, and the Washington DC Slayers, plus three new teams, the New Jersey Turnpike Titans, the Rhode Island Rebellion, and Oneida FC. These teams have committed to the league's standards of operations, including travel, venue, and scheduling obligations. On December 12, 2011 the USARL announced another team, the Baltimore Blues, would join the league for the 2012 season to take over Titans's spot in the USARL.
The 2013 season would be run as a 6 team competition with the 2014 season to be run with 8 teams in two conferences, the liberty and Freedom conferences. Oneida FC and New Haven Warriors have withdrawn from the 2013 season, and will return for the 2014 season.
|Baltimore Blues||N/A||Baltimore, Maryland||2012||2012|
|Boston Thirteens||MIT Steinbrenner Stadium||Boston, Massachusetts||2009||2011|
|Jacksonville Axemen||Hodges Stadium||Jacksonville, Florida||2006||2011|
|Philadelphia Fight||A. A. Garthwaite Stadium||Conshohocken, Pennsylvania||1998||2011|
|Rhode Island Rebellion||Classical High School||Providence, Rhode Island||2011||2011|
|Washington DC Slayers||Duke Ellington Field||Washington, D.C.||2003||2011|
Former teams
|Former USARL teams|
|Team||Stadium||City/Area||Foundation Year||Final Year|
|New Jersey Turnpike Titans||Lincoln Park||Jersey City, New Jersey||2011||2011|
Developmental teams
As part of the 2011 season, a former AMNRL team, the Pittsburgh Sledgehammers, participated as a "developmental team", playing a more limited schedule while developing the club for future seasons. Several other clubs have registered "developing" teams: these include the Denver Wolverines, the Los Angeles Raiders, the Orange County Outlaws, the Seattle Force and Texas Rugby League (which will field two teams, the Dallas Dragons and the Houston Hornets). Several of these are established developing teams that were previously aligned with the AMNRL; the USARL has committed to support them in their development. Another team, the Utah Avalanche, were formerly affiliated as a developmental team, and participated in the 2011 USARL 9s tournament.
|USARL Developing Teams|
|New Haven Warriors||Ken Strong Stadium||2006|
|Oneida FC||MIT Steinbrenner Stadium||2011|
|Dallas Dragons||Dallas, Texas||2011|
|Denver Wolverines||Denver, Colorado||2010|
|Houston Hornets||Houston, Texas||2011|
|Los Angeles Raiders||Los Angeles, California||2011|
|Orange County Outlaws||Orange County, California||2011|
|Pittsburgh Sledgehammers||Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania||2009|
|Seattle Force||Seattle, Washington||2010|
In 2011 the Jacksonville Axemen also launched a reserve grade competition, the "Firehouse Subs" Southeastern Rugby League Championship, which acts as a feeder club system for the Axemen to further develop players. The competing teams are the Daytona Gearheads, the Jacksonville Hatchets, and the Orlando Adrenaline.
Rugby League development programs
The USARL has supported the establishment of the American Youth Rugby League Association (AYRLA), a clinic and game program for juniors run through high schools in Rhode Island and as of 2012 Philadelphia.
Mikhael Shammas of the Boston 13s has also endeavoured to establish a North American Match Officials Association to improve officiating quality of the game within North America.
The 2013 season has seen substancial growth of the game with the establishment of a New England 9s tournament and an under 23's competition, as well as regular school competitions in Rhode Island and Boston under the ARLYA banner.
- Mascord, Steve (January 12, 2011). "Discord 2011: Edition 2". rleague.com. Archived from the original on January 19, 2011. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
- "New Rugby League Competition Announced". rugbymag.com. Rugby Magazine. January 12, 2011. Archived from the original on January 19, 2011. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
- "Breakaway league launched in the US". code13rugbyleague.com. January 12, 2011. Archived from the original on January 19, 2011. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
- "Eagles Cease Operations". fairfaxeagles.com. April 12, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
- Mark Reynolds (July 23, 2011). "Providence-based rugby team battles for recognition". The Providence Journal. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
- "USARL Constitution, Teams, Entry Qualifications Announced". Philadelphia Fight Rugby News and Press. fightrugby.com. February 18, 2011. Retrieved February 21, 2011.
- "USA Rugby League (USARL) Names Peter Illfield Chairman". usarugbyleague.com. USA Rugby League. January 13, 2011. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
- "USA Rugby League name a Chairman-the Fight's own Peter Illfield". Philadelphia Fight Rugby News and Press. fightrugby.com. January 13, 2011. Archived from the original on January 19, 2011. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
- Daniel Andruczyk (August 28, 2011). "It's Hard to Keep a Game of Rugby League Down". rugbyleagueinternationalscores.com. Retrieved August 30, 2011.
- "USARL Constitution, Teams, Entry Qualifications Announced". usarugbyleague.com. USA Rugby League. February 17, 2011. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
- "USARL welcomes the Blues". usarl.com. USA Rugby League. December 12, 2011. Retrieved December 12, 2011.
- "USA Developing Regions". usarugbyleague.com. USA Rugby League. 2011. Retrieved March 29, 2011.
- "Draw for this Weekends 9′s Announced". usarugbyleague.com. USA Rugby League. May 23, 2011. Retrieved June 10, 2011.
- "Three New Teams Coming to Florida". jaxaxe.com. Jacksonville Axemen. May 27, 2011. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
- Youth program expands to Philadelphia | <urn:uuid:1d7e9ea3-a8df-407a-9b88-8aecef8b4826> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Rugby_League | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912281 | 2,079 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Reporting Tim Kephart
Legislative Session Coverage
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The latest numbers from the U.S. Labor Department offer a mixed bag of news to President Barack Obama.
According to the Labor Department, U.S. hiring slowed in March as employers added just 120,000 new jobs. Most analysts had predicted job gains of roughly 200,000 in March.
Still, the overall unemployment rate in the United States dropped to 8.2 percent, which is the lowest rate since January 2009 when President Obama was inaugurated.
Political pundits have said for Obama to get re-elected, the unemployment rate will need to drop below eight percent.
Overall, the economy has added 858,000 jobs since December. It’s the best four months of hiring in two years, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the current pace is unlikely to continue if consumers don’t spend more. | <urn:uuid:5ec72336-828b-4b47-820e-c0a37290522d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/04/06/unemployment-rate-drops-job-creation-slows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96105 | 190 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Within months, the company raised $386 million with the sale of several Bethlehem Steel subsidiaries, including Georgia-based steel product distributor J.M. Tull Industries and plastics maker Kusan, which together netted $16 million in an otherwise dismal 1985.
Almost as if Bethlehem Steel's new chief executive had waved a magic wand, the red ink turned to black. The fourth quarter of 1986 brought net income of $34 million and was the first of what would be four consecutive years of profits. Williams, the guy who knew the sweat that goes into making a steel beam, was a hero to some workers.
By 1987, nearly a decade of payroll trimming, more efficient production and the end to extravagant spending, such as funding Suite 310 and lump-sum golden parachutes for executives, was starting to improve the bottom line. The continuous casters Trautlein built at Burns Harbor and Sparrows Point for $500 million were beginning to pump out profit-making steel. The state-of-the-art casters allowed workers to shape steel directly from its molten form, eliminating the need for large, expensive mills for rolling ingots into slabs and bringing Bethlehem out of the dark ages of steelmaking. Even the bankruptcy rumors that had dogged the company for nearly a year were starting to wane.
But Bethlehem Steel's fleeting resurgence also was the result of a strong national economy and the misfortunes of its competitors.
The nation's largest steel producer, U.S. Steel, wasn't producing steel during a six-month work stoppage. LTV, which acquired Republic Steel and Jones & Laughlin Steel and toppled Bethlehem as the second largest producer in 1984, was struggling to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Wheeling-Pittsburgh and Kaiser Steel companies were also mired in bankruptcy.
The national economy was picking up. People were buying cars again, investors were building office complexes and demand for steel was rising after a sharp decline in the first half of the decade.
Most important, a weak dollar compared to foreign currency was making American steel a better buy internationally. What government trade quotas and tariffs couldn't do, a strong economy and a weak dollar did almost overnight. Imports that made up 26 percent of the steel consumption through the mid-1980s plummeted to under 18 percent in the late 1980s and early '90s. Steel prices spiked by 10 percent, and Bethlehem was profitable once again. Between 1987 and 1990 the company recorded $830 million in profits, including a record $403 million in 1988.
Still, the 4,500 workers at the flagship plant in Bethlehem weren't buying it. Yes, the bottom line looked better, the company staved off bankruptcy and a stock that sank below $5 a share in 1986 was pushing $20 by the end of 1992. But there were ominous signs that the trouble never really left.
Bethlehem Steel was shrinking fast. Pensioners outnumbered workers more than three to one, mini-mills Nucor and Chaparral Steel were selling beams that Bethlehem Steel executives thought could never be efficiently rolled from electric furnace steel. And most worrisome to workers, all of the profits Bethlehem Steel intended for modernization were leaving Bethlehem. More than $80 million was about to be spent on a new electric furnace at the Steelton plant -- something that workers desperately had wanted in Bethlehem. To employees, that was a clear message that the company had already given up on its flagship plant.
A $50 million upgrade of the Grey mill in 1988 was only a pitiful Band-Aid. It was spent to modernize the middle mill of a three-mill operation. The steel went into the same outdated blooming mill, where it was reduced to a dog-bone-shaped form, and still came out of the same obsolete finishing mill, where the beam was completed. The fact it was rolled into a beam by passing through a new, modern Grey mill in the middle didn't change the product. Without an additional $200 million to replace the two other mills, the money to replace the Grey mill was money burned, workers argued.
Management had given up on the flagship plant long ago, says Stephen "Hector" Nemes. He was a beam straightener and crane operator in the Bethlehem plant before he was elected to the union's grievance committee and worked his way up to staff representative for the United Steelworkers International union. With more than 16 years' experience in grievance arbitration and contract negotiations, he'd learned he was more likely to get what he wanted by checking the militant union talk at the door. He found respect and cordial words, even for the cutthroat company negotiators other union representatives treated with only scorn. | <urn:uuid:3cce9360-c81d-4e73-abf6-9109673639e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.mcall.com/2003-12-14/topic/3501498_1_bethlehem-steel-martin-tower-mini-mills/8 | 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 | 0.979605 | 949 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Jindal said he’ll head to the sinkhole site next week. The announcement comes after residents displaced since early August criticized the governor’s absence and after local media highlighted Jindal’s refusal to say whether he’d check out the state’s response efforts in person.
In a new hands-on approach, Jindal visited at the governor’s mansion Monday with Assumption Parish leaders and state lawmakers from the area to discuss the work to stabilize the site. They also discussed concerns about the threat of a new sinkhole developing in the area.
Scientists say the sinkhole formed after the failure of an underground salt cavern operated by a Houston-based firm, Texas Brine Co. LLC, which extracted brine and piped it to nearby petrochemical facilities. The cavern failure released oil and natural gas from formations along the salt dome face.
Jindal said he’s meeting Wednesday with officials from the company to push for buyouts for the evacuated families.
“It’s time for Texas Brine to step up and do the right thing for the people in Bayou Corne,” Jindal said in a statement.
The sinkhole opened up in August near a community along Bayou Corne, a sparsely populated area of swampland about 40 miles south of Baton Rouge.
Officials issued an evacuation order to about 350 people living in the area that has remained in effect for more than seven months, with no immediate end in sight.
Jindal had repeatedly said he’s received regular updates from his agency chiefs about the state’s ongoing response efforts to the sinkhole.
But the governor — considered a potential 2016 presidential candidate — hadn’t made the hour-long trip to see the damage and meet with residents, even as he traveled the nation for Republican campaigns, fundraisers and speeches.
A spokesman didn’t immediately respond Monday to a question about why the governor waited so long to visit the sinkhole site.
No buyouts have been offered to Bayou Corne residents so far, with Texas Brine officials saying they are focused on immediate response efforts. Some residents have filed lawsuits against the company.
Bruce Martin, vice president of operations for Texas Brine, told lawmakers recently that the company expects to have the site fully contained by April.
But worries have arisen about another nearby cavern owned by Texas Brine that is closer to the edge of the salt dome than originally thought. Jindal said state agency leaders have drawn up a response plan in case it’s needed.
“According to the Department of Natural Resources, there are no data at this time to suggest a failure is occurring or that a failure is imminent. But, we are not taking anything for granted,” the governor said.
The natural resources department is running tests on the second Texas Brine cavern to determine its risk of collapse, and Jindal said the agency will have more data by the end of April about the cavern’s structural integrity.
The second cavern is close to a main highway running through the parish. Jindal’s office said the transportation department has come up with detour plans if the road is threatened and would consider rerouting and rebuilding the highway further north if needed. | <urn:uuid:d17f8c6b-e1e0-4896-82ea-e1106cee2f0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stmarynow.com/view/full_story/21954115/article-Jindal-plans-to-visit-Bayou-Corne-sinkhole | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963625 | 669 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The animal research industry is a multi-billion pound global industry responsible for inflicting pain, suffering and death on millions of animals around the world every year. It is also highly secretive and little information about it is publicly available, except the ‘positive’ stories researchers choose to share.
In the UK, the research industry and government claim that animals in laboratories are well cared for by competent individuals and adequately protected by laws and regulations. The reality, however, is often different.
Pioneering Undercover Work
The BUAV pioneered the use of investigative work in the UK, placing undercover workers within laboratories and animal supply companies. Our first undercover investigation in 1989 at Huntingdon Research Centre (now Huntingdon Life Sciences) revealed, for the very first time, the plight of beagles in toxicity testing and caused a public and political outcry.
It provided a damning insight into the workings of the Government's much-heralded Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.
The BUAV has expanded its undercover operations to countries as far afield as Mauritius, Tanzania, Indonesia, Barbados, Japan, Thailand, Belgium, Portugal, Germany and Spain.
In 1992, BUAV’s Paradise Lost investigation was the first ever in-depth investigation of the trade in primates for research, and played a major role in changing the very nature of the international trade in primates.
The revelations of the cruelties inherent in the wild-caught trade received international media coverage and resulted in source country trade restrictions, government bans on the use of wild-caught animals, and airline embargoes. In the UK, the government announced a ban on the use of wild-caught monkeys in research.
Most recently we have uncovered a massive and expanding lucrative trade in primates for research from Laos to feed the international research industry.
Hitting the Headlines
The BUAV’s investigation at the University of Cambridge in 2002 showed the deliberate infliction of brain damage on marmosets in an effort to mimic human diseases. We also investigated the use of primates in toxicity testing at Covance in 2003, an international contract testing laboratory, in Germany. Both investigations received widespread international media and political attention, including in-depth coverage on the BBC flagship political programme, Newsnight.
BUAV subsequently took the UK Government to the High Court in a landmark legal challenge concerning the way in which the Home Office regulates animal experiments.
To this day, the BUAV's high profile and professional investigations, many of which are months if not years in the making, continue to be one of the most effective weapons the anti-vivisection movement has against animal experiments.
Over the years, the BUAV has been a major force in taking on animal dealers, laboratories and governments striking at the very heart of the animal research industry. We have captured on film images never before placed in the public domain, and exposed cruelty, malpractice, breaches and irregularities in legislation, and the inadequate implementation of legislation. Above all we have exposed the grim reality of life and death for animals in the research industry. | <urn:uuid:033a6753-a6de-490e-b983-c518e3171563> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mailto:%20Angela.Bunting@buav.org/undercover-investigations/thehistoryofbuavinvestigations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936156 | 626 | 2.453125 | 2 |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact: Deron Lovaas, Natural Resources Defense Council, (202) 289-2384; Betsy Otto, American Rivers, (202) 347-7550 ext. 3033; John Bailey, Smart Growth America, (202) 974-5157
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Report: Sprawl Compounds Water Crisis in Drought-Stricken Cities
WASHINGTON, DC (August 28, 2002) -- Sprawl development is making the nation's drought even more painful by impairing the landscape's ability to recharge aquifers and surface waters, according to a new report released today by American Rivers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Smart Growth America. Nationwide, paved-over land sends billions of gallons of water into streams and rivers as polluted runoff, rather than into the soil to replenish groundwater. This groundbreaking report, Paving the Way to Water Shortages: How Sprawl Aggravates Drought, estimates the extent of this phenomenon in 18 rapidly growing cities. The authors urge communities to adopt "smart growth" policies to reign in sprawl and protect water supplies and watersheds into the future.
"Sprawl development is literally sending billions of gallons of badly needed water down the drain each year the storm drain," said Betsy Otto, senior director for watershed programs at American Rivers. "Sprawl hasn't caused this year's drought, but sprawl is making water supply problems worse in many cities."
The authors estimate that in Atlanta, the nation's most rapidly sprawling metropolitan area, recent sprawl development sends an additional 57 billion to 133 billion gallons of polluted runoff pour into streams and rivers each year. This water would have otherwise filtered through the soil to recharge aquifers and provide underground flows to rivers, streams and lakes. The report gives the first estimates of groundwater losses due to sprawl development in the 1980s and 1990s. A table of estimates for 18 of the nation's most land-consuming metro areas follows below.
The implication of this phenomenon is tremendous -- but the actual impacts on the public's water use vary from city to city. On average, 40 percent of Americans get their water directly from underground sources across the country. Groundwater also supplies, on average, 50 percent of the water in the rivers and lakes that serve everyone else.
"As over-development washes more rainwater away instead of replenishing the water table, drought conditions get worse," said Deron Lovaas, deputy director of the smart growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Sprawl is hanging us out to dry. Smart growth is a way to ease our water crisis."
Sprawling land development -- characterized by strip malls and highway-dependent residential, commercial, and office developments -- is gobbling up the American countryside at an alarming rate. Government figures suggest that 365 acres of forest, farmland, and other open space succumb to sprawl per hour. In most communities the amount of developed land is growing much faster than the population.
The authors conclude that the link between sprawl and drought needs to be examined more closely. The report's results suggest that policies to promote "smart growth" and low-impact development techniques are needed to ensure adequate water supplies and to protect aquatic resources into the future.
"By investing wisely in places we live, we can both protect our environment and improve our quality of life," said John Bailey, associate director of Smart Growth America.
The three organizations called for more money for scientific study to determine more precisely the extent of sprawl's impact on water resources and watersheds. In addition, the report presents a series of policy recommendations that are consistent with the principles generally known as "Smart Growth." The authors conclude that strengthening regional cooperation on planning and concentrating development in already urbanized areas can protect water supplies by slowing the development of open space and containing the spread of impervious surfaces.
Full report, Q&A, photos, and estimated water losses in 18 cities now available online at www.americanrivers.org
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Sprawl's Impacts on Water Resources and Watersheds, 8/28/02 in PDF format, 146k.
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- NRDC meets the highest standards of the Wise Giving Alliance of the Better Business Bureau. | <urn:uuid:2e35b995-0d0e-474a-b904-883bf98ba5c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/020828.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911575 | 1,024 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Inside the Plan B meltdown
posted at 9:01 am on December 21, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
NRO’s Robert Costa was on the Hill last night, watching as disaster unfolded for John Boehner on the House floor. All day long, House GOP leadership predicted a close but successful vote in forcing the Senate to reject a plan that raised taxes on millionaires while keeping rates at current levels for everyone else. But when a vote to replace the sequester ended up a lot closer than GOP whips had predicted, Boehner understood that the writing was on the wall for his Plan B political strategy.
When Boehner threw in the towel, though, even his critics in the caucus were stunned:
Boehner’s speech to the group was short and curt: He said his plan didn’t have enough support, and that the House would adjourn until after Christmas, perhaps even later. But it was Boehner’s tone and body language that caught most Republicans off guard. The speaker looked defeated, unhappy, and exhausted after hours of wrangling. He didn’t want to fight. There was no name-calling. As a devout Roman Catholic, Boehner wanted to pray. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he told the crowd, according to attendees.
There were audible gasps of surprise, especially from freshman lawmakers who didn’t see the meltdown coming. Boehner’s friends were shocked, and voiced their disappointment so the speaker’s foes could hear. “My buddies and I said the same thing to each other,” a Boehner ally told me later. “We looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and just groaned. This is a disaster.”
Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, a burly former car dealer, stood up and urged the conference to get behind the speaker. “How the hell can you do this?” Kelly asked, according to several people inside the room. A few of Boehner’s critics told Kelly to stop lecturing, but most were silent. They had been battling against “Plan B” all week, and quite suddenly, they had crippled the leadership. Boehner sensed the tension, requested calm, and then exited the room.
It’s not just Boehner allies who may end up regretting the failure:
“I don’t want to talk to the people who ruined this, at least right now,” a retiring House member told me. “They don’t get it.” Another senior member told me that Boehner was always going to struggle with the whip count since most House conservatives have little interest in seeing the speaker strike any kind of deal. “Boehner was trying to play chess and the caucus was playing checkers,” he said, sighing. “Boehner is willing to lose a pawn for a queen. I’m not sure about the rest.”
Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a conservative with libertarian leanings, was stunned. As he walked back to his office, he said the episode was unfortunate, even though he was planning to vote against the measure. For the past month, since House leaders booted him off the budget committee, he has been railing against Boehner for his management style. But even Amash wondered whether the House GOP was making the right move. “Too many people in there were arguing that this thing is a tax increase, and I don’t think that’s what Boehner was trying to do,” he said. As much as he disagrees with Boehner’s approach, even he regretted how the speaker’s plan was killed.
Be sure to read it all. While Boehner came under considerable heat for this strategy, he’s playing a losing hand overall anyway. Plan B wouldn’t have even gotten a Senate vote, but neither will any bill pushed by the conservative wing, either. Plan B would have at least given Republicans some measure of political cover to insist that they weren’t blocking middle-class tax stability, especially since the bill that Boehner pulled would have addressed tax rates separately, as well as the AMT patch. And if by chance the Senate felt forced to take it up and pass it, the bill would have left the debt limit as a big bargaining chip for February without keeping most taxpayers hostage.
Instead, Boehner lost control of the caucus, and with it any juice Boehner might have now or in February. That’s Boehner’s fault in large measure, too; he shouldn’t have gone to the floor without knowing he could get enough support to pass the bill. But the failure of this measure makes it very easy for Democrats and the media to paint the House GOP as so resistant to new revenues that they’re willing to obstruct tax relief for over 99% of the country, even though Democrats had said they wouldn’t pass it.
Will this push us over the fiscal cliff? I will have a few thoughts on that later.
Breaking on Hot Air | <urn:uuid:48e7d87d-6b40-4f0e-86f6-448e80a4f550> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/21/inside-the-plan-b-meltdown/comment-page-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985318 | 1,054 | 1.5 | 2 |
You wouldn’t wait to go to the emergency room if you thought you were having a heart attack. Why would you wait if you thought you were having a stroke? Time lost is brain lost. Learn the BE FAST symptoms. If you experience any, don’t wait. Call 911 and have the ambulance get you to Gundersen Lutheran—the area’s only Primary Stroke Center—right away.
B = Sudden loss of coordination and Balance
E = Sudden loss of vision or double vision (Eyes)
F = Weakness on one side of the Face
A = Arm or leg weakness on one side
S = Difficulty speaking or understanding Speech
T = Time symptoms started
A sudden and severe headache can be another sign. | <urn:uuid:8e991b7f-36a3-49d1-a8b5-692196cfa6e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gundersenhealth.org/neuroscience/stroke/be-fast | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944931 | 157 | 1.578125 | 2 |
- The South Platte River Trail leads from Julesburg southwest to Ovid, then crosses the South Platte River and returns northeastward to Julesburg on Interstate 76. This is the shortest of scenic byways in Colorado with a length of only 19 miles. Highlights on this route include the only Pony Express stop in Colorado and Fort Sedgwick (built in 1865). This is also a segment of the Lincoln Highway, the first coast to coast auto route in the United States, and the path of many fifty-niners, heading to the mountains around Denver to seek their fortune.
Recreation - This route is excellent for history lovers, because it brings the events of many different eras of Colorados past together in one day trip. Hunters and anglers will enjoy the lands of the Sedgwick Bar and Julesburg State Wildlife Areas.
Climate - Climate conditions in Colorado should be taken seriously throughout the state. Snow and ice are common on roads and trails from mid-October through late April. In the summer months snow is still possible but less common. Varying conditions throughout a given day can be expected throughout the year. Remember that summer days can typically have beautiful sunny mornings and short sudden thunderstorms in the afternoon. Summer on the plains can be very hot. Temperatures reach the triple digits frequently. Bring plenty of water on this road trip.
This scenic byway is located in the northeaster corner of the state. The scenic byway literally makes a rectangular trip around the waters of the South Platte River as they enter Colorado. | <urn:uuid:e8f6c189-382b-477e-946a-4021b87ecdef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wildernet.com/pages/area.cfm?areaID=COSBSP&CU_ID=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937005 | 317 | 2.171875 | 2 |
As recently as the 1960's, sickle cell disease was considered an issue of childhood care, since relatively few patients survived very far into adulthood. No universal cure for the disorder has been developed. However, improvements in general medical care and the development of palliative treatments have extended life expectancy well into adulthood. The general medical services available through pediatric departments are generally well organized and comprehensive. In contrast, the medical services of most adult hospitals lack comprehensive services for adults with sickle cell disease. Care often becomes fragmented for adults with sickle cell disease.
Adolescents with chronic illnesses need appropriate transition to adult care. Children with cystic fibrosis, thalassemia, congenital heart disease and other genetic disorders face barriers when leaving pediatric care. Appropriate transition of the adolescent from pediatric to an adult system of care is very important. The consequent disruption in continuity of care often produces problems that could have been prevented.
A smooth transition process requires a close interface between pediatric and adult providers. Patient trust in adult providers to a large degree depends on a vote of confidence in those physicians by the pediatricians. A good working relationship is the best way to create such confidence. Further, the issue of adult care must be developed slowly for both patient and family. Abrupt transfers are likely to work poorly. The seeds of the concept that the patient will become an adult and will need new providers should be laid early, beginning even as early as 12 years of age.
Our foremost goal as health care providers must be to keep patients in the medical care system. Only then can we execute our second goal, the delivery of true preventative care to patients with sickle cell disease. In this process we must develop programs to assess the medical and psychosocial needs of these young people. Using this information, we can develop specific individual and programmatic interventions. Our key challenge is to avoid having youth and young adults "fall through the cracks" as they move between pediatric and adult care. Organized transition programs can facilitate this process.
For transition resources, visit www.floridatransitionproject.ucf.edu | <urn:uuid:eaf7d69b-fda0-4637-9906-bb8c57c432df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sicklecelldisease.org/index.cfm?page=transition-from-adolescent-to-adult-care&CFID=6247852&CFTOKEN=9e11bb2ebde42e60-C882F12E-0338-8730-45494FC61C13CBF9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960726 | 428 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Space colonists from Pilgrim I, Earth's first spaceship to colonize the outer regions, have spent 30 years in their new home. It's a lonely barren place and they are waiting for a ship from... See full summary »
Anthology type science fiction program with a different cast each week. Tending toward the hard science, space travel, time travel, and human evolution it tries to examine in each show some... See full summary »
Produced at the same time as the more well-known Twilight Zone, this series fed the nation's growing interest in paranormal suspense in a different way. Rather than creating fictional ... See full summary »
Will J. White
Space colonists from Pilgrim I, Earth's first spaceship to colonize the outer regions, have spent 30 years in their new home. It's a lonely barren place and they are waiting for a ship from to arrive to transport them home. Some of the colonists are at their wits end and another one, the 9th in six months, commits suicide. They are led by William Benteen, who they call Captain, a tough no-nonsense type who does his best to keep the together. They rejoice when the ship arrives and are given three days to prepare for their departure. As the day approaches however, Benteen assumes the community will stay together on Earth. When he realizes that most in the community will go their own way once they get home, he decides they should stay. When the group decides otherwise, Benteen is left with only one option. Written by
During one of his monologues, Captain Benteen talks about the planet never experiencing night due to the presence of two suns. For this geometry to be true, the suns would have to be on opposite sides of the planet, yet they are clearly close together in the sky. This would actually leave night across the opposing hemisphere of the planet's surface. See more »
Now listen to me. I want to tell you some things about the Earth that you haven't heard before. Things that are ugly. Things that are wrong. Things... that cannot be lived with. There is violence on Earth. There are hatreds! And jealousy! Now listen to me, listen to me and listen carefully. The Earth is a place we do not know. The Earth is a place we have never lived in. It is a society we do not belong in. If we leave here, we will die. We will *die*! We'll be committing suicide if we go back ...
[...] See more »
This was one of my favorite TZ episodes and I grew up with them from the beginning. What is interesting about this one is Rod Serling's naming of the starship captain "Captain Benteen" which was the name of one of Custer's doomed company commanders at Little Big Horn. A great historical allusion which is sorely lacking in TV today. James Whitmore did a great job portraying a benevolent dictator trying to hang onto his power, which had become his identity and reason for living. I agree with other reviewers who have said that this episode is not so much a quest for absolute power but rather the trait in human nature that once you get into a position of authority it is hard to relinquish.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you? | <urn:uuid:7b06076c-06fb-4ee3-bb0f-795466cde98e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734606/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967771 | 677 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A masterpiece of world theatre, Shakuntala, which means one who is brought up by birds (Shakun), is an epic love story, known and revered by South Asians the world over. It is about King Dushyanta and a devout young woman, Shakuntala, who meet in innocence, fall in love, then are cruelly separated before they are eventually reconciled and reunited in eternity. Their child is destined to become the enlightened ruler of the world. Poetic and deeply human, this story takes us on a magnificent, emotion-filled journey that is profound and far-reaching. This marks the first professional production of Shakuntala in Canada.
Adapted and Directed by Charles Roy, Choreography by Hari Krishnan, Original music by Reza Jacobs.
Set Design by Teresa Przybylski, Costumes by Milan Shahani, Lighting Design by Itai Erdal.
Shakuntala by Kalidasa
February 4 - 15, 2009
Fleck Dance Theatre at Harbourfront Centre
Queen’s Quay Terminal
Shakuntala is part of World Stage Festival at Harbourfront Centre
Preview: Wednesday, February 4 at 8:00 PM
Opening: Thursday, February 5 at 8:00 PM
Performances: Tues – Sat at 8:00 pm | Matinées: Sat/Sun at 2:00pm
The legend of the exquisitely beautiful Shakuntala and the mighty King Dushyanta is a thrilling love story from the ancient epic, Mahabharata, which lies at the origin of Indian culture and religion. The great poet, Kalidasa, retold the story in his immortal play, The Recognition of Shakuntala or (Abhijnanashakuntalam.)
In bringing Shakuntala to modern Canadian audiences, I have sought to underline the universal qualities of Kalidasa’s play by using a very diverse cast and by mixing many theatrical traditions with those from classical Indian theatre. By taking these traditions from all over the world and mixing them together, we’re actually able to extract elements that might in some way relate to our audiences here, thereby allowing them to access this glorious world of 5th century India, and hopefully to unlock the play’s unique and very rich power.-- Charles Roy
Charles was born in Vancouver to Indian and British parents. He studied at McGill University (BA), Visva-Bharati University (Santiniketan) and York University (MFA – Directing). He is the co-founder of the Classical Theatre Project, Talking Camel Productions and The Lower Ossington Theatre. Recent directing credits include: Hamlet (Classical Theatre Project), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (CTP), Romeo and Juliet (Dora Nomination), the Canadian premiere of Neil LaBute’s Autobahn, Shakuntala (York University), and Look Back In Anger (Santiniketan Dramatics, Kolkata, India.) Most recently he composed and played the music for The Great Gatsby at the Lower Ossington Theatre.
David Collins has performed extensively on stage, film, TV and radio, throughout Canada and the US. This year he was a Company member at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, performing in Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labor's Lost, and Ceasar and Cleopatra. Most recently he received a Dora nomination for his performance in Twilight Café. Toronto audiences will remember him in The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God (Mirvish), Comedy of Errors (Canstage), Pusha Man(Theatre Passe Muraille), Bunnicula (LKYPT), Film and Television: Mr. Magorium’s Magic Emporium, Regenesis, Owing Mahoney, Shoot em Up, The Incredible Hulk, MVP and Nurse Fighter Boy.
Frank Cox-O’Connell (Vidusaka, Durvasas)
Recent acting credits include The Drawer Boy (Theatre Passe Murialle as well as a British tour with Farnham Maltings, UK), Sanctuary Song (Tapestry New Opera for Luminato), Bach at Leipzig (Theatre Athena) and The Demonstration (Theatre Direct). Frank also creates and performs new work with, among others, Small Wooden Shoe (with whom he is currently developing Dedicated To The Revolutions for Buddies in Bad Times spring ’09), Public Recordings, and One Reed Theatre (founding member creating Never Underestimate The Power, It’s Hard to Count to a Million and Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With Us – spotlight award for performance SummerWorks ‘06), As a musician, Frank plays drums and banjo with Boys Who Say No. He’s a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.
PRAGNA DESAI (Priyamvad)
Most recently: Bhopal in Canada Steel for which Pragna was nominated for a Dora Award - Outstanding Performance. Selected TV and Film: CBC’s The Border, ABC's In Justice; NBC's award-winning series ER; Slings and Arrows; Train 48 on Global; Missing; Sue Thomas FBI; Blue Murder; Mutant X; Tom Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears; Deepa Mehta's Bollywood/Hollywood. Selected Theatre: Sabra in Eastern Front Theatre’s production of In The Backseat. Two seasons at the Stratford Festival in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pride and Prejudice, Tartuffe, The Alchemist, and the Governor General award-winning play by Timothy Findley Elizabeth Rex; Canstage; LKTYP; and Great Expectations at Winnipeg's Prairie Theatre Exchange. Pragna is the recipient of a Tyrone Guthrie Award from the Stratford Festival for Outstanding Talent.
Anita is a graduate of the acting program of theNational Theatre School of Canada and holds a degree in English, Theatre and South Asian Languages from theUniversity of British Columbia. Dancing for 12 years, Anita's training originates in Kathak, but she has also studied Bharatnatyam and Odissi. Theatre credits include her self-written/self-performed The Misfit (PUSH Festival, Vancouver/ Theatre Passe Muraille) and Fish Eyes (The Other Festival, India.) Acting Credits include: Bloom (Modern Times Stage), Bombay Black (Cahoots Theatre Projects/Arts Club Theatre), and Tales from Ovid (Centaur Theatre). Film Credits include: Force Four/CBC's Murder Unveiled, loosely based on the true life story of Jassi Sidhu, for which Anita received her first acting award at the Asian Festival of First Films in Singapore. Additionally, she was one of 50 artists invited to celebrate the Canada Council for the Arts' 50th Anniversary with the Governor General, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaële Jean. Anita was Playwright in Residence withNightswimming Theatrelast season and was invited this summer by British Columbia's Ministryof the Attorney General to perform excerpts from The Misfit for their annual forum on domestic violence. Upcoming in 2009: Aisha n' Ben (South Asian Arts/ Theatre Jihad), Rice Boy (Stratford Festival) and Diverted (CBC Television).
Shakuntala marks Carrie-Lynn's first full length production with Pleiades Theatre and she couldn't be more thrilled to be working with this incredible cast and creative team. Since graduating from Sheridan College's Music Theatre Performance Program Carrie-Lynn has worked with The Classical Theatre Project in Toronto performing such roles as: Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Ophelia (Hamlet), Helena (A Midsummer Night's Dream), and was a member of the ensemble in the Dora nominated production of Macbeth. Carrie-Lynn is excited to work on another challenging and inspiring classical piece.
Sanjay Talwar (King Dushyanta)
Originally from Halifax, Sanjay was Artistic Director of Shakespeare in the Rough for the last four years and directed their most recent production, The Merchant of Venice, this past summer. Recent acting credits include Rosencrantz in Hamlet (Soulpepper) and two productions of Helen's Necklace at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto and at Pi Theatre in Vancouver, where he won a Jessie Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sanjay played a recent role in CBC'c The Border, episode "Target of Opportunity" and appeared in the feature films The Dawn of the Dead and A Touch of Pink starring Jimi Mistry and Suleka Mathew.
Box Office: (416) 973-4000, Extension 1 | <urn:uuid:9865d3e9-c1c5-46a4-89ce-e7c07b328007> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mybindi.com/articles/shakuntala | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934779 | 1,800 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Badly treated orphans, a prophecy, witches, wizards and magical creatures: These tropes of children's fantasy fiction would seem to have little capacity still to thrill or delight, if only because of the frequency with which they appear in print. But a great story is all in the telling, and in "The Emerald Atlas" the telling is superb.
First-time novelist John Stephens has created a vicarious adventure for children ages 9-15—the first in a trilogy—filled with unexpected twists and marvelously distinct and vivid characters. Of the three children at the center of the story—Kate, Emma and Michael—only Kate, the eldest, has any memory of a time before they lived as unwanted itinerants, shuttled from one miserable orphanage to the next.
Kate vaguely remembers waking one snowy night, seeing the silhouette of a strange man in the doorway and being begged by her tearful mother to promise that she'll take care of her brother and sister—but nothing more.
The Emerald Atlas
By John Stephens
Knopf, 418 pages, $17.99
With exceptional skill, Mr. Stephens weaves the resulting pathos into the children's characters and into their sibling relationships. Life has made the children brave, quick-witted and self-reliant, but their parentless hearts are hungry, and that longing shapes their actions.
Soon after we meet the siblings, they're shunted onward yet again, this time to a vast and ominous stone house on the edge of a blighted village called Cambridge Falls. They find themselves the sole inmates, with only the company of a lame handyman and a querulous cook, who constantly (and, for the reader, comically) berates the bewildered children for putting on aristocratic airs.
Exploring the house, the three discover a curious room—behind a door that Michael could have sworn wasn't there a moment ago—filled with mysterious objects that include an ancient blank book bound in green leather. This is the Emerald Atlas, "an ocean of power" that suddenly sweeps the children back in time to Cambridge Falls in the grip of a remorseless witch (who, against type, looks like a teenage coquette and sprinkles her repartee with French phrases). Before long, the children have embarked on a quest that will take them back and forth through time, into a dwarf kingdom ruled by a drunken usurper, in and out of battle with monstrous creatures, and—most stirring of all—yield a glimpse of their long-lost mother. | <urn:uuid:74743aa7-ec95-4d36-92ef-be2cf882ea48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471904576230750876077250.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94928 | 518 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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From: Mary <MMacneil@malden.mec.edu> To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion Date: 2001020311:00:11 Subject: Homework Policy At the beginning of the year each team sends home a sheet (which must be signed and returned) explaining their HW policy. All of our middle school students must carry an agenda (assignment notebook) provided by the school to record all assignments every day. At the beginning of class they take out their agendas to record their HW, and take out their HW froom the previous night. I then make a quick trip around the room. If their HW is missing or unacceptable (set your own standards) they get a red signature from the teacher, and must stay after school for 1/2 hour. All teachers in all subjects do this. If the students are not used to this system, be prepared to keep quite a few after school the first couple of weeks. This serves 2 purposes. The homework will get done. Parents have nightly feedback on their children and should recognize a problem early on. Students may phone home if they must let their parents know they are staying. We have been using this system for several years and parents and teachers like it. It is also a simple way to communicate with short notes when necessary. It helps the students with their organizational skills that are a problem for so many of them. If they bring a note from home saying they attempted the HW but had problems completing it they will not get a red signature, but are expected to learn it in class that day - or come after school for extra help. I have the students correct their own HW, and give 2-3 quizzes/week (which may/must be made up if low). Personally, I keep my rankbook by entering the HW followed by the quiz that goes with it, rather than on seperate sheets. I collect and enter HW before tests/quizzes. I enter it as a check, check minus (1/2 credit), 0, 0-NW (no work, no credit), 0-INC, Late (1/2 credit unless absent). This allows them and me to clearly see the relationship between completed HW and highlighted quiz/tests grades. At the end of the term I make out a HW average to count as a test grade. A quick and easy HW motivator is to have a posted monthly HW chart. If a class has perfect HW they get a star that day. At the end of the month come up with a prize for them. (candy, HW pass, special activity?) A little positive peer pressure is not a bad thing, and they enjoy the competition. A simple way to inform parents of missing work is to number and list HW, tests, and quizzes as they appear in your rankbook. Write and Xerox the list, then just check off what is owed. It is quick to periodically update the original list, and saves a lot of time when a parent/student requests a list of missing work. This is probably more info than any of you wanted!
Math Forum Home || The Math Library || Quick Reference || Math Forum Search | <urn:uuid:6d1fe9a0-0331-4465-9538-b88e54e654e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathforum.org/t2t/discuss/message.taco?thread=5103&n=37 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960757 | 681 | 1.671875 | 2 |
What Is Slow Food > Slow Food USA Blog
Posted on Mon, April 26, 2010 by Intern
by intern Christine Binder
Since September 2009, Slow Food members and supporters have sent over 111,000 letters, emails, and petition signatures to Congress in support of healthier school food. At Summit Academy Youngstown Community School in Youngstown, Ohio, students wrote letters and mailed them to Senator Sherrod Brown. Recently, one of Sen. Browns representatives responded with a visit to the school. Barbara Pagani, a teacher at Summit Academy, told us the story of his visit:
Max Blachman, assistant to Senator Sherrod Brown, visited Summit Academy Youngstown Community School on Monday, March 29, 2010. When he called to set up the meeting, he said he had received our very sweet series of notes and was calling to introduce himself. He asked if he could visit and sit down to meet the students behind the letters. He said he would like to close the loop on our outreach to the Senator. When he arrived at our building, the students gave him a warm welcome and Mr. Blachman was warm right back!
Mr. Blachman gave a great talk about democracy and how we had just become involved in our countrys direction by contacting a Senator. He did a great job of explaining the way the government works and what it can do for the students. He took a look at the food we were having for breakfast and politely declined. Mr. Blachman answered about 50 questions from the students. He used words that even the youngest student could understand. He took the time to walk outside and look at our school garden. Mr. Blachman was so warm and friendly that our students came away with the idea that representatives from our government are cool. It was an assembly that our students will never forget.
Contacting Congress about school lunches is a great way for kids (and adults) to make their voices heard on an issue where their health and their futures are at stake. Congress is set to pass a Child Nutrition Bill this year, which means we have a short window of opportunity to encourage legislators to invest in healthier food, strengthen nutrition standards, and support Farm to School programs.
Posted on Fri, April 23, 2010 by Gordon Jenkins
The Child Nutrition Bill thats currently moving through the U.S. Senate would add six cents to the amount that schools receive from the USDA for each school lunch. If youre wondering if these few extra pennies would make any difference, heres a helpful PDF you can download. The school food service company Revolution Foods put it together in order to illustrate the cost of healthy school food.
For example, an increase of ten cents can provide:
*1/4 cup of broccoli
*1/4 cup of freshly cut carrots
*1/4 cup of freshly cut celery
Not too much. Especially not in the midst of what Jamie Oliver is calling Americas darkest moment in health, i.e. the child obesity epidemic.
If you think we can do better than six cents, write a letter to your legislators urging them to fully fund school lunch when Congress passes the Child Nutrition Bill this year.
Posted on Thu, April 15, 2010 by Jerusha Klemperer
by Debra Eschmeyer
When President Obama established a “Presidential task force on childhood obesity” in February, Grist’s Tom Laskawy wondered whether our nation’s first federal food policy council had quietly sprung into being. In a food policy council, the key stakeholders of a region’s food system come together to assess the current food situation and envision ways it might be improved. Food policy councils are a growing phenomenon at the state and municipal level, but such a thing had never existed before at the national level. Does it now?
Well, last week I had the honor of attending the new task force’s White House Childhood Obesity Summit, and it certainly had the flavors of a food policy council: an array of food-policy players across agencies gathered to discuss a key symptom of a food system gone off the rails: childhood obesity.
The task force was charged with developing and submitting to the President in 90 days an interagency plan that “details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan.” As part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! campaign, the task force is engaging both public and private sectors with the primary goal of helping children become more active and eat healthier within a generation, so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight.
Feeding our children better may look at first glance like a softball issue for the first lady; but the Ms. Obama is actually in the opening stages of what looks like a long and complicated fight. but as Time put it:
“If this sounds like a political fight, well, it is. Michelle Obama may be tilling nonpartisan ground with her vegetable garden and child-obesity program, but food has long been political. From soda taxes to corn subsidies, food is about health care costs, environmentalism, education, agriculture and class.”
[to read the rest of this post, go to Grist, by clicking here.
Debra Eschmeyer is an Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Food & Society Fellow and the communications and outreach director of the National Farm to School Network, which is a program of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. While she continues her passion for organic farming on her fifth-generation family farm in Ohio, she currently plows with her pencil from Washington, DC. ]
Posted on Mon, April 05, 2010 by Jerusha Klemperer
by intern Jackie Fortin
On March 3-4, Slow Food Wisconsin Southeast member Martha Davis Kipcak accompanied a small delegation to Washington DC to speak to Wisconsin legislators about securing healthy food for the citys 60,000 school-age children.
A Community Food Systems Advocate and the trip coordinator, Kipcak headed to Washington with Will Allen, CEO and founder of Growing Power, Kymm Mutch, Director of School Nutrition Services for Milwaukee Public Schools, and Emmanuel Pratt, a doctoral candidate in urban planning from Columbia University.
Our goal was to put legs on Michelle Obamas Lets Move campaign, she said. We called ourselves Lets Move Milwaukee.Ҕ
Over the two days, the group met with Sen. Herb Kohl, Sen. Russ Feingold, Rep. Gwen Moore, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Janey Thornton, and two of her colleagues, The NEA Foundation and a Department of Energy representative.
At first, Kipcak didnt think she was fit for the task, but she said the process ended up being simple and empowering.
The chance to talk to staffers, elected officials, and government leaders, for me, reinforced the notion that the real insight on the subject of a sustainable food system is with the people, she said. Thats you and me: folks on the ground every day producing, shopping, preparing and eating.
Kipcak said she would encourage other Slow Food chapters to engage in face-to-face conversations with their legislators, especially if they do so as a coalition with other community partners.
The message is stronger if it comes from a team, and its a better use of everyones time, she said. Its all about building authentic relationships with those that are on the ground doing the work.
According to Kipcak, Activism in some ways kind of scares people because they have this idea that they have to beat their chests, wave their hands and be on the nightly news.
Instead, she said, it is about speaking up, and being informed, mindful and inquisitive. I think more of us are activists than we think.
Posted on Thu, April 01, 2010 by Gordon Jenkins
From Slow Food Chicago
The organizations Slow Food Chicago, Green City Market and Common Threads teamed up earlier this month to hand-deliver 65 letters from grade school students to the Chicago office of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, asking the Senator to invest in the students education and well-being by passing a strong Child Nutrition Bill that help schools serve healthier food. In their letters, students asked for more broccoli, more fruit and healthy food at school, and nutritious food that gets you going at recess.
Congress currently gives schools $2.68 for each lunch served, but with child obesity and health care costs spiraling out of control, that level of funding no longer adds up. As Congress works to update the Child Nutrition Bill next month, the students and the organizations are asking Congress to invest in healthier school lunches.
All of us understand that this is not just about dollarsits about SENSE, Slow Food Chicago Board Member Amy Cox said. How can we collectively work together to make sensible changes for the sake of our future generations wellness?”
At the meeting, Cox made a salad of Chicago lettuce, Illinois walnuts and tarragon, Michigan apples and Wisconsin cheese to show that local, fresh food can be quick, inexpensive, healthy and delicious. In contrast, she and Sara Gasbarra of Green City Market and Kurt Lewis and Courtney Treutelaar of Common Threads presented photos of typical school-lunch fare, including a burger served with fries and chocolate milk, a box of pizza swimming in cheese, and a rib in a puddle of greasy red sauce.
The meeting was positive and productive, and an exciting starting point for future discussions, Cox said. Senator Durbins staff members enjoyed the salad and commented that it was one of the best meetings theyve had with community members.
To follow Slow Food Chicagos lead and join the campaign to help schools serve healthier food, check out the Time for Lunch Campaign.
Photo: at Senator Durbin’s Office. Photo credit Kurt Lewis of Common Threads.
Posted on Thu, March 25, 2010 by Gordon Jenkins
Yesterday, the Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously approved its bill to update child nutrition programs (the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act). The bill will now go to the Senate floor at a date to be determined, no earlier than mid-April.
The committee made no major changes, though we were excited to see Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas increase funding for Farm to School programs to $40 million (inching closer to our goal of $50 million over five years). The bill also strengthens nutrition standards for all the food sold at school, effectively kicking junk food out of school vending machines. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio passed an amendment for an organic food pilot program to get more organic food into school meals, though the amendment doesnt yet have funding.
Overall, the bill invests $500 million per year in child nutrition programs, which falls short of the $1 billion per year proposed by President Obama in order to help schools serve healthier food. Senator Lincoln was hopeful about funding, however, saying:
“I am committed to working to identify additional resources for this legislation…. After reporting this bill I look forward to working with my colleague Senator Baucus and the leadership in the Senate to identify additional funding.”
Funding for healthier food will be paid for by offsets in other parts of the federal budget. Currently, the Child Nutrition bill makes a cut to conservation programs, which is a cut that Slow Food USA does not support particularly when a much larger portion of the budget goes to farm subsidies that support unhealthy processed foods.
On the same day that the committee approved the bill, Slow Food USAs Time for Lunch Campaign surpassed its goal of sending 100,000 letters and petition signatures to Congress. The momentums still growing—click here to learn how you can help out.
Posted on Wed, March 24, 2010 by Jerusha Klemperer
by intern Christine Binder
Yesterday, President Barack Obama signed the health care bill into law. Tucked away inside the massive piece of legislation, there is provision requiring chain restaurants with 20 or more outlets in the United States to list calorie counts on menus, menu boards, and drive-through displays. The law, which affects over 200,000 U.S. restaurants, also applies to vending machines.
In 2008, New York City was the first to mandate calorie counts, and was followed by Seattle, California, and over a dozen other states and municipalities. The Food and Drug Administration will create standards for the labeling, which should come into full effect within the next few years. Soon enough, people all over the country will be able to see the number of calories in an item before they purchase it. According to food policy guru Marion Nestle, calorie labeling has a second positive effect: it motivates fast food and chain restaurants to provide lower-calorie offerings.
For more information see Nestle’s blog, Food Politics.
Posted on Mon, March 22, 2010 by Gordon Jenkins
Last week, Slow Food Denver volunteer Andrew Nowak had the opportunity to sit down with one of Senator Michael Bennets staff members in D.C.
In the meeting with Senator Bennets staff, Andrew talked about his nine years of work coordinating Slow Food Denvers Seed to Table School Garden Program. He also encouraged the Senator to help schools serve healthier food by passing a strong Child Nutrition Act and to include legislation to support purchases of local food through Farm to Cafeteria initiatives.
After, Andrew had a few words of encouragement for other Slow Food leaders:
For someone who participated in this arena for the first time, I do feel closer to the process and have learned quite a bit of what goes on. I can’t say that I will become a total political junkie after this experience, but I am a more informed voter. I think you should encourage other Slow Food leaders to reach out and connect with their representatives on this issue.
Well said. Contacting your legislators staff is an opportunity to become someone on whom the staff relies for advice and information. Its a particularly good idea if your Senator is on the Agriculture Committee, because theyll begin marking up the Child Nutrition on March 24.
To learn more about Slow Food Denvers work with local schools, check out what Andrew had to say in this recent article on INDenverTimes.com.
Posted on Fri, March 19, 2010 by Jerusha Klemperer
by intern Julia Landau
Over 100 school food service directors, community activists, and government agency partners will convene at the second Annual Meeting of the organization School Food FOCUS in Chicago on March 25-27, 2010.
School Food FOCUS supports the nations largest urban school districts in their efforts to procure more healthful, more sustainably produced and regionally sourced food. FOCUS was developed in response to a call by urban school districts to transform the quality of school food. The organization is also driven by a recognition that improving the meal service in large school districts with major purchasing power can go a long way towards improving the food system nationwide.
The keynote speaker of next weeks conference is Jan Poppendieck, author of the new book Free For All: Fixing School Food in America (We reviewed it on this blog last month). The meeting will also feature the first Real School Food Showcase - a selection of carefully chosen chicken, whole grain and other food products available for institutional purchasing that strive to meet FOCUS criteria for more healthful, local, and sustainable.
The meeting will highlight demonstrated successes in sourcing local and nutritious school food. There will be a conversation with USDA officials, giving participants the chance to learn more about the new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program and the upcoming Childhood Nutrition Act.
This is seriously good timing for talking about school lunch. Senator Blanche Lincoln just introduced her draft of the Child Nutrition Act, and the Agriculture Committee will begin marking it up on March 24. Slow Food USA is asking legislators to invest in healthier food, strengthen nutrition standards and link schools to local farms click here to learn how you can help.
[photo, from Fed up with school lunch]
Posted on Wed, March 17, 2010 by Gordon Jenkins
Today, Senator Blanche Lincoln unveiled her version of the Child Nutrition Act and announced that the Senate Agriculture Committee will begin marking up the bill next week, on Wednesday, March 24.
Lincolns draft boosts funding for child nutrition programs by $500 million per year, and includes stronger nutrition standards and some support for Farm to School programs. She called it a record investment in child nutrition programs, which is technically true but only because Congress has consistently under-funded school meals in every Child Nutrition Act until now. It’s encouraging to see that there’s any new funding, but Lincoln’s draft only has half of the $1 billion proposed by President Obama, which isn’t enough to transform school lunch in a time when nearly 1 in 3 children is obese or overweight.
If your Senator serves on the Agriculture Committee, you have a short window of time to make an impact. Please take three minutes to make a phone call to your Senators office in D.C. and ask them to support:
Helping schools serve healthier food by making the full investment of $1 billion per year for child nutrition programs.
Including $50 million over five years for grants to start Farm to School programs, which link schools to local farms and support the local economy.
You can learn more about Slow Food USAs campaign to help schools serve healthier food at www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.
Slow Food International also runs a publishing company, Slow Food Editore, which specializes in tourism, food and wine. The library now contains about 40 titles and houses Slow, the award-winning quarterly herald of taste and culture, available in five languages: Italian, English, French, German and Spanish. | <urn:uuid:4b323c25-e4e9-44da-81ba-0b7e7cdad603> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_cat_archive/category/policy/P60/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959016 | 3,664 | 2.203125 | 2 |
"Gun owners are scared," said Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a Colorado group that promotes gun rights.
People in the business are calling this rush to buy guns after the Newton shooting a "banic," meaning people are panicked that Obama would ban guns, said Bill Bernstein, owner of the East Side Gun Shop in Nashville, Tenn.
Tennessee saw among the highest increase in gun checks at the end of last year, with 91,922 background checks in December, up from 59,840 in November. Bernstein said sales after the Connecticut shooting "went on steroids."
Gregory Johnson, of Molalla, Ore., said he and his wife aren't afraid of Obama taking away their guns. He said they are signed up to take a required class to get a concealed license permit because they want to make sure they can protect themselves in a situation like the Dec. 11 shooting spree at an Oregon mall where a gunman killed two people before killing himself. Johnson was shopping in a Milwaukie, Ore., gun store Friday, looking for a small gun his wife could carry in her new job that will have her driving at times alone at night.
"I'm not expecting her to carry, but at least she has the option if she needs it, or at least have something available to her in her vehicle," Johnson said. "That's my priority, my wife's security."
Outside New Orleans, the manager of Gretna Gun Works, Jason Gregory, said surging sales were no cause for celebration. In Louisiana, background checks increased from 38,584 in November to 59,697 in December. Gregory said sales more than doubled in his store, spurred by politicians calling for tougher gun laws.
"They're causing such fear among the people," he said. "It's not the way the market should be working."
Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert in Denver, John Christoffersen in Newtown, Connecticut, Steve DuBois in Milwaukie, Oregon, Mike Kunzelman in New Orleans, Bob Johnson in Montgomery, Alabama; Joseph Pisani in New York and Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
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- Supreme Court to weigh in on... 17 | <urn:uuid:6f09d164-a1d2-4ce7-9c4f-219ffbec49af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765619641/Fewer-gun-buyers-seen-in-US-mass-shooting-states.html?pg=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958898 | 621 | 1.59375 | 2 |
By Jacob Goldstein
A handgun case landed in the Supreme Court this week, stirring up an old question: Are handguns a public health issue? You betcha, argues an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Deaths and injuries from handguns are “a serious public health issue that demands a response not only from law enforcement and the courts, but also from the medical community,” says the piece, published online late yesterday.
Guns were used to kill 30,143 people in 2005, according to the most recent CDC statistics cited by the editorial. A quick look at the stats shows that deaths from firearms were more than twice those from HIV/AIDS (12,543) and just a tad more than those from prostate cancer (28,905) that year.
“In deciding on the constitutionality of the District of Columbia statutes, we hope that the justices will consider not only the intricacies and ambiguities of language in the Second Amendment but also the potential public health consequences,” the editorial continues. “Health care professionals, whose responsibility it is to treat the wounded and the dying, have special reason to be concerned.”
The NEJM also published a perspective piece by Garen J. Wintemute, an emergency medicine doc who studies violence prevention. He argued that “epidemiologically, there can be said to be ‘passive’ gun owners who are analogous to passive smokers. Living in a home where there are guns increases the risk of homicide by 40 to 170% and the risk of suicide by 90 to 460% . . . among women in shelters for victims of domestic violence, two thirds of those who come from homes with guns have had those guns used against them.”
Health Blog Bonus Questions: Are guns a public health issue? What role, if any, should the health-care community play in the gun control and gun rights?
Photo by absolutwade via Flickr | <urn:uuid:c8a3d6a1-52b2-426e-9787-27574cc1aae1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/03/20/are-guns-a-public-health-issue/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963635 | 402 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Kindred, Rachel, Mrs.
The following data is extracted from History of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington, 1889.
MRS. RACHEL KINDRED. - The experience of mothers in crossing the plains is one of those historical wonders which will never be forgotten. It adds much to the value of this volume to incorporate within its pages the story of one of these women, and to present her portrait.
Miss Rachel Mylar was born in Kentucky in 1821, and is a grand-niece of Daniel Boone. While quite young she removed with her parents to Missouri, and there was married to Mr. B.C. Kindred in 1842.
It would quite naturally seem that a mother with a child of a year old should not b obliged to endure the severe hardships of a journey across the plains but in making this trip there was no alternative. Thus on the lonely heights of the Blue Mountains, where the cattle were nearly exhausted, and the road was simply a rocky bed of a caņon, or wound around the stony ridges, it was necessary for her to perform the crossing of the divide on foot. Also at the Cascades, where everything must be transported, she was obliged to walk from the upper to the lower landing of the portage. Her clothing had grown thin and ragged, and her shoes were worn out. Hose were the only covering for her feet; and these were soon cut to pieces upon the rocks and gravel. The simple, ordinary, every day wear and tear of the trip, and the care and anxiety of mind, would seem astonishing enough; and numberless were her shifts to make scanty food and apparel perform the offices of necessity. Her boy, however, born at the end of the trip, the Christmas gift of 1844, seemed no worse for the time of his advent, - nor was his mother.
After reaching a permanent home on Point Adams, near Fort Stevens, Oregon, her labors were not diminished. There fell to her a large if not the larger share of making a home. Her husband's business made frequent absences necessary; and the care of a farm as well as that of the house were hers at such times. Many were her experiences there. The following was characteristic: Going down to the beach in front of her house one day, she found a soldier cast away on the shore and apparently about to die. She got the poor fellow to her house and recognized him as a discharged veteran who was then living with the Indians. He had been cast away by them in his sickness, according to their custom. Mrs. Kindred, however, nursed him back to life through a severe fever. He had no money, and gave her a shotgun as his only way of discharging the debt. Recovering, however, and going back to the Indians, he began to want his gun once more, and while his benefactress was gone from home entered her house and stole it. Incensed at this outrage and breach of gratitude, Mrs. Kindred upon her return took her little boy, and Mr. Schwatka's little girl, and with this escort repaired to the Indian camp, explained matters to the chief, and upon his requisition recovered the piece. The Indians highly disapproved of the soldier's way of doing.
On another occasion, when the Woodpecker was wrecked on the bar, the flour and provisions with which the schooner was loaded were drifted by the tide up stream. Mr. Kindred being away, his wife put out with a rowboat, securing barrels enough of the articles to last her three years. Some of her neighbors, however, happening by with a wagon, supposed it was a "free haul," and helped themselves to a portion while the lady was still out in the stream getting more. This is not an altogether pleasant commentary upon the early times; but we may suppose that the neighbors made the seizure in full innocence of heart.
It was amid the scenes of such a wild and solitary life, surrounded by good but not enchanting Indians, that Mrs. Kindred made her home, reared her family, and created the conditions for her husband from which a competency has been drawn. Women such as she have been the mothers of the state, and deserve no less credit than its fathers.
Source: History of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington, 1889 | <urn:uuid:1f7a45ea-bd08-4210-8e64-488f5d1d9d75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scripts/data/database.cgi?file=Data&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0020674 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9909 | 898 | 2.1875 | 2 |
HTML5 is the latest version among the web designing softwares which are currently in use. This software in new among the designers and there are a lot of things these designers are yet to know. The need of adapting with the continuous advancements in the technology arises and its very essential for the designers to be well versed with the knowledge of this software.
HTML5 gives a wider variety of functionality to its users and at the same time there are many adds-on to the options which were available with the older version of this software. With the introduction of HTML5 there has been a significant decrease in the use of flash templates over the internet. This is due to the fact that this software provides much better workability and more options to its users to work upon. This post will help you out with the various basics as well as complicated tasks on HTML5.
element through a fun example: bouncing a blue ball around.
r code. So let’s dig in. | <urn:uuid:c62e41e6-5acc-457b-87c1-76f3da6f4eda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blog-id.info/article/27-html5-tutorials-and-techniques | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95996 | 198 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Over 50,000 people have bungee jumped off the Victoria Falls Bridge, thrilling to a drop of 111 metres (364 ft) in front of spectacular Victoria Falls. The bridge crosses the Zambezi River, which is the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia in South-Eastern Africa. While neither the highest nor widest falls in the world, Victoria Falls is the largest sheet of falling water in the world with a width of 1,708 meters (5,604 ft) and height of 108 meters (354 ft).
SOLID PERFECT-SURFACE COPPER+ CONDUCTORS (PSC+): Perfect-Surface Copper+ has an astonishingly smooth and pure surface. Proprietary metal-processing technology protects the wire’s surface at every stage of drawing and fabrication. When high-purity low-oxide copper is kept as soft, pure and smooth as possible, it becomes a wonderfully low-distortion PSC+ conductor. PSC+ is manufactured by applying the same exceptional technology to an ultra-pure copper. The resulting sound quality is even more focused and simply less in the way. For over 30 years AudioQuest has pioneered the use of superior metals; yet even we were surprised by the huge leap in performance made possible with Perfect-Surface Technology. PSC+ simply outperforms all previously available copper metals at any price. All of Victoria's conductors are solid. Electrical and magnetic interaction between strands in a conventional cable is the greatest source of distortion, often causing a somewhat dirty, harsh sound. Solid conductors are fundamental toward achieving Victoria’s very clean sound.
POLYETHYLENE AIR-TUBE INSULATION: Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and then released as distortion. All of Victoria’s conductors use PE Air-Tube Insulation because air absorbs next to no energy, and Polyethylene is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile. PE Air-Tube Insulation causes much less of the out-of-focus effect common to other materials.
DIELECTRIC-BIAS SYSTEM (DBS, US Pat #s 7,126,055 & 7,872,195 B1): All insulation slows down the signal on the conductor inside. When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio. AudioQuest’s DBS creates a strong, stable electrostatic field which saturates and polarizes (organizes) the molecules of the insulation. This minimizes both energy storage in the insulation and the multiple nonlinear time-delays that occur. Sound appears from a surprisingly black background with unexpected detail and dynamic contrast. The DBS battery packs will last for years. A test button and LED allow for the occasional battery check.
CARBON-BASED 3-LAYER NOISE-DISSIPATION SYSTEM (NDS): 100% shield coverage is easy. Preventing captured RF Interference from modulating the equipment’s ground reference requires AQ’s Noise-Dissipation System. Metal and Carbon-Loaded synthetics prevent most RFI from reaching the equipment’s ground plane.
DOUBLE-BALANCED ASYMMETRICAL GEOMETRY: Purpose designed for single-ended applications, Double-Balanced Asymmetrical Geometry offers a relatively lower impedance on the ground for a richer, and more dynamic experience. While many single-ended cable designs use a single path for both the ground and the shield, Double-Balanced designs separate the two for cleaner, quieter performance.
COLD-WELDED DIRECT-SILVER PLATED PURE "RED-COPPER" RCA PLUGS: This plug design allows for a connection devoid of solder, which is a common source of distortion. Because the ground shells are stamped instead of machined, the metal can be chosen for low distortion instead of machinability. Red-Copper offers a cleaner, clearer sound over nickel-plated or OFHC metals commonly found in competing manufacturers' plugs. Direct-Silver Plating offers one more important step toward greater clarity and doing no harm to the signal. | <urn:uuid:94ea9ed2-6d12-4ed9-adb3-cd5905dffefa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.soundadvice.com/AudioQuest-Bridges-Falls-series-Analog-Interconnect-RCA-RCA-pair-model-VICTORIA-P3460.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903726 | 890 | 2.28125 | 2 |
You are hereScope of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology
Scope of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology
Is M.Pharm in pharmacology is better than pharmaceutics in industry?
Now a days there is a better scope of Pharmaceutics than any other pharma field. As there are lot of projects and researches are going on the same. Because now a days companies are more concentrating on formulation and development (F & D) rather than R & D. Since R & D is more expensive.
But it is not so that Pharmacology does not have advantages. Each and every subjects have their own advantages. As per all know that if any new molecule or drug is discovered, it will go through kinetics and dynamics studies, toxicology studies, preclinical and clinical studies etc. which all are done in Pharmacology experts.
If a person wants to join any from both, it all depends upon his/her interest. A person is with good knowledge about pharmacology will not progress his/herself in pharmaceutics. It is not a matter to join any of them due to their value but join per your interest then only you grow. | <urn:uuid:0a57a9b7-efbd-405e-897e-5baf086d83d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pharmatutor.org/smart-question-and-answers/ceutics-cology.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944607 | 236 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The Mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.
ALA is the leading advocate for
- the value of libraries and librarians in connecting people to recorded knowledge in all forms.
- the public's right to a free and open information society.
By 2005, ALA will have increased support for libraries and librarians by communicating clearly and strongly why libraries and librarians are unique and valuable.
By 2005, ALA will be recognized as the leading voice for equitable access to knowledge and information resources in all formats for all people.
By 2005, ALA will be a leader in the use of technology for communication with, democratic participation by, and for shared learning among its members.
By 2005, ALA will be a leader in continuing education for librarians and library personnel. | <urn:uuid:4c292094-4a53-43b3-8a49-34af52af1be4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ala.org/aboutala/strategicplan/planningarchive/alaction2005 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925377 | 198 | 2.3125 | 2 |
ITOCHU Announces Investment in U.S. Venture Company That Possesses Second Generation Bioethanol Manufacturing Technology
March 5, 2012 -- ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has acquired shares in ZeaChem Inc. (headquartered in Colorado, U.S.A.: Jim Imbler, CEO; hereinafter “ZeaChem”).
Together, ITOCHU and ZeaChem will acquire partners in each region to investigate the expansion of the technology worldwide, in second generation bioethanol business sectors that use ZeaChem’s technology, and in the future in chemicals business sectors that produce from biomass (green chemicals industry), with the aim of commercializing the technology in 2014. Also, we will create new business through project investment and development, by continuing to actively pursue the development of leading-edge technologies that are environmentally friendly and promising.
About Second Generation Bioethanol and ZeaChem technology background
As of now, ethanol is manufactured primarily from foods such as corn and sugar cane, and the volume that can be produced is limited. As a result, production of bioethanol, which is derived from inedible biomass and can be procured in large volumes, is attracting worldwide attention, and is known as second-generation bioethanol or cellulosic ethanol. Inedible biomass mainly refers to wood grown on land that is unsuitable for farming or agricultural residue such as rice straw and wheat straw. Since it is renewable, it is environmentally friendly, cheaper to obtain than conventional raw materials, and can be procured worldwide. However, until now the ethanol conversion efficiency when producing ethanol from biomass sources such as these was extremely low compared with conventional ethanol production, and it could not be produced cheaply.
The greatest drawback to conventional ethanol fermentation was the generation of carbon dioxide gas. By doing away with this, and by making good use of the biomass residue that until now has had to go to waste, ZeaChem has succeeded in substantially raising the ethanol conversion efficiency.
ZeaChem’s unique, next-generation technology has the ability to utilize diverse, non-food biomass resources, including wood such as poplar, eucalyptus and acacia, as well as energy grasses, and agricultural residues. This biomass flexibility allows for deployment of the technology in wide-ranging geographic regions. The highly efficient conversion of these biomass resources into multiple fuel and chemical products, which are currently fossil fuel derived, delivers environmental and economic benefits to established markets and industries. ZeaChem products include bio-based chemicals such as acetic acid and propylene and biofuels including ethanol.
Wood that can be used all year round and does not require a storage warehouse is the most convenient raw material for actual production, and by switching tree varieties between eucalyptus, poplar, and acacia, it is possible to choose the production area, regardless of the temperature. Moreover, if ethanol production is located next to the areas where the trees are grown, the cost of transporting raw materials can be kept down. ZeaChem’s process does not choose the types of biomass to use, so the large volumes of agricultural residue that remain in harvest season may be used and deployed worldwide.
Further, ZeaChem’s process makes it possible to produce chemicals such as propylene. This changes the structure of chemical production that relies on fossil fuels, offering great potential environmental advantages, and as such the process is attracting worldwide attention. | <urn:uuid:8aaa7ce8-3b63-4322-a430-3725683b10a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mdv.com/press-room/press-releases/itochu-announces-investment-us-venture-company-possesses-second-generation?page=5&gmaps=ABQIAAAAoHAC831MdTYFxzNq94SmYRThdXzn2lzfOjGU-TOJCPKlO97EnxTBy_YKXqR-5Gfrb_Tsw5GjSZBzoQ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945436 | 745 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Muay Thai is quite a torquing MA. MT emphasis is on power, and proper mechanism that allows the full flow of force. Which means, every kick, every punch and every elbow has the waist twisting motion with the joint that's hitting straight. Like hitting with a baseball bat. Although full force is created and very devastating, a miss will result in you spinning away from your opponent and facing your back against him.
The MT footwork is not fast-paced as the one in Kickboxing, and it's constant side-stepping. There is very little straight forward motion in MT, as people prefer to cover distance from the sides and by sidestepping you add MORE power into your kicks, punches and elbows [Hooks anyone?].
The kicks are very different from the one used in Kickboxing during Wallace's time. MT kicks has always been with the shin, from a sidestep with no snapping action. The ones used in Kickboxing has quite a lot of karate influence as Americans likes "safety first" as it is easier to recover from a snap kick.
Now what is kickboxing? Many say kickboxing evolved from MT but I doubt it. Kickboxing WAS mainly American boxing combined with the kicking techniques of Shotokan karate. Hence the flashy kicks and long range fighting preference.
The footwork in Kickboxing is fast-paced, jumpy and covers a lot of distance in a short time. Swaying, duck, weaving and bobbing is all used to get in and out, very different from MT. Kickboxers prefers to get in straight, not from the side by using slipping techniques such as evading a jab and then enter.
To be honest, kickboxers have better hand techniques than MT boxers. MT boxers uses only 4 techniques; Jab, Straight, swings and uppercut. Kickboxers utilizes almost all, from hooks, uppercuts, jab, straight, cross, shovel hooks, horizontal hooks and swings. The accuracy rate of a kickboxer is about 80%, while MT boxers are somewhere around 45%. This means that MT boxers have a harder time hitting with their punches as they are more used to kicking, and clinching whereas kickboxers are very skilled in in-fighting. MT boxers always resort to the clinch if they get near.
Kickboxers however have a hard time gauging their opponent unlike MT boxers. By utilizing the "teeb", MT boxers are able to keep opponent away from them to gain a breather, whereas a kickboxer's only gauge technique is the side-kick which shouldn't be thrown unless they know the opponent will attack. MT teeb can be thrown without the fear of "whiffing"[missing and then being punished].
Agility. Kickboxers have a lot more agility than a MT boxer. They are able to get in and out in a mere second and deliver their attack, whereas a MT boxer, you see him coming but you're unable to stop him. This leads to the question of who will endure the match longer? Well, if it's a fast paced match with only 3 1/2 minutes, kickboxers will have it easier, whereas if it's a prolonged match, it will naturally favor the MT boxer who enjoys defensive tactics.
Naturally, most Thai MT boxers are Sluggers. Most kickboxers are fighters, they enjoy rushing the match. That's why many enjoy watching kickboxing more than MT.
I hope that was sufficient information. If you want more, just drop me a line.
ps. . my comparison was between 80's MT and Kickboxing during the Wallace era, which I believe is during the 80's as well. | <urn:uuid:3d0d7e81-89ca-427e-94ad-01520fca90e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=232828 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973091 | 764 | 2.390625 | 2 |
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA - ALUMNI PLAZA
The University of Arizona Alumni Plaza is located at the junction of university life. Interfacing the monumental central mall axis, the plaza is designed to receive and conduct the daily activity and events that occur on the hot and arid campus in the Sonoran desert. The desire for flexible spaces, sensitive water use, and memorable communal outdoor space drove the design process. On one side of the plaza groves of trees laced with the sound of moving water shade the area where students spill out of the student union for lunch. On the other side a large eliptical landform divides the circulation of bicycles, people, and utility vehicles as it serves as a gathering place to observe the activities on the mall. An influential component to the design was the careful study of existing mature palms and cacti, and their integration into the plaza design. | <urn:uuid:4a61c1bb-bdcc-44ad-a1d1-d73dce56612c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hargreaves.com/projects/Academic/UArizonaAlumni/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94504 | 183 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The Brno Metropolitan Police was established by the City of Brno in 1992. MP is a body of the municipality that fulfils its tasks to secure local public order, and it also fulfils other tasks according to the Act no. 553/1991 of Collection on Metropolitan Police.
Metropolitan Police has eight wards in the City of Brno, each ward consists of one or more boroughs. There is at least one police station with non-stop service withnin each ward – please see MP Brno contacts.
There are specialist units withnin MP with their territorial scope in the whole city, e.g.:
Based on the contract governed by public law, the MP can excercise its activities also outside the City of Brno borders, precisely in Vranov and Lelekovice. | <urn:uuid:d13c8769-3318-4bf8-bf4a-c1bffe518321> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mpb.cz/en/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961699 | 164 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The seventeenth Sharpe novel sees Sharpe returning from India to London to join the newly formed Green Jackets.
Soldier, hero, rogue – Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears.
In this adventure, Sharpe is on his way home from India. He is sailing with the Royal Navy, who are hunting a formidable French warship, the ‘Revenant’, carrying a secret treaty that may prove lethal to the British.
The ‘Revenant’ makes it to the safety of the French and Spanish fleets off Cadiz, and it seems Sharpe’s enemies have found safety. Yet over the horizon is another fleet, led by Nelson, and Sharpe’s revenge will come in a savage climax when the two armadas meet on a calm October day off Cape Trafalgar. | <urn:uuid:11361974-13c6-4878-a3bb-6f440760730d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharpes-Trafalgar-Bernard-Cornwell/dp/0002261073 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957556 | 213 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Mother’s Day is approaching and my daughter who is 5 is going to make sure it is a BIG event! She has been talking about it for weeks – and is so excited!
She keeps hinting at what she has been doing at school for me and today I sent her to school with an envelope with a few coins for the mother’s day stall.
The carnation is of course the traditional gift/symbol for mother’s day.
Anna Jarvis sent 500 of these beautiful flowers to a church service in the U.S in 1908 to be handed out to mothers. The carnation represents all things sweet, innocent, pure and essentially, love. And so the tradition of gift giving for mothers began.
(Image via tumblr)
(image via flowers89.com)
My mum always said no gifts for her on Mother’s Day. The biggest gift to her would be that we spend a day being good – meaning no fighting with each other (which took a lot of effort considering there were 4 girls in the house!!). She also encouraged acts of ‘service’ from us, such as making cups of tea!
I will be looking forward to my gift from my daughter though. My wrapped slice, face washer or whatever it may be that my daughter chooses from the stall. And for me it won’t be about the gift itself, but that for the first time she was able to choose something all by herself with me in mind, that she thinks I will love. And I am intrigued to see what she chooses and why. And so begins the act of ‘giving’ and how giving to others can more often than not, be more rewarding than receiving. As I have grown older I have relished in being able to buy gifts for my parents, being able to make them happy with things I can give, in a small way showing appreciation for all that they have given me. And on Mother’s Day when I hand my gift to mum this year she will say, as she does every year, “oh, no presents”.
White carnation (image via flowers89.com)
Anna & I wish our mum a happy Mother’s Day and we look forward to taking the day and time just to ‘hang-out’ with her. Our thoughts are with those who are remembering the life of a mum or grandmother lost. And we wish all mums in the sorella-hood (and our mum’s-to-be who I’m sure already feel like mum’s to their unborn babes!) a warm and wonderful day.
Enjoy the day with your families full of love, a sleep, a cooked breakfast, maybe some new sorella & me PJ’s (we have been very busy and know there will be some very surprised, happy and comfy mummas on the weekend!).
My daughter, mum and I at ‘Annie’ the musical. A special girls night out for us!
By the way have you checked out Sustainababy lately? There are a fantastic range of ecofriendly, organic and sustainable baby products on offer at the online store.
Sustainababy have a fabulous Mother’s Day Promotion running that we are thrilled to be a part of. Head to the blog and enter the comp to win a gorgeous sorella & me organic lounge wrap….If you win, you could give it to your mum….or treat yourself!! Good luck!!
How will you spend Mother’s Day on Sunday? | <urn:uuid:b168e15f-481a-4814-8c0b-8fd4d24924b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.sorellaandme.com.au/category/uncategorized/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963673 | 739 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Overhead and Gantry Cranes - Handling the Load
|Overloading is a common, but significant hazard associated with cranes. A
crane shall not be loaded beyond its rated load capacity for any reason except test
purposes. A load limit safety factor is not built into cranes, therefore, loads shall not
exceed the load rating on the equipment name plate. "Rated load" means the
maximum load including any lifting devices (such as magnets, spreader bars, chains, and
slings) for which a cranes load block or shell is designed and built.
Every load lifted by a crane shall be well secured and properly balanced in the sling or lifting device before it is lifted more than a few inches. To prevent swinging of a load, the hook shall be brought directly over the load when the attachment is made.
The operator of a crane shall avoid carrying loads over other personnel. In addition, no employee is permitted on the load, hook, or lifting device while hoisting, lowering, or traveling. Finally, operators of cranes are not permitted to leave their position at the controls while a load or lifting device is suspended.
At the beginning of each operator's shift, the upper limit switch of each hoist shall be tried out under no-load conditions. Additionally, the hoist limit switch which controls the upper limit of travel of the load block shall never be used as an operating control. | <urn:uuid:fd340459-625e-4632-b660-504124b40c16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.odessa.edu/dept/occupational/courses/info/mod12/1244----.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918287 | 292 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Family Attractions & Activities
in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland
Dumfries and Galloway have attractions for both young and young at heart.
- Laggan Outdoor offer various activities from mountain boarding to clay pigeon shooting, mountain balling to rear steer jeeps, www.lagganoutdoor.co.uk.
- For the sweet tooth there is a Chocolate Factory www.thecocoabeancompany.com or for Ice Cream and outdoor playground www.creamogalloway.co.uk,
- or should you wish to get hands on wildlife experience www.mabiefarmpark.co.uk
Galloway Forest Park
At 300 square miles, Galloway is Britain’s largest forest park, extending from seashore to mountaintop taking in lochs and moorland along the way.
The splendid isolation of the huge Family Activities is right on your doorstep, and should be high on your list of things to do in Scotland during your Scottish activity holiday with us.
Glen Trool (pcitured) is well worth a visit, where the hill walker is rewarded by breathtaking views over Loch Trool.
One of the most popular things to do in Dumfries & Galloway is to follow a trail through the forest on the lookout for red squirrels and other wildlife.
The Park is also a designated Dark Sky Park, the first in the UK and one of only five in the world, from where on a clear night you can see thousands of stars.
Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park
Designated Dark Sky Park in 2009, Family Activities is the first in the UK and one of only five in the world. This means the park enjoys very dark skies and on a clear night you can see thousands of stars, whereas in a city you might see only a few dozen of the brightest cars.
Astronomers measure the darkness of the sky on the Bortle Scale, a nine point scale that describes the level of light pollution overhead. Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park has a Bortle class of 2, defined as a “truly dark site”. The only class of sky darker than this is class 1 “utterly unpolluted sky”. Nowhere in the UK or mainland Europe has a sky of this class. Making Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park certainly one of the darkest skies in the world, and probably the darkest skies you will ever see.
Things you can see from Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park that you will never see from a city sky include – detail within the grey band of the Milky Way, other galaxies and nebulae visible with the naked eye, dozens of shooting stars, the northern lights and true darkness.
The 7 Stanes
The 7stanes pushes the concept of mountain biking into new and higher realms - bringing out the best of the hills and forests of southern Scotland through the use of the area's plentiful natural resources of timber and stone. Trails in Dumfries & Galloway range from easy family routes to technical expert runs and some of Scotland’s best single track.
- For further information about The 7stanes, seven mountain biking trail centres spanning the south of Scotland, visit www.7stanesmountainbiking.com | <urn:uuid:81e8f881-a12a-49fd-a202-ff18b16ec742> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcmillanhotels.co.uk/north-west-castle-hotel/local-activities/family-outdoor-activities.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917465 | 675 | 1.5 | 2 |
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
By Sudarsan Raghavan, The Washington Post
DIABALY, Mali — Most of the rebels who took over this central town for five days this month were Malian and spoke the local languages of the north and the south. But their commanders were different, local residents said. They were foreigners who spoke Arabic.
Six bodyguards protected the most senior commander with the gray-speckled beard and black turban. The Islamist militant ate Algerian-made spaghetti and Mauritanian-made canned tomato sauce. Malian fighters only served as his translators or brought him intelligence reports.
"The Arabic speakers were in charge," recalled Moussa Sangire, 71, a retired soldier who lived next to a house taken over by a group of foreign fighters.
What began as a home-grown, Malian-led rebellion is now firmly entrenched as a conflict directed by al-Qaida's West and North Africa wing, mostly foreign fighters from Algeria and Mauritania, according to western diplomats, Malian military officials and analysts.
As French and Malian forces advance in northern Mali, they are learning more about the rebels who have held this Texas-sized swath of territory for months, mostly out of view of outsiders. Diabaly, briefly held by the militants, has now changed hands and offers a small window into the leadership of the jihadists.
They are an enemy that appears determined to broaden the conflict into a wider struggle against the West. The first reaction by the insurgents to the French forces' takeover of parts of the town of Gao on Saturday came from a top regional al-Qaida leader, published on the Arabic website of the Al Jazeera television network. He vowed to resist what he described as a "new Crusader aggression," adding that a "jihadist Islamist emirate" would be created in northern Mali.
"It seems that these groups are being led by AQIM," said Bertrand Soret, chief political adviser to the European Union delegation in Mali, referring to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. "The tactical backbone of the rebels is more influenced by AQIM."
In Diabaly, the jihadists covered their pickup trucks with mud and parked them under the thick canopy of mango trees to hide them from French air strikes. They stole ubiquitous scooters and used them to patrol the town and blend into the population. They mounted antiaircraft guns on the rooftops of homes.
Some residents described seeing Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, a senior AQIM leader, though his presence in the area could not be independently verified.
The rising influence of the foreign fighters could bode well for efforts to negotiate with Malian insurgents to defect and turn against AQIM. Some local fighters have already defected, suggesting they were unhappy with the direction the fight was taking.
But it also means that French forces could face a full-blown guerilla insurgency punctuated by suicide bombings, home-made bombs and ambushes, tactics used in Afghanistan, Algeria and neighboring Nigeria. Many of the foreigners are veterans of these and other conflicts, according to Western diplomats and security analysts.
Western diplomats in the capital, Bamako, predict that the French forces, with their air strikes, superior weaponry and manpower, will likely take full control of Gao and the other two major militant strongholds of Timbuktu and Kidal after some resistance, as the militants retreat tactically or meld into the population.
But the real struggle for the north, they said, would likely unfold afterward, as less experienced Malian and African forces secure the towns. The jihadists can take advantage of the vast northern desert they have lived in for years to disappear, train and rearm — creating a base to stage stealth attacks against French, Malian and other African soldiers in and outside urban areas.
"The million-dollar question is at what point they will work out that they can't defeat the French on the battlefield," said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussing military matters. "Once they reach this conclusion, we have to anticipate an asymmetrical terror campaign."
During their brief siege of Diabaly, which ended a week ago, the militants unveiled some of their tactics: using civilian neighborhoods as refuges and to deposit weapons and ammunition, and turning local people into human shields. To accomplish this, they were polite with most Muslim residents, offering them dates and peanuts.
One Arabic-speaking commander, through a Malian fighter, informed Hamidou Sissouma that they were only interested in killing French and Malian soldiers. Clutching a black walkie-talkie, he handed Sissouma a ringlet of Muslim prayer beads as a gift.
"He said 'We're not going to hurt you. Our mission is to teach you the proper religious ways'" recalled Sissouma, 45, a teacher. "They were so kind. They were trying to win the people over."
In March, secular Tuareg separatists took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize the northern half of the country, pushing out the weak Malian army with the help of arms smuggled from former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's arsenal. AQIM fighters and other religious extremists piggybacked on the rebellion and soon marginalized the secular Tuaregs, installing a harsh brand of Islamist law and justice, enforced by public amputations, stonings and whippings.
Initially, a home-grown group called Ansar Dine or "defenders of the faith" was in control. Iyad Ag Ghaly, its leader, is a prominent Malian Tuareg religious hard-liner who has been fighting for a separate Tuareg state since the late 1980s. But gradually, Western diplomats and analysts said, AQIM and its offshoot, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, began to assert more authority over the rebellion. Increasingly, Ag Ghaly needed money from AQIM to finance his movement, and the al-Qaida affiliate, its coffers flush with millions of dollars from kidnapping westerners, were happy to oblige.
"He has been relying more and more on AQIM, and now he has been taken over by AQIM," Soret said.
Further bolstering AQIM's presence within the rebellion was the split last week inside Ansar Dine, with the defecting faction saying it was willing negotiate with the French and Malian forces.
AQIM's origins can be traced back to the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching or Combat, an insurgent group that initially fought the Algerian government in the 1990s but later embraced al-Qaida's philosophy and changed their name to AQIM.
Today, Soret added, AQIM's goal is to "internationalize the conflict as best as they can." It appears to be working to some degree. Since the French military intervention on Jan. 11, AQIM has been lionized by radical groups and in extremist Internet chat rooms, with some referring to Mali as a religious war. The taking of hostages this month at a natural gas plant in neighboring Algeria, in which at least 37 foreigners were killed, has also bolstered their image in global jihadist circles.
On the ground, the foreign fighters have overseen the fighting to the minutest degree. In Diabaly, residents said the foreign commanders walked around town inspecting the damage from French air strikes. They sent Malian jihadists on scooters, dressed in plain clothes, to gather information.
In one house, residents said they recognized Abou Zeid from his photo shown on television the night before. Born in Algeria, he is considered one the most violent jihadist commanders in the region, linked to several kidnappings and executions of Europeans.
Moussa Komare, 48, who lived near a house occupied by Abou Zeid, said the medium-height, bearded commander was surrounded round-the-clock by six bodyguards. He had arrived on a Wednesday, two days after the town was captured.
While he was there, he did not leave the compound, said Komare. The bodyguards referred to him only as "our leader."
If true, the presence of Abou Zeid on an obscure front line would underscore the extent to which AQIM is directing the Mali conflict on the ground.
On late Thursday night, a day after he arrived, he left Diabaly, said residents. The next morning, the rest of the jihadists began pulling out, and by Saturday they had all vanished. | <urn:uuid:da3b0b78-1232-45ee-97a5-f079c8c91c1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://registercitizen.com/articles/2013/01/29/news/doc510824cd4391c533752663.prt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97577 | 1,755 | 1.5 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Veterans groups are angry after President Obama told them Monday that he is still considering a proposal to have treatment for service-connected injuries charged to veterans' private insurance plans.
President Obama, with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shineski, spoke with leaders of veterans groups Monday.
Leaders of the country's most prominent veterans groups met Monday at the White House with Obama, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Steven Kosiak, the director in charge of defense spending for the Office of Management and Budget.
Some of the veterans groups were caught off guard when the president said the administration is still thinking about the idea as a way of generating $540 million for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2010. The groups and some members of Congress have been very vocal in opposing the idea.
The message, according to some of the people in the room, was that if the groups do not like this idea, they need to come back with another way of saving or raising revenue for the VA.
"I got the distinct impression that the only hope of this plan not being enacted is for an alternative plan to be developed that would generate the desired $540 million in revenue," Cmdr. David Rehbein of the American Legion said in a written statement.
But the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs vowed Tuesday that the plan would never gain the panel's approval.
"VA's sacred duty is to care for veterans injured in honorable service to our nation, and the department should not turn to wounded warriors' private insurance to pay for combat injures," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii. "Under my chairmanship, the Veterans' Affairs Committee will not advance any such legislation."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said no decision has been made.
"The president and the [veterans service organizations] had a good conversation, and veterans can be assured that the president understands any concerns that they would have," Gibbs said. "The budget the president has proposed represents an historic increase in discretionary spending to take care of our wounded warriors: those that have been sent off to war, have protected our freedom and have come back wounded."
He added, "this president takes very seriously the needs of our wounded warriors that have given so much to protect our freedom on the battlefields throughout the world."
Obama did most of the talking for the administration in the session with veterans representatives, participants said. Shinseki did not speak much in the meeting, which was described as "professional" by David Gorman, executive director of Disabled American Veterans.
The president was sympathetic to the needs of veterans, Gorman said, but insisted that the insurance companies are getting away with not paying for anything.
"The vets are paying premiums to insurance companies, and that is a free ride that needs to stop," Gorman said in describing the president's message to the group.
The groups oppose the idea because they believe that the government has a moral obligation to pay for service-connected injuries for the men and women who risked their lives serving the country.
"This flies in the face of the VA's covenant to cover all service-related health-care expenses," said Jay Agg, a spokesman for AMVETS.
The groups also say that the cost of treating service-connected injuries could lead to veterans quickly maxing out their benefits in third-party insurance, risking coverage for not just them but their families, who are also covered under the plans. In addition, they foresee premiums rising to cover the cost of treating the service-connected injuries.
"We are going to go back in and fight this thing tooth and nail," Gorman said.
He said the president complained that instead of commending the significant budget increase for the VA -- an 11 percent increase in 2010 and $25 billion over five years -- the groups are complaining about this proposal. But Gorman said that the issue of third-party billing is fundamental to the VA and that it is a "distraction" from discussing the budget increases.
Another group, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that although it is encouraged by the increase in money for veterans' health care, the billing proposal is not acceptable.
"Veterans of all generations agree that this proposal is bad for the country and bad for veterans. If the president and the OMB want to cut costs, they can start at AIG, not the VA," said Paul Rieckhoff, the group's executive director, in a written statement.
The opposition is not a surprise to the White House. The groups had sent a letter opposing the idea when it was just a rumor. Last week, Congress weighed in when members of both the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees told Shinseki at separate meetings that they objected to the plan.
Shinseki was told by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, that it would be "dead on arrival." Rep. Mike Michaud, D- Maine, said that if it were presented, he would oppose the entire budget.
It is unconscionable, and it is an insult to our veterans who have been hurt overseas," Michaud said. "It is just unbelievable that anyone would ever think of doing that in this budget."
At the time, Shinseki would say only that the idea was under consideration but no decision had been made.
The groups have another meeting with the White House on Thursday to suggest other options. Both AMVETS and Disabled American Veterans believe that the VA could raise more revenue by being more aggressive about pursuing billings for non-service-connected treatments. Increasing third-party billing for non-service related injuries by 10 percent, suggested Agg, would free up more money to help service-related injuries.
Another idea that will be presented would be to bill Medicare.
"This, we believe, would more easily meet the president's financial goal," said Rehbein, of the American Legion.
Gorman said his group is willing to concede some money in the VA budget to avoid the insurance proposal.
"If it comes down to this issue, which is fundamental to the VA and what it should do, we are willing to give up a couple billion to salvage this issue," Gorman said.
A VA spokesman deferred all questions to the White House. White House officials were not immediately available for comment.
CNN's Rachel Streitfeld contributed to this report
|Most Viewed||Most Emailed||Top Searches| | <urn:uuid:a69dde91-af74-433f-87b2-7c1b6a422ddf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/obama.veterans/index.html?eref=rss_us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973177 | 1,332 | 1.5625 | 2 |
IFAC calls for G20 to adopt global standards and support integrated reporting
Jun 14, 2012
The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has written to the G20 outlining its recommendations for consideration at the G-20 Leaders’ Summit on June 18-19, 2012 in Los Cabos, Mexico. The recommendations include global adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) and International Standards on Auditing (ISAs), increased resources for regulators and standard setters, and support for the International Integrated Reporting Council's proposed integrated reporting framework.
In relation to the global adoption and enforcement of accounting and auditing standards, IFAC supports the adoption of the auditor independence requirements set out in the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, issued by IESBA.
The letter goes on to note:
IFAC considers it critical that the G-20 continue its momentum and ambition for regulatory reform and convergence that has been developed over the last few years... IFAC recognizes that there are some areas where global standards may need further development and enhancement. However, the way forward is to encourage and resource improvements in those global standards, rather than have individual jurisdictions make country-specific revisions and amendments. Additionally, it is important that G-20 nations are discouraged from implementing national regulatory reforms, which involve legislative changes that have extraterritorial impacts.
In relation to the recommendation the G20 support of the IIRC's integrated reporting framework, the letter notes:
A common criticism of current financial reporting regimes is that they often fail to appropriately recognize the social, environmental, and long-term economic context within which businesses—whether they are in the public sector or private sector, or whether they are large and complex or small—operate. A thorough understanding of this context is imperative if the objectives of global sustainability and growth are to be achieved. As evidenced in the global financial crisis, a focus on short-term risks and rewards can encourage behaviors that lead to inappropriate and disastrous outcomes.
The letter covers a number of other recommendations, including the development of sustainable organisations, strengthening the accountancy profession in developing and emerging economies, and greater accountability and transparency in the management of public resources.
Click for access to the full letter (link to IFAC website).
- International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB)
- International Accounting Standards Board (IASB)
- International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB)
- International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA)
- International Federation of Accountants (IFAC)
- International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC)
- Sustainability reporting and integrated reporting
- Global financial crisis | <urn:uuid:31bcd06f-b372-4db1-87f1-2e397b60f26b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iasplus.com/en/news/2012/june/ifac-calls-for-g20-to-adopt-global-standards-and-integrated-reporting/view | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92431 | 539 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Why study with The Open University?
The Open University offers a range of flexible distance learning, meaning that you can learn in a way that works for you; whether it is at home, at work or on the move.
More people in Scotland choose to study part-time with The Open University than with any other university, with over 15,000 students currently studying.
You can start to study with the Open University from the age of 16, when you have left school or in addition to school studies.
No previous qualifications are necessary for undergraduate degrees at the OU; in fact more than a quarter of OU students in Scotland don’t have standard university level qualifications.
Studying part-time study enables students to earn while they learn, meaning you can save money and also gain the experience in the workplace that puts you ahead of others at traditional university.
Where and how you can study
With a variety of innovative, multi-media learning materials including downloads, DVDs and podcasts, you can study in a flexible way that works for you.
You’ll also get one to one support from your tutor and the OU’s student community – online or by meeting up at tutorials.
What you can study and how much it costs
The Open University offers over 600 courses and around 300 qualifications including undergraduate certificates, diplomas and degrees. You can build up a qualification one step at a time.
- Subject areas include: Social Sciences,
- Business Studies,
- Health & Social Care,
- Computing and
Students aged 16 or over, earning less than £22,000 may be eligible for an Individual Learner Account (ILA) to help towards OU course fees, and some students also qualify for a free place or a free computer.
On 1 April 2011, ILA500 (for national certificate level qualifications) was replaced with a new Part-Time Fee Grant that will be delivered by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS).
Visit the SAAS website to find out more and download an application form for academic year 2011-12.
The £200 grants will remain the responsibility of ILAScotland.
How and when to apply
Applications are made directly to The Open University. The main course start dates are October, November, February and May.
For more information call 0845 300 60 90 / 0131 226 3851 or visit The Open University in Scotland website. | <urn:uuid:79435468-eaae-4135-9afa-57a828f4d88a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.youngscot.org/info/1803-the-open-university | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932891 | 492 | 1.882813 | 2 |
With North Carolina’s unemployment rate at 9.2 percent one of the worst in the nation, it comes as good news that Transportation Secretary Tony Tata wants more emphasis on job creation when evaluating road and infrastructure projects.
Tata is working on a plan for Gov. Pat McCrory, who has been clear that he’s on a mission to restore North Carolina’s economic prosperity. This plan is a welcome way to get started.
With $5.2 billion in state and federal funds to spend each year, it’s obvious that the construction projects could have a considerable impact on unemployment. Construction of any type produces dollars that flow through the economy from the site workers to the suppliers to the restaurants where they eat, the stores where they buy gas, the supermarkets where they buy groceries and on and on as purchases are made and services bought.
It’s not only spending the road/infrastructure money that helps the economy.
Consider this example of how the Department of Transportation’s actions can add jobs.
Tata recently told the Associated Press that construction of a cold storage facility at the port in Wilmington had been languishing. DOT, which oversees the port, worked with other government agencies to fast-track the project when officials realized it would generate 110 jobs.
The privately built project will continue to positively impact the state’s economy by cutting the costs for farmers to export their pork and poultry through Wilmington rather than bearing the cost of transportation to ports in Virginia and South Carolina.
“That makes so much sense,” Tata told the AP.
He’s right. Working through problems, cutting red tape, using the state’s resources to facilitate projects in any way can pay dividends for North Carolina businesses and their employees.
The Wilmington port project brings with it the possibility of opening new markets for North Carolina businesses and it is good for the balance of trade.
At the direction of the secretary, DOT staff now will include job-creation in the formula used to determine which roads, bridges and other projects are built first. That’s not to say that safety and easing congestion will take a back seat. Jobs will represent about 10 percent of the formula. That percentage could grow if the secretary has his way.
The secretary’s initiative on roads and infrastructure demonstrates how states can become laboratories for government to try new ways of doing things. If they work well, those ways can spread to other states or be adapted to other areas of government.
That’s the way the Founders intended America would work. Not every solution to the country’s problems can or should roll down from Washington.
Whatever order they come in, new and better roads can help the economy enormously by improving the way goods – and people — move across the state.
By taking job creation into account in deciding which roads to build first and helping transportation projects move along, Secretary Tata and Governor McCrory appear on the right track to boosting the economy of our state. We look forward to more sensible ideas from this administration. | <urn:uuid:b7f6c234-4149-46b8-8526-cd053bb17d75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gastongazette.com/opinion/our-opinion/editorial-good-roads-lead-to-job-creation-1.96211 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948024 | 627 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Consolidation of hosiery business
The National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers reached its peak membership during World War II, Smith says, and it appears that the industry has declined since then, due to consolidation.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Robert Sidney Smith, January 25, 1999. Interview I-0081. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
JM: Worth mentioning any sort of ebbing and flowing to the membership level in the organization? [The membership] always has been, remains the principle industry trade group, obviously. Any substantial shifts of that sort?
SS: I guess the peak activity of the Association -- as was probably true with a tremendous number of other industry groups -- was World War Two, because everything in this country went onto war production, including hosiery and socks. Nylon was taken away, so ladies' hosiery you had to go back to silk and cotton. Producing and operating under the War Board instructions, rules, regulations, it necessitated an organization that could be a conduit for information between the industry and government. They needed each other. The industry had to have a group they could turn to to say, “What does this mean? What do I have to do today for the war effort?” I would say that was probably the high water mark for the Association and for every association. Since my joining in 1972, which was my first introduction -- and I think probably from the high watermark of World War Two -- the trend line has been constantly one of fewer companies, consolidation in the industry. When I joined the industry in 1972, there were probably 600 companies in the business. Today there are 300. I would say if you look back to World War Two, there were 1100. So, it's been consolidation. Now at the same point in time, actual output production in units and sales and dollars has gone the other way. They've gone up. So, it is a consolidating into the hands of bigger groups and bigger organizations. | <urn:uuid:44662e23-cd01-45d1-b677-f72da14205d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/I-0081/excerpts/excerpt_1011.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974067 | 445 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Apr. 13, 2011 Patients who receive intensive care services are very different in the United States than in the United Kingdom, according to a new study that compared admission and mortality statistics from ICUs in each country. The study found that U.K. patients are much sicker upon ICU admission, whereas U.S. patients are more likely to require continuing care after discharge and are often sent to skilled care facilities instead of home.
"The U.S. has about seven times as many ICU beds available per capita than the U.K. We wanted to compare the two because they represent extremes of ICU availability in developed countries," said lead author, Hannah Wunsch, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology and epidemiology at Columbia University. "We wanted to look at the effect of that different availability of care to understand what impact that has on the delivery of critical care. What happens when you are on those extremes?"
Their findings are published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Dr. Wunsch and colleagues examined data from Project IMPACT (PI) in the U.S., and Case Mix Programme (CMP) in the U.K., both large prospective datasets abstracted from clinical records of voluntarily participating ICUs by trained data collectors, according to precise rules and definitions. The researchers merged the datasets and used variables that were confirmed to be defined similarly in both countries.
They analyzed all medical admissions to ICUs from 2002 to 2004, excluding surgical admissions, patients younger than 16 years, and readmissions to the ICU during the same hospital stay.
The researchers then calculated the relative degree of illness of patients, length of stay, and hospital mortality and discharge status.
They found that overall patient age distribution was remarkably similar between the two countries, although the U.S. had proportionally more admissions over the age of 85 (7.8 percent versus 3.2 percent.)
However, the degree of illness of the patients prior to admission was strikingly different. Patients admitted to the ICU in the U.K. were sicker patients who had been in the hospital longer. Also, many more of the patients admitted in the U.K. were mechanically ventilated.
In contrast, U.S. patients were more likely to be admitted to the ICU straight from the emergency room compared to U.K. patients, indicating that fewer ICU beds in the U.K. may necessitate patients spending more time in the general wards than in the U.S.
Dr. Wunsch and colleagues found that hospital mortality for ICU patients was substantially higher in the U.K. than in the U.S., even after accounting for severity of illness, probably because of "a combination of many unmeasured differences in both patients and healthcare systems," said Dr. Wunsch. However, when Dr. Wunsch and colleagues compared subgroups of similarly ill patients -- those who were admitted directly from the emergency room and who had been mechanically ventilated in the first 24 hours after admission -- the mortality rates were similar.
"These findings highlight the importance of comparing 'like with like', and how hard that can be when looking at heterogeneous patients cared for in different healthcare systems," said Dr. Wunsch.
Comparing hospital mortality between the countries was also confounded by the trend for U.S. ICUs to discharge patients to "skilled care facilities" rather than directly home, as was the case in the U.K.
"The U.S. and the U.K. have very different discharge patterns, and the trend in the U.S. has been to shorten hospital length of stay and discharge people earlier to other types of facilities." said Dr. Wunsch. "If you look at hospital length-of-stay information it looks like [the U.S. is] very efficient, but many of these patients are actually going to a skilled care facility where the mortality is a lot higher than among those who go home. The effect is that for studies of ICU patients, there is a fair amount of mortality that occurs after intensive care that is outside of the hospital. This practice makes it hard to compare U.S. hospital mortality to other countries that tend to keep people in the hospital until they either die or are able to go home."
In spite of the difficulties in making direct comparisons between the countries, the study provides valuable information regarding the impact of ICU resources on admission practices and demonstrates some large differences in healthcare delivery. "The differences in the types of patients admitted to the ICU, and the patterns of hospital care for these critically ill patients really are enormous," said Dr. Wunsch.
In future research, Dr. Wunsch and colleagues hope to make more direct comparisons between groups of similar patients. "We want to understand the key differences between these two different models of ICU access," said Dr. Wunsch. "On the one hand, we want to ask at what point does restricted access to care translate into poorer patient outcomes? On the other, at what point are we no longer delivering intensive care that is helpful to patients?"
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- H. Wunsch, D. C. Angus, D. A. Harrison, W. T. Linde-Zwirble, K. M. Rowan. Comparison of medical admissions to intensive care units in the United States and United Kingdom. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2011; DOI: 10.1164/rccm.201012-1961OC
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:adb6f6cd-5534-48bf-8560-36d3c7082231> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110413151627.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96261 | 1,198 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Children 'an increasing financial burden'
Parents have been advised to invest in a child trust fund (CTF) as children are becoming more of a financial burden.Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of 11- and 15-year-olds in the UK expect their parents to help fund their time at university, CTF provider Children's Mutual has revealed.What's more, 60 per cent of the same group believe their parents will help them buy their first house.David White, chief executive of Children's Mutual, believes the best way for parents to avoid disappointing their offspring is to open a CTF to save for the future."Our research shows that children have high ambitions and many are hoping their parents will pay," he said."Raising children can be expensive and parents need to be prepared. The CTF provides a fantastic opportunity to encourage parents to save small amounts regularly, over the long term, helping to meet their children's expectations. "By saving over 18 years, it could prove easier for parents to help fund their children's futures, rather than by having to find money out of savings, earned income or their mortgage when their child is older."
Budget 2010: The UK government gives with one hand and takes with the other!
The Chancellor the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, today reported a £245 million package to help UK businesses through what has been the most challenging trading environment in living history. He placed himself in the position of the saviour of the UK economy and UK businesses, offering relief which will obviously assist many in the short term, but what is the real underlying position? While ther...Read More
UK Pound under pressure as Euro rallies
For a few moments yesterday the pound in your pocket would have bought just 98c as the pound fell below parity with the euro. While the currency did rally towards the close to end at €1.104 many believe we are now on the verge of a slippery slope for sterling, which could see the euro challenge the dollar and the yen as one of the main currencies around the world. So what does the future hol...Read More
Merrill Lynch sees overweight position in emerging markets
As worldwide investors look to position themselves to benefit from a forecast recovery in the global economy, Merrill Lynch, the US investment giant, has highlighted a significant shift in strategy towards emerging markets. April saw a significant move with global asset allocators "massively" raising their overweight positions in global emerging markets. This is a very significant move because eme...Read More
Barclays bank deals final salary pension schemes a killer blow
News that Barclays bank is not only closing its final salary pension scheme but also transferring assets into a cheaper scheme which will reduce future liabilities has received widespread criticism from the unions and employees. Just weeks after agreeing the sale of its iShares division the company is looking to reorganise and rebalance its assets and liabilities and the final salary pension schem...Read More
Currency counterfeiting on the increase
As we have pointed out on a number of occasions, the ongoing recession in the UK has attracted a significant increase in criminal activity with currency counterfeiting one of the leading "benefactors". It is estimated that one in 20 one pound coins in the UK are counterfeit which equates to a staggering 73 million fake coins in circulation. When you consider that a fake one pound coin can cost bet...Read More | <urn:uuid:29608d15-ed23-48a4-9858-0d4e7b3c3dc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.financialadvice.co.uk/news/10/savings/5528/children-an-increasing-financial-burden.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964995 | 691 | 1.898438 | 2 |
A novel of tremendous scope and beauty, The Translator tells of the relationship between an exiled Russian poet and his American translator during the Cuban missile crisis, a time when a writer's words -- especially forbidden ones -- could be powerful enough to change the course of history.
About the Author
John Crowley lives in the hills of northern Massachusetts with his wife and twin daughters. He is the author of ten previous novels as well as the short fiction collection, Novelties & Souvenirs.
Praise for The Translator…
“Thrilling....[Crowley] succeeds with what no prudent novel ought to attempt.”
-New York Times
“A rarity: a love story with a core of intelligence and insight.’
“A novel that affirms and celebrates language... [and] masterfully renders a moment in history.”
“Wonderfully sensual... Layered and rich, The Translator is a remarkable novel.
-San Francisco Chronicle
-Christian Science Monitor
“Nothing short of magical.”
-Time Out New York | <urn:uuid:7d708f8d-c1c1-42bf-9c0d-a0fb03b2bf8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookpeople.com/book/9780380815371 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922352 | 225 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Close on the heels of the recent positive steps in India-Pakistan relations comes a historic auction of Pakistani art hosted by Indias leading auction house, Saffronart
. Appropriately the Art of Pakistan auction is headlined by a portrait of one of the most recognized Bollywood stars by one of the most recognized Pakistani contemporary artists - Salman Khans portrait by Rashid Rana - as a symbol of the cultural exchange between the two countries,. The auction presents a unique opportunity for collectors to acquire an exceptional selection of artworks by pre-eminent modern and contemporary Pakistani artists. With a total of 70 lots, this 24-hour auction of the Art of Pakistan will take place online at www.saffronart.com on November 7-8, 2012.
The auction features significant works by modern masters including Sadequain, Ahmed Parvez, Jamil Naqsh and Anwar Jalal Shemza, as well as distinguished contemporary artists such as Imran Qureshi, Mohammad Ali Talpur, Naiza Khan, Ayaz Jokhio, Shazia Sikander and Nusra Latif Querishi. With a total estimate of Rs. 1.86 crore (USD 364,925) to Rs. 2.45 crore (US$ 481,630), this auction promises art connoisseurs some of the finest modern and contemporary Pakistani artto come to market in recent years.
The auction includes a portrait of Bollywood superstar Salman Khan by Rashid Rana from his Ommatidia series of photomontages, estimated at Rs 7,50,000 to Rs. 10,00,000 (USD 15,000 to 20,000). Rana blurs the boundaries between advertising, painting, print making, photography and video. In this series, created in 2004, the artist comments on the social construction of celebrity and the role of fantasy. Salman Khan, the superstar of Indian cinema is idolized throughout South and West Asia as a paragon of masculinity and sexuality. This series of works, however, is not about the star. This portrait is composed of several thousand smaller images of ordinary Pakistani men, whose shared aspirations Rana believes uphold the entire industry.
Another highlight is Imran Qureshis Moderate Enlightenment 2 estimated at Rs. 6,00,000 to Rs. 7,50,000 (USD 12,000 to 15,000). This painting belongs to a series of portraits in which Qureshi reflects on the events of 9/11 and those that followed it. In this painting, the artist pairs the outfit of a religious scholar with a pair of camouflage socks, challenging narrow-minded assumptions made on the basis of appearances. Qureshi feels his art also reflects this dissonance in its technique, where contemporary themes are paired with traditional miniature styles.
Nazia Khans sculpture The Skin She Wears is estimated at Rs. 3,00,000 to Rs. 4,00,000 (USD 6000 to 8000). The piecerepresents an intimate womans garment, but is crafted from metal and leather. There are many possible meanings behind the juxtaposition of subject and material; the piece simultaneously conveys strength and siege, softness and rigidity, lightness and weight. Unsurprisingly, this work is dense with connotations: emotional, cultural, political, psychological and sexual, which often contradict one another. Khan leaves it to the viewer to engage with the work and draw those messages from it that are most significant to them.
Among the modern artworks is a painting by Anwar Jalal Shemza, one of Pakistans most well known modern artists. Shemzas work fused Western principles of modernism with those of traditional Islamic art forms. His works show great attention to geometry and perspective, with strong verticals and horizontals highlighted by his choice of palette. This painting is estimated at Rs. 5,00,000 to Rs. 7,50,000 (USD 10,000 to 15,000).
Speaking about the auction, Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and Co-founder of Saffronart, said, We are privileged to be offering this remarkable selection of modern and contemporary Pakistani art at this historic auction. This auction offers Indian, Pakistani and international collectors a rare opportunity to appreciate the richness and diversity of the art created in Pakistan over the last 60 years, acquire some its finest examples, and become part of an important cultural dialogue between Pakistan, India and the rest of the world.
Along with a complete online catalogue, Saffronart will also host a panel discussion and special previews at its galleries in London and New York, and viewings at its galleries in Mumbai and New Delhi. The sale will take place online on November 7-8, 2012. Collectors may place bids at Saffronarts website www.saffronart.com, or via Saffronarts proprietary iPad, Blackberry and iPhone applications. | <urn:uuid:8cbaf7a6-b5b2-4954-8d37-7718147e73ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=58743&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939036 | 1,000 | 1.507813 | 2 |