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WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Supervised exercise is better than shockwave treatment for relieving chronic shoulder pain, according to a new study.
Shockwave treatment is widely used to treat shoulder pain, even though a number of studies have suggested that it's not effective. To investigate, Norwegian researchers studied 104 men and women, aged 18 to 70, who'd had shoulder pain for at least three months.
The study patients were randomly selected to receive either radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment (low to medium energy pulses delivered into the tissue) once a week for four to six weeks, or supervised exercise consisting of two 45-minute sessions a week for up to 12 weeks.
All of the patients were told not to use any additional treatments except analgesics, including anti-inflammatory drugs. The participants were assessed at six, 12 and 18 weeks, and their pain and disability were measured using a recognized scoring index.
After a period of 18 weeks, 64 percent of those in the exercise group and 36 percent of those in the shockwave therapy group had reduced pain and disability scores. More patients in the exercise group were able to return to work, while more patients in the shockwave group required additional treatment after 12 weeks.
"Supervised exercises were more effective than radial extracorporeal shockwave treatment for short-term improvement in patients with subacromial shoulder pain," the Oslo-based researchers reported.
The findings, published online Sept. 16 in BMJ, support results from previous trials that recommended exercise therapy, the study authors said.
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about shoulder pain.
SOURCE: BMJ, news release, Sept. 15, 2009
Copyright © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
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LATIN AMERICAN MSS.--MEXICO III
The Latin American mss. Mexico III, 1563-1855, consist of historical documents relating mainly to Mexico's colonial period. Many of the items in the collection are concerned with inheritances and decendents' estates. Other documents deal with a variety of legal disputes and there are also some powers of attorney. This collection complements the Mexico and Mexico II collections.
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Farm tour offers lawmakers reality check
Last Monday, Oct. 10, California lawmakers were treated to a whirlwhind tour of farms and farmworker communities along the state's central coast. The Sustainable Food & Farming Tour brought legislators to see firsthand the critical issues facing agricultural families in the state.
The tour, co-organized by PAN, Californians for Pesticide Reform and Pesticide Watch, set out from San Francisco to visit farms, schools and homes. The packed day on the road put a real-world face to many of the urgent problems raised by pesticide use, and highlighted ground-proven solutions of sustainable agriculture.
The tour left from Mission Pie restaurant and headed to Jacobs Farm, one of the country’s largest organic herb growers. There Brise Tencer, a sustainable agriculture policy consultant, encouraged legislators to support state and federal policies that assist organic farmers:
[Organic agriculture]…is thriving, it’s a growing sector of our economy, even in a time of recession. It’s exciting to see the economic growth, the job opportunities, and I think what’s most remarkable about this trend is that organic farmers have been at a pretty significant disadvantage historically in terms of public policy.
The federal government in particular spends a really significant amount of resources, tax dollars in particular, helping U.S. agriculture…and organic agriculture has been noticeably absent from that work.
Then at Swanton Berry Farm, co-founder Jim Cochran spoke about the challenges and opportunities facing the agricultural sector. He urged the policymakers to help pick the right path forward: “We have a choice to follow the path of flailing Detroit automakers or the Silicon Valley innovators.”
Water too contaminated to drink
Later in the day, Brown Beret youth leader Salvatore Lua spoke at Renaissance High School in Watsonville about the harms of industrial agriculture. He and many other students, as well as their largely farmworker families, are unable to drink the water at school or at home because it is so heavily contaminated.
Dr. Ann Lopez, director of the Center for Farmworker Families, called out this unequal burden that farmworkers and their families face, noting that “300,000 farmworkers are poisoned every single year in the U.S.”
Finally, legislators stopped at the Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association (like Mission Pie, profiled by our partners at Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles) to learn about this innovative program that teaches farmworkers how to become successful, profitable organic farmers. The organization has already trained dozens of organic farmers in the Monterey Bay Area.
As legislators head back to their offices, PAN and our partners hope they take with them the stories of sustainable farming, the barriers to achieving that success, and a deeper understanding of how our broken industrial agricultural system is harming real people in communities throughout the state. | <urn:uuid:dfc84bed-1e83-4513-b1f4-c895d67f5897> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.panna.org/blog/farm-tour-offers-lawmakers-reality-check | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944818 | 589 | 1.96875 | 2 |
National Puppy Day – March 23
Celebrate the puppy but remember to ADOPT DON’T SHOP.
That means do not ever buy a puppy from a pet store, from an online breeder, a puppy broker, or from a backyard breeder. Reputable breeders don’t post signs on telephone poles or post ads on Craig’s List.
Pet stores get their dogs from disgusting puppy mills like the infamous Hunte Corporation. What is a puppy mill? Please see previous blogs for an explanation and more information.
If you want a puppy – rescue a puppy from Pima Animal Care Center, Humane Society of Southern Arizona, Pinal County Animal Control, Santa Cruz Humane Society, Cold Wet Noses, and any number of local rescue groups and in Phoenix, the Animal Guardian Network.
Remember, depending on the breed, that cute little puppy will get bigger. Will you love the dog when he or she is 2 year old, 5 years, 9 years old?
Check out the National Puppy Day website for puppy videos, most popular puppy names, and more reasons to ADOPT NOT SHOP. According to this website, “Pet stores that sell puppies are the number one reason that so many puppy mills exists today.”
Tucson Dog Protection has requested two pet stores discontinue selling puppies: Animal Kingdom in the Tucson Mall and Desert Pet located at 4810 E. 22nd Street. Peaceful protests will be held on alternating Saturdays starting March 24 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. This Saturday is Desert Pet. TDP has plenty of signs or bring your own. To get involved, visit this website.
(Photo is courtesy the Humane Society of So. Ariz.) | <urn:uuid:1a2a4ff4-fb0e-470c-bdd5-4d414e803601> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-tails/tag/tucson-dog-protection/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908586 | 359 | 1.65625 | 2 |
"Today the concept of truth is viewed with suspicion, because truth is identified with violence. Over history there have, unfortunately, been episodes when people sought to defend the truth with violence. But they are two contrasting realities. Truth cannot be imposed with means other than itself! Truth can only come with its own light. Yet, we need truth. ... Without truth we are blind in the world, we have no path to follow. The great gift of Christ was that He enabled us to see the face of God".Pope Benedict xvi, February 24th, 2012
The Church is ecumenical, catholic, God-human, ageless, and it is therefore a blasphemy—an unpardonable blasphemy against Christ and against the Holy Ghost—to turn the Church into a national institution, to narrow her down to petty, transient, time-bound aspirations and ways of doing things. Her purpose is beyond nationality, ecumenical, all-embracing: to unite all men in Christ, all without exception to nation or race or social strata. - St Justin Popovitch
THE YEAR OF FAITH ROSARY
Thursday, 10 November 2011
PREACHING BY CHARITY by Michael J. MIller
source: The Catholic World Report Msgr. Leo Maasburg is national director of the Pontifical Missionary Work in Austria. For several years after his ordination in 1982 he accompanied Mother Teresa of Calcutta on many journeys to destinations ranging from Moscow to New York. He was interviewed in German for Catholic World Report in late August. The English edition of his book Mother Teresa of Calcutta: A Personal Portrait, was released by Ignatius Press in September. Who introduced you to Mother Teresa of Calcutta? How did you become a collaborator in the apostolate of her Missionaries of Charity?
Msgr. Maasburg: A Slovak bishop who had been friends with Mother Teresa since the World Eucharistic Congress in Bombay (now Mumbai) introduced me to the Blessed. During one of my first visits, Mother Teresa wanted to know whether I owned an automobile and, since I did have one, she immediately assigned me my first “job.” After she had become better acquainted with me in this way—and I with her sisters—she asked me (at that time still a newly ordained priest) to conduct a week of spiritual exercises for her sisters. Astonished and terrified, I asked what I should talk about. The answer came promptly: “About Jesus, of course—what else?”
What did you learn about missionary work by visiting Mother Teresa’s communities in India?
Msgr. Maasburg: During the years when I was privileged to accompany Blessed Teresa on many journeys, I was studying missiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. It was very interesting to study theory in Rome, the center of the Church, and to experience the practice more or less at the same time in a wide variety of mission territories. I think that despite all the differences between the theoretical and the practical approach, the goal was the same: to teach and to show Jesus, who is love, to believe in him and to live out that love.
What completely captivates me, now as then, is the close connection between the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and his presence in his “distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor,” as Mother Teresa used to say. Blessed Teresa clearly showed her sisters and us helpers that the most fully developed and most profound way to preach the Gospel is to love the poorest. Regardless of religion, skin color, or ideology, love is the only preaching that is understood worldwide by all people of good will.
Tell us something about your travels with Mother Teresa to the New World.
Msgr. Maasburg: Mother Teresa did not begin founding houses for her sisters outside of India until 1965. She recognized that besides material poverty there was a much deeper poverty that is much more difficult to remedy, namely loneliness, abandonment, the apparent uselessness of the lives of many older persons. Mother Teresa called these people “throwaways of society,” and soon she and her sisters tried to devote their time, their care, their attention and love to them in the New World, too, and above all in the industrialized countries.
In the New World, in New York for example, Mother Teresa founded in 1985 the first house for terminally ill AIDS patients. Even she could not heal their bodies, but she wanted to touch the minds and souls of these individuals with her tactful and completely non-judgmental love. In each of them, too, Jesus was present in his “distressing disguise of the poor.”
Mother Teresa founded houses in the Soviet Union when the work of missionaries there was still severely restricted by law. How did she and her sisters adapt their apostolate in an officially atheistic nation?
Msgr. Maasburg: The first house of her sisters that Mother Teresa opened in Moscow in 1988 could be called a third step in recognizing a “distressing disguise.” Not knowing or being allowed to know the faith, never to have heard or experienced the worldwide proclamation of Jesus’ love, was for Mother Teresa the greatest poverty people could live in. After all, they were all created “to love and to be loved.” Just a few days later, on Christmas Day in 1988, Mother Teresa brought four sisters to Armenia, which had been struck by a terrible earthquake. She asked me to accompany her sisters so as to assure them of daily Mass and the spiritual support that they urgently needed for their new task. This task had been defined by Mother Teresa as “giving humble love and service.” We had been assigned to a children’s hospital, which was severely overcrowded by the earthquake victims. The service consisted of consoling the children, and the parents and relatives if any were left, and also of constantly cleaning all the toilets and floors. After a few months the sisters opened a little house of their own in which they took in disabled children, victims of the earthquake, who had no one left who could care for them. There they were “the poorest of the poor.”
Please describe the work of the Missionaries of Charity in Austria today. Has the international character of this congregation of consecrated women religious facilitated their outreach to the many immigrants and refugees who have arrived in Austria in recent years?
Msgr. Maasburg: There is only one house of the Missionaries of Charity in Austria, and that one is located in a red-light district in Vienna. As everywhere, the sisters attend to the most urgent needs that they find. In Vienna it is the immigrants, the elderly, and the lonely who no longer have anyone to care for them.
Often the sisters speak languages that they learned on earlier assignments. The Slavic languages are especially helpful, since to a large extent the immigrants come from Eastern European countries.
The language of the Missionaries of Charity that is understood best and everywhere, though, is their friendliness and their cheerfulness, even in difficult situations.
Did Mother Teresa bring the Missionaries of Charity to any predominantly Muslim countries?
Msgr. Maasburg: Yes, there are houses in many predominantly Muslim countries, for example in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, and Yemen. In 1973 the MC sisters were invited to Yemen. “We can come only if we have a priest who celebrates Mass for us daily, because without that we cannot live,” was Mother Teresa’s answer. The government of that country, in which there had been no priest for centuries, agreed. The sisters were allowed to bring a priest with them. Years later a government official remarked, “The presence of the sisters has kindled a light of love in our country.”
Were you asked to testify in the cause for the beatification of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta? What can you say from first-hand observation about her heroic practice of Christian virtues?
Msgr. Maasburg: Yes, I was asked to answer questions about the life and virtues of Mother Teresa, and so I could contribute in a very small way toward capturing the image of this great saint of our time for the future.
What I always found so extraordinary about Blessed Teresa was that she was so normal. She had no celebrity mannerisms whatsoever, nor did she demand any sorts of privileges for herself. Between visits with presidents and kings she used to work quite normally in whatever house she was staying in, whereby she usually sought the lowliest jobs like cleaning toilets and lavatories.
At the same time, though, she kept her goal in view at every moment: to spread Jesus’ love as clearly and as far as she could. And for all her modesty and “normality” there were at the time of her death 594 houses that she had founded. She seldom spoke about foundations, however. Whenever there was a new foundation, she would say, “We have given Jesus a new tabernacle.” It was always her goal to make Jesus present: in the Eucharist and in her love for the poorest of the poor.
In my opinion, one absolutely heroic practice of love of neighbor was her discipline in speaking. In the seven years during which I was often around her and could discuss many matters with her, I never heard her say even one single negative word about someone. “They were so good to us…” was an expression she frequently used to nip in the bud any attempt to place blame or pass judgment. She used to call negative language “talking darkness,” and she saw it as her duty to reignite the light of hope right away by referring to some positive aspect. Thus, for example, when someone asked, didn’t she see the corruption in Calcutta?, she replied, “I know there is corruption, but I know also that there is good, and I have chosen to see the good.”
Mother Teresa trained lay volunteers to work with her sisters in serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. Is mobilizing the laity an express purpose of the Missionaries of Charity? What forms does this collaboration take in other parts of the world?
Msgr. Maasburg: Thousands of volunteer coworkers help in Mother Teresa’s houses to alleviate the suffering of the poorest, not only through material assistance, but also by their personal involvement. Young people from all nations and continents meet in Calcutta and other houses of the sisters so as to spend a few weeks or months of their free time meeting and serving Jesus in “the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.”
All over the world, people who are themselves seriously ill or disabled—the so-called “Suffering Coworkers”—pray and make sacrifices for the spiritual healing and sanctification of the poorest. Like a plow, the foundations of Mother Teresa prepare the ground for the poor and the sick, but also for the “strong,” who by serving the poor discover that they themselves need God’s healing.
Have the Missionaries of Charity continued their rapid growth in membership since the death of their founder in 1997?
Msgr. Maasburg: At the time of Mother Teresa’s death there were 594 houses, or “tabernacles.” Today there are more than 765 houses of the sisters. The number of active and contemplative sisters has surpassed 5,000. Despite these statistics, the growth of the Congregation may have slowed somewhat.
What are the major opportunities and challenges today for the missionary work of the Catholic Church in Austria?
Msgr. Maasburg: The Catholic Church in Austria is a wealthy Church, financially and culturally. I think that the great challenge in a relativistic world is no more and no less than fidelity to the Catholic faith that we profess in the Creed and can witness to in our love for the poorest.
I am a Benedictine monk from Belmont Abbey, Hereford. I studied theology at Fribourg University in Switzerland, and was chaplain for many years at Belmont Abbey School, now sadly closed. I spent some time in Whitehaven in the parish. For the last 27 years I have been in Peru,part of the Belmont foundation here, but for most of the time working in parishes. I am now Superior of a monastery which has been founded from Belmont on the outskirts of Lima. I have written two books of theology, the first "The Royal Road to Joy. The Beatitudes and the Mass", published by Gracewing in 2003. The second, "Heaven Revealed. The Holy Spirit and the Mass" will be published in July or August by the same publisher, and I am working on a third. My interests: theology, ecumenism,especially with the Eastern Churches, things pastoral.
From 1981 - 1990 I was in Tambogrande
1991 - 1997 in Negritos, Talara
1998 in Harrington, Cumbria
1998 2002 in Cajamarca
2002 till now in the monastery except for 2006 when I was with the Charismatic Renewal in Lima | <urn:uuid:a917d62b-7d76-4418-8aa1-7e70b05d7672> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2011/11/preaching-by-charity-by-michael-j.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978257 | 2,738 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Has this been dullest German election campaign in decades or the most exciting? Has the battle for power in Berlin between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that concludes with Sunday's election been a memorable showdown or a forgettably boring contest?
Many journalists, pundits and voters have complained it's all been a merciless bore compared to the high-octane battles of the past with little action and precious few highlights.
But I would argue that in many ways it has been one of the most interesting campaigns in decades. Why? Because the outcome is so uncertain and there are more different government possibilities that could result from it than at any time in Germany's post-war history.
Instead of the usual centre-right or centre-left choice that German voters had for the last 60 years, there are options galore this time -- at least in theory.
There could be a centre-right government, another grand coalition or several three-way coalitions that could include the Free Democrats, the Greens and from a purely mathematical point of view even the Left party that have never been tried before at the federal level. | <urn:uuid:a02ac06e-6b08-4254-bcd3-adfb7b438df1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/tag/frank-walter-steinmeier/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961989 | 229 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Small business owners across the country are writing letters to newspapers to show their support for President Obama:
I am a disabled American who started a successful business a year ago because of President Obama's pro small business policies. My mom and I worked hard to build our business, and we are proud to employ American workers and provide our services to local and out-of-state customers as well as customers from all parts of the world.
We feel and agree that President Obama knows that too. That's why he's fighting for small businesses like mine, which create two out of every three jobs in this country. He's invested in rebuilding the roads we use to ship our products across Florida, in the education and training that makes sure we can hire skilled workers to compete in the global economy, and in the basic research and technology that businesses build on to keep American innovation at the cutting edge. President Obama has stood behind small businesses and has helped them put Americans back to work.
I have been a business owner for the past 42 years. Each business I have owned has benefited from the generous assistance from others, including the government. In the very early days, an SBA-guaranteed loan helped us get off the ground. Most of our shipments were by common carrier. Without the Interstate Highway System … we could never have competed on a national scale. My newest business … not surprisingly, is very dependent upon the internet.
President Obama has done a commendable job helping small businesses. The policies espoused by [Mitt] Romney may help some sectors of the economy, but they will not help my small business, those it employs, or the middle class in general.
By the way, I am a registered Republican who voted for Goldwater and Reagan, among others. I will be voting for President Obama. To me, the choice is clear.
Meet more of the small business owners who are standing with President Obama at smallbusiness.barackobama.com. | <urn:uuid:68c6050b-5856-4a23-be7f-6bdf3632fd5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/small-business-owners-for-obama-to-me-the-choice-is-clear?source=read-more | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977984 | 399 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Thanks for your interest in our Free Compressor Newsletter.
You can have access to over 50 articles from our back issue archives. This
information covers a variety of topics and is available to you for FREE just
for subscribing to our newsletter.
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Here are the topics in this sample issue.
1. Air Audit Investigation
2. 4 Opportunities To Save Energy
3. Tools for Trouble Shooting
We only allow one small ad at the beginning of each issue. This helps us
cover the cost of research and publishing.
1. Air Audit Investigation
Have you ever been through an air audit?
We had the chance to tag along on a Level 1 Air Audit. It was at an
industrial facility with a total compressor horsepower of 1100.
The manufacturing company wanted an air audit because their existing
compressors were not keeping up with the air requirements of the production
process. Also, they were having trouble eliminating the moisture from the
The audit discovered the root cause of each of their concerns. The following
are the main points:
a) There were several locations where compressors and dryers were trying to
feed compressed air into the header through a pipe tee connection. This
creates a turbulence that leads to back pressure.
This interconnecting piping back pressure creates false unloading signals.
The compressors are prevented from operating at full load which makes it
impossible to deliver the required air to the production process.
The solution is to modify these connections to eliminate the back pressure.
This is done by using either a 30 or 45 degree angle entry instead of a tee.
b) The dryers were sized to handle the compressors capacity. However, under
performing aftercoolers caused these dryers to be undersized because they
were not supplying the dryers with 100 degree F air.
The dryers should have been oversized considering the long periods of heat
in the climate as well as the heat from other equipment in the compressor
room. A solution at this point is to either buy larger dryers or add water
cooled aftercoolers to the system prior to the dryers.
c) The use of timer operated drains contributed to the problem of moisture
in the air. These drains operate on a cycle that either leaves condensation
in the system because the drain is not open long enough or wastes air
stays open too long. In this case, the drains were not staying open long
The solution is to install automatic condensation drains that are also zero
air loss drains. A recommendation was made on a drain that has been proven
to meet these requirements.
d) Leaks were noticed that can easily be shut off. In some cases, valves
were left open to help drain the condensation. This can be eliminated with a
small investment in the right type of condensation drain. The net gain is to
producing compressed air that is wasted.
a) The audit was completed with a 2 day site visit. The experience of the
auditor made it possible to identify the problem areas and solutions without
the extra expense of measurement trending.
A verbal report was made with an outline of all the recommendations. This
included the details for correcting the piping problems so the customer
could begin to implement the changes.
A written report with recommendations and cost payback information was
delivered within 2 weeks. The complete air audit project was done for less
b) It was demonstrated that a 200 horsepower compressor could be turned off
while still meeting all the demands of the production process. This will
produce a minimum of $60,000 in annual energy savings.
The energy savings alone are enough to pay for the modifications to the
piping system, the addition of a secondary aftercooler for the compressors
marginally sized dryers, the expense of replacing the condensation drains
and the cost of the air audit.
A consistent supply of clean, dry compressed air will also lead to savings.
There will be less production downtime and less maintenance.
c) The air audit was a tremendous training opportunity for the maintenance
and engineering people that are responsible for supplying air for
production. These were intelligent and conscientious workers who simply had
not been informed
or trained on the basics for getting the most from their compressed air
It was obvious that they were enthusiastic about what was learned and the
potential they now have to make a positive impact on their air system. The
Level 1 Air Audit provided solutions and a compressed air strategy that will
immediate and long lasting benefits.
It is our opinion that the process should be undertaken by every plant with
an air system. Think about it, you get expert analysis on your system with
ideas that pay for the audit. What are you waiting for?
Send an email to
email@example.com if you have any questions or would like
more information on a Level 1 Air Audit.
2. 4 Opportunities To Save Energy
Air compressors powered by electrical motors will use a surprisingly large
amount of energy each and every year of operation.
These operating costs are commonly considered part of plant overhead and are
rarely evaluated as a separate issue. This contributes to the assumption
that compressed air is an inexpensive utility.
The annual power cost to operate a compressor can equal the initial cost of
the unit. The initial purchase price of a 100 horsepower air compressor will
range between $30,000 and $50,000, depending on the type and options.
The same 100 horsepower compressor with 6000 hours a year, a power rate of
$.07 per KW and a motor efficiency of .90 will have an annual power cost of
You can determine the approximate annual electric power cost of your
compressors with this formula. The first step is to multiply the horsepower
of the compressor times .746 times the hours of operation times your power
rate (HP x .746 x hours x power rate). Then, divide that number by the motor
Everyone in the plant should be made aware of the total power cost for
operating the compressors. This is especially important for anyone that
works with air operated equipment.
Choosing The Right Compressor
There is intense competition for your business when you are interested in
buying a compressor. The only way to make sense of all the options is to
understand what you want, and the limitations of your requirement.
You will probably have to make some compromises as you compare the options
and various types of compressors. You can prepare for this exercise by
determining the importance of the following key issues:
a) Can you handle maintenance in house or will you have to rely on outside
b) Match the operating conditions of your environment with the sensitivity
of the various compressor types.
c) Consider the availability and quality of the cooling medium, either water
d) What is the required duty cycle?
e) What is the required air quality, lubricated or non lubed?
f) Will the compressorís capacity control and regulator system be capable of
translating less air usage into less electrical power usage?
An often overlooked aspect of the compressor is the motor efficiency. The
compressors being sold today can be found with motors that range in
efficiency from .87 to .94 and higher. Remember, this factor will have
nothing to do with the compressor capacity, pressure loss, controls, etc.,
but it will determine how much you spend every year to operate the
There is a trade off between the price to upgrade motor efficiency and the
available annual power savings. The idea is to know what you are getting and
to evaluate the potential of the upgrade.
Effective leak control in an air system can pay huge dividends.
A quarter inch leak in a 100 psi system will pass about 100 CFM of
compressed air. This is approximately $12,000 in annual wasted power cost
based on 24 hours a day compressor operation with a power rate of $0.07 per
The process of detecting and monitoring leaks should focus on more than the
basic header and piping system. The fact is that you will find a majority of
your leaks at valves, fittings, connections, tools and at the point of use.
Condensate drains or traps are a major source of wasted compressed air. They
are also one of the easiest to eliminate.
The problem begins with the limitations of the drains or traps currently
being used to remove condensation. Consider the following drawbacks to these
The manual valves and level operated mechanical traps are often left open to
compensate for clogging. The electronic timer style traps will waste air in
the normal course of operation. They are designed to use compressed air to
force the condensate out the trap.
These are set for the number of times they will open each hour and for the
duration of the open cycle. However, they are usually left with the factory
setting and they are almost never adjusted to fit the application or for
seasonal temperature changes.
The solution is to install electronic or automatic drains. These receive
their signal to open and close by sensors measuring the level of
condensation in the housing of the trap. They waste no air and have been
proven more reliable than the other types of condensation traps.
However, customers resist the electronic or automatic drains because of the
price. Also, the contaminants in the condensate will cause problems for any
components that come in contact with the condensation.
A condensation drain should automatically remove condensate when it appears
at the drain without wasting air or clogging. In addition, it should be easy
to monitor, affordable and capable of handling a large amount of condensate.
We have found only one drain that meets this criteria. Send an email to
firstname.lastname@example.org and we
will make sure you get the complete product specifications, pictures and
The first consideration is to determine the specific pressure required for
all the air requirements in your plant.
This is important because every pound of increase or decrease in pressure
requires a one half of one percent increase or decrease in power. Therefore,
a 10 psig decrease can save you 5% in power which amounts to $1,740 in
annual savings for the 100 horsepower compressor in the earlier example.
Plants that have studied this issue have often found that they were
producing high pressure air for the entire plant just to satisfy an isolated
high pressure requirement. The solution was to install a small departmental
compressor designed to handle the higher pressure. This allowed them to
lower the pressure requirement of the main compressors and immediately save
In some plants, air pressure is raised to overcome system pressure drop. The
cause is usually found to be shortcomings in the piping system and pressure
loss at the filters and dryers. Each of these problem areas will cost you
money on an annual basis.
The key to selecting pipe size is to consider the length and flow required
and choose a diameter that generates no pressure drop. The pipe should not
be sized to be equal to a valve or connecting device. You can "bush up" to
larger pipe and avoid pressure loss.
The pipe fittings used for directional changes can also cause pressure loss.
A feed line of compressed air should not use a tee connection to a line with
a flowing steam of air. The turbulence will cause pressure drop that can be
avoided by using a 30 or 45 degree angle entry instead of the tee.
Air line filters and dryers are often purchased without considering the
pressure loss factor. In general, these products can be made smaller and
cheaper if you will accept a higher pressure drop. This is not a good
bargain when you consider the power cost to produce wasted pressure.
Always check the pressure loss of filters before installing them in your air
system. You can compare dryers in terms of inlet air temperature, CFM
handled, pressure loss and pressure dew point achieved. The objective is to
install a filter and dryer with the lowest pressure drop.
Train Your People
The operation and management of a compressed air system takes the efforts
and talents of many people. A decision to work towards energy savings will
require all of these individuals to be part of the process. However, they
can not be effective unless they understand the cost of compressed air and
the interdependency of the components of an air system.
The companies that have trained their people on the importance of saving
energy have reaped the biggest savings. This type of training has a very
fast payback with long term benefits. These energy savings will go directly
to the bottom line and can make a difference in the profitability of any
Send an email to
email@example.com for details on customized training programs
that have helped others.
3. Tools for Trouble Shooting
Temperature and pressure readings can organize your trouble shooting efforts
when dealing with a problem in the compressed air system. Specifically, you
can use normal condition readings as a reference point in order to isolate
the cause of the problem.
The normal condition readings are taken on a regular basis for historical
reference and to observe any trends that indicate the beginning of a
problem. The readings are usually taken at locations before and after air
equipment including, among others, the compressors, aftercoolers, dryers,
receivers, air tools and filters.
We have found some interesting methods of collecting the information that
will help you with trouble shooting.
Increasing temperature in a compressed air system is one of the best
indicators of a problem. If you monitor temperatures over time, you can
build a base line for normal conditions and create a model for predicting
when you will have trouble with your compressed air equipment.
The most useful tool for this application is an infrared thermometer. This
is a hand held device that gathers temperature readings by aiming at an
There are a couple of points to keep in mind on this issue. The first is to
be aware that you are measuring the surface temperature, not the temperature
of the oil, air or water inside the object.
This method is not as accurate as putting a probe in the oil, air or water.
However, it is a practical way to get information that can be used in
The second point is to always take temperature readings when the compressor
is at full load. This gives you meaningful information that can be compared
to the design standards for the equipment.
There are several companies that offer infrared thermometers. However, you
have to decide what you want from the tool before you go shopping.
There are 2 basic decisions you have to make before selecting an infrared
thermometer. The first is to determine the maximum temperature you will have
to measure. The second is to decide if you will want to download the details
into a computer for trending.
The infrared thermometers manufactured by Raytek Corporation are considered
among the best products in this industry. They have a range of products that
can handle most applications.
You can visit
http://www.raytek.com or call them at 800.866.5478 for help in choosing
the right tool for your application.
The best idea we observed was the use of a single gauge that was adapted to
fit in an air line quick connection. The operator simply inserted the gauge
into quick connections that were mounted in key locations on the air system
Accuracy is critical when comparing readings and trying to isolate a
problem. It is important that you use a high quality gauge.
A superior gauge for this application is a Helicoid Digital Pressure Gauge
made by Bristol Babcock. They have a Series HG2000 with several different
pressure ranges (0 to 20 psi, 0 to 50 psi, 0 to 100 psi, 0 to 200 psi,
These different ranges each have a unique part number, so be sure of your
pressure before ordering. The 0 to 200 psi gauge is the one we observed
being used during our research.
You can visit
http://www.bristolbabcock.com or call them at 860.945.2200 for more
The right tools can make a huge difference in your trouble shooting efforts.
Those mentioned above make it easier to gather reliable information that can
help you isolate a problem in your compressed air system.
This newsletter and our website at
http://www.CompressorWise.com are dedicated to helping industry with
information about how to get the most from compressors and compressed air
The Compressor Newsletter is only sent to those who have subscribed from our
website. There is no charge for the subscription and we never sell or share
any email address.
©2005 Copyright and All Rights Reserved. No information in this newsletter
or located at
http://www.CompressorWise.com may be copied or reproduced, in whole or
in part, without prior written consent. Contact
for more information.
The information in this newsletter and on our website comes from Mechanics,
Maintenance Supervisors, Buyers, Plant Managers, Engineers, Compressor
Consultants and others. In no event shall CompressorWise.com be liable for
any damages arising, in any way, from the use of the information. | <urn:uuid:2c2461dd-a9dd-4632-8062-11939a5cca45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://compressorwise.com/newslettersample.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928633 | 3,634 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Welcome to Energy.Data.gov
where data and insight are combined to facilitate public discussion and awareness of our Nation’s energy activities. Whether you are interested in alternative fuels, managing buildings to be more energy efficient, or trying to manage energy in your own home, we have something for you. Look at the data, use the apps, join the conversation.
Check out talks from the White House Energy Datapalooza
Energy.data.gov is a new open government initiative to increase awareness of and deepen insights into our Nation’s energy performance. Energy.data.gov brings together high-value datasets, tools, and applications to shed new light on energy use. These free datasets and tools have been gathered from agencies across the Federal government with the goal of empowering all Americans to understand energy issues, including energy consumption within the Federal government.
Energy Data Initiative
The Energy Data Initiative is an Administration-wide effort to liberate government data and voluntarily contributed non-government data as fuel to spur entrepreneurship, create value, and create jobs in the transition to a clean energy economy. Find out more about how you can benefit and participate!
To maximize opportunities for education and entrepreneurship across a diverse set of energy subjects, Energy.data.gov has challenges, prizes, and competitions that relate to energy data in meaningful and engaging ways. Compete in a challenge, get to know winners of previous challenges, ask questions, and share your great ideas! | <urn:uuid:f69d9b43-1a09-4ecd-8e97-5483cc6cb166> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.data.gov/energy/community/energy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916817 | 294 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Take a Hike!
By Cari Scribner/HealthyLife
When many of us think of hiking, we picture ourselves meandering peacefully through woods with plenty of stops for picture taking. Or walking our dogs along a trail. Or walking with kids and letting them stop frequently to look at bugs, trees and birds.
All of these activities are family-friendly and a great way to be outside. But unless you’re chugging along at a brisk clip, you’re not likely to break a sweat, which means you haven’t engaged in true heart-pumping, calorie-burning exercise.
But you can pair being in the great outdoors with getting a good workout, and hiking experts say this is a powerful combination.
Neil Woodworth is executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), a nonprofit organization advocating conservation, environmental education and responsible recreation. More than 30,000 hikers belong to the club and take part in ADK-sponsored outings many weekends of the year. Woodworth says active hikers are in it for the enjoyment and the physical benefits. Continue reading | <urn:uuid:2afe08bb-4375-4b6e-90c1-9cf1258de110> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.timesunion.com/healthylifemagazine/tag/adirondacks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950461 | 229 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Williamsville, NY (PRWEB) October 12, 2012
The rules surrounding Medicaid eligibility can be confusing and difficult to navigate. Simplified Solutions of WNY, a trusted resource for senior citizens in New York, understands this and encourages seniors and their caregivers to take the time to be educated appropriately.
According to Simplified Solutions, Medicaid eligibility begins with an applicant being disabled, blind, or over the age of 65. Any person meeting any one of those three criteria has passed the federal test for eligibility. However, since the states administer Medicaid on behalf of Washington, a myriad of rules exist from one to the next. This is the area in which seniors and their caregivers need the most education.
"Remember that Medicaid is a Federal Government program administered at the state level," notes Simplified Solutions' Margie Cannon-Zdrojewski. "Because of this each state, and even possibly each county, can and will interpret the rules differently."
Cannon-Zdrojewski went on to note that income and specific asset restrictions and marital status affect Medicaid benefits. She said a monthly income of just over $2,000 would disqualify the average applicant from the program. But specific money management strategies can be employed as a workaround for such restrictions. Cannon-Zdrojewski says consumer focused education is necessary to make people aware of these strategies. Simplified Solutions of WNY helps clients learn how to use strategies for qualifying even if they have too much income or too many assets.
Simplified Solutions of WNY is an advocacy organization focused on helping America's seniors navigate through the challenges of daily life. They assist with Medicaid applications, health insurance issues, veteran support, bill management, and more. Seniors interested in learning more about Medicaid eligibility can contact them over the phone, via the Internet, or through e-mail.
About the company:
Simplified Solutions of WNY provides a focused, informed approach to elder care, while maintaining their privacy, independence and dignity. Their number one goal is to provide our clients and their loved ones with a sense of security, trustworthiness, and peace of mind. They assist their clients navigate through everyday challenges of independent senior living, those who are living in retirement communities, and all living situations in between - their services target not only day to day responsibilities, but also those that are specific to insurance matters. Simplified Solutions of WNY is the Buffalo Areas best choice for assistance with the Medicaid Application Process and Veterans Aid & Attendance pension benefits. For more information visit their website at http://www.simplifiedsolutionsofwny.com. | <urn:uuid:eb9b76f2-9766-473e-8b1e-d5b1c6d2019c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb10004322.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94618 | 529 | 1.820313 | 2 |
SHERIFF GARCIA PARTNERS WITH BOYS SCOUTS OF AMERICA
TO REACH AREA YOUTH THROUGH POLICE EXPLORERS PROGRAM
HOUSTON, TX – Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia launched today the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) Police Explorers program, a career and value-oriented initiative that will give young adults the opportunity to explore a career in law enforcement by working with deputies of the HCSO.
The HCSO’s Police Explorers program is open to teenagers and young adults between the ages of 14 (must have completed the 8th grade) and 21 interested in a career in law enforcement. Student participants will get a first-hand look at what it takes to be a law enforcement officer and decide early on whether it is a career they want to pursue.
The Explorers students will have the opportunity to train to perform certain police functions and utilize that training in mock police calls. They’ll also be able to showcase that training in Explorers competitions, held throughout the United States, and qualify to win awards and even college scholarships.
There are five Explorers posts within the HCSO, one assigned to each patrol district. A complete list of those posts is listed below. Also, each post will hold an open house during the month of October. A list of the open house dates and locations is attached. Everyone is encouraged to attend.
The Sheriff’s Explorers program, which is a subsidiary of the Boy Scouts of America and is affiliated with Learning for Life, will be led by two trained advisors in each district post and supported by HCSO civilian assistant advisors. “The Police Explorers program is a proven model and comes with a nationally respected brand of the Boy Scouts of America,” said Sheriff Adrian Garcia. “I am excited to partner with them to help me reach out to young people in the Harris County community! The Police Explorers program is a great opportunity to educate and mentor our youth and expose them to the rewarding profession of community service and law enforcement. It’s also a great way for our youth and their parents to support law enforcement.”
Nationally, there are over 33,000 Explorers and more than 8,000 adult volunteers.
Sheriff Garcia is proud to announce that Scout Master Joseph (Al) Blendermann, who also is a veteran Sergeant of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, is leading this important program. In addition, many of the designated HCSO advisors were members of the Boy Scouts in their younger years and some are actual alumni of the Police Explorers program.
The HCSO is currently accepting student applications. Any young adults interested in participating in the HCSO’s Explorers program can contact any of the HCSO deputies listed below. Please note that background checks will be conducted on all members and volunteers.
· Sgt. Joseph A. (AL) Blendermann,
Sheriff’s Explorers Program Coordinator
· Post 41 – District 1 Patrol
Deputies Ronnie Curnel and Raymond Bennett
· Post 42 – District 2 Patrol
Deputies Terry Garza and Lonnie Alexander
· Post 43 – District 3 Patrol
Deputies Brian Goldstein and Christopher Garza
· Post 44 – District 4 Patrol
Deputies David Bateson and Lisa Heiden
· Post 45 – District 5 Patrol
Deputies Scott Hardcastle and James Thomas
Photo courtesy of the HCSO. | <urn:uuid:1a7c46ef-e141-44be-b8a7-8147a8e59482> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guidrynews.com/story.aspx?id=1000037923 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931998 | 716 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The International Badminton Federation was founded in 1934 and was reported in the Badminton Gazette, November 1934, page 8 as follows:
On Thursday, July 5th, 1934, at Bush House, Aldwych, London, duly appointed representatives of the Badminton Association met representatives of all known Badminton associations (or corresponding organisations) for the purpose of forming an International Badminton Federation. The following were present: Colonel R. Bruce Hay, D.S.O., Mr. B.L. Bisgood and Mr. A.D. Prebble, representing the Badminton Association: Mr. A. E. Hollings (Canada), Mr. A.C.J. Van Vossen and Mr. H.M. Speight (Denmark), Sir George Thomas, Bart., Mr. E. Hawthorn, Mr. D.L.H. Mercer, Mr. G.E. Mills and Mr. L.T. Wickham (England), Mr, Rene Gathier (France), Mr. Edw. Den Hoed (Netherlands), Mr. J. Plunkett Dillon and and Major J.D.M. McCallum , D.S.O. (Ireland), Mr E.D. Andrews (New Zealand), M. J.A. Gibson and Mr. Jackson Millar (Scotland), Mr. T.W. Hughes and Mr. E. Trevor-Williams (Wales). Mr. F.W. Hickson, Secretary of the Badminton Association, acted as Secretary to the Meeting.
Mr. A.D. Prebble, in taking the Chair, said that it was his privilege on behalf of the Badminton Association to give a hearty welcome to the Delegates and to thank them for their attendance. Mr. Prebble gave a brief history of the game of Badminton, and of the Association which had been responsible for making the Laws of the game since 1893. He said that other nations were taking up the game very strongly and the time had now arrived when the Badminton Association felt they should hand over the existing Laws of the game to an international body. They therefore proposed the formation of an International Badminton Federation, which would in future be responsible for any amendment of the Laws and which amendments would be agreed to by every National Badminton Governing Organisation before becoming part of those Laws. Mr. Prebble concluded his remarks by stating that in his humble opinion, Badminton is the finest indoor game there is, and he hoped that in years to come we may be able to travel to any town in the whole world and find friends on a Badminton court.
The Chairman formally proposed and Sir George Thomas seconded the following Resolution:-
“That this meeting, consisting of duly authorised representatives of National Badminton Organisations, shall and hereby does form an International Badminton Federation; and that the Draft Rules already circulated to each National Organisation by the Badminton Association be and hereby are adopted as the Constitution of the Federation.”
After a short discussion this Resolution was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously.
The meeting now resolved itself into the first General Meeting of the International Badminton Federation, and Messrs. G.E. Mills, D.L.H. Mercer, H.M. Speaight and L.T. Wickham retired officially from the meeting.
The Chairman said that before proceeding with the business of the meeting, he wished to announce that the Badminton Association desired , through its representatives now present, to accord its full recognition and support to the International Badminton Association just formed, and to hand over to that Federation the International control of the game and its Laws.
The Officers for the ensuing year were then elected as follows:-
President: Sir George Thomas, Bart.
Vice-Presidents: Mr. B.I. Bisgood, Mr. E. Hawthorn, Colonel R. Bruce Hay, D.S.O., Mr. A.D. Prebble.
Hon Treasurer: Mr. D.L.H. Mercer.
Mr. F. W. Hickson, of 74 Grange Drive, Winchmore Hill, London, N.21, England, was appointed Secretary. This address to be the Official address of the Federation.
The delegates then adjourned to the May Fair Hotel, Berkeley Street, London, W., for luncheon, as the guests of the President and Committee of the Badminton Association.
The founding members of the IBF were: England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Denmark, Holland, Canada and New Zealand.
From this date the Badminton Association ceased to exist, and the Badminton Association of England was formed which became the governing body responsible for badminton in England. | <urn:uuid:1a5ea1e0-8b7d-4723-875d-52913d1d9907> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.badmintonengland.co.uk/text.asp?section=1711§ionTitle=1934%2C+Formation+of+IBF | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948782 | 999 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Diagnosis of Leukemia
The doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history and perform a physical exam. He or she will check for swelling of the liver, spleen, or lymph nodes in the armpits, groin, and neck.
Tests may include:
—to check for leukemia cells in the blood. Another blood test may be done to assess for the presence of specific genes associated with leukemia.
Bone Marrow Aspiration
—removal of a sample of liquid bone marrow to test for cancer cells
Bone Marrow Biopsy
—removal of liquid bone marrow and a small piece of bone to test for cancer cells
If the biopsy shows leukemia cells, additional tests may be ordered to determine whether the disease has spread and what systems are affected. Staging of leukemia depends on the type of leukemia. Tests may include:
Lumbar Puncture (Spinal Tap)
—removal of a small amount of fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord to test for cancer cells
—films of the chest that may detect signs of cancer in the chest
Acute leukemias are aggressive from the very beginning, but chronic leukemias have a longer and more indolent course. Over time, they may develop more aggressive characteristics as the cells making up the leukemia become more immature. As a consequence, chronic leukemias are classified not only by type but also the phase in which the disease is at the time.
Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia is grouped by three general phases:
- Chronic, with few immature cells, mild symptoms, usually responds to treatment
- Accelerated, with fewer than 30% blasts, some symptoms (eg, fever, poor appetite and weight loss), not as responsive to treatment
- Blast, with more than 30% blasts
In the US, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) uses a Rai classification to describe the phases of the illness:
- Rai Stage 0, as low risk, with a high blood lymphocyte count
- Rai Stage 1, as intermediate risk, with a high blood lymphocyte count and enlarged lymph nodes
- Rai Stage 2, as intermediate risk, with a high blood lymphocyte count and an enlarged spleen or liver
- Rai Stage 3, as high risk, with a high blood lymphocyte count and anemia
- Rai Stage 4, as high risk, with a high blood lymphocyte count and low platelet count
Acute leukemia is not staged because it involves bone marrow throughout the body and often has spread to other organs. Doctors classify it by type and subtype in an attempt to determine the prognosis and a recommended level of treatment.
American Cancer Society
website. Available at:
Cecil Textbook of Medicine. 21st ed. W. B. Saunders Company; 2000.
Conn's Current Therapy 2001. 53rd ed. W. B. Saunders Company; 2001.
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society website. Available at:
National Cancer Institute website. Available at:
Textbook of Primary Care Medicine. 3rd ed. Mosby, Inc.; 2001.
Last reviewed November 2012 by Mohei Abouzied, MD
Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
Copyright © EBSCO Publishing. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:71f88a40-1257-4540-9c6b-9783e8498a18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harthosp.org/HealthLibrary/Medications/default.aspx?chunkiid=20370 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90985 | 762 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Monkeys are born slackers. The furry procrastinators of the natural world will happily wait for a banana to fall from the tree rather than exert any energy to climb up there and grab one.
But a few years ago, a pair of scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C., managed to turn a group of monkeys into workaholics. By blocking the D2 gene, the monkeys' cells were prevented from receiving dopamine, the chemical that carries messages associated with reward. In laymen's terms, they could no longer tell that their efforts weren't worthwhile.
Without dopamine, the monkeys worked blindly at any task they were given - even if their new, improved work ethic earned them no additional reward.
The study suggests that our current cultural predilection toward busyness may be a simple case of bad wiring. Do we work so hard because our brains are broken?
Whatever the answer, there does seem to be an expanding cultural disconnect between effort and reward. People are working harder and feel more stress, but are reluctant to make any major change.
In 2008, more than 1.8-million Canadians worked 50-plus hours a week, and in 2007 more than 2.5-million employees over the age of 15 worked unpaid overtime every week.
Polls show that one in five adults also report being severely time crunched, and 78 per cent of Canadians between 35 and 44 years of age have reported that their daily schedule is more hectic than it was five years ago.
But if we'll (sometimes) admit we're overwhelmed, addicted to our smart phones and unable to contend with myriad responsibilities, many of us also insist we enjoy the pace, that we can handle it and aren't willing to make any substantial change.
According to Ofelia Isabel of Towers Watson, a consultancy that helps companies manage employees, the majority of organizations have work-life balance policies in place that go unused.
Although most employees say they want to improve their work-life balance, they rank career advancement even higher, and believe the two are incompatible.
"We want it all; we want the work-life balance but we want to be the first considered for that interesting project," says Ms. Isabel. "I think there'll always be some tension there."
Dr. Barbara Killenger, a Toronto-based psychologist who specializes in workaholism, says the inclination toward doing it all is deeply ingrained.
"An obsession controls you, you don't control it. And the obsession is to work," she says.
Dr. Killenger believes workaholics have been rewarded and glorified by society to such an extent that we can no longer recognize the inherent cost of such behaviour. We're like monkeys who have had our dopamine blocked.
"You don't feel real unless you're doing something," she said. "The lack of awareness is just so problematic."
With her clients, a willingness to change comes only when someone has reached their breaking point. Sometimes she councils people who have suffered a heart attack or other health problem inflamed by their schedules. In many cases, it's a spouse who says enough, threatening divorce unless balance is restored.
Good thing those workaholic monkeys weren't married. | <urn:uuid:dc190f97-1d9b-494c-8770-8d6589e75ea9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/work-life-balance/what-we-can-learn-from-workaholic-monkeys/article1781673/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Lates | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973045 | 663 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Dec 1 2011
I originally posted this back in 2009 but I have updated the post with some new information. Its the first day od December and this is the first of the Christmas links. I found this excellent video greeting and message from Santa on 23rd December 2009 and thought it was a really well designed system.
Simply provide the information and you can amaze your kids or young children (or older people who don’t understand technology) – it is very well done!
The Portable North Pole system allows Santa to talk to you and to deliver a personalised video with details of what that person asked for. You can also save and buy the video later if you want.
It is really excellent. To get your personalised Santa video go to http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home | <urn:uuid:a7c9e476-e030-4d9d-8604-362bb21f25b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shanemcdonald.org/myblog/2011-12-01/santa-talks-to-you-and-gives-a-personalised-video-message/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958403 | 166 | 1.585938 | 2 |
On January 21, 2011, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed Executive Order 11-01 to establish the Office of the Repealer in the Kansas Department of Administration.
In a press release related to the order, the Governor’s Office explains the order:
“My number one priority is to get our state’s economy growing again. With the help of Kansans, the Office of the Repealer will work to identify laws and regulations that are out of date, unreasonable, and burdensome. Laws and regulations shouldn’t hinder opportunities for Kansans and Kansas businesses,” Gov. Brownback said.
KDA Secretary Dennis Taylor will serve as the Repealer. The executive order sets out the office’s duties:
- Investigate the system of governance of the State of Kansas including its laws and regulations to determine instances in which those laws and regulations are unreasonable, unduly burdensome, duplicative, or contradictory.
- Establish a system for receiving public recommendations suggesting various laws and regulations to be considered for possible repeal. This system will include an online portal for receipt of public comments.
- Make recommendations for either outright repeal or for modification to be delivered to the originating body of such law or regulation. The recommendation will provide specific details with justification for the requested repeal or modification.
- Implement a tracking system to follow the action taken by the originating body on any recommendation made by the Office of the Repealer in order to prepare regular reports to the Governor regarding the progress of repeal or modification.
Brownback said the Office of the Repealer will also have the authority to determine and implement such internal policies, standards, and procedures as may be necessary for the orderly and efficient carrying out of its mission.
The order becomes effective upon its filling with the Secretary of State’s office.
The full text of the executive order is available online at https://governor.ks.gov/frontpagenews/2011/01/21/1-21-11-executive-order-11-01. | <urn:uuid:57bb1204-27f6-4331-b422-9657f21c9ac0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rulemaking.wordpress.com/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922173 | 419 | 1.914063 | 2 |
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|Evan Watson, NatureCity author & contributor|
According to new research from Japan, drinking coffee may lower the risk of certain cancers in the mouth and throat. The findings were part of a large scale Japanese population analysis called the Miyagi Cohort Study.
The results are published in the December 15, 2008 iss of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The study included 38,679 participants aged 40-64 years old with no previous history of cancer. In 1990, they filled out food frequency questionnaires which the researchers used to identify coffee consumption.
During the 13 years of follow up, 157 cases of oral, throat and esophageal cancers were identified.
After adjusting for outside risk factors like alcohol consumption and smoking, researchers found that participants who drank one or more cup(s) of coffee per day had half the risk of developing mouth, throat and esophageal cancers than those who did not drink coffee.
The researchers, from Tohoku University, also noted that drinking coffee was associated with a reduction in oral cancer risk among even the most high risk groups in the study.
In addition to these apparent anti-cancer properties, recent research has shown coffee may have a variety of other health benefits.
In recent years approximately 19,000 studies have examined coffee’s impact on health. For the most part, the results have been very positive.
Coffee has been shown to reduce the risk of diabetes, cirrhosis and oral cavities. And at least six different studies have shown that people who drink coffee regularly are up to 80% less likely to develop Parkinson’s.
A cup of Java may even play a role in treating asthma and reducing the frequency and severity of headaches.
Perhaps the best part of waking up really is coffee in your cup.
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Monday, February 26, 2007
Week of the First Quarter Moon in Gemini
"The first quarter moon phase symbolizes the power of reconstruction. After foundations are destroyed rethinking and reconstruction of a situation is brought to the forefront."
3 of Wands
Planetary ruler Neptune
The image for three of wands is 18th century students and scholars taking notes on a model of the heliocentric solar system. This card suggests the use of tools and materials to grasp a progressive knowledge of the universe. Passing knowledge from one generation to the next by use of the written word, mathematics, art, music and oral instruction. The card symbolizes greater awareness through education and innovation. This card also reflects the student who learns from his teacher, the teacher who learns from his student. Expanding on what you know through experimentation that leads to a profound discovery. Being at the edge of discovery use of the microcosm to understand the macrocosm. Inspiration and understanding comes from the use of scale models, math formulas, blue prints, preliminary sketches, and the rough draft, a few notes jotted on paper.
I think the most important thing about this card is the sense of discovery. Once you have learned the 'information' indicated by this card it is one of those "eureka" moments that you are forever changed by. Much like when people first realized the planets were orbiting the sun and not spinning around the earth. Or that the earth was round and not flat. This card is all about explaining new information that you can build on... note in the Gemini moon cards below the phases show how the differing phases impact the idea of learning new information. Looking to the opposite moon phases is also interesting. The first quarter moon in Sagittarius is the 3 of coins it is all about manifesting new ideas as opposed to just explaining.
Traditional tarot meaning: turning away from the past with hope for the future
In a reading: This card represents the understanding of complex systems by the use of scale models. Technology used in the process of teaching.
Other Gemini moon cards...
new moon in Gemini (May 21-June 20)
Embarking on a journey or quest, with the lesson learned a relationship ends.
full moon in Gemini (Nov.22-Dec.20)
last quarter moon in Gemini(Aug 23-Sept 22)
This is the time of the year when the sun crosses back over its path and begins its journey toward shorter and shorter days.
Full Moon Cycle of Gemini
The Ancient Egyptian myth of Shu and Tefnut twin lions.
Have a great week, | <urn:uuid:129c6589-f635-416d-bbbe-bc1f9db2ba9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wwwnewmoontradingco.blogspot.com/2007/02/week-of-first-quarter-moon-in-gemini.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94245 | 533 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Chris Hall opens our series of IPA reviews with a good look into the throbbing heart of the beer style.
Simply, India Pale Ale was a beer style created for export to India to be enjoyed by British colonists and soldiers. The legend goes that the beer was made strong and loaded with hops so that it would survive the arduous voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India. This is something that has been questioned repeatedly, but one thing we know is this: the beer that arrived in India was unlike any that had been made before and it changed the brewing industry forever. The way we judge IPAs today is thus: they should be above average in both hop bitterness and alcohol content.
People like to pick at the legend of IPA and find all the glaring faults and historical inaccuracies, but in my opinion, the fact that this beer even has a legend is something worth celebrating. You can’t say that Foster’s or Carling have a legend, can you? This is a beer style so beloved by connoisseurs and beer enthusiasts all over the world that they will happily argue at length about it.
So how did it all come about? Well, India Pale Ale has its roots in two places, London and Burton-on-Trent. London was where the first prototypes of IPA were developed and shipped to the farthest reaches of the Empire, but the basis for IPA was crafted first in the historic home of British brewing, Burton.
Before India Pale Ale, naturally, was regular Pale Ale. For this, we have to thank Sir Henry Platt. In 1603, he pioneered the charring of coal to create coke. Coke was a superior fuel to coal in two important ways: it did not produce nasty noxious gases, and coke fires could be controlled far more easily. In the brewing world, this meant that malted barley could be heated to finer degrees, resulting in light, brighter and paler beers.
Beer was being exported to India from the moment the British first arrived, but in terms of quantities it fell way behind the likes of the claret, madeira and brandy enjoyed by the upper-class officers. Meanwhile, common soldiers posted in the sweltering climate were turning to the local liquor arak to keep away diseases. It was known at the time that water could carry disease, and that fermented alcohol was cleaner and safer, but there was also a perception that alcohol actively removed infection and illness, so booze of all kinds was being swilled by the barrel by colonists and soldiers alike. This meant the poor blighters drinking arak were either dying from alcohol poisoning or suffering from nasty cases of blindness.
Due to the demand for something non-deadly to drink (plus a number of factors, including the rising competition between Burton brewers and their London counterparts), after 1716 more and more pale ale was being shipped to India, which was seen was the safer, cleaner choice to drinking bottles of brandy at lunch. London brewers such as George Hodgson brewed the prototype IPAs, and off the back of their success in India, made their fortunes. It is clear to modern brewers now that it was the journey, not just the ingredients, which made IPA what it was. The lengthy period of maturation (at least three months) refined the beer into something quite beyond regular pale ale. They called it ‘a wine of malt’: something with enormous flavour that was light, bright and massively refreshing. It became IPA.
Thus, a legend was born. As distribution hit record highs, IPA became world-famous as the pinnacle of English brewing, and over time attracted envious attention. Brewers from all over Europe visited the breweries of Burton to better understand their mastery of pale beers. One Danish visitor, Carl Jacobsen, studied at Evershed brewery for several months and went back to Denmark to try his hand at brewing for himself. He went on to develop one of the definitive lager yeasts, and gave his name to his own beer: ‘Carlsberg’. The sad truth is that IPA was so inspirational to generations of 19th century brewers that it ultimately brought about its own downfall. Lager began to replace it both at home and abroad as the lighter beer for refreshment in warm climates, and thus it began its long fall into obscurity.
We have the American craft brewing scene to thank for IPA’s resurgence. After the prohibition era, large corporations held the monopoly producing light tasting lagers, and innovative would-be brewers began to seek more flavoursome alternatives. In doing so they revived several English beer styles, and among them was India Pale Ale. Hop varieties grown in the USA are famous for their citrusy, piney flavours, and as an ingredient they lent themselves perfectly to IPA’s rich, bittersweet flavours. In the past decade, British brewers staged their own beer revolution, and now every county in the UK contains dozens of passionate microbrewers, almost all of whom brew the beer seen as British brewing’s benchmark.
This week’s issue Rum and Reviews features reviews of a plethora of British IPAs, from bold, ballsy innovations to traditionally recreated relics. Hopefully these reviews will give you an idea of what to expect from this ever-popular beer style.
For further reading, please seek out Pete Brown’s Hops and Glory, the source of most of the information in this article. It is seen by many as the seminal text on IPA history (and a fantastic read to boot). For more information about styles, definitions and more beers to try, seek out Zak Avery’s 500 Beers and the Beer Companion by the late, great Michael Jackson (no, not that one). | <urn:uuid:1074c2e0-2266-487f-8638-4aa20f5ff76c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rumandreviews.com/2011/08/22/india-pale-ale-beer-of-legend/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978568 | 1,170 | 2.5 | 2 |
|Local History News - Article||Actions|
From the 1840s three leading weekly journals were produced in Britain with news and information for the architectural and building trades. As the second half of the 19th century progressed their format, especially of illustrations, became much richer and more extensive providing a fascinating insight into the development of not just techniques and the buildings themselves, but also the man–made landscape of many parts of U.K.
The earliest journal was The Builder established in 1843 and still published today as Building. Building News followed in 1855 with probably a wider geographical coverage of the country, especially outside of the Home Counties. In 1869 The Architect & Contract Reporter appeared with a similar emphasis to Building News and some 60 years later these two journals merged and continued until 1980.
The most elusive publication The British Architect, an oversize journal, Manchester based with emphasis on northern Britain, emerged in 1874 and ran to 1919 before being absorbed by The Builder. Finally in 1895 the Builders Journal appeared and continued until about 1910 before being renamed Architects & Builders Journal. This later became known just as the Architects Journal & remains one of the most vibrant journals of today.
All of these publications produced bi-annual indexes of varying degrees of detail and thoroughness, and it is these that may well be of use to local historians.
The weekly magazines varied in length from about 15 to 40 pages with copious advertisements, though very few exist in their original form today. Invariably only the text was bound, where they have been preserved, and apart from public libraries their bulk and storage space meant few exist in private hands.
Initially they were bound by the year, but from the late 1870’s by the half-year with corresponding indexes. The main ones are approx A4 size & quite handleable, though as they got thicker, the task of exploring and checking them can be time consuming, and on occasions quite frustrating. However a lot of building-related information is there.
The journals are considerably enhanced, nevertheless, with many splendid lithographic illustrations which grew in number from 1-2 per issue at the beginning to 7- 8 by the late 19th century.
There are generally detailed indexes sometimes broken down into categories, and all have a separate illustration index. However, frustratingly, they may list by subject or theme rather than location – e.g- hotel in Sussex rather than e.g. Brighton – Hotel [Victoria'>more..., hospital in Malvern or theatre in Ipswich , so careful inspection is vital.
While visual material is always prized, there is a vast source of miscellaneous local information, but this can mean trawling through hundreds of entries to find a particular location. Obviously if the date of a particular event or building is known, this should help in the search, but if one is less precise it may involve checking several years; at two bound volumes a year and using three or four journals it can be very time consuming. Some journals also index by architect, but unfortunately there is no cumulative index for any journal, apart from one for illustrations in The Builder covering 1843 when it began to 1883. This is very useful with considerable cross-referencing. Another possible source is The guide to Victorian architectural competitions with indexes by place as well as subjects & architects.
I have felt for years that a cumulative index by journal would yield a massive amount of local history material, but alas I’m unaware of any such project, but maybe one day these will be created. An exception, but based on the Antipodes, is Guy Murphy’s index which he has painstakingly created after manually checking every page of virtually all of these journals over a 2 year period at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Library at Portland Place in London. This library is probably the best in U.K. and now gives access to the public with most of the journals on open shelves. The other I know of is the Cambridge University architectural department, though this is less extensive. No doubt research will reveal which other cities and possibly universities hold collections though where they exist they may only have microfiche copies.
However, having been fascinated by these publications for over 16 yrs, I have been fortunate to build up my own collection which has among other things, enhanced my local history knowledge of the places I’ve lived. In trying to achieve complete runs, one has often had to purchase several volumes for example at auction. Spare copies have enabled me to supply notes and particularly illustrations to other enthusiasts, history societies, museums, libraries etc throughout U.K. and even abroad. Ebay has been an invaluable medium through which to do this, and I now have a vast list of contacts and enthusiasts keen to add to their knowledge and collections of local material. A friend of mine who regularly advertises this type of material has such a site under the name ‘yelesomniloc’.
My main activity now is in researching indexes predominantly for illustrations, but also notes on particular locations, but this can be exceedingly time consuming. However it is very rewarding and always fulfilling to discover another piece in the jig saw of local history.
I have mentioned the idea of creating a national database of indexes based on these journals to various individuals and organisations, but as far as I am aware nothing has ever been attempted in this field, so until this is done, architectural journals will probably remain an unknown or underused source for local historians.
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Born: January 8, 1966 Primary Instrument: Piano
Pascal Wintz was born in 1966 in the French Alps near the beautiful city of Annecy. After obtaining his diplomas for piano jazz and composition from the Conservatoire Populaire de Genève, Pascal Wintz turned towards classical music, obtaining the prize Gabriela de Agostini and entered the class of virtuosity at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris.
First of all, I learned to improvise on the piano in pure jazz-man style and gave my first jazz concerts, he asserts. Then, I studied the extremely demanding discipline of classical music. Whilst studying in Paris, I interpreted the Beethoven's 3rd Concerto with the Cities University Symphony Orchestra. Pascal Wintz then made a start giving classical recitals: The United Stated Foundation in Paris, The French Alliance in Denver, The Red Cross Museum in Geneva, Paquet Cruises on the Mediterranean Sea, a tour with the Orchestra of the Savoy Region of France. When his first passion caught up with him, Pascal Wintz introduced jazz into his recitals and presented a cocktail of music from Bach to Duke Ellington.
Inspired by American Musical Comedies and 1930's Jazz, he found a repertoire which suited his musical talents.
When his first passion caught up with him, he introduced jazz into his recitals and performed his variegated programs from Bach to Duke Ellington. Through American musical comedies and 1930's Jazz, he found a repertoire which fitted his musical aspirations. Using a fluent neo-classical writing style, he has adapted these popular themes for the piano and has proved his talents as an improviser and interpreter.
Today, I make a composition of the two styles in my own arrangements. I am particularly at ease with Gershwin's music, both jazz and classical at the same time and with 1930's Jazz at once melodious and lively.
Since 1995, Pascal Wintz has travelled with his own Steinway Concert Grand Piano, which he transports to all locations using a marvellous motorised machine, the Klavier-Roller. He has also released several recordings: Jazz Piano 1930, Genuine Jazz Piano, Stompin' with Gershwin, Divertiento Viennois, Plays Broadway, West Side Story, Piano Romantique, Antigone Variations. I would like to demonstrate through my musical journey, he concludes that Gershwin and the Broadway composers, deserve an important place in twentieth century music; like Mozard and Chopin, they were able to write music both brilliant and popular.
Since his first engagements in 1991, Pascal Wintz has performed over one thousand times. | <urn:uuid:79030f07-a4ab-4480-94f7-8f759fe5a519> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/musician.php?id=28561 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955729 | 565 | 1.625 | 2 |
Posted: Mar 7, 2013 5:01 PM by Erika Flores
Updated: Mar 7, 2013 6:38 PM
TUCSON - The trickle down effect of federal sequestration cuts is affecting a local airport.
Ryan Airfield is on a list of smaller airports set to lose air traffic control towers in April.
It made the list because there are fewer than 150,000 take offs and landings, but the Tucson Airport Authority is working to save that tower.
They missed the mark by almost 30,000 take offs and landings.
In 2012, they had 121,000.
Pilots said if the tower is shut down, that would be disastrous.
"I think that's not really a good idea," said John Gordon, a private pilot.
Ryan Airfield is one of 189 airports on that list.
"I'm real disappointed and quite upset that that might go away," said Phil Drury, a pilot.
His friend agrees.
"We have three runways here so we have the potential for disaster," said pilot John Phillips.
The air traffic control tower tells pilots whether they're clear for take off or landing.
They also navigate safely through bad weather and keep planes at a safe distance from each other.
"The pattern gets very heavy at times, and the controllers keep us safe," said pilot John Gordon.
Gordon said the air traffic control tower helped him land safely when the transmission part of his radio went out while in flight.
"I would click three times and then they would give me the next command on where I should be in the pattern. That it was all safe to land and let me do that," said Gordon.
But as long as pilots' radios are working, retired flight instructor Bill Mclearran claims an airfield without an air traffic control tower can be safer than an airfield with a tower.
"I believe they are because those pilots at those fields are used to and depend on only their eyes. They are all in communication today. Most aircrafts have radios, so we can communicate with each other clearly," said Mclearran.
But these pilots said they don't want Ryan Airfield making the FAAs final list because they feel safer with more eyes in the sky.
"Cutting down on the number of people that are actually looking out for us is not a good idea at all," said Phillips.
The Tucson Airport Authority is petitioning the FAA to keep the tower open.
The FAA will release their final list of closures March 18.
This is the Tucson Airport Authority's statement:
"Tucson Airport Authority is preparing materials to petition the FAA to keep the ATC tower at Ryan Airfield operating. The FAA is asking for information pertaining to negative national impacts that would result from closure. We believe the military operations conducted at Ryan Airfield meet this criteria. The Arizona Army National Guard conducts training exercises at Ryan, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S. Air Force.
Locally, the closure of these facilities would result in significant job losses for controllers, for on-airport business operations, and for businesses that rely on a local airport to access the national and international aviation system. We hope to persuade the FAA to reconsider its plans to close the air traffic control tower at Ryan Airfield."
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A bedbug is a small (about the size of a pencil eraser), flat, reddish-brown bug that can be found in homes all over the world. It hides during the day and comes out during the night to look for blood. A bedbug has a special ingredient in its saliva (spit) that keeps blood from clotting while it's eating.
What a Bedbug Bite Looks and Feels Like
If a person gets bitten by a bedbug, the bite will feel itchy. Bedbug bites look like little red bumps (similar to mosquito bites) and they can sometimes occur in a line on the body.
What You Should Do
If you think you've been bitten by a bedbug, wash the bites with soap and water. Put on some calamine lotion to help with the itching. An adult can find an anti-itch cream at the drugstore for you. Try not to scratch the bites too much because this can make them become infected.
What a Doctor Will Do
If you get an infection from scratching bedbug bites, a doctor will need to prescribe medication to clear up the infection.
How to Avoid Getting Bitten
The best way to avoid getting bitten by bedbugs is to keep your room uncluttered so bedbugs won't have places to hide. Changing your sheets once a week and vacuuming the floor are also important things to do. If you think you have bedbugs, ask an adult about the best way to get rid of the bugs. | <urn:uuid:7ae908fa-7555-40fc-80c5-6b892d1596c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kidshealth.org/PageManager.jsp?lic=403&dn=CookChildrens&article_set=10271&cat_id=20442 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948482 | 309 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Over the weekend trade ministers from 147 countries hashed out a blueprint on agriculture to move World Trade Organization (WTO) trade liberalization efforts forward. U.S. commodity organizations give the blueprint mixed reviews.
The National Cotton Council (NCC) has the most reservations. Perhaps that's because cotton has been in the cross hairs of the gun sights of trade negotiators for some developing countries, particularly Brazil, longer than other U.S. farm program crops.
NCC: Specific references to cotton concern growers
"We're disappointed to see cotton highlighted in numerous contexts," says Woody Anderson, NCC Chairman. "However, we're encouraged to see no specific commitments for an ‘early harvest’ of the cotton program, which would have required separate negotiations outside of the overall agriculture discussions."
NCC President and CEO Mark Lange notes that "singling out cotton as a separate issue is both unfair and inappropriate. Unfortunately, this initiative has been influenced by poor economic analysis. Particular emphasis on U.S. cotton is unjustified and unwarranted - the world cotton market is much more than the United States. We've not increased cotton production. But foreign production is surging, particularly in China and Brazil."
NCGA: Corn sees better market access
The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) applauds the WTO effort.
"The framework calls for the eventual elimination of export subsidies and a significant reduction in import tariffs," says NCGA president Dee Vaughan. "This has long been a priority for NCGA and will provide new market opportunities for U.S. grain and value-added products.
"Plus, NCGA has long sought harmonization of trade distorting domestic support. The framework moves us in the right direction while ensuring the preservation of a strong farm safety net," says Vaughan. "We look forward to a final agreement that will increase global trade."
ASA: Soybeans see a tradeoff
The American Soybean Association (ASA) supports the U.S. negotiating team's position that reductions in trade-distorting domestic farm supports must be matched by meaningful gains in market access through tariff reduction and higher Tariff Rate Quotas on import-sensitive products. ASA believes that meeting this goal will be the key to achieving a successful outcome in the next phase of negotiations.
"ASA has asked that negotiations address the need to require advanced developing countries, particularly world class exporters like Brazil, to comply with the same disciplines on domestic support and export competition that developed countries must observe," says ASA President Neal Bredehoeft. "We will continue to press our negotiators to address this issue as the talks move forward."
ASA is concerned with how the product-specific spending caps to be imposed on trade-distorting programs included in the so-called Amber Box will be administered. Depending on the historical period chosen for establishing these ceilings, some commodities could be treated significantly better than others, which would skew production incentives under the Farm Bill.
"Global demand for high protein soybean meal and vegetable oil is rising rapidly," says Bredehoeft. "U.S. soybean producers don't want the farm program to provide disincentives for increasing soybean production as we seek to maximize our share of this growing market."
AFBF: Important direction for future negotiations
The American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman released a statement voicing support for the adopted framework text, saying it is an important direction for the future negotiations that the goal of "substantial improvement in market access" will apply to all agricultural products.
Stallman says, "The export competition measures in the text will benefit American farmers and ranchers by eliminating export subsidies and bringing rules to bear on the market-distorting operations of state-trading enterprises. We will also preserve the ability to provide food aid to those in need.
"The framework text does not settle all of the issues but it provides the opportunity to continue to work toward agricultural trade liberalization. We applaud the hard work of our U.S. trade team to provide a framework for future negotiations."
NFU: Farmers asked to sacrifice at altar of free trade
National Farmers Union President Dave Frederickson expressed disappointment with the World Trade Organization framework agreement approved over the weekend.
"This seems to be the administration's way of accomplishing through the WTO what they could not achieve in Congress-the elimination of U.S. farm programs," Frederickson says. "Once again U.S. farmers are being asked to sacrifice on the altar of free trade without getting anything in return.
"Our negotiators agreed to cut domestic economic safety net programs substantially, without identifying a plan to improve economic returns to producers or even achieve the same level of specificity concerning export subsidies or market access," Frederickson says. "It also fails to address specific trade distorting competitiveness issues such as exchange rates, labor and environmental standards and the effects of concentration."
"National Farmers Union is disappointed that the WTO framework will perpetuate a never-ending race to the bottom in producer commodity prices, pitting farmer against farmer and country against country for the one commodity all humans must have food," he adds.
Daschle: Trade negotiations hurt family farms
Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., is against the proposed 20% reduction in farm subsidies for corn, wheat, soybeans, and other crops. He says this proposal marks a significant step backward for U.S. agricultural producers.
"The proposed cuts seriously jeopardize the increased loan rates, the updated bases and yields and the counter-cyclical payments that I fought for as majority leader during the 2002 farm bill.
"In every deal, there are winner and losers. In this deal, big agribusiness has won and family farmers in South Dakota and across the country have lost," Daschle says. "It appears the Bush Administration is selling out our farmers at the negotiating table. That's simply unacceptable."
Grassley: WTO only way to level playing field
Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Committee on Finance, says while the framework makes some positive advances, there still is a long way to go before the Doha Round is deemed a success for U.S. agriculture.
"The road map is there. Now we have to fill in the details," he says. "I know our farmers can compete with anyone in the world, but that competition must be on equal terms. The road map laid out this past weekend can surely help us get there, and I'll continue my efforts to make sure that this is what's achieved as negotiations continue.
Grassley adds that negotiations through the WTO are just about the only way to "achieve significant worldwide agricultural reform - reform that's necessary if U.S. agriculture is to compete on a level playing field." Grassley says he finds it ironic that some members of the Democratic Party are now criticizing a framework that would help us get there. "I'm certain that they would be complaining and criticizing just as loudly had no framework been achieved at all." | <urn:uuid:58296b73-93d4-40ea-bcd8-d554b051360b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://farmprogress.com/story-farm-groups-mixed-on-wto-roadmap-0-2130 | 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 | 0.950857 | 1,438 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Cleburne's Division of Re-enactors will take on the 1400-acre Brice's Crossroads Battlefield to present two full-scale scripted battles with historically authentic scenarios. On Saturday, June 13 at 2 p.m., they will re-enact the Battle of Brice's Crossroads as it actually happened, and on Sunday, June 14 at 2 p.m. they will play out the Battle of Tupelo on the battlefield property.
Both battles were part of the Federal’s Atlanta Campaign. General William Tecumseh Sherman's plan was to destroy the Confederate army by dissecting the south and occupying Atlanta, GA. while keeping Forrest away from his supply lines.
Fought June 10, 1864, Brice’s Crossroads resulted in a decisive victory for Forrest, however, General A.J. Smith succeeded in beating back Forrest’s charges in the July 14, 1864 Battle of Harrisburg.
Cleburne’s Division of Civil War re-enactors, hosts of the event, promotes education and authenticity through the hobby. They have participated in re-enactments across the country with recent successful appearances at the 145th Anniversary Gettysburg and Chickamauga events in 2008.
In addition to realistic battles, an activities tent will host a variety of presentations from sewing and music in the Civil War to maneuvers used in the battle. Spectators will witness the Grand Ball on Saturday night as the battles take second stage to an authentic social event. On Sunday morning, period church services including a dedication and memorial to the soldiers will be held in the activity tent.
“Engineering, medical, and military demonstrations will be set up for spectators and programs will run all day on the hour in the Activity Tent,” said Edwina Carpenter, curator of the center and event organizer.
For children ages 8-13, the weekend starts early with a Civil War Discovery Day at the Brice's Crossroads' Battlefield. Children will meet on Friday morning beginning at 10 a.m. at the center. Buses will transport the children to the battlefield where soldiers, dressed in period attire, will greet them.
Participants will be invited to visit stations or camps to learn about different aspects of life as a Civil War soldier including music, uniforms, weapons and food. The day wraps up at 1 p.m. when they will be treated to a tasting of camp-fire prepared food before returning to the visitors center at 2 p.m.
“Living history demonstrations are a great way for Tupelo to celebrate its heritage,” said Linda Johnson, executive director of the Tupelo Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We are thrilled with the authenticity of this re-enactment.”
Parents and the public are invited and encouraged to attend. The $5 registration fee includes lunch. Registration can be done at www.bricescrossroads.com with Paypal or at the center located at 607 Grisham St. in Baldwyn, Miss. Tuesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Also on Friday at 7:30 p.m., cavalry and infantry will parade the Main Street in Baldwyn with a presentation of Colors, drum corps and troops in full attire.
A reception honoring the Officers and parade participants will be held at 8 p.m. in downtown Azalea Court with a period band and light refreshments.
Spectator parking is available at the crossroads on Highway 833 across from the Bethany A.R.P. church for a charge of $5 per car, per day. Shuttle buses will transport spectators to the battlefield site from the Visitors Center at 607 Grisham Street all day on Saturday and Sunday. Buses will run every 30 minutes to and from the field for $2 per person.
For a complete schedule of events, please contact Edwina Carpenter at 662-365-3969 or firstname.lastname@example.org. To learn more about Tupelo’s festival season, please call 800-533-0611 or go to www.tupelo.net.
# # #
Advertising, Public Relations agency primarily focusing on tourism in the Southeastern United States | <urn:uuid:6048a74a-a4e2-40d1-a1ad-1e3baca29ce5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prlog.org/10254942-brices-crossroads-to-host-145th-anniversary-reenactment.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930115 | 873 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Russia’s invasion of Georgia today raises some questions about how a McCain administration might deal with a crisis like this.
McCain’s main foreign policy adviser and spokesperson, Randy Scheunemann, is a former registered lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia. Back in April, in an interview with Radio Free Europe, Scheunemann took a strongly pro-Georgia anti-Russia line, insisting that the United States should move forward with missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as supporting the NATO membership of Ukraine and Georgia, regardless of the negative consequences that these policies would likely have for U.S.-Russia relations.
Given McCain’s provocative statements regarding Russia, it’s clear that he shares Scheunemann’s hardline views on the subject. As we wrote last month, this has troubling implications for the prospect of Russia’s essential cooperation in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. But is also raises the question of how a McCain administration — staffed by committed Georgian partisans like Randy Scheunemann — could conceivably be seen as an honest broker for dealing with the growing crisis between Russia and Georgia?
UPDATE: The McCain campaign issued a statement calling on Russia to “immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory,” and calling for the international community “to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.”
As Jonathan Martin notes, McCain has taken a much harder pro-Georgia line on the situation than the Bush administration. It remains to be seen how a McCain administration could productively mediate such a conflict, especially given Randy Scheunemann’s past statements dismissing diplomatic “trade offs” with Russia as “kind of a relic of a bygone era of power politics.”
UPDATE 2: Rob Farley has this analysis, also noting here Georgia’s bombardment last night of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, which prompted today’s Russian action in support of Georgian separatists. | <urn:uuid:f92b2d5c-e295-46a4-91a5-04cc82698b91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/security/issue/?m=20080808&mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939124 | 429 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Council & Democracy | Children & Families | Culture & Heritage | Economy & Enterprise | Environment & Planning | Jobs & Careers | Education and Learning | People & Community | Safety & Emergencies | Social Care & Health | Transport & Roads |
Evidence Based Practice
This course has been designed by Plymouth University and Devon County Council to benefit road safety practitioners who wish to enhance their skills in evidence appraisal. It will also benefit allied professionals, such as public health practitioners, who have an advocacy role in road casualty reduction.
Evidence based practice has had a major impact on healthcare by engendering good practice through sound judgement of scientific evidence and continued professional development amongst its practitioners. This course aims to combine the experience and skill of road safety professionals with an evidence based approach known to be successful within healthcare. It will present a critical overview of the evidence sources relevant for those professionals working in Road Casualty Reduction, and will review and develop the skills needed to interpret this research in their professional context.
Below are some examples of how this course impacted on participants and some of their comments on the course itself.
1. It was clear a number of participants had had little prior exposure to the research base:
"I have never considered research as a method of looking at a particular road safety issue. Whilst aware that obviously research was being undertaken, and from time to time hearing about it, I have never given it much credence or seriously looked at it as any more than general information"
2. Acquiring skills in evidence appraisal appears to make practitioners,
(a) more likely to want to consider research but more importantly (b) more likely to use it!
"I usually take it for granted as being 'gospel' - that has changed and I now feel more equipped to challenge and use that information"
"I am more likely to now search for research on a particular problem I will be dealing with. I hope I am now better equipped to easily identify quality papers"
3. Having been exposed to research, it changes attitudes towards practice:
"It questions what we all accept as good practice when in fact this might be flawed. But at least it makes us think, is there better practice?"
As part of its Beacon roll-out programme Devon County Council will be running further courses in 2007. For the latest information on locations, dates, costs and whether or not you may qualify for discounts contact Jeremy Phillips, Road Safety Operations Manager, firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:5e351c50-279d-4c7b-ba4b-465146e5ea98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.devon.gov.uk/text/index/transportroads/roads/road_safety/road_safety_strategies/evidencebasedpractice.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962223 | 507 | 2.0625 | 2 |
A senior official at the Iraqi oil ministry announced that the ministry is preparing long term plans to increase the level of oil production to 3.5 million b/d. The official noted that the cost of implementing of these plans would be US$4 billion, and that the production increase will be gradual. According to the plans, it will be achieved by 2007.
The source clarified, according to <i>Alahali</i> newspaper, that the ministry also set plans to increase the production level of liquefied natural gas (LNG) with the cooperation of leading foreign companies.
It should be recalled that the Iraqi oil ministry is currently studying the option of restructuring the oil sector via the inception of the National Oil Company as a governmental company that would be administratively and financially independent and merge the existing companies within it. | <urn:uuid:a9e483ae-ca5d-4946-a9ca-ea67699d5453> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albawaba.com/print/business/iraq-raise-oil-lng-output | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963869 | 167 | 1.703125 | 2 |
- All Genres
- Theatre & Shows
- Days Out
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Making Theatre: Gaining Skills
A course to develop creative skills and improve work prospects.
The course will allow the young people to work as a team on a real theatre production, learning technical and production skills such as construction, lighting, graphic design and event management.
It has been designed to be particularly valuable to young people with moderate learning difficulties such as Asperger’s Syndrome, Dyslexia and ADHD.
Learners that complete the course successfully will achieve a Bronze Arts Award and a BTEC Level 1 Award in Supporting Employability and Personal Effectiveness.
Local employers including Portsmouth Football Club and The Graphic Design House will provide valuable advice and guidance.
The course will run from Monday 7 January until Friday 1 February, with the first 2 weeks at the New Theatre Royal and the second half of the course at Catch 22 in Fratton. The programme is fully funded and free of charge to young people aged 16-18 not currently in full-time learning.
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Venue: New Theatre Royal
PO1 2DD 50.796669, -1.093047
→ Portsmouth & Southsea 3 min walk | <urn:uuid:3a6f1317-c092-43b8-bc12-389d8ad2c0ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ents24.com/portsmouth-events/new-theatre-royal/making-theatre-gaining-skills/3213553 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924169 | 332 | 1.695313 | 2 |
After six decades, Margaret Dunning still breezes down the road in her creamy 740 Packard roadster.
Packard, 81, Is a Youngster to Its Driver:
When she was 12 her father died, and his Model T Ford became hers.via [ Time Goes By ]
Once her politically connected mother, who had arthritic feet and could not drive cars, finagled a driver’s license for the 12-year-old Margaret, she drove her mother everywhere. Her mother drove the farm’s four teams of horses.
“If you had just a little knowledge and some baling wire and bob pins, you could keep the thing going,” she said of the Model T. “It was the little car that made America.”
She cherished her time in the car alone, reaching into the wind for roadside stalks of fragrant sweet clover. “I’d see a few friends or race past a blind pig,” she said, using the euphemism for Prohibition-era drinking establishments. “Before I could get home, people would be calling saying, ‘I think I just saw Margaret, with quite a dust pile behind her.’ ” | <urn:uuid:3d168722-720f-46e4-af2d-7f1b9e0ec69b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2011/09/101-year-old-woman-with-81-year-old-car.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979047 | 257 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Rip currents are basically currents that carry large amounts of water outward toward the sea. They do not "suck" you under and will not carry a person to England. They usually stop just beyond the breakers. They are not tides, so when you hear rip tides, that is not correct, they are currents. Sadly, they are responsible for many beach related drownings, as novice swimmers usually panic and try to swim back to the beach, against the current. You will rarely win that way, as these currents can be very strong.
What to Look For
Rip currents form in a shallow channel formed on the beach. At low tide, channels cut in the sand running out towards the sea are indications of a rip current spot when the tide comes back in. Strong currents may be a slightly different color than surrounding water and often can be seen as a disturbance or break in the surf line. They may also form around submerged sand bars.
What to Do If Caught in a Rip Current
If you are caught in a rip current, always swim parallel to the beach. Never swim against the current. Think of of it as a treadmill that can not be turned off. To get off, simply step off to the side! Swimming parallel to the beach, you will eventually break free and then can swim back in. If you tire and are a good swimmer, just let the current take you to where it ends, then swim at an angle away from where you came. Remember, never swim against the current, it will drain your energy and you probably will not make it! | <urn:uuid:281e502d-8b97-4ba5-84ea-9493f3cc5ab4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huntingisland.com/rip_currents.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971223 | 324 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Newsletter - Week 31
Welcome To Week 31
Your Baby: Eye-Opening Developments
The third trimester is a time of rapid growth -- for you and your baby. You might gain a great deal of weight -- and for good reason. Only 31 weeks, your baby weighs in at about 3 pounds 5 ounces (1590 g), and measures over 18 inches (46 cm) tall. Thanks to the deposits of white fat underneath the skin, the baby's color is changing from red to pink. At this point, the baby's irises dilate and contract in response to light, and his fingernails may extend to the end of the hands.
The organs are also in a growth period. Don't worry: Even if your lungs (and heart) make you feel breathless when you climb a flight of stairs or walk around the block, your womb mate is getting plenty of oxygen from your placenta.
Your Body: Planning For The Birth
Most first-time moms have mixed emotions and endless questions when it comes to labor and delivery. You may wonder how you will know when you're having a contraction, or when you should go to the hospital. You may be worried about what you can take for the pain. One of the easiest ways to get answers and ease your fears is to arm yourself with knowledge: Read books on childbirth, take notes during your childbirth education class, consult your health care practitioner, and ask friends and family to share their experiences.
Many women put together a birth plan to delineate their wishes for labor and delivery. It’s probably better to think about your “birth preferences,” because the inherent unpredictability of labor and birth makes it hard to have a plan.
So what’s to prefer? Births are a little like weddings – you’ve probably been to weddings that you think are lovely and tasteful and elegant, and you’ve been to others that you thought were vulgar and tacky. But the bride and groom chose to spend their day with that cake, those flowers, and that DJ – and it was right for them. Similarly, some women want to have a birth without any pain medicine and minimal medical intervention, and want to hold and bond with their baby immediately after birth, amniotic fluid and all. Other mothers would happily have an epidural placed before the first contraction, and would like their baby washed, with lots of soap, diapered, and dressed before touching him or her for the first time. Within the realm of what’s safe, there are lots of different “right” ways to have a birth. You and your partner should think about what works best for you.
The following are some of the key issues to think about what your preferences are, then ask your practitioner or talk to the hospital to learn about general policies. Discuss the risks and benefits of the various options. You may have to fill out specific forms or releases concerning many of these items ahead of time.
- How do you feel about using medication for pain relief in labor? Do you want to try to go without pain medicine, or would you prefer to have anesthesia as early as possible?
- Would you like to be able to labor in a tub or shower, if one is available at your chosen birthing center or hospital?
- Is there anything you want to bring to the hospital? Check the hospital's guidelines about video cameras, music, pillows, lights, etc. Some hospitals may have rules regarding video taping the birth.
- Who do you want to be present during labor? During delivery? Is there anyone you specifically want kept out of the room?
- What is the role of your coach
- Is there a particular delivery position
or procedure you would like follow? How do you feel about the use of stirrups to brace your legs? If you do not want to use stirrups, who will be with you to help hold your legs when you push?
- Would you like to have a mirror in the room when you are pushing, so you can watch your baby emerge?
- Do you have strong feelings about assisted delivery methods
(forceps, vacuum extraction) or cesarean delivery?
- Would you like to avoid an episiotomy, if possible?
- If you have a cesarean
, would you like your partner or coach to be present during the surgery?
- Who do you want to cut the umbilical cord?
- Do you want to hold your baby immediately after birth, or do you want her washed and swaddled before you meet her for the first time?
- Do you have specific desires about a bonding period with the baby after birth?
- Do you have strong feelings about receiving a routine IV to replenish your fluids?
- Are you planning to breast feed? If so, how do you feel about having your baby stay in your room after delivery? Would you like to avoid pacifiers or supplements, unless ordered by your baby’s pediatrician?
- Do you want anyone from the hospital to help you with breastfeeding, or to explain bottle-feeding or other baby care issues?
- Do you want a male baby to be circumcised
Some other issues routinely come up in books and web sites about birthing plans, but are rarely used at hospitals today. Check with your health care provider to make sure, but generally, you won’t be offered an enema, nor will your pubic area be shaved, unless you specifically request it.
On A Different Note: Every Bite Counts
To ensure that you and your little one are strong and stay healthy, follow the guidelines of this food plate
. It will help you feel good and will help your baby grow great!
A lot of moms and dads-to-be wonder if and when they will bond with their baby. An easy way to welcome and connect with your future arrival is to write a letter beforehand. Share your feelings about the pregnancy and about becoming a parent. Regale him with things friends or family have said or done, what you would do the same or differently if you could do it all over again. You can use it as a time to reflect on the past seven plus months and to relish the time left.
Irina Burd, MD, PhD, Maternal Fetal Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. | <urn:uuid:c5dae560-a2a1-44d0-a4aa-3c1d31ee706a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upmc.com/health-library/Pages/ADAM.aspx?GenContentId=000052&ProductId=14&ProjectId=14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954853 | 1,325 | 1.945313 | 2 |
High resolution X-ray spectroscopy of Active Galactic Nuclei
Prof. Graziella Branduardi-Raymont
High resolution X-ray spectroscopy is one of MSSL's astrophysics group well established lines of research, focussing on the study of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), and the ionised gas (the 'warm absorber') that lies in our line of sight to the central engine. The detailed analysis of the absorption features imprinted by the gas on the nuclear X-ray continuum, as well as of the emission lines generated in the gas, is a powerful diagnostic of the physical conditions of the environment surrounding the nuclear black hole, of the dynamics of the gas, its chemical composition and ionisation state. The gas is generally observed to be outflowing from the innermost regions of the AGN; the outflow rates are often comparable to, or even larger than, those of the matter accreting onto the black hole, and leading to the AGN powerful X-ray emission. This suggests that both outflow and accretion play a major role in the evolution of the black hole mass and of the AGN as a whole. The feedback mechanism associated with this may regulate star formation in the host galaxy, and may determine the known relationship between the mass of the black hole and that of the surrounding spheroid. The research student is expected to become very familiar with AGN science and learn the techniques employed in the analysis of high-resolution X-ray spectra, with the aim to contribute to and to further our investigations in the topics outlined above. The student will employ archive as well as guest observer data obtained with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS), which MSSL contributed to build. The knowledge acquired in building, testing and calibrating the instrument has translated into a deep understanding and interest in the exploitation of the data returned by the spectrometer. This combination of knowledge and observational expertise in high resolution X-ray spectroscopy is unique among UK astronomy groups, and puts us in a strong position for exploiting high-resolution data from the non-dispersive X-ray spectrometers of the future.
RGS spectrum of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC3516,fitted using the 'slab' absorption model. Some of the strongest absorption features are labelled (from Mehdipour et al. 2010, A&A, 514,100 - Missagh Mehdipour is a current MSSL PhD student).
Artist's impression of the core of the Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxy Arakelian 564 showing the limits (set by the RGS data) on the locations of the broad emission, narrow emission and absorption line regions (from Smith et al. 2008, A&A, 490, 103 – Rebecca Smith was a PhD student at MSSL who received her doctorate in 2009).
Mehdipour, M., Branduardi-Raymont, G. et al. Multiwavelength campaign on Mrk 509. IV. Optical-UV-X-ray variability and the nature of the soft X-ray excess, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 534, 39 (2011)
Mehdipour, M., Branduardi-Raymont, G. and Page, M. The X-ray warm absorber and nuclear obscuration in the Seyfert 1.8 galaxy ESO 113-G010, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 542, 30 (2012) | <urn:uuid:a45c8ca4-e79d-4ac4-b944-edebc3c8e105> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mssl/astro/phd/GBR/GBR-AGN | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912875 | 732 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Protein inhibitor helps rid brain of toxic tau protein
Inhibiting the protein Hsp70 rapidly reduces brain levels of tau, a protein associated with Alzheimer's disease when it builds up abnormally inside nerve cells affecting memory, neuroscientists at the University of South Florida found. The study is reported online today in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Now that we've discovered that targeting the chaperone protein Hsp70 can clear tau, it could be helpful in finding more effective drugs for Alzheimer's disease," said the study's senior author Chad Dickey, PhD, assistant professor of molecular medicine who works out of the Byrd Alzheimer's Institute at USF Health "The therapeutic strategy may also be applicable to other neurodegenerative diseases involving Hsp70, such as Huntington disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and some cancers."
Hsp70 is a one of several "chaperone" proteins that supervises the activity of tau inside nerve cells. The normal function of tau is to support the structure of nerve cells, much like the skeleton provides a scaffold to support the body. Tau is inside nerve cells, while another hallmark protein associated with Alzheimer's, beta amyloid, is outside the neurons.
Working with researchers at the University of Michigan, the USF team tested the effects of several compounds on Hsp70 in cell models and brain tissue from mice genetically modified to develop the memory-choking tau tangles. Some compounds activated Hsp70, and others were Hsp70-inhibitors.
One of the more effective Hsp70-inhibitor drugs the researchers discovered was a derivative of methylthioninium chloride, or Rember™, the first experimental medication reported to directly attack the tau tangles in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Rember™ was heralded as a major development in the fight against Alzheimer's when results in early clinical trials were announced last year at the International Conference on Alzheimer's disease.
But Rember™ and its derivatives do have some inherent problems; they're not very potent so effective therapy would require fairly high doses, Dickey said.
"The drug does help prevent the protein (tau) from clumping together, but that in itself doesn't mean it's actively getting rid of the toxic tau," he said. "Now that we know Hsp70 is a target of Rember™, we can develop similarly-acting drugs that will more specifically target this chaperone protein in affected areas of the brain, resulting in fewer side effects."
The USF researchers originally thought activating Hsp70 would direct the chaperone protein to decrease the tau gone bad -- preventing tau from stacking up into tangles inside cells involved in memory and destroying them. But instead of restoring tau to its normal supportive function, activating Hsp70 actually led to tau's preservation and even more accumulation, Dickey said. "Basically we think the chaperone binds to the tau, and somehow in the process of trying to fix things decides to keep holding onto tau when it shouldn't. So, activating Hsp70 is not necessarily what we want to do; we ultimately want to inhibit Hsp70 to promote the release or clearance of tau …to kill the bad tau."
Dr. Dickey emphasizes that problems with Hsp70 alone do not cause Alzheimer's. It likely develops from a convergence of various factors in the brain, he said, including deposits of the other featured Alzheimer's protein beta amyloid, or a genetic defect; disruption of cell signaling; a breakdown in the neuron's support structure, and then accumulation of tau into the memory-choking tangles.
Dr. Dickey's team at USF focuses on how to manipulate with drugs or gene therapy the chaperone proteins that regulate tau's fate – determining whether it's preserved or cleared from the brain. The University of Michigan team works on identifying and developing compounds that may be effective against Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies.
- Inhibitor of heat shock protein is a potential anticancer drug, Penn study findsThu, 29 Oct 2009, 17:26:25 EDT
- Dynamics of chaperone protein critical in rescuing brains of Alzheimer's mice from neuron damageFri, 3 Dec 2010, 11:04:25 EST
- Fox Chase researchers find new method of fixing broken proteins to treat genetic diseasesFri, 15 Jan 2010, 5:00:15 EST
- Untangling the mysteries of Alzheimer'sThu, 2 Feb 2012, 16:37:20 EST
- Two cardiovascular proteins pose a double whammy in Alzheimer'sSun, 21 Dec 2008, 14:23:20 EST
- Protein Inhibitor Helps Rid Brain Of Toxic Tau Proteinfrom Science DailyWed, 30 Sep 2009, 14:28:11 EDT
- Protein inhibitor helps rid brain of toxic tau proteinfrom Science CentricWed, 30 Sep 2009, 12:56:28 EDT
- Protein inhibitor helps rid brain of toxic tau proteinfrom Science BlogTue, 29 Sep 2009, 22:28:22 EDT
- Protein inhibitor helps rid brain of toxic tau proteinfrom Science BlogTue, 29 Sep 2009, 17:56:13 EDT
- Protein inhibitor helps rid brain of toxic tau proteinfrom PhysorgTue, 29 Sep 2009, 17:35:17 EDT
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- Genetic engineering alters mosquitoes' sense of smell
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- 'Popcorn' particle pathways promise better lithium-ion batteries | <urn:uuid:e2e506fc-83f7-4a5c-a69d-e8fc50a9dc96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/09/29/protein.inhibitor.helps.rid.brain.toxic.tau.protein | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916392 | 1,291 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible, by Matthew Henry, at sacred-texts.com
(Eze 14:1-11) Threatenings against hypocrites.
(Eze 14:12-23) God's purpose to punish the guilty Jews, but a few should be saved.
No outward form or reformation can be acceptable to God, so long as any idol possesses the heart; yet how many prefer their own devices and their own righteousness, to the way of salvation! Men's corruptions are idols in their hearts, and are of their own setting up; God will let them take their course. Sin renders the sinner odious in the eyes of the pure and holy God; and in his own eyes also, whenever conscience is awakened. Let us seek to be cleansed from the guilt and pollution of sins, in that fountain which the Lord has opened.
National sins bring national judgments. Though sinners escape one judgment, another is waiting for them. When God's professing people rebel against him, they may justly expect all his judgments. The faith, obedience, and prayers of Noah prevailed to the saving of his house, but not of the old world. Job's sacrifice and prayer in behalf of his friends were accepted, and Daniel had prevailed for the saving his companions and the wise men of Babylon. But a people that had filled the measure of their sins, was not to expect to escape for the sake of any righteous men living among them; not even of the most eminent saints, who could be accepted in their own case only through the sufferings and righteousness of Christ. Yet even when God makes the greatest desolations by his judgments, he saves some to be monuments of his mercy. In firm belief that we shall approve the whole of God's dealings with ourselves, and with all mankind, let us silence all rebellious murmurs and objections. | <urn:uuid:dafeea50-4071-42ad-b639-12dbe4d60c58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/mhcc/eze014.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970447 | 381 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Citizens of poorest countries are happiest in the world
Gallup, The American Institute of Public Opinion, conducted a study to find out which country had the happiest citizens. The survey results were striking as it was discovered that citizens of the poorest countries were the happiest. The list of the happiest countries was topped by El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. What is the secret of Hispanic happiness?
Specialists of the Gallup Institute released data from a study conducted back in 2011. Experts conducted a survey in 148 countries around the world to find out in which countries people were more likely to experience positive emotions. People were interviewed in person and on the phone, and each person was asked five questions, all about the ways they spent the previous day.
Social scientists asked whether the respondents felt joy, whether they felt rested, and how often they laughed and smiled. In addition, the researchers asked whether their interviewees felt respected by their peers, as well as whether they learned something new the day before.
According to the Gallup, the happiest people on the planet were the citizens of El Salvador, Panama and Paraguay. These three countries were the "happiest". The top ten included 7 countries in Latin America - in addition to the above, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica made the list. Russia, however, did not even make it to the top one hundred of the happiest countries, occupying one of the lowest spots (along with Iran and Algeria).
First place in the ranking was occupied by a small equatorial country in Latin America - Panama, whose population is only 3.4 million people (according to 2010 census). However, despite the relatively small size of the country and small population, the standard of living in the country is relatively high. According to the studies, the birth rate in the country is 20 per thousand - 96th place among other countries. The mortality rate is low at about 4.5 people per 1000.
Panama's mortality rate is among the lowest -196th. The average life expectancy is impressive as Panamanian men live on average 74 years, women - 80. In Panama, the vast majority of the population lives in urban areas - 73 percent. The country earns its income exploiting the Panama Canal, as well as tourism, insurance, and banking. Two-thirds of the population is employed in these sectors. According to UN statistics, the per capita GDP in 2009 was nearly 12 thousand dollars, which is not bad for a small country whose level of production was only 18 per cent of annual GDP.
World analysts note that Panama is a country where people can be quite happy with their living conditions. UN experts believe that the standard of living in the country is comparable to that of North America - the United States and Canada, only the price of goods and services is several times lower. For example, a meal at an upscale restaurant is only 50 U.S. dollars, and a taxi ride anywhere in the capital is $2.
The level of health care in the country is also high, noted the experts from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Hospitals and clinics boast state of the art equipment and doctors are highly skilled, which is key to the high level of health care in the country. Incidentally, nearly all of Panama's qualified doctors have been trained in the U.S. The cost of health insurance in the country does not exceed $800 dollars, and the price of medical services is two times lower than in the United States.
Of course, the Gallup experts noted that the infrastructure of the country and high quality of life were not the only factors that influenced the extent to which its citizens were happy. The country's favorable climate plays a significant role. The temperatures remain virtually unchanged all year round at the level of 25-28C degrees in the afternoon. Panamanians never see snow, which is not surprising, as the country is located near the equator. Dry and rainy seasons do happen on the country's territory.
In 2005, Panama won the first place in the global index of the most comfortable countries in the world. Retirees tend to move to Panama because it has one of the most developed pension systems in the world. According to the American Association of Retired Persons and the organization "International Living", the United States recognized Panama as one of the four of the world's best countries to live outside the U.S.
Despite the fact that El Salvador and Paraguay took the second and third places in the Gallup ranking, experts still say that the standard of living in these countries is low. The urban population in these countries is under 60 percent, and the economy is based on agriculture. The unemployment rate in these countries is somewhat higher, but it is easier to find a job here than in Panama - mainly in logging, and cotton and sugar cane plantations.
Average life expectancy in other Latin American countries, however, is the same as in Panama - 73 years for men and 79 for women. However, the level of health care in these less developed countries is poor. For example, this year, Paraguayan doctors sounded the alarm as the country faced an epidemic of yellow fever. According to the Associated Press, in 2012, the state government appealed to various international health organizations asking for 600,000 vaccines for prevention of yellow fever.
The results surprised the researchers from the Gallup Institute as it turned out that the happiest people live in poor countries of Latin America. If the standard of living in Panama is comparable to that of developed European countries, residents of such countries as El Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago cannot boast similar conditions. Scientists explain this by historically formed mentality of these people who see happiness in things other than material goods. According to them, people in poor countries can find joy in the moral satisfaction that often is not available to citizens of the developed countries.
Some of the world's media cited an example of two attitudes - a successful and wealthy businessman from Singapore and a poor woman who sells tea in the streets of Paraguay. "We keep working and don't get paid enough," complained the 33-year Singaporean Richard Lowe. "Wealth does not bring happiness, but only problems. Life is too short, and there is no place for sadness," said Maria Solis of Paraguay.
Singapore, Iraq and Armenia closed the list of the happiest countries in the world. It may be true that it is not the standard of living in a particular country, but the attitude of the citizens that matters. | <urn:uuid:2da08ed4-3f71-4fb1-b6b5-cac366e9fec2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/02-01-2013/123363-poor_happy-0/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969103 | 1,320 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Places to see and things to do in Bulgaria
Bulgaria is home to remains of the Byzantine empire, including hill fortresses from
the 11th century like the one at Mezek, and the Black Sea coast is Bulgaria’s major
tourist attraction even now. However, the country’s interior is virtually undiscovered
by tourists, and has many miles of well maintained horse and hiking trails, allowing
discovery at a leisurely pace. The mountains of Bulgaria offer one of the few opportunities
you’re likely to get in Europe to see a lynx in the wild.
Bulgaria’s public transport is cheap and efficient and makes it possible to travel
fairly easily between the country’s urban centres and its sedate rural areas where
traditional life continues more or less undisturbed.
Rural Bulgaria offers timber frame villages, with life often centred around the
wood burning stove and the Orthodox Church. Urban Bulgaria is a different matter,
with modern cities like Sofia filled with alfresco bars and beautiful parks.
Bulgaria is a country of ravishing views, a haven for orienteers, skiers and outdoors
enthusiasts of every description. It’s also a land with a broad coast of beaches
and coves, a rich history whose record can still be read on ruins as well as museums,
and where modern luxurious living can be had within easy reach of wilderness as
well as in town.
Below, you’ll find a list of Bulgaria’s best, which we’ve assembled to make sure
you get the best from you trip to Bulgaria.
If you think there’s something that would improve this page, please
contact us and let us know. | <urn:uuid:061bbe60-2b72-41e3-a0d9-d0a33254ab14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.property-abroad.com/bulgaria/attractions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95139 | 372 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Fact No. 1: There was nobody named Jack Dawson on the Titanic.
Fact No. 2: The man named J. Dawson who was among the passengers and died on the Titanic, and whose grave movie fans visit in Nova Scotia, was not Jack, the character Leonardo DiCaprio played in that 1997 blockbuster movie.
"The Titanic for Dummies" will teach you that, and thousands more facts about the legendary disaster.
New Haven author Stephen Spignesi is responsible for this reference book published in January. Spignesi also wrote "The Complete Titanic: From the Ship's Earliest Blueprints to the Epic Film" in 1998.
So if his first Titanic book was "complete," why write a new one?
"I was already a 'Dummies' author. I've written three of them," Spignesi said, referring to "Second Homes for Dummies," "Lost Books of the Bible for Dummies" and "Native American History for Dummies." "I had done the [Titanic] book in 1998. I had already put in the time to do the research and had a massive archive of books, articles, videos and facts."
With that research in hand, he persuaded Wiley, the publisher, to let him write "The Titanic For Dummies" on the 100th anniversary of the disaster, which happened on April 14-15, 1912. More than 700 passengers and crew members survived the sinking of the Titanic, but more than 1,500 died.
"'The Complete Titanic' was straightforward history, and the 'Dummies' books are very modular and nonsequential," he said. "They're meant entirely as reference books."
But he said in addition to the new format, the new book also contains updated information based on new research and inquiries, or what he referred to as "a boatload of information."
"Did I just say 'boatload?'" he said.
New And Improved
"The Titanic for Dummies," in 20 easily accessible chapters, describes in detail the ship's construction, the socioeconomic status of the passengers, life aboard the ship, the first four days of the trip, before disaster struck, how people survived once the ship hit the iceberg, firsthand accounts of the sinking, press coverage, what went wrong, later efforts to find the remains, movies about the Titanic, myths, artifacts and one startling chapter about a book written in 1898, "Futility / Wreck of the Titan," whose story had eerie similarities to the tragedy that happened 14 years later.
Spignesi said that for him and for the general public, the enduring fascination with the Titanic tragedy — which isn't even close to being the most fatal maritime disaster in world history — is largely due to the fact that it sank on its maiden voyage.
"Actually, what the Titanic was trying to do was ... a routine journey. For immigration, mail and cargo, a steamship was the only way to get across the pond," he said. "But to sink on a maiden voyage? ... If I walked into a movie producer's office and said, 'I have a great idea for a movie: Get the biggest ship ever, fill it with millionaires and have it sink hitting an iceberg on its first trip,' it would be considered too far-fetched."
"If the Olympic [another ship] sank on its fourth or fifth or sixth trip to New York, I don't think it would be anywhere near as important or interesting as the Titanic," he said. "Here we have a $7 1/2 million ship, the ultimate in luxury, some of the richest people in the world on board, the biggest moving thing on the planet, and it sinks on its first trip. It's ludicrous. Truth is stranger than fiction."
But other aspects of the tragedy are just as fascinating; Spignesi called the entire episode "human error, combined with design error."
He said if the ship truly were to be "unsinkable," it would have to have been built with all the watertight compartments closed off by thick ship walls that extended all the way up to the top of the boat.
But human error played just as big a role, starting with the British Board of Trade, which still operated under laws based on ships about 10,000 to 26,000 tons. The Titanic was 46,000 tons.
"White Star Line was in total compliance with the laws of the time, but the laws were outdated," he said. "The laws required 16 lifeboats. They put four additional collapsible lifeboats on board, to make people think they were going overboard protecting people's safety." | <urn:uuid:50414697-8f43-46e8-9b38-7b230afb24ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.courant.com/features/hc-titanic-for-dummies-0407-20120406,0,1506075.story?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982561 | 948 | 2.84375 | 3 |
As we all know fish can sometimes feed very selectively. There are some days when the fish “Lock Into” certain bugs. Our job as anglers is to figure out what they’re eating.
Most successful anglers are also very observant and can determine what stage of the bug the fish are taking. Once they determine the stage, a fly is chosen to match that particular stage of the hatch. The more you know about what fish feed on, the better you can match the hatch. The better you can match the hatch, the more fish you will catch in many circumstances.
This where being observant and being an active collector of bugs comes into play. It pays to know what kind of bugs are available in each of your fishing areas, runs, riffles, and tailouts. One of the best angling tools that you can add to your arsenal is a “kick screen”. It can be made easily by taking a square of window screen with a wooden dowel attached to the edges of each end.
It will pay big dividends if you sample the river each and every time you head to the river. The bottom ends of the sticks are jammed into the river bed with the screen strung between them perpendicular to the current of the river. You just position yourself upstream from the screen and shuffle your feet to loosen up rocks to get the bugs to lose their grip and flow downstream into the screen. Anything that is dislodged from the bottom is washed into the screen and held there by the water current. Carefully raise the screen to the surface, being careful that the trapped insects stay on the screen. Bring along something like a white plastic lid or Frisbee and pick out the bugs from the net and place them in the lid with a little water to see what’s going on in the insect world.
Once you have the bugs swimming around in the lid, pull out your fly boxes and find the flies than match the correct size, and color. The first thing that you will probably find out is that you have been regularly fishing with flies that are too big. Rick Hafele, who is a popular writer and entomologist, often says that the most important trigger for flies is to match size. This is one of those things we need to burn into our brain. “Size matters”.
If you can find one, the “Borger Color System” is a chart of systematically arranged color swatches which allow you to judge colors accurately.
It is also a good practice to take notes on what you find and keep them in a fishing journal.
Match the bugs and go fishing!
Preserving your Bug Samples
If you are interested in collecting bugs to bring home as references for your fly tying, you will need to learn how to store the bugs, and probably the most important, label your samples.
Aquatic invertebrates, bugs, should be preserved in 70 to 80 percent alcohol. It is recommended using 80 percent since the organisms you add to it will carry some water and dilute the alcohol. If the alcohol becomes too diluted, your specimens will become mushy and useless for study. Ethyl alcohol should be used whenever possible because it provides the best fixation of body tissues and is good for long term storage. However, isopropyl alcohol is a good substitute and can be purchased cheaply in drug stores. Whichever preservative is used, you should change it once with in a day or two after collecting.
Collections from different locations and dates should be preserved in separate containers and individually labeled. Small glass vials with tight-fitting screw cap lids or rubber stoppers are the best. The minimum amount of collection information should include name of water body, location of water body (e.g. road route, mileage to nearest town), elevation (if available), date (day, month, year) and name(s) of collector(s). Label information should be written on 100 percent bond paper using a pencil or alcohol-proof black ink. Labels should be placed inside the vial with the organisms. Below is an example of a typical label.
Lower Yuba River
1 1/2 miles above the Parks Bar Bridge
January 25, 2010
Identifying and studying your collections can be rewarding for several reasons. First, you can learn more about the different kinds of potential trout food/ organisms present in a stream you fish. Second, the size, structure, and color of preserved organisms can provide tips on how to model your flies at the vise.
The Basic identifications (order and family-level) required to benefit your fly tying activities can be made with a hand held magnifying glass.
The better information and samples you have on your tying bench, the better flies you will tie.
Have fun out There!
Fly Fishing Traditions
Fly Fishing Traditions Blog | <urn:uuid:18a806b6-e441-48bd-b37e-4cf2101fd93e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theflyfishingforum.com/forums/coldwater-articles/211561-bug-collecting.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942901 | 1,000 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Antonello Venditti (born March 8, 1949) is an Italian singer-songwriter who became famous in 1970s for the social themes of his songs.
Antonello Venditti was born in Rome, the son of a police commissary.
He studied piano in his youth and made his debut in the music world in the early 1970s at the Folkstudio of Rome, together with singers the like of Francesco De Gregori and Giorgio Lo Cascio. In duo with the former he released in 1972 his first LP, Theorius Campus. The LP scored little success, but Venditti at least made himself being noted for the strength of his vocal qualities and for his attention for social issues, evidenced by pieces like "Sora Rosa" which is sung in Roman dialect. Also in dialect was "Roma Capoccia", a declaration of love for his city, that later became one of his most famous songs. Curiously, Venditti refused to sing it for several years, as he considered it not politically or socially "engaged" enough. | <urn:uuid:41e69c5f-6e99-4f90-9b61-87f10e2284e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chordie.com/song.php/songartist/Antonello+Venditti/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.994889 | 224 | 1.84375 | 2 |
The environmental impacts of a moderate-income housing development critics say could bring big-city crime and traffic to their semirural enclave will be the focus of a meeting Monday in Lafayette.
Planning commissioners will meet at 7 p.m. inside the Community Hall at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center to discuss the 315-unit Terraces of Lafayette, which would be built on what is known as the "Christmas Tree Lot" on Deer Hill Road. Commissioners will hear public comments and take questions about a draft report describing how construction could affect the air quality, geology and biology of the area -- and what can be done to lessen any impacts.
The Circulation Commission will hear comments and questions about Terraces-related traffic at 5 p.m. that day, also at the library.
Released in May, the lengthy draft report details various ways the Terraces could alter the landscape, including how 14 residential two- and three-story buildings could change views of hillsides and ridgelines. It explains what steps developers must take to lessen construction noise and what can be done to reduce traffic hazards near the apartments, among other issues.
The city has been discussing the Deer Hill Road area, including the property owned by Anna Maria Dettmer, since 2001.
Last year, the Dettmers submitted plans to develop their 22-acre lot, which is zoned for offices with multifamily housing allowed with a permit.
However before any construction can begin, developers would need various permits from the city, such as those that would allow them to build on a hillside, remove trees and have dwellings visible along protected ridgelines.
As part of the draft report, the city is offering three alternatives, including not approving the apartment complexes, reducing their size or putting four three-story office buildings on the site.
Once all comments and questions on the Terraces' environmental merits are received, they will be responded to in the final report. Staffers expect that to be ready in September and will conduct a public hearing on its adoption. The project will then go through various reviews before the city decides whether to approve it.
Written comments on the draft EIR will be accepted until 5 p.m. June 28 and can be submitted by mail to Ann Meredith, City of Lafayette, 3675 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Suite 210; emailed to email@example.com; or faxed to 925-284-3169. | <urn:uuid:c5aa7db5-80fe-4212-a1f2-67a271a4bed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_20867879/proposed-lafayette-housing-development-undergo-scrutiny | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953359 | 503 | 1.59375 | 2 |
A sure sign of a dysfunctional market economy is the persistence of unemployment. In the United States today, one out of six workers who would like a full-time job can't find one. It is an economy with huge unmet needs and yet vast idle resources.
The housing market is another US anomaly: there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people (more than 1.5 million Americans spent at least one night in a shelter in 2009), while hundreds of thousands of houses sit vacant.
Indeed, the foreclosure rate is increasing. Two million Americans lost their homes in 2008, and 2.8 million more in 2009, but the numbers are expected to be even higher in 2010. Financial markets performed dismally – well-performing, "rational" markets do not lend to people who cannot or will not repay – and yet those running these markets were rewarded as if they were financial geniuses.
None of this is news. What is news is the Obama administration's reluctant and belated recognition that its efforts to get the housing and mortgage markets working again have largely failed. Curiously, there is a growing consensus on both the left and the right that the government will have to continue propping up the housing market for the foreseeable future. This stance is perplexing and possibly dangerous.
It is perplexing because in conventional analyses of which activities should be in the public domain, running the national mortgage market is never mentioned. Mastering the specific information related to assessing creditworthiness and monitoring the performance of loans is precisely the kind of thing at which the private sector is supposed to excel.
It is, however, an understandable position: both US political parties supported policies that encouraged excessive investment in housing and excessive leverage, while free-market ideology dissuaded regulators from intervening to stop reckless lending. If the government were to walk away now, real-estate prices would fall even further, banks would come under even greater financial stress, and the economy's short-run prospects would become bleaker.
But that is precisely why a government-managed mortgage market is dangerous. Distorted interest rates, official guarantees and tax subsidies encourage continued investment in real estate, when what the economy needs is investment in, say, technology and clean energy.
Moreover, continuing investment in real estate makes it all the more difficult to wean the economy off its real-estate addiction, and the real-estate market off its addiction to government support. Supporting further real-estate investment would make the sector's value even more dependent on government policies, ensuring that future policymakers face greater political pressure from interest groups like real-estate developers and bonds holders.
Current US policy is befuddled, to say the least. The Federal Reserve Board is no longer the lender of last resort, but the lender of first resort. Credit risk in the mortgage market is being assumed by the government, and market risk by the Fed. No one should be surprised at what has now happened: the private market has essentially disappeared.
The government has announced that these measures, which work (if they do work) by lowering interest rates, are temporary. But that means that when intervention comes to an end, interest rates will rise – and any holder of mortgage-backed bonds would experience a capital loss – potentially a large one.
No private party would buy such an asset. By contrast, the Fed doesn't have to recognise the loss; while free-market advocates might talk about the virtues of market pricing and "price discovery", the Fed can pretend that nothing has happened.
With the government assuming credit risk, mortgages become as safe as government bonds of comparable maturity. Hence, the Fed's intervention in the housing market is really an intervention in the government bond market; the purported "switch" from buying mortgages to buying government bonds is of little significance. The Fed is engaged in the difficult task of trying to set not just the short-term interest rate, but longer-term rates as well.
Resuscitating the housing market is all the more difficult for two reasons. First, the banks that used to do conventional mortgage lending are in bad financial shape. Second, the securitisation model is badly broken and not likely to be replaced anytime soon. Unfortunately, neither the Obama administration nor the Fed seems willing to face these realities.
Securitisation – putting large numbers of mortgages together to be sold to pension funds and investors around the world – worked only because there were rating agencies that were trusted to ensure that mortgage loans were given to people who would repay them. Today, no one will or should trust the rating agencies, or the investment banks that purveyed flawed products (sometimes designing them to lose money).
In short, government policies to support the housing market not only have failed to fix the problem, but are prolonging the deleveraging process and creating the conditions for Japanese-style malaise. Avoiding this dismal "new normal" will be difficult, but there are alternative policies with far better prospects of returning the US and the global economy to prosperity.
Corporations have learned how to take bad news in stride, write down losses, and move on, but our governments have not. For one out of four US mortgages, the debt exceeds the home's value. Evictions merely create more homeless people and more vacant homes. What is needed is a quick write-down of the value of the mortgages. Banks will have to recognise the losses and, if necessary, find the additional capital to meet reserve requirements.
This, of course, will be painful for banks, but their pain will be nothing in comparison to the suffering they have inflicted on people throughout the rest of the global economy.
• Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010 | <urn:uuid:434ba7a6-a135-4eef-a6c0-3cbf99ebf6b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/09/us-housing-crisis-policies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96852 | 1,148 | 1.929688 | 2 |
It's Ours; Get Out
The appalling story of Diego Garcia, once a pleasant paradise, now a stationary base for bombing. Excerpts from a John Pilger article:
Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.
All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.
During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitise" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.
To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."
At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitising", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."
The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertiliser. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.
In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts. | <urn:uuid:a19e6701-4647-4e22-9079-adbe81fd993a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgoodsel/post911/2004/10/its-ours-get-out.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981586 | 786 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Excerpt: Doctor in a strange land
A doctor leaves one tsunami-struck country to help another
By Satinder Bindra
Editor's Note: CNN New Delhi Bureau Chief Satinder Bindra was in Colombo, Sri Lanka, when the tsunami struck on December 26 and spent the next three weeks covering the disaster. Inspired by the courage of a 9-year-old boy who lost his mother, Bindra has written a book, "Tsunami: Seven Hours that Shook the World." These are select excerpts from the book.
Indian Navy doctor, Commander Gopalan Parthasarathy, was spending a relaxing weekend at home when the phone rang.
It was 10:30 a.m. and on the line was his breathless older brother informing him that a tsunami had lashed parts of the southern Indian city of Chennai. The conversation immediately brought Commander Parthasarathy to his feet. His hands turned clammy and he could barely speak.
Then, he slowly enquired about the whereabouts of his mother and grandmother who lived on a beachfront property. There was no good news there either. His brother had not been able to contact them.
Seconds after concluding his conversation, Commander Parthasarathy turned on the television set to catch the latest news.
He then picked up the phone, silently praying he wouldn't have any problems contacting Chennai. After more than two hours of continuous dialing, he got through to his mother, who told him she was safe but his 82-year-old grandmother had been evacuated to an unknown destination.
As the Indian naval pathologist sat down to lunch, the phone rang again. This time the call was from naval officials at the hospital asking him to prepare immediately for deployment to Colombo.
As he packed his bags, Commander Parthasarathy was still unaware of both the condition and the whereabouts of his grandmother. It was only four days after his arrival in Sri Lanka that he got to speak to his emotional grandmother on the phone. Anyone in his situation would have been alarmed and would have thought twice about his impending trip. But not Commander Parthasarathy. He was all set to go.
This is what he had trained for and he felt duty-bound to help the people of Sri Lanka. By 2:00 p.m., he had packed almost 750 kg (1,650 pounds) of medication and, shortly thereafter, reached the airport with two paramedics who helped in loading his gear onto an Indian Navy plane. At 7:30 that same evening, Commander Parthasarathy and his team arrived in Colombo, heralding the onset of the world's largest-ever relief operation.
The next morning, Commander Parthasarathy was deployed with the Sri Lankan Army at Hambantota in the south of the island. Relief workers there were finding it hard to cope with hundreds of bodies that had been deposited at the local hospital and morgue. Heavy rains in the area had further compounded their difficulties as it was now impossible to cremate the bodies.
Left with no choice, Commander Parthasarathy and his team prepared for mass burials. Army bulldozers were pressed into action to dig huge pits near the beach. These graves were then lined with lime and bleach to slow down the decomposition of bodies so that they wouldn't contaminate the local water supply.
For the next few days, the small Indian medical contingent teamed up with a group of Sri Lankan medical students who acted as their interpreters and they drove to all the relief camps in the area.
They often travelled 250 km a day, saw almost 150 patients and worked long hours, but for Commander Parthasarathy, the intense effort was certainly worth it: "There was a lot of appreciation for what we did and people in the district were deeply thankful." Parthasarathy was also heartened to see how the people came together. "Such disasters always bring out the best in humanity.
"For example, there was a group of people in Hambantota. Most had lost their entire families but when they heard the army was pulling out bodies from the muddy and swampy waters, 40 of them volunteered to help. They actually helped us pull out bodies, line them up and photograph them before they were buried. They didn't expect a single penny for what they did and it was phenomenal."
A lot of people from Colombo also drove down to help. Among them were large batches of students who loaded vans with hundreds of coconuts and plied relief workers with sweet coconut water. "What I saw reinforced my belief in humanity. It taught me people are not always bad and there is always a helping hand when we face these kinds of troubles."
Commander Parthasarathy's experience also reinforced his faith in God. "Everywhere I went mosques and shrines were often the only structures standing. And it made me wonder why they were still intact when every other building around them had been destroyed." He also never felt guilty about leaving India, which itself had been ravaged by the tsunami: "I could trust that there would be somebody in India doing what I was doing in Sri Lanka. You have got to have that faith.
"That's what you've got to think. If my country can send people abroad, of course they can look after their own." Commander Parthasarathy's spirit, his magnanimity and his selflessness were soon to become a shining example for millions across the world who showed unprecedented generosity in helping the people of Sri Lanka.
|© 2007 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
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Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. | <urn:uuid:0be66dd6-5e50-4f81-a2c0-bf8b8603f58d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/06/24/bindra.excerpt.4/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990182 | 1,173 | 2 | 2 |
BARCELONA, Spain--At the Mobile World Congress here, I hitched a ride in a 2011 Audi A8 demo equipped with Alcatel-Lucent 4G/LTE infrastructure.
The 2011 Audi A8 is typically equipped with an integrated 3G Wi-Fi hot spot to support its Google Earth navigation system and up to six device connections. But the 4G hot spot will give users even higher bandwidth for better telematics response and Internet access to support applications such as streaming media. Think live video conferencing from the backseat of the car, which is what we did.
Alcatel-Lucent demoed the 4G capability in the vehicle using LiveCast and Vidyo. As I rode around Barcelona in the back of the A8, I video-conferenced with an Alcatel team following us in another vehicle. Our demo was also broadcast to Alcatel's booth at Mobile World Congress.
This Audi connected to Alcatel's temporary 4G base station in a building about 1.5 miles away from us, and we witnessed speeds of up to 30Mbps. However, there were only a couple of users accessing that base station. In a commercial application, Alcatel says users can expect speeds around 5Mbps. That's a lot faster than the 400Kbps to 1.5Mbps you can expect on current 3G networks.
In my experience, the video quality was excellent, with very low latency. The only limitation was the audio, which was likely due to the microphones being placed too far away from the occupants. What this new technology means for the consumer is better infrastructure to support the infotainment and telematics systems. The high speed connection with low latency will also make it possible to conduct business while cruising around in the A8, hopefully with a chauffeur at the wheel.
An Alcatel spokesperson said the 4G integration in the Audi A8 won't be available until 2014, because the antenna will need to be upgraded, which will also require additional testing. However, Audi Chairman Rupert Stadler announced at the Consumer Electronics Show last month that LTE technology would be used in cars by early 2011.
In the U.S., Verizon has already deployed the 4G network in 38 cities, and AT&T is expected to roll out the technology in July. In China, the LTE network is being tested in six cities, each with 100 to 200 base stations. | <urn:uuid:c4812cfd-75b5-4cf8-8a0c-b34956a8c3b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20032174-48.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958637 | 495 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Backyard Chicken Keeping
Video: Chickens in the City!
Backyard Chicken Keeping Regains Popularity!
Not so long ago, most American households raised their own chickens. As our lifestyles became more "metropolitan", unfortunately most families lost this connection to these beloved birds. Many residents are surprised to learn that the keeping of chickens is quite legal in many Bay Area communities, including St. Petersburg. In fact keeping chickens is allowed in many large cities, including New York, Chicago, Seattle and Portland; so why should St. Pete be any different?!
Of course there are rules, such as No Roosters (they crow, and are not necessary for female chickens to lay eggs), they cannot be allowed to roam free, enclosures must be kept clean, etc. Still, the keeping of a few laying hens has become increasingly popular in Tampa Bay, and across the nation; and there are many great reasons for keeping a few chickens.
From the perspective of gardening, chickens are a great resource. They will eat much of your garden waste (and household vegetable scraps, etc), as well as insects and weeds in the garden. They also produce some of the best organic fertilizer available! But beyond the gardening benefits, chickens have so much to offer.
Chickens require very little room. They are inexpensive to maintain. Each hen will produce an egg, almost every day, and the eggs are so much better than store bought eggs. Since the owner determines the diet of the birds, the eggs can be completely organic, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, etc. And the quality of life of a chicken in your garden is so much more humane than that of a chicken used for commercial egg production.
The best part of chicken keeping, for many people, is the fact that chickens are endlessly entertaining and affectionate. There are many breeds from which to choose, and some of the breeds are extraordinarily attractive!
To learn more about keeping chickens in your garden, please join Brock Wood at Sunken Gardens, Saturday, August 6, at 11:30am. The program is free with admission $8 adults, $6 seniors (55+), $4 children (2-11) and free for members. Sunken Gardens is located at 1825 Fourth Street North, St. Petersburg. | <urn:uuid:902970eb-4a0d-482d-a447-7fbd83a92477> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://studio10.tv/category/gardening/segment.aspx/202832/Backyard_Chicken_Keeping | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966505 | 469 | 1.960938 | 2 |
|The company’s origins are in coal mining, bricks and pottery, but today Höganäs AB focuses solely on metal powders.
Although Höganäs is more than 200 years old, the path to becoming the world’s largest producer of metal powders effectively started with the introduction of the Höganäs Sponge Iron Process in 1910.
In the 1930s, iron powder was compacted and sintered to make components and since then the use of metal powders has grown dramatically.
Count Eric Ruuth
Iron powder has proved to be a material of endless possibilities. Through its enduring commitment to R&D, the company is continuing to expand into new application areas.
The most important milestones >>
The Company History
Archives, in Swedish only, containing more information about the company’s history and dating from the 1700s to the present day, can be accessed by researchers, local history societies and other interested parties.
For more information, please contact the Stawford Society, a society that works to preserve the company's collection of historical documents. This website is in Swedish only. | <urn:uuid:fdcc2a8e-2826-4f9b-a5ad-e7603cac77d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hoganas.com/en/About-Us/History/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929938 | 235 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Sport on TV: Fischer mind games show price to be paid for talent
During a week in which sport has searched its soul to understand the secret pressures placed on its heroes, Bobby Fischer: Genius and Madman (BBC4, Wednesday) showed how fame can destroy the most brilliant of talents. It's not just that a chess player has more possible moves to make in a single game than there are atoms in the solar system (that's 10 to the power of 45, in case you were wondering), which takes a certain type of mind in the first place. In fact it's the insatiable power of such talent which perhaps makes it more vulnerable. But Fischer was under far greater strain than a mere maths test.
It seems strange to say now, but in the early 1970s Fischer was the most famous man on the planet after Jesus Christ. Crowds stood outside shop windows to watch his battle with Boris Spassky. Not only that, he was also a pawn in Henry Kissinger's Cold War games. "The Communist state took over chess to use asproof of mental superiority over a decadent West," said grand master Gary Kasparov. "Fischer realised that he was fighting not just for him but for the entire free world. It was too much of a weight on his shoulders." No matter how unlikely, he was in the blue corner with the Stars and Stripes trunks on.
Six hundred million people play chess worldwide, yet there are maybe as many who would say it's not a sport. But Fischer is reckoned to have put some 20,000 hours of practice in since the age of six, and his personal trainer Harry Sneider said "Championship chess is a highly physical game". Fischer was fascinated by fitness and trained like a boxer (without the sparring – not good for the brain), so it's no surprise when a commentator on the Fischer-Spassky contest in Finland in 1972 said: "It's just like the Ali-Frazier fight all over again." The rather absurd modern phenomenon called "chess-boxing", in which contestants go from board to ring and back again, rather unsubtly makes the point.
But the real work is, of course, all in the mind. A litany of chess's casualties includes Akiba Rubinstein, who jumped out of a window because he thought a fly was after him, and Carlos Torre Repeto, who took all his clothes off in a bus. At 14, Fischer's mother Regina paraded him from town to town, and he would take on up to 80 opponents at once.
When he was 16, Regina walked out on him. He didn't know who his real father was, or even that he was Jewish. Such a background would be enough to destroy any child, let alone a prodigy. He was 29 when he beat Spassky in a thoroughly obnoxious display of gamesmanship, then he fled and went into hiding as his mental state deteriorated.
He turned to the fundamentalist Worldwide Chuch of God, then descended into an all-consuming anti-semitic paranoia. He made a comeback in 1990 at the request of a Hungarian girl admirer, flouting the United Nations to play Spassky again in war-torn Yugoslavia. Then he disappeared again.
He was next heard ranting about 9/11 on a radio station in the Philippines – "what goes around comes around" – prompting George Bush to issue a personal threat against him. Only Finland would take him in, and there he died, raving to the last. The endgame was protracted and messy, and in his mind Fischer could not escape his chequered past.
Revealed: Devastating impact of 'bedroom tax' sees huge leap in demand for emergency hardship handouts for tenants
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You thought Ryanair's attendants had it bad? Wait 'til you hear about their pilots
Revealed: Eerie new images show forgotten French apartment that was abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched for 70 years
Chloe Johnson death: Family of five-year-old British girl who died in a pool at in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh resort 'angry' that more wasn't done to save her
- 1 Stoke City investigate 'religious abuse' after 'pig's head is found in Kenwyne Jones' locker'
- 2 Gove’s lesson: spare the comma, spoil the child
- 3 Grace Dent on TV: Extreme Couponing, My Strange Addiction, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, TLC
- 4 You thought Ryanair's attendants had it bad? Wait 'til you hear about their pilots
- 5 Join Ryanair! See the world! But we'll only pay you for nine months a year
BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes
Find out what The Independent's resident travel expert has to say about one of the most beautiful small cities in the world
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Travel and lunch expenses: ESI Media: Rare work experience opportunity for asp...
£28000 - £36000 Per Annum: The Green Recruitment Company: The Green Recruitmen...
£350 - £400 per day: Progressive Recruitment: Agile Java Developer London
£19000 - £20000 Per Annum: The Green Recruitment Company: Our client is a lead... | <urn:uuid:369f705e-73f7-47d4-9800-caa7e5daf770> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/sport-on-tv-fischer-mind-games-show-price-to-be-paid-for-talent-6272021.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970536 | 1,140 | 1.898438 | 2 |
WAM 609 - Dwarf sperm whale
Cally Harper and Marina Piscitelli, UNCW stranding
volunteers, examine a dwarf sperm whale
July 23, 2005
The animal was first observed alive by private citizens in Shalotte Inlet at 5pm on July 23, 2005. The animal live stranded and was pushed off by local citizens but continued north into the inlet and approached the Intracoastal Waterway. At 8pm a small boat came across the animal in the marsh and approached it. They said the animal came towards the boat and raised its head. The animal went back to the edge of the Intracoastal Waterway and at 8:45pm death throws were observed. The animal died at approximately 9pm on July 23. The animal was recovered by local citizens, and transferred to the UNCW stranding team for necropsy. | <urn:uuid:e816fd87-32be-4c85-ac62-fdfaff5c7aeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uncw.edu/mmsp/WAM609.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982725 | 181 | 1.671875 | 2 |
"All Sweetness and Light"
What was the "bitter" dispute that involved Adolph Rupp and Bob Tallent during and after the 1967 Tennessee-Kentucky game at Stokely Center?
Here's what Wildcat historian Tev Laudeman wrote in a book titled "The Rupp Years: The University of Kentucky's Golden Era of Basketball," ©1977, The Courier Journal and Louisville Times.
"Next came a 76-57 loss at Tennessee and an incident with Tallent that led to the junior guard's dismissal from the tem. During the game, as he brought the ball upcourt, Tallent flipped the ball over to [Louie] Dampier. Dampier, looking straight ahead, didn't see it. The ball went out of bounds and Tallent was pulled from the game.
"Rupp and Tallent exchanged bitter words when the player reached the bench. Later, in the locker room, there was another exchange."
Laudeman wrote that equipment manager George Hukle told Tallent that, "No more equipment would be issued to him."
Laudeman also noted that Rupp was "reprimanded by John Oswald, then UK president and criticized by the UK student newspaper...." The Kentucky Kernel wrote an article titled "Did Rupp Choke?" alluding to a statement by Rupp that Tallent couldn't play well under pressure.
And you thought that basketball, even at Kentucky, was all sweetness and light, one for all and all for one. Gives new meaning to "Going to War," a favorite Big Blue slogan, doesn't it? | <urn:uuid:544a93b5-22a8-461c-b849-e6de63310b80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.knoxnews.com/mattingly/2013/02/all-sweetness-and-light.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982431 | 331 | 2.390625 | 2 |
The Federal Communications Commission today announced plans to launch a rulemaking to strengthen the reliability and resiliency nationwide of 9-1-1 communications networks during major disasters.
The widespread outages and disruptions to 9-1-1 services in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions as a result of the 2012 derecho storm impacted more than 3.6 million people and led to the in-depth FCC inquiry into what went wrong, and what steps should be taken to better ensure public safety. This inquiry included an in-depth investigation, public comment and analysis culminating in the report, “The Impact of the June 2012 Derecho on Communications and Services: Report and Recommendations.”
“… the derecho provided a snapshot of the reliability and readiness of a portion of the nation’s communications infrastructure in the face of unanticipated disasters – and it revealed considerable flaws in the resiliency planning and implementation of the primary 9-1-1 network providers in the affected region,” according to the report.
“Here’s the bottom line,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “We can’t prevent disasters from happening, but we can work relentlessly to make sure Americans can connect with emergency responders when they need to most.”
Fairfax County Response to the Report
The June 29 derecho storm hit our community hard. From 7:36 a.m. until 3 p.m. on June 30, 9-1-1 service was completely out; for the next three days, service was sporadic. As a result of this critical outage, Fairfax County submitted official comments to the FCC investigation detailing what happened, suggestions for Verizon to improve its service and exhibits to show supporting documentation/actions.
“This report validates Fairfax County’s strong concerns about Verizon’s performance following last year’s derecho,” said Sharon Bulova, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. “It is essential that public safety communications services function at the highest level without interruption. The kind of breakdown that the FCC report addresses must never happen again.”
“Fairfax County is pleased that the FCC so quickly investigated this event and issued its report a short six months later,” said Steve Souder, director of the Department of Public Safety Communications, Fairfax County’s 9-1-1 Center. “A person may only need to call 9-1-1 once, but it could be the most important call of their life. 9-1-1 must be available to all residents at all times regardless of weather conditions. The inability of our residents to be able to contact 9-1-1 for emergency services is unacceptable.”
About Fairfax County 9-1-1
The Department of Public Safety Communications (DPSC), also known as Fairfax County 9-1-1, is a nationally recognized public safety communications center, the largest in the commonwealth of Virginia and one of the 10 largest in the United States. DPSC receives approximately 1 million calls requesting public safety service per year and dispatches units of the Fairfax County Police Department, Fire and Rescue Department and Sheriff’s Office. In addition to Fairfax County, DPSC is the designated 9-1-1 public safety answering point (PSAP) for the towns of Herndon and Vienna and the city of Fairfax.
Approximately 30 percent of 9-1-1 calls are received from traditional wire line phones, 69 percent from wireless/cellular telephones and 1 percent by Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephones. Fairfax County 9-1-1 is an accredited 9-1-1 center for emergency medical dispatch with the Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services and is a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) 9-1-1 Call Center Partner. Learn more at www.fairfaxcounty.gov/911/.
Posted 8:44 a.m.
The June 29 derecho storm hit our community hard. One major issue was the loss of 9-1-1 service. From 7:36 a.m. until 3 p.m. on June 30, 9-1-1 service was completely out; for the next three days, service was sporadic.
As a result of this critical outage, Fairfax County submitted official Comments to the Federal Communications Commission detailing what happened, suggestions for Verizon to improve its service and exhibits to show supporting documentation/actions.
You may read our official Comments on the FCC website (PDF).
We are pursuing this life safety issue from many angles including this report to the FCC and regional work through the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
As our report declares:
“In short, the ferocity of the derecho does not explain the 9-1-1 outage. Instead, its relevance is as a reminder of the need for resilient and reliable 9-1-1 service. During and after a storm, and in any emergency or disaster, the loss of the public’s ability to contact emergency responders is most profoundly felt. Families in darkened homes crushed by fallen trees, motorists unable to get through roadways blocked by downed electric power lines, elderly residents in care facilities without power in temperatures over 90 degrees, and any other citizens in need of emergency services must be able to call 9-1-1 to seek assistance.”
For more details about our community’s critical 9-1-1 emergency service, view our Department of Public Safety Communications 2011 annual report (PDF) for call volume, trends and other data.
The Fairfax County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is asking for feedback from county residents and businesses to help assess the county’s response to the June 29 derecho storm that affected the county and the National Capital Region. To find out about the county’s strengths as well as opportunity areas for improvement, we are asking you to fill out an online emergency information survey. It should only take a few minutes.
This survey is part of the official review of the storm response and input from residents and businesses will be invaluable. It will be used for OEM’s after-action report on the derecho event and how Fairfax County Government responded.
Emergency communications are critical before, during and after incidents that affect our community. A variety of entities and people are part of that process such as Fairfax County Government, utility companies, the commonwealth of Virginia, the private sector and others. This survey focuses on Fairfax County Government.
“We’re asking for every resident to provide input, as well as business owners,” said David McKernan, coordinator for the Office of Emergency Management. “It’s important for us as emergency planners to learn how this storm affected our residents, businesses and infrastructure so that we can implement corrective measures and plans for a better response for future storms.”
To take the survey, visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/fairfaxemergencyinfo.
A reduced residential disposal fee was instituted as part of the recovery effort from the June 29 storm. Residents who elected to self-haul loads of brush or bulk debris to the county’s recycling and disposal centers at the I-66 Transfer Station or the I-95 Landfill Complex have been charged $5 per load. This special recovery disposal fee will expire on Sunday, July 22.
Beginning on Monday, July 23, disposal fees for brush and debris will return to their normal levels. A complete listing of disposal fees for waste brought to the Recycling and Disposal Centers at the I-66 Transfer Station or the I-95 Landfill Complex are available online. Additional questions may be referred to the Solid Waste Management Program at 703-324-5230, TTY 711.
The Fairfax County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) has launched a new Disaster Damage Database reporting tool. The online tool is designed to allow county residents to report damage caused by emergencies like hurricanes, tropical storms, earthquakes, fires, snow or other disasters — even the derecho that struck Fairfax County and the region on Friday evening, June 29.
Fairfax County may share the disaster damage reports with the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and/or the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to evaluate whether Fairfax County can be declared a major disaster area, on the state and/or federal level, and what kind of federal disaster assistance should be made available to county residents who have suffered losses.
Emergency Management officials encourage residents to begin using this reporting tool by submitting any damage suffered from the June 29 weather event. However, OEM stresses that submission of disaster damages is not a requirement to apply for federal disaster assistance nor is it a promise that federal disaster assistance will be provided to cover damages from the derecho, or any other disaster event when the online tool is used.
The online database is at www.fairfaxcounty.gov/disasterreport/.
For more information about the Disaster Damage Database, emergency management or how you and your family can better prepare for emergencies, email OEM or phone 571-350-1000, TTY 711.
Local nonprofits and shelters have been busy supplying residents in need with food, water and and other supplies that may have been lost during the June 29 derecho storm (and the resulting extended power loss) and recent heat wave. Loss of power at the shelters and increased demand for assistance has depleted many of the shelters’ reserves, and these food pantries are now turning to the community for help.
Fairfax County partner food pantries and nonprofits are accepting food and cash donations to help restock and supply our most vulnerable families with healthy meals. Those interested in donating should contact a local food pantry directly for more information on how to contribute.
Cleanup from the June 29 storm continues in our neighborhoods and communities.
All private refuse collection companies operating in Fairfax County must collect brush placed at their customers’ curbsides as long as the brush is in bundles of less than 4 feet in length, weighing less than 50 pounds and no piece is larger than 6 inches in diameter.
For larger amounts of brush or bulk debris, you should contact your trash collection service provider for information about special collections and set-out instructions.
For a charge, the county does offer a MegaBulk collection service to collect larger amounts of brush or bulk debris. You may also self-haul large amounts of brush or bulk debris to the county’s recycling and disposal centers at the I-66 Transfer Station or the I-95 Landfill Complex where it can be disposed of for a fee. During the storm recovery the brush disposal fee has been set at $5 per load for residents only.
Complete details on tree and debris removal are available online. Additional questions may be referred to the Solid Waste Management Program at 703-324-5230, TTY 711.
What a storm.
What we experienced on June 29 was not a common occurrence in Fairfax County, according to an analysis from the National Weather Service.
This storm tested all of us. You as individuals in your homes, many without power. Businesses. Utility companies. Nonprofits. Faith communities. And yes, us, the government.
At today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, County Executive Ed Long presented a report about the storm, county government’s response, issues with 9-1-1 and many more details about what we do behind the scenes that does not often get highlighted on our blog posts during storm response.
We invite you to review the report. Are there gaps and issues that need to be addressed? Yes, there are always ways to improve emergency response and our Office of Emergency Management will lead a formal after action report for the whole government.
So what can you do? What kind of family or business “report” should you consider? What steps can you take for the next time?
As many of you experienced the unfortunate combination of no power and a major heat wave, we as one community need to take steps to ensure we’re ready for the next storm, flood, terrorism act or whatever may come next.
Here are a few things to consider:
- Are you going to the grocery store this week? Pick up some extra water for your family. Stock up on batteries. Get some other basic supplies so you are ready.
- Learn some key digital preparedness tips. Many of us learned how dependent we are on communications during this storm when it was difficult to access the Internet and other tools. Get prepared digitally.
- Please make plans for the most vulnerable in your family or neighborhood. If there are special medical or social needs, register with us so we can contact you directly after an incident.
- Please make plans for your pets. Try to think of places they can go, supplies they need and more. Pets are such an important part of many of our lives, but they need plans, too.
There are many other ways to prepare and be ready for the next incident. We need you to be ready because we the government at any level (local, state or federal) may not be able to respond and help right away. The general idea is to be self sufficient for 72 hours. Check out these resources to help plan:
Last Friday’s storm has left many people with yard debris, like broken tree branches, and rotten food that needs to be thrown out. Follow these instructions on how to dispose of your garbage and yard waste.
Disposing Yard Waste
If your trash is collected by a private company, call them directly to schedule a special pickup for yard waste from the storm. Private companies are required to pick up your regular garbage and yard debris at least once a week.
For homeowners who get their trash collected by Fairfax County, put your yard waste on the curb, and leave it there. County crews will eventually pick it up as they make their rounds. However, county authorities ask that you schedule a brush pick up because this will help trash crews to prioritize their routes, and it will help to ensure that your house doesn’t get missed.
Special pickups may be scheduled online or call 703-802-3322, TTY 711, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. This special collection will not count against the five allowed per year.
Please note that your brush likely won’t be collected on the date assigned because of the enormous volume of debris to be cleaned up. We ask for your patience, please.
Getting Rid of Rotten Food
You should put your spoiled food in a garbage bag before dumping it in your trash can; this will help reduce odors and discourage rats, mice and other animals from getting into your garbage. If you put your trash in bags without a container, don’t put the bags on the curb until the evening before pick up.
Additionally, you should wash your hands after handling rotten food to protect yourself from potential food-borne illnesses.
Taking Your Trash and Yard Waste to the Landfills
Whether your trash is picked up by a private company or the county, any resident can dispose of regular garbage or yard waste at the county’s two landfills—the I-66 Transfer Station and I-95 Landfill—for a fee. Both facilities are open seven days a week during their normally scheduled hours.
There is a flat $5 fee per load for residents to dispose of yard waste and brush at either of the two landfills during storm recovery efforts, and the minimum fee for regular trash is $6. Payment may be made by cash, Visa or Mastercard.
The I-66 landfill is located at 4618 West Ox Road, and the I-95 landfill is at 9850 Furnace Road.
Most county residents get their garbage collected by a private company, but the county government provides trash collection for some residents. Check this map (PDF) to see if the county collects your trash or call 703-802-3322, TTY 711, Monday through Friday.
Posted 9:15 a.m.
Our emergency operations center remains activated this morning as we continue to monitor and help those affected by Friday’s storm. Virginia Dominion Power reports that less than 1 percent of its serviced homes in Fairfax County remain without power. We continue to coordinate with Dominion Virginia Power and receive the latest updates (view outage map).
It’s going to be very hot again today. Please follow these safety tips to stay hydrated and indoors if possible.
Posted 2:47 p.m.
A number of roads are still impacted by damage from the storm. The list will be updated as information becomes available.
Drivers are reminded to obey four-way stop rules at intersections without power.
- Treat each traffic light as a four-way stop, with the driver on the right having the right-of-way.
- Proceed with caution only when traffic permits.
- Enter intersections only when it is safe to do so, using turn signals to let other motorists know your intentions.
- Yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.
- Watch out for and obey police officers directing traffic within intersections.
Posted 12:35 p.m.
Our emergency operations center is active again this afternoon into tonight. Today’s EOC commander, Roy Shrout, provides a status update on the storm response, including 16,375 Dominion Virginia Power and 8 NOVEC customers without power. | <urn:uuid:d98f1221-9862-4495-8b86-ed83e6e62732> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fairfaxcountyemergency.wordpress.com/category/june-29-2012-storm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941938 | 3,613 | 1.828125 | 2 |
- – - – - – -
ASSIGNMENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COMMUNICATIONS FUNCTIONS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions. Survivable, resilient, enduring, and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial, and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies, and other nations. Such communications must be possible under all circumstances to ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies, and improve national resilience. The views of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the public must inform the development of national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications policies, programs, and capabilities.
Sec. 2. Executive Office Responsibilities.
Sec. 2.1. Policy coordination, guidance, dispute resolution, and periodic in-progress reviews for the functions described and assigned herein shall be provided through the interagency process established in Presidential Policy Directive-1 of February 13, 2009 (Organization of the National Security Council System) (PPD-1).
Sec. 2.2. The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) shall: (a) issue an annual memorandum to the NS/EP Communications Executive Committee (established in section 3 of this order) highlighting national priorities for Executive Committee analyses, studies, research, and development regarding NS/EP communications;
(b) advise the President on the prioritization of radio spectrum and wired communications that support NS/EP functions; and
(c) have access to all appropriate information related to the test, exercise, evaluation, and readiness of the capabilities of all existing and planned NS/EP communications systems, networks, and facilities to meet all executive branch NS/EP requirements.
Sec. 2.3. The Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and the Director of OSTP shall make recommendations to the President, informed by the interagency policy process established in PPD-1, with respect to the exercise of authorities assigned to the President under section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (47 U.S.C. 606). The Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and the Director of OSTP shall also jointly monitor the exercise of these authorities, in the event of any delegation, through the process established in PPD-1 or as the President otherwise may direct.
Sec. 3. The NS/EP Communications Executive Committee.
Sec. 3.1. There is established an NS/EP Communications Executive Committee (Executive Committee) to serve as a forum to address NS/EP communications matters.
Sec. 3.2. The Executive Committee shall be composed of Assistant Secretary-level or equivalent representatives designated by the heads of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Commerce, and Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the General Services Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission, as well as such additional agencies as the Executive Committee may designate. The designees of the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense shall serve as Co-Chairs of the Executive Committee.
Sec. 3.3. The responsibilities of the Executive Committee shall be to: (a) advise and make policy recommendations to the President, through the PPD-1 process, on enhancing the survivability, resilience, and future architecture of NS/EP communications, including what should constitute NS/EP communications requirements;
(b) develop a long-term strategic vision for NS/EP communications and propose funding requirements and plans to the President and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), through the PPD-1 process, for NS/EP communications initiatives that benefit multiple agencies or other Federal entities;
(c) coordinate the planning for, and provision of, NS/EP communications for the Federal Government under all hazards;
(d) promote the incorporation of the optimal combination of hardness, redundancy, mobility, connectivity, interoperability, restorability, and security to obtain, to the maximum extent practicable, the survivability of NS/EP communications under all circumstances;
(e) recommend to the President, through the PPD-1 process, the regimes to test, exercise, and evaluate the capabilities of existing and planned communications systems, networks, or facilities to meet all executive branch NS/EP communications requirements, including any recommended remedial actions;
(f) provide quarterly updates to the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and the Director of OSTP, through the Co-Chairs, on the status of Executive Committee activities and develop an annual NS/EP communications strategic agenda utilizing the PPD-1 process;
(g) enable industry input with respect to the responsibilities established in this section; and
(h) develop, approve, and maintain a charter for the Executive Committee.
Sec. 4. Executive Committee Joint Program Office.
Sec. 4.1. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish an Executive Committee Joint Program Office (JPO) to provide full-time, expert, and administrative support for the Executive Committee’s performance of its responsibilities under section 3.3 of this order. Staff of the JPO shall include detailees, as needed and appropriate, from agencies represented on the Executive Committee. The Department of Homeland Security shall provide resources to support the JPO. The JPO shall be responsive to the guidance of the Executive Committee.
Sec. 4.2. The responsibilities of the JPO shall include: coordination of programs that support NS/EP missions, priorities, goals, and policy; and, when directed by the Executive Committee, the convening of governmental and nongovernmental groups (consistent with the Federal Advisory Committees Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.)), coordination of activities, and development of policies for senior official review and approval.
Sec. 5. Specific Department and Agency Responsibilities.
Sec. 5.1. The Secretary of Defense shall: (a) oversee the development, testing, implementation, and sustainment of NS/EP communications that are directly responsive to the national security needs of the President, Vice President, and senior national leadership, including: communications with or among the President, Vice President, White House staff, heads of state and government, and Nuclear Command and Control leadership; Continuity of Government communications; and communications among the executive, judicial, and legislative branches to support Enduring Constitutional Government;
(b) incorporate, integrate, and ensure interoperability and the optimal combination of hardness, redundancy, mobility, connectivity, interoperability, restorability, and security to obtain, to the maximum extent practicable, the survivability of NS/EP communications defined in section 5.1(a) of this order under all circumstances, including conditions of crisis or emergency;
(c) provide to the Executive Committee the technical support necessary to develop and maintain plans adequate to provide for the security and protection of NS/EP communications; and
(d) provide, operate, and maintain communication services and facilities adequate to execute responsibilities consistent with Executive Order 12333 of December 4, 1981, as amended.
Sec. 5.2. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall: (a) oversee the development, testing, implementation, and sustainment of NS/EP communications, including: communications that support Continuity of Government; Federal, State, local, territorial, and tribal emergency preparedness and response communications; non-military executive branch communications systems; critical infrastructure protection networks; and non-military communications networks, particularly with respect to prioritization and restoration;
(b) incorporate, integrate, and ensure interoperability and the necessary combination of hardness, redundancy, mobility, connectivity, interoperability, restorability, and security to obtain, to the maximum extent practicable, the survivability of NS/EP communications defined in section 5.2(a) of this order under all circumstances, including conditions of crisis or emergency;
(c) provide to the Executive Committee the technical support necessary to develop and maintain plans adequate to provide for the security and protection of NS/EP communications;
(d) receive, integrate, and disseminate NS/EP communications information to the Federal Government and State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as appropriate, to establish situational awareness, priority setting recommendations, and a common operating picture for NS/EP communications information;
(e) satisfy priority communications requirements through the use of commercial, Government, and privately owned communications resources, when appropriate;
(f) maintain a joint industry-Government center that is capable of assisting in the initiation, coordination, restoration, and reconstitution of NS/EP communications services or facilities under all conditions of emerging threats, crisis, or emergency;
(g) serve as the Federal lead for the prioritized restoration of communications infrastructure and coordinate the prioritization and restoration of communications, including resolution of any conflicts in or among priorities, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense when activities referenced in section 5.1(a) of this order are impacted, consistent with the National Response Framework. If conflicts in or among priorities cannot be resolved between the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, they shall be referred for resolution in accordance with section 2.1 of this order; and
(h) within 60 days of the date of this order, in consultation with the Executive Committee where appropriate, develop and submit to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, a detailed plan that describes the Department of Homeland
Security’s organization and management structure for its NS/EP communications functions, including the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, Wireless Priority Service, Telecommunications Service Priority program, Next Generation Network Priority program, the Executive Committee JPO, and relevant supporting entities.
Sec. 5.3. The Secretary of Commerce shall: (a) provide advice and guidance to the Executive Committee on the use of technical standards and metrics to support execution of NS/EP communications;
(b) identify for the Executive Committee requirements for additional technical standards and metrics to enhance NS/EP communications;
(c) engage with relevant standards development organizations to develop appropriate technical standards and metrics to enhance NS/EP communications;
(d) develop plans and procedures concerning radio spectrum allocations, assignments, and priorities for use by agencies and executive offices;
(e) develop, maintain, and publish policies, plans, and procedures for the management and use of radio frequency assignments, including the authority to amend, modify, or revoke such assignments, in those parts of the electromagnetic spectrum assigned to the Federal Government; and
(f) administer a system of radio spectrum priorities for those spectrum-dependent telecommunications resources belonging to and operated by the Federal Government and certify or approve such radio spectrum priorities, including the resolution of conflicts in or among such radio spectrum priorities during a crisis or emergency.
Sec. 5.4. The Administrator of General Services shall provide and maintain a common Federal acquisition approach that allows for the efficient centralized purchasing of equipment and services that meet NS/EP communications requirements. Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect the procurement authorities granted by law to an agency or the head thereof.
Sec. 5.5. With respect to the Intelligence Community, the DNI, after consultation with the heads of affected agencies, may issue such policy directives and guidance as the DNI deems necessary to implement this order. Procedures or other guidance issued by the heads of elements of the Intelligence Community shall be in accordance with such policy directives or guidelines issued by the DNI.
Sec. 5.6. The Federal Communications Commission performs such functions as are required by law, including: (a) with respect to all entities licensed or regulated by the Federal Communications Commission: the extension, discontinuance, or reduction of common carrier facilities or services; the control of common carrier rates, charges, practices, and classifications; the construction, authorization, activation, deactivation, or closing of radio stations, services, and facilities; the assignment of radio frequencies to Federal Communications Commission licensees; the investigation of violations of pertinent law; and the assessment of communications service provider emergency needs and resources; and
(b) supporting the continuous operation and restoration of critical communications systems and services by assisting the Secretary of Homeland Security with infrastructure damage assessment and restoration, and by providing the Secretary of Homeland Security with information collected by the Federal Communications Commission on communications infrastructure, service outages, and restoration, as appropriate.
Sec. 6. General Agency Responsibilities. All agencies, to the extent consistent with law, shall: (a) determine the scope of their NS/EP communications requirements, and provide information regarding such requirements to the Executive Committee;
(b) prepare policies, plans, and procedures concerning communications facilities, services, or equipment under their management or operational control to maximize their capability to respond to the NS/EP needs of the Federal Government;
(c) propose initiatives, where possible, that may benefit multiple agencies or other Federal entities;
(d) administer programs that support broad NS/EP communications goals and policies;
(e) submit reports annually, or as otherwise requested, to the Executive Committee, regarding agency NS/EP communications activities;
(f) devise internal acquisition strategies in support of the centralized acquisition approach provided by the General Services Administration pursuant to section 5.4 of this order; and
(g) provide the Secretary of Homeland Security with timely reporting on NS/EP communications status to inform the common operating picture required under 6 U.S.C. 321(d).
Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) For the purposes of this order, the word “agency” shall have the meaning set forth in section 6.1(b) of Executive Order 13526 of December 29, 2009.
(b) Executive Order 12472 of April 3, 1984, as amended, is hereby revoked.
(c) Executive Order 12382 of September 13, 1982, as amended, is further amended by striking the following language from section 2(e): “in his capacity as Executive Agent for the National Communications System”.
(d) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the OMB relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(e) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(f) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. | <urn:uuid:fd74807d-af7e-41bc-929a-78981a95c125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usahitman.com/aonsaep/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915108 | 3,093 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Consequentialist moral theories are teleological: they aim at some goal state and evaluate the morality of actions in terms of progress toward that state. The best known version of consequentialism is utilitarianism. This theory defines morality in terms of the maximization of net expectable utility for all parties affected by a decision or action. Although forms of utilitarianism have been put forward and debated since ancient times, the modern theory is most often associated with the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806- 1873) who developed the theory from a plain hedonistic version put forward by his mentor Jeremy Bentham (1748- 1832). As most clearly stated by Mill, the basic principle of utilitarianism is:
Both men insisted that "the greatest number" included all who were affected by the action in question with "each to count as one, and no one as more than one." Any theory that seeks to extend benefits not only to the self but also to others is a form of altruism . (Another goal-directed theory is egoism, which promotes the greatest good for the self alone.)
Utilitarianism is a simple theory and its results are easy to apply. It also allows for degrees of right and wrong, and for every situation the choice between actions is clear-cut: always choose that which has the greatest utility.
There are several objections, however--
1. It is not always clear what the outcome of an action will be, nor is it always possible to determine who will be affected by it. Judging an action by the outcome is therefore hard to do beforehand.
2. It is very difficult to quantify pleasures for cost/benefit analysis (but since this only has to be done on a comparative scale, this may not be as serious an objection as it at first seems).
3. The calculation required to determine the right is both complicated and time consuming. Many occasions will not permit the time and many individuals may not even be capable of the calculations.
4. Since the greatest good for the greatest number is described in aggregate terms, that good may be achieved under conditions that are harmful to some, so long as that harm is balanced by a greater good.
5. The theory fails to acknowledge any individual rights that could not be violated for the sake of the greatest good. Indeed, even the murder of an innocent person would seem to be condoned if it served the greater number.
A system of rules would help with the other objections, however,
if they only serve as convenient advice. They would codify the wisdom
past experience, and preclude the need for constant calculation.
some writers propose that the theory of utilitarianism, although it
describes the ultimate sanction of moral principles, is best preserved
for the minority that are capable of applying it. The greatest good is
best served by the masses when they follow rules out of duty and leave
the difficult and subtle calculations to those in authority. This
along with the attempted qualitative distinctions among pleasures, and
utilitarianism's tendency to condone inequitable distributions or even
the abuse of minorities has led to frequent charges of elitism. It
be noted that this was far from Mill's purpose. John Stuart Mill was a
leader in the fight against the African slave trade, and a pioneer for
women's rights and individual liberties. It is a curious fact that his
own theory of ethics fails to serve those ideals any better than it
Copyright © 1997 Charles D.
Kay. All rights reserved.
rev. January 20, 1997 | <urn:uuid:83db3cac-f5e3-442e-9801-971dfe2ec517> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://webs.wofford.edu/kaycd/ethics/util.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963876 | 719 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Times reporter killed covering war, August 18, 1944
Through most of World War II, Tom Treanor provided Times readers with firsthand accounts of the battle against the Axis as his travels took him to such places as China, South America and Europe.
This is the last story he wrote before being killed Aug. 18, 1944, when a tank made a turn and struck his jeep on a dusty road outside a French village that had just been liberated from the Nazis. He lived long enough to learn that the doctor attending his wounds was from Los Angeles: Capt. William Werner, 1402 Crenshaw Blvd. Treanor told Werner that he was sorry he wouldn't be able to cover the liberation of Paris.
The Times established a journalism fellowship at UCLA in his honor, but it apparently hasn't been awarded since 1961. He also wrote a book titled "One Damn Thing After Another," published in 1944. Treanor was buried in an Army cemetery near Le Mans.
Other Times writers killed while covering violence include: Dial Torgerson, Honduras, 1983; Joe Alex Morris Jr., Tehran, 1979; and Ruben Salazar, East L.A., 1970.
Note: The Times identified the village where Treanor was fatally injured as "Eront," which cannot be located on any map of France. Possibly it was Ermont. | <urn:uuid:03693e8a-8cea-4de1-b0f5-6d8d498d9e5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2007/07/fourth-of-july-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989472 | 275 | 1.765625 | 2 |
After three days of inspecting the Macondo well, BP has announced that the current oil sheen in the Gulf of Mexico is likely due to the ‘cofferdam’—a 86-ton dome used in one of the company’s failed containment attempts.
“The latest survey marks the third time since the Macondo well was permanently sealed in September of 2010 that it has been visually inspected at the sea floor and confirmed not to be leaking,” read a BP statement released yesterday.
For more than a month, a surface sheen has been visible at the site of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. After positively fingerprinting the surface oil to Macondo, the U.S. Coast Guard instructed BP to determine where the oil was coming from. The company has pointed to the ‘cofferdam’ as the “probable source of the surface sheen.”
“The cofferdam is a 86-ton, steel container that was lowered over a leaking drill pipe at the Macondo well site in May 2010 in an attempt to capture the oil and funnel it to the surface,” the BP statement read. “A mixture of oil and slushy methane hydrates was trapped inside the cofferdam during the response.”
On Oct. 17, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) videoed “small, intermittent drops of oil coming from an opening at the top and another on one side of the cofferdam.” Samples of the oil escaping from the equipment were collected, and will be compared to the surface sheen to confirm a match. | <urn:uuid:a282e8b4-7036-44b8-88af-6dde10530323> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ricksblog.biz/bp-cofferdam-is-probable-source/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971588 | 335 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Definition of Kitsch
KITSCH:- Derived from the German verkitschen etwas, kitsch means to 'knock something off'. Today it is synonymous with objects of bad taste that are so bad they're good in an ironic way. In the fifties and sixties kitsch was - and still is - highly collectable. Kitsch can be anything from flying ducks to Tretchikoff paintings and Elvis toilet roll holders. Definition from BBC News Online. | <urn:uuid:be057fdf-1c50-4a4c-8866-71aceb0cb150> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/kitsch_and_caboodle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933237 | 98 | 2.25 | 2 |
|<< Acts 18 >>|
Wesley's Notes on the Bible
1 After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth;
18:1 Paul departing from Athens - He did not stay there long. The philosophers there were too easy, too indolent, and too wise in their own eyes to receive the Gospel.
2 And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them.
18:2 Claudius, the Roman emperor, had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome - All who were Jews by birth. Whether they were Jews or Christians by religion, the Romans were too stately to regard.
3 And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.
18:3 They were tent makers by trade - For it was a rule among the Jews (and why is it not among the Christians?) to bring up all their children to some trade, were they ever so rich or noble.
4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.
5 And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ.
18:5 And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia - Silas seems to have stayed a considerable time at Berea: but Timotheus had come to the apostle while he was at Athens, and been sent by him to comfort and confirm the Church at Thessalonica, 1Thess 3:1 -
5. But now at length both Silas and Timotheus came to the apostle at Corinth. Paul was pressed in spirit - The more probably from what Silas and Timotheus related. Every Christian ought diligently to observe any such pressure in his own spirit, and if it agree with Scripture, to follow it: if he does not he will feel great heaviness.
6 And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles.
18:6 He shook his raiment - To signify he would from that time refrain from them: and to intimate, that God would soon shake them off as unworthy to be numbered among his people. I am pure - None can say this but he that has borne a full testimony against sin. From henceforth I will go to the Gentiles - But not to them altogether. He did not break off all intercourse with the Jews even at Corinth. Only he preached no more in their synagogue.
7 And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man's house, named Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue.
18:7 He went into the house of one named Justus - A Gentile, and preached there, though probably he still lodged with Aquila.
8 And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized.
18:8 And many hearing - The conversation of Crispus, and the preaching of Paul.
9 Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace:
10 For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city.
18:10 I am with thee: therefore fear not all the learning, politeness, grandeur, or power of the inhabitants of this city. Speak and hold not thy peace - For thy labour shall not be in vain. For I have much people in this city - So he prophetically calls them that afterward believed.
11 And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
18:11 He continued there a year and six months - A long time! But how few souls are now gained in a longer time than this? Who is in the fault? Generally both teachers and hearers.
12 And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to the judgment seat,
18:12 When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia - Of which Corinth was the chief city. This Gallio, the brother of the famous Seneca, is much commended both by him and by other writers, for the sweetness and generosity of his temper, and easiness of his behaviour. Yet one thing he lacked! But he knew it not and had no concern about it.
13 Saying, This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law.
14 And when Paul was now about to open his mouth, Gallio said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:
15 But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.
18:15 But if it be - He speaks with the utmost coolness and contempt, a question of names - The names of the heathen gods were fables and shadows. But the question concerning the name of Jesus is of more importance than all things else under heaven. Yet there is this singularity (among a thousand others) in the Christian religion, that human reason, curious as it is in all other things, abhors to inquire into it.
16 And he drave them from the judgment seat.
17 Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. And Gallio cared for none of those things.
18:17 Then they all took Sosthenes - The successor of Crispus, and probably Paul's chief accuser, and beat him - It seems because he had occasioned them so much trouble to no purpose, before the judgment seat - One can hardly think in the sight of Gallio, though at no great distance from him. And it seems to have had a happy effect. For Sosthenes himself was afterward a Christian, 1Cor 1:1.
18 And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow.
18:18 Paul continued many days - After the year and six months, to confirm the brethren. Aquila having shaved his head - As was the custom in a vow, Acts 21:24; Num 6:18. At Cenchrea - A seaport town, at a small distance from Corinth.
19 And he came to Ephesus, and left them there: but he himself entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the Jews.
20 When they desired him to tarry longer time with them, he consented not;
21 But bade them farewell, saying, I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem: but I will return again unto you, if God will. And he sailed from Ephesus.
18:21 I must by all means keep the feast at Jerusalem - This was not from any apprehension that he was obliged in conscience to keep the Jewish feasts; but to take the opportunity of meeting a great number of his countrymen to whom he might preach Christ, or whom he might farther instruct, or free from the prejudices they had imbibed against him. But I will return to you - So he did, Acts 19:1.
22 And when he had landed at Caesarea, and gone up, and saluted the church, he went down to Antioch.
18:22 And landing at Cesarea, he went up - Immediately to Jerusalem; and saluted the Church - Eminently so called, being the mother Church of Christian believers: and having kept the feast there, he went down from thence to Antioch.
23 And after he had spent some time there, he departed, and went over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples.
18:23 He went over the country of Galatia and Phrygia - It is supposed, spending about four years therein, including the time he stayed at Ephesus.
24 And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.
18:24 An eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures - Of the Old Testament. Every talent may be of use in the kingdom of God, if joined with the knowledge of the Scriptures and fervour of spirit.
25 This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.
18:25 This man had been instructed - Though not perfectly, in the way of the Lord - In the doctrine of Christ. Knowing only the baptism of John - Only what John taught those whom he baptized, namely, to repent and believe in a Messiah shortly to appear.
26 And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.
18:26 He spake - Privately; and taught publicly. Probably he returned to live at Alexandria, soon after he had been baptized by John; and so had no opportunity of being fully acquainted with the doctrines of the Gospel, as delivered by Christ and his apostles. And explained to him the way of God more perfectly - He who knows Christ, is able to instruct even those that are mighty in the Scriptures.
27 And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him: who, when he was come, helped them much which had believed through grace:
18:27 Who greatly helped through grace - It is through grace only that any gift of any one is profitable to another. Them that had believed - Apollos did not plant, but water. This was the peculiar gift which he had received. And he was better able to convince the Jews, than to convert the heathens.
28 For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ. | <urn:uuid:f815243e-d202-4d43-9b22-02a004d4ceda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wes.biblecommenter.com/acts/18.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984366 | 2,238 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Those with private insurance feel better protected
The healthcare reform is a topic that has constantly been in the news over the last few years. The varied structural changes, the increase in the minimum income level for switching to private health insurance, the constant treatment limitations among statutory health insurers and ultimately the German Health Fund launched on January 1, 2009, have generated uncertainty among German citizens and created doubt regarding the healthcare system. The MLP Health Report 2008 once again highlighted how those with private health insurance feel better protected in the event of illness than those still in statutory health insurance funds. While 89 % of those with private health insurance considered themselves well covered, only 56 % of statutory insurance policy holders came to the same conclusion. The psychological pressure is generating willingness to make the switch or at least stimulating interest in private supplementary insurance.
Better healthcare only via private insurance
The current situation represents great potential for future private health insurance, particularly as it will be easy to see from January 2009 what cost increases the German Health Fund will force upon statutory insurance policy holders. With the introduction of the German Health Fund, anyone previously in a cheap healthcare fund can expect to pay around 20 % more. Added to this is the fact that the treatment for those in statutory health insurance funds is likely to be even further reduced in future while costs increase – meaning that the gap between the performance of private and statutory insurance will become even wider and more obviously apparent.
More and more people will be willing in the mid and long term to sign up for private supplementary insurance to insure themselves against illness and care. We therefore expect to see further increases in brokerage quotas for our sales teams. However, the prerequisite for this is that people have the necessary reserves in their disposable income. The economic slump anticipated in 2009 could, of course, lead to short-term stagnation in demand, although it should then be possible to compensate for this from 2010 onwards, when positive economic development is again expected. The long-term trend is clearly upward. | <urn:uuid:7c244c22-3993-42cb-9c2b-e14eabb670d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reports2.equitystory.com/reports/mlp/annual/2008/gb/English/507025/health-provision.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958289 | 395 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Since the BSA and salmonella scandals in the 1990s there have been periodic kerfuffles about where on earth our food comes from. In the academic literature the word most often used is that of 'provenance', which led to the food of origin appearing on the food label. But labelling is an inadequate response to consumers who wish to understand the provenance of their food, and not only because an abattoir that is capable of passing of horse as cow is hardly likely to be concerned about which farm the horses came from. To understand the deeper level of our connection with food we may need the French word terroir, a sense of the cultural connection with local soil expressed through food as well as other forms of folk culture.
Here is how I describe this connection in my book, The Bioregional Economy:
'The Gloucestershire love of apples is an example of what the French would call an attachment to terroir, the sense of pride in your local place and its specialities that could be taken as constitutive of a bioregional approach to provisioning. The contrast with a globalised market approach to provisioning is instructive. While the market economy needs global uniformity and standardisation, the bioregional economy revels in difference and local distinctiveness. The word ‘terroir’ comes, of course, from the word terre meaning land and it is this attachment to land, your local land, as expressed in the particular products it is suited to producing that lies at the heart of the ability of a bioregional economy to enable a process of environmental re-embedding.'
Of course buying local from farmers you know and, if you are not a vegetarian, eating animals that you have seen grazing in local fields, also offers immediate practical reassurance that you know what you are eating in a way a labelling system never can. For more on the delights of local provisioning in the Stroud Valleys please visit the beautiful blog Let Them Eat Hay by doyenne of the local food movement Helen Pitel.
So why have we moved from this satisfying local provisioning to a world of complex supply chains where regulation is virtually impossible? The answer is obvious: it increases the ability to extract value for the food corporations, which has also undermined the livelihoods of farmers. In a report from Green House thinktank published today, commodities expert Thomas Lines describes a world crisis for farming, a crisis of reduced agricultural incomes, and an ageing farming population. The author argues that a new approach is needed, building on known methods – a greater variety of staple crops, traditional farming techniques and agro ecology – to create a food system which is economically as well as ecologically more resilient and sustainable. His recommendation to farmers and growers north and south is that they should get themselves out of the market system and focus on providing good quality food for local markets. | <urn:uuid:68f71e36-0842-4504-a3c3-1d31e06e5b31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gaianeconomics.blogspot.com/2013/02/incredible-edible.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956372 | 594 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Last week we discussed the controversial Swiss architect Le Corbusier. Although his architecture is largely out of style — the apex of 20th century functionalism — his furniture is still a popular modernist touch in many contemporary interiors. The designer primarily responsible for Le Corbusier’s furniture was Charlotte Perriand, one of the rare women in the field at the time. Hers is a great story of talent combined with determination, and we’ll look at it today.
After World War I, women had more opportunities than they had before, but they were still barred from many professions. For example, women were welcome at the Bauhaus, but they were not allowed to study furniture making or architecture, and nearly all were shunted to the weaving workshop. Within this context, along came the 24-year-old art school-grad Charlotte Perriand, bored by the traditional Beaux-Arts designs around her, hoping to design furniture using new industrial materials.
Inspired by Le Corbusier’s publications, Vers une Architecture (Towards an Architecture) and L’Art Décoratif d’Aujourd’hui (Today’s Decorative Arts), she applied for a job at his atelier in 1927, and was famously rejected with the line, “We don’t embroider cushions here” (Charming!).
In the face of rejection, Perriand renovated, turning her own small apartment into a sleek barroom made out of chrome, aluminum and glass, which she then recreated for that year’s Salon d’Automne (the 20th-century version of the Paris Salon). Le Corbusier’s cousin and collaborator, Pierre Jeanneret, brought him to see the bar, and Le Corbusier was so impressed that he changed his mind and hired Perriand as a furniture designer. How’s that for a fairy tale story?
It is Perriand who, alongside Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, designed the pieces we associate with the main man (image 2). Le Corbusier wrote in L’Art Décoratif d’Aujourd’hui that furniture should be equipment for living, designed as an extension of a person, as though it were a part of him (this is before ‘ergonomics’ was applied to anything other than manual labor), and should be well suited to its task. Now he needed appropriate furniture to put in his new domestic architectural commissions, like Villa Savoye.
Perriand, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret designed several chairs that year, each with specific purposes. The conversation chair is the B301 (image 3). Like Marcel Breuer’s seminal “Wassily” chair, designed at the Bauhaus only a couple years before, the B301 uses tubular steel as a frame, with fabric stretched and cantilevered to form a comfortable non-upholstered chair. Unlike Breuer’s chair, the B301 has a back that rocks with the sitter’s movement, achieving the connection between body and furniture that Le Corbusier sought. The B302 (image 4), was more of a desk chair; it swiveled, and its back was shaped to cradle the sitter.
The relaxation chair was the LC2 “Grand Confort” armchair, basically a steel tube frame with padded upholstery around it, which you surely know from Maxell’s “Blown Away” ad from the ‘80s (image 5). The chair for sleep is the very sexy B306 chaise longue (image 7), which seems to be the most popular Le Corbusier design in today’s homes (images 8-9). Like the B301, the B306 moves with the sitter’s body, with a range of motion all the way to a full recline (image 1).
An important question is the extent to which these designs were a collaboration, or if they were Perriand’s own but with the guidance of her superiors at the atelier. Different sources treat attribution differently: some credit Perriand alone, others credit Le Corbusier alone, but each mention the other two names as being partly responsible for the designs. Among the three, it seems that ego rarely interfered, and they enjoyed fruitful working relationships for many decades. A telling comparison is between Pierre Jeanneret’s low “Scissor” chair from 1949 (image 10), which he made while working alongside Perriand, and Perriand’s low chair of 1954 (image 11) – it is difficult to tease apart influence and direct contribution when it comes to design.
Perriand left Le Corbusier’s atelier in 1937, but continued to collaborate occasionally with him and with Jeanneret. She also worked with Jean Prouvé and the artist Fernand Leger, among other important designers. She lived for nearly two years in Japan, and four years in Vietnam, where she learned weaving and furniture caning.
In both 1941 and 1955, Perriand mounted exhibitions in Tokyo at the department store Takashimaya. The designs she exhibited there bear obvious traces of the influence of the skills and sensibilities she developed abroad while retaining a distinctly European character. Her chaise longue basculante (1940), which she made in Japan, is a bamboo version of the B306 (image 12), while her Ombre chair (1953) referenced Bunraku, the traditional Japanese puppet theater (image 13, left). Her stackable “Air France” table and her Nuage (“cloud”) shelves (both 1954) were conceived in conjunction with Jean Prouvé (image 13, right, and image 14), and show a perfect marriage of her Japanese-informed aesthetic and Prouvé’s groundbreaking industrial modernism.
Perriand was also an accomplished architect in her own right, but I find her furniture – and her story – especially timeless and appealing. At a time when women were expected to stay home and "embroider cushions," Perriand bent tubular steel and traveled the world in search of a modern aesthetic. Although too often obscured by Le Corbusier's fame, Perriand designed some of modern furniture's worthy icons.
Loving her work? You can own Perriand’s designs if you’d like. Cassina has exclusive rights to their reproductions. Wanting to read more? An upcoming book in the Objects and Furniture Design by Architects series will focus on Charlotte Perriand, and will be available next year. In the meantime, you can read Perriand’s biography, published in 1998, the year before she died.
Images 1 Charlotte Perriand shown lounging on the B306 chaise longue she designed with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in 1928, image from the Design Museum London; 2 Perriand with Le Corbusier (right, with glasses) and Pierre Jeanneret in their Paris atelier, image from the Design Museum London; 3 The B301 chair, designed by Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in 1928, image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; 4 B302 swivel chair, by Perriand, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, photo by Anna Hoffman; 5 Maxell "Blown Away" ad from the late 1970s, image from Corbustier.com; 6 Unupholstered view of the B306 chaise longue by Perriand, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret from 1928, in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photo by Anna Hoffman; 7 Contemporary interior featuring the B306 lounger (notice the mix of old and new, with Louis XV-style chairs and a Frank Gehry Wiggle chair from 1972 in the background), photo by Eric Roth via CocoCozy; 8 Ranjana and Naeem Khan's living room, featuring the B306 lounger and Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, photographed by Simon Upton for Elle Decor; 9 Pierre Jeanneret's "Scissor" chair (1949), at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photo by Anna Hoffman; 10 Charlotte Perriand's low chair (1954), shown at her 1955 show at Tokyo's Takashimaya, now at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photo by Anna Hoffman; 11 Perriand's chaise longue basculante made out of bamboo in Japan (1940), with her Banquette style Tokyo (1954) in the background, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photo by Anna Hoffman; 12 Perriand's plywood Ombre chair (1954) and metal "Air France" table (1953), the latter of which was made in Jean Prouvé's studio, both shown at Takashimaya in 1955 and now at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photo by Anna Hoffman; 13 Nuage ash and aluminum shelves (1954), shown at Takashimaya in 1955, now at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, photo by Anna Hoffman. | <urn:uuid:8f2f796e-6681-47da-8e24-ba378abfc213> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/-last-week-we-discussed-98469?img_idx=8 | 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 | 0.937946 | 1,988 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Of course I had to attend the birthday celebration of the Eternal City, Rome, on April 21st!
When you reach my age, you appreciate those who are in your league.
………….but let us go back to the beginning of this grand matriarch of Europe…I will begin with Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus and the mortal Anchises, who left the burning city of Troy, at the end of the Trojan War, with his son Ascainius. After many adventures, they arrive at the city of Laurentum on the west coast of Italy, whereby Aeneas marries Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, the king of the area, and founds the town of Lavinium in honor of his wife. It is then that Ascanius, son of Aneneas, decides to build a new city which he names Alba Longa. The mother of twins named Romulus and Remus was a Vestal Virgin named Rhea Silvia. She was the daughter of Numitor and the niece of King Amulius of Alba Longa. Numitor was the rightful king and the usurper was his bother Amulius. Amulius feared a future challenge from Numitor’s descendants and to prevent this challenge, forced the daughter of his brother Numitor to become a Vestal Virgin….and you thought your life was complicated!!! The penalty for violating the vow of chastity was a cruel death (notice there were no rules of this sort for the guys) ……..anyway…….Rhea Silvia was impregnated by Mars but she survived long enough to give birth to her twins – Romulus and Remus and thus the story of Rome begins………………… (I know you are saying …………finally!!!)
As a sidebar, Rhea was buried alive in punishment for breaking her vows of chastity.
Of course King Amulius ordered the twins to be put in a basket and left to die in the Tiber River. As luck would have it, the basket washes ashore and is found by a kind she wolf (lupa) who suckles the twins and a woodpecker name Picus who feeds them until the shepherd Faustulus finds the twins and brings them to his home…….lucky boys!!! ……by the way the Lupercale (a cave) was uncovered on the Palatine Hill in Rome and some think it is the Lupercale in which Romulus and Remus were suckled.
When they grow up, Romulus and Remus restore the throne of Alba Longa to its rightful ruler, their maternal grandfather and set out to found their own city………here it comes folks…but not so fast…….sibling rivalry leads Romulus to slay his bother Remus and therefore he becomes the first king and founder of the city of ROME on one sunny day in April 2,763 years ago…….and for those of you who are interested…..Romulus’ end came when a thunder-storm wrapped itself around him and he was never seen again…..but, by then we had Rome.
whew!………well some 2,763 years later I step into the scene and become fully entranced by all the beauty and history that is modern-day Rome with all her glorious history nestled in the very heart..
Of couse one of the most famous of sites is the Colosseum, her grandeur standing proudly in the center of the old city………..ahhhh but if you listen carefully enough you can still hear the jeers and screams echoing off her walls.
Today the gladiators, lions and poor victims have been replaced by hundreds of feral cats.
So entrenched in the daily lives of current day Romans are these felines that local politicians who come off best in a difficult situation are referred to as the best cat in the Colosseum.
It is really quite amazing to walk about a modern city and gaze upon ruins of this majestic, ancient civilization
…………….and of course those “borrowed” from other ancient cultures and incorporated into Roman art……..
One of my all time favorite buildings is the Pantheon………
The Pantheon was commissioned by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in about 126 AD. The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular Vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon’s dome is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.
It is one of the best preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to “St. Mary and the Martyrs” but informally known as “Santa Maria della Rotonda.” The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda.
The ancient Roman writer Cassius Dio speculated that the name comes either from the statues of so many gods placed around this building or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens.
…………and of course there is The Trevi Fountain……
Located in the Trevi district of Rome, the Trevi Fountain stands 85.3 feet high and 65.6 feet wide. It is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world. The fountain is at the junction of three roads (”tre vie”) In 19 BC, supposedly with the help of a virgin, Roman technicians located a source of pure water, this scene is presented on the present fountain’s façade. This ”Aqua Virgo” led the water into the Baths of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. It served Rome for more than four hundred years. The coup de grâce for the urban life of late classical Rome came when the Siege of Rome (537-538) broke the aqueducts. Medieval Romans were reduced to drawing water from polluted wells and the Tiber River, which was also used as a sewer.
The Roman custom of building a handsome fountain at the endpoint of an aqueduct that brought water to Rome was revived in the 15th century, with the Renaissance. In 1453, Pope Nicholas V finished mending the Acqua Vergine aqueduct and built a simple basin, designed by the humanist architect Leon Battista Alberti, to herald the water’s arrival. In 1629 Pope Urban VIII, finding the earlier fountain insufficiently dramatic, asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to sketch possible renovations, but when the Pope died, the project was abandoned. Though Bernini’s project was never constructed, there are many Bernini touches in the fountain as it exists today. An early, striking and influential model by Pietro da Cortona, preserved in the Albertina, Vienna, also exists, as do various early 18th century sketches, most unsigned, as well as a project attributed to Nicola Michetti.
Competitions had become the rage during the Baroque era to design buildings, fountains, and even the Spanish Steps. In 1730 Pope Clement XII organized a contest in which Nicola Salvi initially lost to Alessandro Galilei – but due to the outcry in Rome over the fact that a Florentine won, Salvi was awarded the commission anyway. Work began in 1732, and the fountain was completed in 1762, long after Clement’s death, when Pietro Bracci’s Oceanus (god of all water) was set in the central niche. Salvi died in 1751, with his work half-finished, but before he went he made sure a stubborn barber’s unsightly sign would not spoil the ensemble, hiding it behind a sculpted vase, called by Romans the ”asso di coppe”, the Ace of Cups.
The Trevi Fountain was finished in 1762 by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, who substituted the present allegories for planned sculptures of Agrippa and “Trivia”, the Roman virgin.
It was a joyous celebration of this old matriarch, who has seen and contributed so much to our lives……even today the Trojans march in her honor
…..as we leave this beautiful city in her celebration, I thought you might enjoy some Roman quotes:
Roma caput mundi : Rome, Center of the World
Tutte le strade portano a Roma : All roads lead to Rome
Roma non fu costruita in un giorno : Rome wasn’t built in a day
Quando ce vo’ ce vo’ : When it’s needed, it’s needed – meaning there is no choice
Fammo alla romana : Let’s do as the Romans do
Quando sei a Roma : When in Rome
la citta eterna con le sue virtu e i suoi vizi : The Eternal City with its virtues and its vices | <urn:uuid:c44bd1e9-c378-4e80-9eae-cd2759a25762> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://the-tin-man.com/tag/vienna/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966315 | 1,945 | 2 | 2 |
NFL star William Green motivates students
Former Cleveland Browns running back William Green addressed Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School students Tuesday, Nov. 27, at the school’s auditorium to send a message of encouragement and motivate them to make decisions leading to success in life. Green participates in the Bill Glass Champions for Life program and visited the school on behalf of the organization.
Green was born in Atlantic City, N.J. He went to Boston College where he played football and where he is the all-time leading rusher. In 2002, he was a first-round draft pick for the Cleveland Browns, initiating his NFL career. According to Green, he was the MVP for the Browns and the leading rusher his first year on the team. He is 6-feet-2 at 230 pounds and can run the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds. A big man with a big heart, Green said after he retired from football he wanted to do something he enjoyed and the Champions for Life program reached out to him.
“I really love it,” Green said of the program. “I was one of those kids. My father was addicted to drugs, heroin. …Drugs and alcohol ruined my father’s entire life. … He died of HIV and a year later my mother died. … It was really difficult, especially with my mother. When my father died, she was there standing beside me with her arm around me telling everything would be OK, but when she died there was no one there to do that.”
Green said he struggled for years to make the right decisions in life. He was separated from his siblings after his parents’ deaths. He told the students he just kept telling himself and his siblings that once he got into the NFL, everything would be better. He said after being drafted by the Browns, he realized he had not found a permanent solution to his problems.
“What does NFL stand for?” Green asked students.
“National Football League,” the students shouted.
“Well, the other players and I realized what it really stands for and that’s ‘not for long,’” Green responded.
Green said he retired due to injury and was lucky to have his college degree when his NFL career ended. He told the students that after he awakened from his dream of playing football, it was his education that saved him.
“The degree I got from this university,” Green said holding up a Boston College jersey, “is something no one can take away from me. Success in life can only be earned through hard work and dedication. Education is so important!”
Green told the students to set goals and aim high. He said it is important to look at the larger goals in the distance while working to accomplish the small goals. Green, who can bench press 415 pounds, illustrated his point by performing pushups while four different students took turns standing on his back. He had the smallest of the four step onto his back first. Then, he lifted each them into the air with the largest student in the group going last. Green also bent a steel bar over his head. He said the bar represented obstacles, like prison bars or depression students may face in their lives.
“It’s time to get rid of the bars,” Green told the crowd. “No one’s born a winner or a loser. You’re all born choosers! It is so important to have a vision in your heart — a big dream. … Look at the larger goal in the distance.”
Green said he is proud to participate in the Champions for Life program, which also includes prison ministry. He said he has the platform to help guide the students, and they listen to him.
“When I put that jersey on, they pay attention,” Green asserted. “It’s a responsibility I was given, and I want to try to make the most of it.”
It seems to be working if the LC-M students were any indication. They sat and listened raptly and several were called on to participate in the interactive part of the program. Green said he hopes they got the message.
“No matter where they are, kids have struggles,” Green said. “They need to be willing to persevere and push to reach their goals.” | <urn:uuid:dd1db144-7727-47cf-8b69-e0d0e789d254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theexaminer.com/stories/sports/nfl-star-william-green-motivates-students?page=1&quicktabs_1=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989889 | 919 | 1.75 | 2 |
For this 12 Jun 2012 show, World Footprints will take you inside the sport of blind judo with a Paralympic hopeful, a past Paralympian and the founder of the Blind Judo Foundation.
As a member of the 2012 USA Paralympic Judo Team, Jordan Mouton is on a quest for Olympic Gold in London. Jordan joins us to talk about her sport, her preparations for London and why she considers Judo an ideal sport for the blind or visually impaired athlete.
Lori Pierce is a Paralympic trail-blazer for athletes like Jordan. As the First Lady of Paralympic Judo, Lori was the first ever and only female on the 2004 US Paralympic Judo Team. Now, Lori is one of Judo’s ambassadors and she joins us to share her plans to return to international competition in the near future.
Ron Peck, founder of the Blind Judo Foundation, recognized that athletes like Jordan and Lori needed a stronger support system than was available. He founded the Blind Judo Foundation to help create opportunities and support the growth of blind and visually-impaired athletes in the sport of Judo. Ron joins us to talk about the “aha” moment that led to the creation of the Foundation.
You can also listen to the show at http://www.worldfootprints.com/paralympic-judo | <urn:uuid:d36e1604-ac40-4aff-b519-29d52ee4a9b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.explorationtravelmagazine.com/world-footprints-radio-inside-team-usa-paralympic-judo/ | 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 | 0.927683 | 286 | 1.75 | 2 |
Learn how to make a heart origami folding paper-craft using a dollar bill. This heart in particular is sometimes called
"change of heart."
Tags:How to Make an Origami Heart using a Dollar,change of heart,dollar heart,dollar origami,money origami,origami,origami heart
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Here, I’ll show you how to make an origami heart out of a dollar. There are many different patterns out there and this one is sometimes called change of heart. You’ll need a dollar bill or any U.S. paper currency. For this video however I’m going to be using a piece of paper approximately twice the size of a dollar so you can see what's going on more clearly. I want the pink side of this paper to show so I’m going to start by flipping it over. Fold the corner of one end down to form a triangle. Crease and then unfold. Now, fold the other corner down to form a triangle, crease and then unfold. Now, we’ll pinch in the sides and squash it down to form a triangle, just like the water bomb base. And you’ll have to repeat the process on the other side.
If you have trouble pinching in the sides to form the water bomb base, you can flip this over. Fold the sheet back on its self to make a guideline. Now, when you flip back to front you can pinch the sides in a little bit easier. Now we’re going to take this flaps and fold them up and in towards the middle. We’re going to need to squash these flaps down to form a square. I like to use something with a pointed end to help. Now, we’ll take the corners of each of the small squares and fold them in.
When you do this, it kind of looks like a kite and now we’re going to squash these triangles down. Again, I like to use something pointed to help. You’ll need to repeat this process on the three other square parts. Now, we’re going to fold these corners the other way. And here, we’re going to get rid of the white space in the middle. To do this, fold it in half. And then fold one side down. Take one of the pointed ends and pull it backwards down out of the way. And you're almost done. We need to hide this tab on the bottom. This tab is bigger when you use a real dollar. So let’s see it with the real dollar. Now you can simply fold this tab back and hide it out of the way. Or you can be a little fancy and invert the tab. Now, they call this change of heart because once you're done you can stick a quarter inside the center. And there you go. a dollar origami heart. | <urn:uuid:50f73e37-988d-4eae-b617-eab2ae599fc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://on.aol.com/video/how-to-make-an-origami-heart-using-a-dollar-90845925 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904774 | 605 | 3.4375 | 3 |
When groups of kids come in and use the computers as a group and make noise as if it’s an arcade instead of using respect toward the library, it’s impossible to concentrate and write at the computers.
Patrons of all ages can sometimes get a bit rowdy. You can help us keep the peace by letting staff know as soon as you encounter excessive noise in the library. That way we can address it directly at the time that it is occurring.
Another option is to borrow a laptop. That way you can take it to an area of the library that you find more peaceful, such as the 2nd floor.
Assistant Library Director | <urn:uuid:f0e0ffb3-7bfc-4b23-8748-e21279266b3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://waltham.lib.ma.us/blog/suggestions/?p=79 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936586 | 134 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Like many notorious figures who had gone before him, Lenin's death remains shrouded in mystery. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who later changed his name to Vladimir Lenin, ushered in the era of Soviet communism that ruled until the dissolution of the Soviet state in 1991.
Yet, the presumptively healthy Lenin didn't last long in power. He died just before his 54th birthday of a massive stroke and possibly poison. Hoping to resolve Lenin's cause of death, neurologist Harry Vinters and Russian historian Lev Lurie pored over the ruler's medical history.
Lenin's health troubles began when someone tried to assassinate him in 1918. He was shot twice, with one bullet passing through a lung before lodging in his collarbone. The other wedged in the base of his neck. Neither bullet was removed, and his health began to suffer.
Four years later, he was hit with the first of three debilitating strokes. The last, a massive stroke, occurred Jan. 21, 1924, and he died hours later. For years, historians have speculated what brought on the strokes at his relatively young age. An autopsy revealed almost complete blockage of the arteries that supply blood to the brain. But Lenin did not have the traditional risk factors for stroke such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, smoking, or excessive alcohol consumption. He also exercised regularly.
Notes from the autopsy further detailed extremely hardened blood vessels in his brain, which some medical experts had initially interpreted as evidence of a syphilis infection. Vinters didn't find conclusive evidence of this in the autopsy records. He also didn't find any writings describing Lenin suffering from other symptoms of syphilis.
The researchers believe family history played a big role in Lenin's strokes. Lenin might have inherited a tendency to develop extremely high cholesterol, and great stress can further exacerbate the disease.
However, this does not explain the seizures Lenin experienced hours before his death. Seizures are not usually assocated with strokes, but can be brought on by many types of poison. During his lifetime, Russia was a place of great political intrigue and Joseph Stalin was Lenin's main obstacle in maintaining control of the Soviet Union.
Starting in 1921, Lenin began to experience a series of health problems including insomnia and severe headaches. Historians speculate Stalin poisoned Lenin with cyanide. Interestingly, even though toxicology tests were typically a part of autopsies, none were conducted on Lenin. Lenin's body was embalmed and is on display in Moscow's Red Square. Although it's been suggested a brain tissue sample might reveal whether he'd been poisoned, it's not likely to happen. | <urn:uuid:8036138f-bf8d-4a74-9bf9-51ebeae96c64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reporternews.com/news/2012/aug/07/lenins-death-a-mystery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983724 | 532 | 3.34375 | 3 |
If you’ve ever complained that you’re stuck in a dead-end job, take note: you could be your own worst enemy.
A recent VitalSmarts survey shows 97% of employees report they have a career-limiting habit. The attitudes of “It’s not my job,” procrastination, resistance to change and a negative attitude are among the top five career-limiting habits that keep employees from achieving their potential at work, which in turn limits their raise and promotion potential.
Also on the list of career-inhibiting habits include disrespect, short-term focus, selfishness, passive aggressiveness and risk aversion, according to the survey. What’s more, almost half of managers surveyed said deep-sixing a bad habit is three times more important than increasing technical skills.
What’s discouraging is that only 10% to 20% of employees actually make lasting change, the managers surveyed say.
The problem is most people think willpower is the key to changing long-standing bad behavior, says Joseph Grenny, VitalSmarts cofounder and Change Anything co-author. They fall back on their known personality traits and skill sets and then beat themselves up for failing.
“We need to take control of the things we can,” Grenny says. He says employees looking to break habits should seek regular and honest feedback from managers and colleagues, make regular self-assessments of our strengths and weaknesses and identifying the subtle, but powerful, influences that shape our behaviors.
Feedback should go beyond template performance review issues. Sometimes what’s bothering people or managers may be in-between-the-crack behaviors that may not appear in formal categories, says Nancy Rothbard, the David Pottruck associate professor management at Univesity of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Because targeted feedback is the most useful, employees must work at probing for specifics. If you’re compared to a high performer, you may need to ask: “What is it about Jane you want me to emulate?”
Social support and the right environment contribute to change and building them is an iterative process, says Grenny.
“You may need to redesign your social context.” He adds that there is a tendency to under-appreciate the profound influence of people around us. They redefine what normal looks like; they telegraph behavior and can act as accomplices.
You may also need to restructure your work environment and tell managers or coworkers you need to make some changes.
Grenny says low-walled cubicles or partitionless workspaces can increase distraction, and suggest wearing earphones, requesting a new desk location to a quieter after or even contracting with fellow employees to eliminate interactions can enable you to be more productive.
Change isn’t easy and neither is admitting to faults. Rothbard says workers need to feel safe in their workplace to show their vulnerabilities.
That being said, Grenny emphasizes change is incumbent on self-awareness and motivation and says creating a small group of colleagues to talk with can help develop a safe environment.
“People need to feel comfortable expressing themselves whether this involves cool ideas or failures,” says Praveen Tipirneni, senior vice president of corporate development and global strategy at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. Fostering this openness is an ongoing employee development objective at the company which has received 100% participation in a pilot sociometric analysis project.
The project zeros in on what productive interactions look like relative to information flows within work groups and the company as well as what employees can do to improve their productivity.
Part of the project includes creating idea panes, whiteboard-like wall space in lounge areas that allow people to meet and “paint” their questions or ideas on the wall, a practice that leads to causal discussions, Tipirneni says.
Tips to Shape Successful Career Behaviors:
Create a Personal Motivation Statement. Visit your “default future”—the career you’ll have if you are repeatedly passed up for promotion, says Grenny. Post visual reminders of what a successful career might bring like a bigger house, vacations and a full retirement fund.
Invest in professional development. New habits always require new skills. Top performers hone their craft. As one part of a larger change strategy, actively develop the skills you need to be viewed as a top performer through training, workshops or books.
Hang with the hard workers. Surround yourself with hard-working friends who share your career goals, and distance yourself from slackers. “Seeing other people trying to change is motivating and allows you to see the value new behaviors bring to the organization, says Rothbard.
Find a mentor. Changing habits requires help. Find a trusted mentor to encourage your progression and help you navigate career development opportunities. Also, pick a friend whose opinion you deeply respect and for six months make yourself accountable to his or her feedback every day, says Grenny.
Build in accountability. If you’re on a team project and you know you’re, for example, flakey about deadlines or easily distracted, carve out a time slot on your calendar and use it to specifically work on that project, disallowing any external interruptions, says Rothbard.
Job-craft your role for meaningfulness. Change something about your role to highlight your strengths and compensate for weaknesses by partnering with someone whose skills are complementary to yours.
Control your workspace. If you’d benefit from close association with another team, ask to move offices. When possible, turn off electronic interruptions that keep you from being as productive as you need to be. You might also use post-it reminders to address the tasks that will reinforce important behaviors. “This rivets my attention,” says Grenny, “and creates enormous self-satisfaction.” | <urn:uuid:61cb2c00-969f-4367-971e-d5f6b26cf32e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/12/06/stuck-in-dead-end-job-it-could-be-your-fault/?intcmp=related | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946403 | 1,227 | 1.851563 | 2 |
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IFRA Seminar Audience
It can be scientifically verified that smells affect people’s moods, said Tim Jacob of Cardiff University at a recent International Fragrance Association (IFRA) organized fragrance industry meeting held in Brussels.
“Various scientific studies have shown that lemon fragrances can act as an antidepressant,” said Jacob. “Orange and wood oils decrease stress and so does lavender, which is also associated with happiness. Meanwhile, food and fruit odors help patients recover from illness. So bringing flowers and grapes to hospital really will help sick relatives to get better.”
The use of odors and fragrances could also help with mood and sleep.
“We can take advantage of the behavior of this system to influence mood and physiological state,” said Jacob. “The intrinsic properties of smell can be used to influence mood, and smell can be conditioned to mood.”
For instance, he said, in one experiment mice were given a combination of naphthalene and interferon and conditioned to increase the presence of natural killer cells in their bloodstream, thus strengthening their immune systems. A month later the same mice were presented with the naphthalene odor again without the presence of interferon, but the mice continued to produce the cells. Another study led by Jacob found a link between odors and the ability of subjects to go to sleep. Over a period of several weeks, test subjects exposed to key odors found it increasingly easier to sleep than the control group. In both male and female subjects the level of skin conductance fell, suggesting that they were in a more relaxed state.
On an even more basic level, Jacob argued that the sense of smell helps humans to choose their lovers and mates. People often choose mates who give off a distinctly different odor, which may signal a notably different immune system that in combination can aid in the production of children that are healthier than their parents. In an experiment, Jacob tested out this “hedonic reciprocity,” asking students to anonymously rate the odors of other students—both male and female—as attractive or unattractive. Candidates of similar genetic makeup disliked each others odors, while they enjoyed the smell of those who were dissimilar. “They reciprocally hated and liked the smell of other candidates,” said Jacob.
The sense of smell or lack of it can have other health implications, said Steve van Toller, a pioneer in the field who set up the world’s first olfaction department at the University of Warwick in the 1970s. Patients with anosmia—the loss of the sense of smell often caused by a blow to the front of the head that severs the olfactory nerves—complain that they also lose their sense of taste. The first reported account was made public in the 1860s and focused on the case of a person who lost his sense of smell after falling from his horse in 1837. This example was largely forgotten until research papers on anosmia started to be published again in the 1940s. Toller further explained that patients often feel that their complaint is unique. Part of the treatment of the condition includes reassurance and an investigation of how strong a sense of smell patients used to have. | <urn:uuid:64fa3b78-37c4-4ee0-acc3-9cbc85163b41> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.perfumerflavorist.com/events/coverage/44789362.html?mobi=y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968364 | 675 | 2.8125 | 3 |
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...sacs (alveoli) are reached. In the capillaries the blood takes up oxygen from the air breathed into the air sacs and releases carbon dioxide. It then flows into larger and larger vessels until the pulmonary veins (usually four in number, each serving a whole lobe of the lung) are reached. The pulmonary veins open into the left atrium of the heart.
...in evolutionary terms, if mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood was to be avoided in the heart, alterations to its structure had to occur. Land vertebrates developed lungs, a new vein (the pulmonary vein) to take blood from them to the heart, and a double circulation, whereby the heart is effectively divided into two halves—one-half concerned with pumping incoming deoxygenated...
The left atrium, the left superior portion of the heart, is slightly smaller than the right atrium and has a thicker wall. The left atrium receives the four pulmonary veins, which bring oxygenated blood from the lungs. Blood flows from the left atrium into the left ventricle. The left ventricle, the left inferior portion of the heart, has walls three times as thick as those of the right...
...in which blood takes on oxygen and gives up carbon dioxide, the oxygenated blood in veins is collected first into venules and then into progressively larger veins; it finally flows through four pulmonary veins, two from the hilum of each lung. (The hilum is the point of entry on each lung for the bronchus, blood vessels, and nerves.) These veins then pass to the left atrium, where their...
human respiratory system
...lobules. The interlobular veins then converge on the intersegmental septa. Finally, near the hilum the veins merge into large venous vessels that follow the course of the bronchi. Generally, four pulmonary veins drain blood from the lung and deliver it to the left atrium of the heart.
What made you want to look up "pulmonary vein"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:79a9f937-f94f-4e4b-a691-9c643841f471> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/483194/pulmonary-vein | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914972 | 467 | 3.890625 | 4 |
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Oregon Healthy Food in Health Care Newsletter
Healthy Food in Health Care Update
Connecting with Community: Oregon Hospitals Collaborate with Farm to School Projects
Over the past few years hospitals in Oregon and SW Washington have begun to partner with local schools to send the message that eating healthy, sustainable food is important for individual health, our communities and the environment. As centers of healing and health promotion these hospitals are already modeling this message through the food they serve to their patients, staff, and visitors. By taking a step beyond their own kitchens, these hospitals are able to amplify healthy eating messaging in their communities through collaborations with their local farm to school projects. Hospitals partnering with schools districts have placed themselves at the forefront of community wellness and are adding greater meaning to hospital health promotion. As Jodi Nelson from Wellspring – a division of Silverton Hospital Network – notes, the goal of these collaborations are to, “provide a comprehensive, shared voice that imparts the importance of eating fresh, local fruits and vegetables.”
Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital has been partnering with the Lebanon and Sweet Home Farm to School Project since 2008 to increase healthy eating amongst their hospital customers as well as school aged kids and their families.
What they are doing: Working with their local school districts on a Picks of the Month project. Each month the hospital creates a flyer highlighting a seasonal fruit or vegetable – providing nutrient information, a recipe, and general information about the produce. 3500 copies are printed at Samaritan Lebanon and distributed to local schools. The flyers also go out electronically to Oregon Department of Human Services, Linn County Health Dept, WIC, Boys and Girls Club, and Wah Chang of Albany. Pick of the Month is also promoted at the Sweet Home and Lebanon Farmers Markets. At the hospital the Pick of the Month is featured in 4 recipes each week in their cafeteria
What schools are they working with: Lebanon and Sweet Home Schools
Who at the hospital is involved: Michelle Proctor, Food Service Director; Athena Nofziger, Dietician; Nancy Kirks, Community Health Improvement Partnership Coordinator
How has it impacted the community: Each month thousands of families have access to recipes utlizing fresh, local products. Additionally, due to the success at Samaritan Lebanon, Oregon Department of Education has looked closely at them as a model for how other hospitals can become involved with Farm to School efforts.
Samaritan Albany General Hospital is now translating the success in Lebanon to their local facility.
How did they start: In June 2010 Dana Train, RD, contacted her Regional Education District Manager and asked to get involved with the Pick of the Month project.
What are they doing: Coordinating with Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital to distribute Pick of the Month flyers at their hospital and at schools in Albany. Through this coordination they have been able to distribute more than 8,000 flyers a month encouraging community members to eat healthy, seasonal produce.
Who are they working with: OSU Extension, Benton, Corvallis, and Albany school districts, the state Farm to School Coordinator, and various departments within the hospital (Community Benefits, Public Relations, etc.).
How has it impacted the hospital: Samaritan Albany General has seen an increase in sales since implementing Pick of the Month at their hospital. In July the Pick of the Month was summer squash, the first time they made their recipe featuring this product they ran out and had to double the order the second time they made it.
Wellspring – a division of Silverton Hospital Network – is excited to be starting a Farm to School collaboration with Woodburn School District this fall. Based on the success of the Samaritan Health System, they are looking forward to getting kids and their families excited about local, fresh and healthy recipe options.
What are they doing: Partnering with Woodburn School District on their Harvest of the Month project. Wellspring dieticians and chefs are creating fun, fresh and easy recipes utilizing the Harvest of the Month produce that kids can take home. Recipes are also published in their monthly newsletter and posted on their café blog. Wellspring also hosts a weekly farmers market which includes some of the same farmers that also provide produce directly to the schools. Each month the market has a kids cooking class featuring produce from the Harvest of the Month.
Who are they working with: Woodburn, Gervais, North Marion School Districts, Jones Farm Produce, and Happy Harvest Farms.
What has been the biggest challenge: Just getting started. They definitely have the energy but are now working on getting all the right resources to do the best job possible.
There are a number of ways you can get involved with your own local Farm to School project.
For more information on Farm to School Projects:
Welcome, Aireen Joven, Oregon Health Care Without Harm Program Assistant!
On August 30th Oregon PSR’s Heath Care Without Harm Program had the privilege of adding a new staff member. Aireen Joven will take on the role of Program Assistant providing support to both the Healthy Food in Health Care Project as well as the new Clinical Advocacy Project. Aireen comes to us from the Northwest Service Academy where she was providing administration, coordination, and support services as the Garden Based Education Americorps Team Leader. She will be working with us part-time while also beginning a graduate program in women’s spirituality. Please join us in welcoming her to our team and keep an eye out for her at future Healthy Food in Health Care events.
Updates from Around the Region
A lot is happening with healthy, sustainable food at hospital food services around Oregon and SW Washington.
Legacy Good Samaritan is happy to announce the opening of a new concept in the Lovejoy Station Cafeteria, open to visitors, employees, and families of patients. Fresh Plate opened on September 27th, serving healthy sides and entrees, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients. Each food option in Fresh Plate fits within defined fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium limits that adhere to FDA restaurant “healthy” guidelines. Entrees include: cilantro lime Draper Valley chicken breast with mango pico de gallo, garbanzo bean & tofu masala, beef sirloin pepper steak, and organic ravioli with tomato cream sauce.
Oregon Health and Science University recently took sustainability to another level. As of August 2010, OHSU Food & Nutrition Services and the Carmen Ranch sisters from Wallowa, OR began their relationship of farm to fork. OHSU will now offer this Food Alliance Certified, grass-fed and finished beef with no added hormones or antibiotics. OHSU will purchase about 4-5 cows each week, using the bones for house-made soup stocks and major cuts for the retail menu. The rest of the meat will be ground and either prepared for burgers & meatloaf for patient and retail menus or packed away in the freezer for winter. Carmen Ranch beef is lower in calories, saturated fat and cholesterol than conventionally raised beef, contains more omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed beef, is high in health-enhancing fats like CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) and is rich in antioxidants like vitamins E and C and beta-carotene. The pasture-based production also creates low-stress, humane conditions for growing cattle while protecting delicate rangeland ecosystems. These are facts that this hospital likes to wave on its food service flag. OHSU is so proud to protect the health of the animals, the environment, and the people that inhabit it, by providing truly healthful food to its patients, employees, students and visitors every day.
Help us get the word out about the work hospitals are doing to improve the health and sustainability of their communities through their food service. Please send us updates on what you are working on at your facility. It’s a great way to get feedback as well as share your expertise with your colleagues.
Community Partner Highlight
FoodHub Helps You Partner with Local Farms and Schools
FoodHub (www.food-hub.org) is a new online directory and marketplace that makes it easy and efficient to find local food producers and do business with them. FoodHub offers you a variety of ways to search for and communicate with local farmers and food producers, as well as search for specific products. Several Oregon and Washington health care facilities are already FoodHub members, including Oregon Health & Science University, Providence, Oregon State Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, Good Shepherd Medical Center, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Shriners Hospital for Children, and Fort Vancouver Convalescent Center. Launched on February 1st, FoodHub is a tool created by the non-profit Ecotrust based in Portland, Oregon. Membership costs $100/year or about $8/month.
Ecotrust’s Farm to School Program is working on a wide-range of initiatives that enable schools to feature healthy, regionally sourced products in their cafeterias, incorporate nutrition-based curriculum in all academic disciplines, and provide students with experiential agriculture and food-based learning opportunities, from farm visits to gardening, cooking, composting, and recycling. Community support for these programs is critical! There are many ways that your health care facility can support local schools in sourcing and serving more local products. For example, the Wellspring Medical Center in Woodburn, Oregon is partnering with the Woodburn, Gervais, and North Marion school districts to promote their shared Harvest of the Month program for the 2010 – 2011 school year. Wellspring will highlight the same monthly featured fruits and vegetables as the districts on its menus and also send information out to the community via its newsletter. In this way, hospitals and schools can support each other by co-messaging the community about their work to source and serve more healthy, regional foods.
Both FoodHub and Ecotrust’s Farm to School program are great resources for hospitals that wish to get more involved with schools. You can use FoodHub to find schools that are purchasing local foods, or you can contact Ecotrust’s Farm to School Coordinator directly with questions.
For any questions about FoodHub or farm to school programming, or to find resources to support your efforts to source and serve regional foods, please contact Stacey Sobell, Farm to School Coordinator at Ecotrust: firstname.lastname@example.org | 503-467-0751.
Healthcare Voices in the Policy Arena
Each year food, agriculture, and health policy initiatives are voted on, passed, and implemented. Often a strong healthcare voice is absent from these debates. With rising rates of diet related disease, food safety crises, and environmental destruction, input from hospital facilities, healthcare professionals, and public health officials is sorely needed. As hospitals engage in environmentally preferable food purchasing, they are helping shift our food system in a healthier, more sustainable direction. By weighing in on policy issues that affect the food they prepare and the patients, staff, and visitors they serve, hospital facilities can further support a food system that promotes the health and wellness of our communities, citizens, and environment.
Current policy debates you can lend your voice to include:
New Guides and Resources
2010 NE Oregon Food and Farm Online Directory – Find information online about food producers, farmers markets, food security, and community gardens in Baker, Union, and Wallowa Counties.
Risk to kids from toxic pesticides may be underestimated, study finds. A recent study found children’s exposure to residue of organophosphates present on fresh fruits and vegetables varies significantly seasonally. This was not taken into consideration when determining safe levels of exposure and may be putting children at risk.
Hospitals buy antibiotic-free meat, citing drug resistance concerns. Some 300 hospitals across the nation have pledged to improve the quality and sustainability of the food they serve, not just for the health of their patients but, they say, the health of the environment and the U.S. population.
Girls now begin puberty aged 9. Growing numbers of girls are reaching puberty before the age of 10, raising fears of increased sexual activity among a new generation of children. Scientists believe the phenomenon could be linked to obesity or exposure to chemicals in the food chain, and is putting girls at greater long-term risk of breast cancer.
What’s in Beef? New rules change what “organic” means for milk and meat. New organic rules bring regulations on requirements for ruminates, such as cows, more in line with consumer perceptions. The new rules require farmers and ranchers raising ruminates to graze their animals on pasture at least 120 days a year with 30% of their diet being grass.
15th – Oregon Healthy Food in Health Care Workgroup meeting (Portland, OR – Legacy Good Samaritan)
18th-19th – Oregon Public Health Association Annual Conference (Corvallis, OR)
21st – Washington Healthy Food in Health Care Roundtable (Spokane, WA)
26th – Ecotrust’s FoodHub Training for Buyers and Sellers (2-4PM Madras, OR)
27th – Ecotrust’s FoodHub Training for Buyers and Sellers (2-4PM Bend, OR)
9th- Friends of Family Farmers - InFARMation (5:30PM Portland, OR - Holocene)
19th – Oregon Healthy Food in Health Care Workgroup meeting (Portland, OR – Legacy Good Samaritan)
14th- Friends of Family Farmers - InFARMation (5:30PM Portland, OR - Holocene)
17th – Oregon Healthy Food in Health Care Workgroup meeting (Portland, OR – Legacy Good Samaritan) | <urn:uuid:4e9d2753-d39c-4eb5-ac8d-b6271a9a658e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psr.org/chapters/oregon/health-care-without-harm/healthy-food-in-health-care-newsletter/newsletters/hfhc-septemberoctober-2010.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949094 | 2,863 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Vuillard, Édouard (ādwärˈ vüēyärˈ) [key], 1868–1940, French painter and lithographer; a member of the Nabis. He is known for his scenes of Montmartre and especially for domestic interiors that evoke the quiet intimacy of home life. Such paintings as Mother and Sister of the Artist (1893; Mus. of Modern Art, New York City) have a brooding tension that was supplanted by works in a lighter, more decorative vein after 1900.
See biographies by S. Preston (1985) and B. Thomson (1988).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: European Art, 1600 to the Present: Biographies | <urn:uuid:eab49059-6b7a-4433-a51d-99bd19a10df0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/vuillard-edouard.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900563 | 171 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Epsom Downs Racecourse
Epsom Downs Racecourse logo
|Location||Epsom, Surrey, England|
|Owned by||Jockey Club Racecourses|
|Screened on||Racing UK|
|Notable races||Epsom Derby
Epsom Downs is a Grade 1 racecourse near Epsom, Surrey, England. The "downs" referred to in the name are part of the North Downs. The course is best known for hosting the Epsom Derby, the United Kingdom's premier thoroughbred horse race for three-year-old colts and fillies, over a mile and a half (2400m). It also hosts the Epsom Oaks for three-year-old fillies and the Coronation Cup for all ages over the same distance.
The first recorded race was held on the Downs in 1661, and racing continued until the summer of 1779 when Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, organised a race for himself and his friends to race their three-year-old fillies. He named it the Oaks after his estate. The race became so successful that the following year a new race was added for colts and fillies. In 1784 the course was extended to its current distance of a mile and a half and Tattenham Corner was introduced.
In 2009 the racecourse opened the new Duchess's Stand. It has a capacity of 11,000 and has a 960m² (10 000 sq ft) hall. It can be used for banqueting, conferences and exhibitions. The estimated cost of the new stand, which was built by Willmott Dixon, was £23.5 million.
On 4 June 2011, in their first public outing since returning from their Seychelles honeymoon, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (along with Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, William's brother, Prince Harry of Wales, and Catherine's parents, Michael and Carole Middleton) attended the 2011 Epsom Derby at the track. William, Catherine, and Harry were supporting the Queen's horse, Carlton House, a favourite to win who was ultimately placed third. James and Carole had supported the horse in fourth place.
The racecourse is between Epsom, Tadworth, and Langley Vale. As it is in a public area, people can watch the Derby for free, and this meant that the Derby used to be the most attended sporting event of the year. However it is now becoming increasingly difficult to do this, and almost impossible to get a good view for free.
Epsom presents a stern challenge for inexperienced horses and a true test of stamina for those that might previously have contested the 2,000 Guineas Stakes over a mile (1600m).
Epsom Downs Grandstand was also used as St. Petersburg Airport during the filming of the James Bond film, GoldenEye.
Epsom Downs houses the third largest racehorse training facility in the country. The facility is managed by the Epsom trainers society. There are 11 trainers who use the facility, including Simon Dow and Laura Mongan (the only female trainer at Epsom).
Notable races
- Diomed Stakes
- Coronation Cup
- The Oaks
- Surrey Stakes
- Woodcote Stakes
- Princess Elizabeth Stakes
- Epsom Dash
- The Derby
- Investec Derby Trial
- Epsom Downs History
- Beetham, Margaret (2004). "Beeton, Isabella Mary (1836–1865)" (available online through UK public libraries, also in printed form). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2008-04-14.
- Emily Davison (1872 - 1913) BBC History
- Vincent Porter, 'The Robert Clark Account', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 20 No 4, 2000
- 'Freak' winds blamed for ripped roof at Epsom Downs racecourse The Guardian, 10 January 2012
- Prince William, Kate Middleton Wow Royal-Watchers at British Horse Race Popeater, 4 June 2011 | <urn:uuid:1c21b411-3865-4989-87cd-d83ecf19d2af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsom_Downs_Racecourse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954761 | 857 | 1.53125 | 2 |
TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Research peptides are used around the world for a number of reason but most notably to test the effects of growth hormone related hormones and growth hormone related peptides and their effects.
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Growth factors like IGF play an important role in childhood, specifically puberty. IGF is responsible for natural muscle growth that occurs during puberty, along with other functions like increased glucose transport, increased protein synthesis, increased RNA synthesis, increased amino acid transport to cells, and decreased protein degradation.
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Insulin-like Growth Factor 1, abbreviated IGF-1, is a protein that is encoded by the IGF1 gene. It consists of 70 amino acids and is a hormone that is structured similarly to insulin. Its main function is to stimulate growth within the body due to its regulation of both cell growth and cell death.
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News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com
SOURCE US Peptides LLC | <urn:uuid:4e408e8b-41c7-46c5-9df0-8de80261a562> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freshnews.com/news/758331/igf-1-and-long-igf-1-lr3-is-there-difference-us-peptides-discusses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912881 | 772 | 2.3125 | 2 |
It was a sideshow, but a compelling sideshow nonetheless.
The main act was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's at times angry, at times emotional testimony on Wednesday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing on the September terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
But presidential politics was another storyline, thanks to three of the participants who might be harboring 2016 ambitions.
Clinton, the outgoing secretary of state, faces constant pressure from fellow Democrats to make another bid for her party's presidential nomination, even though she's said over and over that another run for the White House is not in the cards for her.
The other two were Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Both were elected in 2010 with strong support from the tea party. Paul has publicly stated that he's considering a bid for the 2016 GOP nomination. Rubio has not been as expressive, but is considered someone who also has White House ambitions.
The two senators were polar opposites in their questioning of Clinton during the hearing, which may say something about both men's possible strategies towards 2016.
Rubio went first, stating, "We all wish that this had never happened so this hearing would never have to happen. But we're glad to see you here and wish you all the best," before asking, "One of the things that I'm interested in exploring with you is how information flows within the State Department and in particular in hindsight looking forward how we can prevent some of this happening."
Clinton was gracious in her answer, saying up front that, "I appreciate your kind words. And I reiterate my taking responsibility."
While understated, Rubio's three questions probed whether Clinton had inquired into security for U.S. diplomats in Libya in the year leading up to the attacks.
Paul didn't so much question Clinton as confront her. | <urn:uuid:99223814-5c81-4b5e-b10a-9db201efabc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksbw.com/news/politics/What-Benghazi-hearing-could-say-about-2016-White-House-race/-/2124/18251870/-/lrjne6/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981965 | 385 | 1.578125 | 2 |
|PAHO Director emphasized to the OIE the progress and challenges in the fight against FMD in the Americas|
Efforts to combat foot-and-mouth disease in the Americas have increased beef production, reduced or eliminated sanitary barriers, consolidated veterinary services, and enhanced economic benefits for the region, yet challenges remain. This was the message of Dr. Mirta Roses Periago, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), speaking at the opening of the World Assembly of Delegates of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), on 20 May, in Paris, France.
Dr. Bernard Vallat, Director-General of the OIE invited Dr. Roses to share with the delegates of the OIE’s 178 Member States PAHO’s experience in improving food and nutrition security, and especially in technical cooperation to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease in the hemisphere. Dr. Roses underlined the important contribution of animals and animal products to public health, the relevance of foot-and-mouth disease in the countries of the Americas, and PAHO’s 60 years of work with public and private veterinary services through the Pan American Center for Foot-and-Mouth Disease Center (PANAFTOSA).
The challenges ahead, according to Dr. Roses Periago, include eradication where this has not yet been achieved; strengthening veterinary services; striking a balance between primary production and processing of foods of animal origin and the negative impact of industrialized production on human health and the environment; and linking efforts to improve animal health and food production with strategies to fight child chronic malnutrition.
“Programs to fight foot-and-mouth disease have contributed significantly to food security, especially for the human population of our hemisphere, but also for the world’s population, since our countries are the main suppliers of foods of animal origin in the world,” asserted Dr. Roses Periago. She added that the region is embarked on an effort to eradicate child chronic malnutrition, together with other United Nations agencies, and must therefore tackle the challenges posed by foot-and-mouth disease.
Noting the improved health conditions achieved over the years, Dr. Roses drew attention to “the important contribution of technical personnel from PANAFTOSA and from the countries, working together for innovation and technological developments, greater availability of diagnostic tools, and new approaches to epidemiological analysis.” She added that PAHO has been working for over 60 years in the control of foot-and-mouth disease in the Americas and highlighted the creation of PANAFTOSA based on a decision made by the countries of the region in the context of the Organization of American States.
In her address to the OIE, the Director of PAHO described the region’s main contributions to the control of foot-and-mouth disease:
Dr. Roses Periago noted as a persistent challenge in the region that eradication is still incomplete. The virus continues to circulate endemically in certain areas, jeopardizing the investment that the countries have made to counter this disease, which amounted to nearly US$ 1.3 billion in 2011. “Collective action is required, since this is a regional, rather than a local problem,” she stressed.
She also mentioned the need to extend the benefits of the livestock business to family farming and small and medium-sized landowners, as well as to strengthen veterinary services “as a vital tool for ensuring the quality and sustainability of health programs.” This entails equipping these services with the professional, technical, and resources structure they need to tackle the challenges of disease prevention, she explained.
According to Dr. Roses Periago, a fourth challenge is to strike a balance between primary production and processing of animal foods in the context of nutrition and food security “and the negative impact of increasingly industrialized production on human health and environmental degradation. She indicated that this requires coordination among producers, the production chain, and consumers in a multisectoral effort.
Finally, she emphasized the need to link animal health and food production to strategies to combat child chronic malnutrition and to the achievement of the first Millennium Development Goal (eradicate extreme poverty and hunger) in the most vulnerable populations of the region.
The OIE is the intergovernmental organization responsible for improving animal health in the world. The need to fight animal diseases at the global level led to the creation of the International Office of Epizootics (Office International des Epizooties) through an international agreement signed on January 25, 1924. In May 2003, the Office became the World Organisation for Animal Health, but kept its historical French acronym, OIE.
The Pan American Foot-and-Mouth Disease Center (PANAFTOSA) is a scientific center of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) which, since 1951, has mounted a significant effort for the control and eradication of foot-and-mouth disease. Technical cooperation in zoonoses became one of its mandates in 1997 and food safety was added as an area of action in 2007. PANAFTOSA-PAHO/WHO provides technical cooperation to all PAHO Member Countries in the Americas in order to improve the health conditions of the population and promote the development of the countries.
Link to address by the Director of the Pan American Health Organization, Dr. Mirta Roses Periago at the Opening session of the 80th General Session of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Mirta Roses Periago English | Spanish | French
Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization | <urn:uuid:1a49dc55-f3fc-4c2b-bdc7-5579e32ddc91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://new.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6814&Itemid=1&lang=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930274 | 1,147 | 2.1875 | 2 |
By: James Shedlock, Director
Recently, we reported that the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University was closing its physical space beginning January, 2012 to focus on the provision of resources and services in electronic format as well as the continuation of its successful embedded librarian program. Since then, it has been announced that the decision to close will be reviewed and the Welch Medical Library will remain open during that review.
The official notice on the library’s website states the need “for a careful review of the future of this treasure on our campus.” Another line states that a committee approach with broad representation of the Hopkins user community will take a “look at our opportunities.”
The Hopkins decision suggests that powerful emotions are at work in their community. Libraries evoke strong ties to reading, learning, intellectual pursuits, history, scholarship, the value and purpose of academic life and many more powerful images that we hold dear. Libraries are increasingly being seen as the go-to place for equipment rental, media creation and collaboration, and myriad other services that don't have a home elsewhere on campus. Some users will always prefer to browse a print collection, and students and others will still gravitate to the library as neutral and study space.
Adapting to bold change requires time. In any case, the library brand is very valuable and should be treated carefully. Even with the stacks gone, users still want a library. Libraries can and should be a connection between the values inherent in the old stacks and the technological realities of the present. How to do this is the real challenge facing Hopkins, Northwestern and many other institutions of higher learning.
We will keep you posted on any new developments. | <urn:uuid:6bd5203f-e75b-4e6e-a698-5fa381972840> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.galter.northwestern.edu/news/index.cfm/2012/1/5/Update-Johns-Hopkins-Medical-Library-Staying-Open-for-the-Immediate-Future | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96182 | 342 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Climate change remained the threat-that-must-not-be-named in the final presidential debate. Even the center-right Politico mocked the candidates for ignoring “a global climate crisis that could result in unprecedented sea-level rise, drought and food shortages.”
So, I’m launching a new occasional feature — “quasi-climate quotes” — words an opinion maker says on some subject that far better apply to climate change.
At the debate, Romney explained why he thinks we need to increase military spending:
And our military — we’ve got to strengthen our military long- term. We don’t know what the world is going to throw at us down the road. We — we make decisions today in a military that — that will confront challenges we can’t imagine.
In the 2000 debates there was no mention of terrorism, for instance. And a year later, 9/11 happened. So we have to make decisions based upon uncertainty. And that means a strong military.
This quote makes little sense as stated, since U.S. military spending “is bigger than that of the next 17 countries combined,” as The Economist noted last year — a point Obama alluded to in the debate himself.
But if one were to apply it to the dangers posed by climate change and to spending on clean energy, then it would require a complete reversal of our current do-little climate policy.
The key point is that there is uncertainty in every major challenge we face. Arguably, reducing risk and avoiding worst-case scenarios are the major drivers of much national spending, from the military to health care. I’ll have more to say on that in a later post.
Uncertainty as it applies to the climate threat has been overstated by both scientists and anti-scientists. As demonstrated in the “Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts” — an analysis of more than 60 recent scientific studies along with numerous review pieces that each cover dozens of studies — we have an unusually high degree of certainty around future climate impacts if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path.
The main “uncertainty” we face on our current emissions path is whether climate change will be the worst catastrophe ever to befall humanity (at a warming of, say 5°F to 7°F) or whether it will mean multiple catastrophes (from warming >7°F) that leave Earth with a carrying capacity far below current population levels. Climate change, much more than military threats, will likely force us to “confront challenges we can’t imagine” — fearsome “unknown unknowns” or unexpected negative synergies such as the bark beetle devastation that wasn’t foreseen even a dozen years ago.
Warming beyond 7F is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e. 4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here. Tragically, that appears to be the likely outcome of business as usual.
And that means moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News asked the quintessential quasi-climate question at the end:
What do you believe is the greatest future threat to the national security of this country?
Sadly the President whiffed on this, continuing his indefensible climate silence throughout these debates. And it isn’t like Obama spent most of his response answering the question. As Politico noted, “the moderators’ questions certainly didn’t stop the candidates from diverting the conversation to their talking points of choice.”
In this case, Obama quickly pivoted to a long digression on education. Yes, those focus-grouped-to-death suburban moms that both candidates are fighting for just love to hear about investments in education — but suburban moms and indeed the majority of independents, Democrats, and moderate Republicans support climate action and clean energy as poll after poll after poll shows.
Someday a Churchill will emerge who won’t duck the issue, who understands that discussing climate change “may actually enhance turnout as well as attract voters over to their side.” Let’s just hope he or she emerges in 2016, since time is the one resource we are running out of the fastest. | <urn:uuid:ab86fc96-8a05-4bce-9db8-c0e7b7287470> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/?m=20121023&mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947887 | 931 | 1.875 | 2 |
What passes for “fact” for President Obama
“But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late. ”
It is not true simplistically that 12 of the hottest years on record have come in the last 15. Which measurement? How does that compare to other measurements? How MUCH hotter? Was it significant or statistically insignificant?
There is no scientist claiming increases in storm events or intensity as fact. Only a – yet unproven – theory. No scientist claiming increases in droughts. Another unproven theory.
There is no emergency. No need to react in a way that hurts the price of fossil fuels.
The lack of science understanding amongst the political class is terrible. No party specific on that complaint. Just Obama is now the latest to trot out anti-science positions that favor his world view.
Science needs to be depoliticized. Climate change is not an urgent issue. We can have all fuel sources. But don’t artificially prop up one or another. I include oil in that as well. Let the market find solutions. Stop treating CO2 as pollution. Is is plant food.
The Democrats have no right to claim a superior scientific rationality. Between foolishness on climate change, GMO, and alternative medicine, they have enough anti-science nonsense of their own to match up with the few creationists. | <urn:uuid:f776755e-725e-4369-b72a-8cf15d3c3741> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tooconservative.com/?p=14879 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952619 | 363 | 1.742188 | 2 |
View Full Version : HMC 11: Kangamolebunny
10-13-2007, 08:18 PM
Couldn't resist attempting to complete one of these challeges especially when the great Bobby Chiu contributed such a great concept...:)
Here's what I have so far:
The way I typically approach any concept where I don't have ortho's is to block in the parts based on the image from a front view. Then try and get the parts to work in the round, and then refine, refine, refine...
10-13-2007, 09:28 PM
looking really natural :)
10-14-2007, 02:41 AM
Just wanted to say what a great start you've made. I am also doing Bobby Chiu's Kangamole Bunny and wish that I had drawn some rotoscopes first. You seem to have got the proportions correct already but I have alot of adjustments to make before it comes close.
Good luck with this fun character. :)
10-14-2007, 04:35 AM
The technique that I use for creating the initial model is something I've been developing for about 4 or 5 years now, and is/was out of necessity. I always ran into trouble when I wanted to model something that was only drawn from one angle, and I couldn't draw well enough to realize the concept from a front, side, and 3/4...
Unfortunately you won't always have those drawings, even in a feature film environment, but you will still be expected to hit the concept for the directors.
So what I do is basically start out with simple primatives, and place them in perspective, and try and line them up to the body parts so that they match the drawing, and then match them in 3D space.
Once it all starts working together, I then start to refine the shapes, and once I have a 3D version of the drawing, I go in and "rig prep" the character. The benefit of working this way, is you can capture the character and life of a sketch in your final model. The downside is you make double work for yourself in that you model the digital maquette first, and then have to go in and straighten it out and clean it up for animation.
Hope this information is helpful to you, and anyone else who reads this. =]
Good luck with your model.
10-15-2007, 04:56 AM
Nice model! This concept is one of my favorites from Bobby.
About your workflow (from the above post)-- Are you using the primitives you initially laid out in your final model? Or are they just placeholders that you delete before modelling that section? I'm not totally clear how you go from the primitives to the final model...
Also, is the image above your initial layout with primitives? Or is this a bit further along? If it isn't your modelling with primitives, could you post a screencap of your initial layout?
10-15-2007, 06:11 AM
My primitives are in the above model... it has the cylinders still in place for the arms, and I will use as much of the primitives as I can... but there are some areas such as the face area where I will clean up the geometry, sometimes deleting large areas of "bad" geo, and replacing it with clean edge loops...
Hope this helps...
10-15-2007, 06:32 AM
Thanks a lot for the image! I look forward to seeing your progress on this :)
10-15-2007, 09:11 AM
i hope the next update.
10-15-2007, 01:46 PM
Looking spot on! :thumbsup: You just gotta love Bobby's style! You're really doing his concept justice.
Keep it up!
10-16-2007, 05:39 AM
I still need to add the gums, tweak the body proportions a bit more, tighten up the feet, and do a detail pass, but all and all I'm pleased with the progress...
10-16-2007, 09:53 AM
Very faithful to the concepts. Interesting approach too! :)
hey great progress...
are you modeling with xsi..?
10-16-2007, 12:29 PM
really nice and clean topo. great update.
can't wait to see some sculpting on this one.
10-16-2007, 01:01 PM
Thanks for the words of encouragment guys...Yes Oglu, I'm using XSI... I haven't seen or at least used a better modeling package... =]
i know the power of xsi... im also modling in xsi... :D
haha nice bunny. are you gonna make facial blend shapes for it ?
10-16-2007, 02:54 PM
fx81, I would like to do a set of targets just to see what those might look like. And once I go in and rig prep the character, I will neutralize the expression on his face.
So it will certainly be possible pretty easily...=]
10-18-2007, 12:31 PM
Going to tighten up the mouth on the baby kangamolebunny quickly tonight, and then I think I'll be ready for a Mudbox pass...
10-18-2007, 12:44 PM
awsome work :thumbsup:
looking forward to see scuplting result :)
wow it's looking so close to the concept!! I really like the organic feel. Great job so far man :)
10-18-2007, 02:40 PM
Thanks for the comments guys...
DDS, your entry for Dominace War was one of my favorites :)
10-18-2007, 08:36 PM
HCR Modeling Halloween ONE MOTH TO GO! (Dateline is November 16th) (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=208&t=551787)
10-19-2007, 12:33 AM
hahaha...! Wonderful job Shilbert :thumbsup:
10-23-2007, 05:57 AM
so quick update... I'm still doing a little bit of mudbox work, trying to take some of the parts like the feet and upgrade them slightly, while staying as loyal to the concept as completely possible...
Next is rig prep, uv, and texture...
10-23-2007, 03:19 PM
I think its looking really really true to the concept. The topology seems nice as well. Hope to see textures soon. keep up the great and inspirng work! XD
11-05-2007, 12:14 AM
I cant wait to see this textured, I know its gona look awesome...
One of my favorite entries for sure.
11-05-2007, 12:14 AM
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vBulletin v3.0.5, Copyright ©2000-2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. | <urn:uuid:6c20b1e1-b167-4d94-9643-36a98eedbf7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-550003.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901654 | 1,502 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Ohio Floodplain Regulation Criteria is meant to serve as a guide to understanding the various criteria that must be addressed in order to manage the natural resources of the floodplain, adequately protect floodplain development from future flood damages, reduce adverse impacts of floodplain development, and meet or exceed the minimum federal requirements for community participation in the National Flood Insurance Program.
This Fifth Edition revision now contains the basic ODNR Model Flood Damage Reduction Regulations in a combined ordinance/resolution format in Appendix B, that can be downloaded for adoption by either counties or municipalities following the guidance in Chapter 2, Adopting and Amending Local Flood Damage Reduction Regulations.
A listing of local regulations that exceed minimum NFIP standards, representing more than 260 communities, is found in Appendix C. Chapter 3 classifies the various "higher standards" into distinct individual criteria that can be selected and incorporated into the new model. Ohio Floodplain Regulation Criteria is now available in a variety of formats. In addition to being downloaded from this site, versions can be provided electronically on CD-ROM or by e-mail. Single printed copies can also be obtained.
PLEASE NOTE: ODNR has determined that, to maintain compliance with federal requirements, regulations adopted before 1998 must be updated. Toward that end, ODNR has updated and improved our model regulations. This model is a basic regulation that meets the minimum federal criteria. As you prepare the model to suit your community's needs, feel free to contact our office with any questions. The following document, How to Use the 2006 Flood Damage Reduction Regulations, is intended to assist in these efforts. Do not forget to submit a draft of your regulations to ODNR for review prior to adoption. Your community will not be in compliance with NFIP standards until ODNR has approved your adopted regulations.
For more information, please contact the Division of Soil and Water Resources at (614) 265-6750 or by writing to: | <urn:uuid:fac21293-fb43-4bc7-9076-eab7fc8ab14e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/water/floodpln/modelfldrules/tabid/3518/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929058 | 389 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Submitted by Playful Plans on Wed, 2013-04-10 11:34
From the collection, two closely-related catapult games 1920's-30's.
The game's object is to shoot a clown figure from a flexible steel launcher onto a rotating wooden spinner. The clown's wire arms catch the spinner's wires; the launcher's action is adjustable using a wingnut and bolt.
Submitted by Playful Plans on Sat, 2013-03-23 16:20
Our friend Ginger Hutto was delighted to see my vintage battery-op boat "Ginger" on a visit to Edisto Island. Alas, when it was powered up on the blackwater canal, it only ran... backwards! Oh well. Read on!
Submitted by Playful Plans on Thu, 2013-03-21 11:09
From the collection, a few of my table and board games from the Golden Era. My favorites are the ones with wooden parts.
The Stratego example (10th down from the top) is much sought-after with the original wood pieces, replaced by plastic shortly after the game was introduced in 1961. The RISK set was purchased in mint unplayed condition, we loved it growing up and still do!
Submitted by Playful Plans on Mon, 2013-03-18 13:08
From the collection, a beautiful vintage (mid-modern) marble game of striking design and unknown manufacture. It's the only one I've seen. I'm sure there are more as it is a manufactured toy and not a craft example.
Submitted by Playful Plans on Wed, 2013-03-13 16:35
From tiny to a whole lot bigger, these vintage sets provide the building blocks of creative play for people of all ages (3 & up).
The smallest is stamped MiNi BAUKASTEN (Construction Kit) and labeled LOQUAI W. Germany (now ID'ed as LOQUAI HOLZKUNST) and is composed of mostly solid parts with a +2mm plywood sliding top and fixed (glued) plied bottom.
Submitted by Playful Plans on Wed, 2013-03-13 16:30
From the collection, a near-mint boxed Takraw Game Set by Sportcraft. The patent was registered on September 15th, 1959. Billed as the "New Game Sensation" it was very popular in the 60's in our Chicago neighborhood and beyond.
Submitted by Playful Plans on Tue, 2013-02-19 11:36
A favorite of mine in the collection is this splendid riding horse, monumental in appearance at a modest height of just 23"!
Her condition is battered and bedraggled, but as with all successful designs that doesn't detract a bit from her exceptional charm. The carved initials and obvious repairs are reminders that this was once some child's well-used dream steed.
Submitted by Playful Plans on Thu, 2013-02-14 10:33
First marketed in 1918, John Lloyd Wright’s Lincoln Logs remain one of the most iconic (and copied) building toys in history. From the collection, here’s the real thing from- yes- Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, John.
A bit of background. John Lloyd Wright, Frank’s second son (b. 1892) achieved his own measure of architectural success in spite of his father’s domineering interference. | <urn:uuid:c0952968-ce82-4b4f-92c4-6f5f0c2d05eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.playfulplans.com/blogs/playful-plans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939499 | 715 | 1.523438 | 2 |
***** America, Wake Up! Terror Prevention Steps We Must Take Now. By James R. White, Jr., and Anthony S. Petti; published by American Book Publishing, www.American-book.com (Web); 150 pages; $16.95.
Police do not prevent crime; it’s the job of private security to do so. Such is the thesis of this book, with the authors estimating that only about a quarter of law enforcement’s time is spent in crime prevention. While they offer no source for that statistic, the proposition seems reasonable. It’s their solution that is controversial: For private security to be effective in its crime prevention role, it needs to become an armed private police force with full authority to investigate and make arrests on the property being protected.
Readers may disagree about whether the assertion is defensible in the right hands, but unfortunately not in the hands of the authors. The first problem is presentation. Their writing style is plagued with redundancies and quickly gets irritating. Case studies are presented with no citations. There is no index, and the table of contents fails to list subject headings.
Problems continue with the book’s substance. The authors say that corporate executives will underfund corporate security solely because they expect police to protect their assets. This may be one reason for inadequate funding, but there are many more: Executives might not embrace the idea of a private armed police force, they may not have convincing cost-benefit data, they might fear liability, and so on. The authors never raise these legitimate possibilities.
“Terror” features in the book’s title, but the book says little about the topic, other than to throw the term into sentences where the term “crime prevention” appears. While terrorism is criminal, terror-prevention methods are different and far more complex than those employed for crime prevention. For example, intelligence from human sources both in the United States and overseas, as well as technical intercepts, are critical tools in the war against terror, but not in typical crime prevention. The authors never consider these issues.
There are some good points. The authors suggest that states regulate security requirements for various types of commercial properties, and that insurance companies examine security at sites before fixing premiums. But these nuggets are overshadowed by the out-of-date crime statistics, slapdash preparation, and poor writing.
Reviewer: Lloyd Reese, CPP, CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), has worked for the U.S. government, a consultancy, and a Fortune 50 company. He was a member of the Terrorist Activities Subcommittee of the ASIS National Capital Chapter for 13 years, and he remains a member of ASIS International. | <urn:uuid:53f7ad29-68ce-46db-8b4a-28a442581715> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.securitymanagement.com/article/america-wake-terror-prevention-steps-we-must-take-now | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949122 | 561 | 1.585938 | 2 |
and life cycle—Phytophthora root and crown rot
The fungus that causes Phytophthora root and crown rot survives
in soil as spores (oospores) for several years. Water, temperature,
and soil texture are the major factors affecting the development
of root and
crown rot. The presence of water is mandatory; soil saturation
for as little as 5 to 6 hours can result in infection.
Optimum temperature for plant infection is 75° to
92° F. Contaminated seed and transplants
or soilborne inoculum are sources of primary infections.
Irrigation water often disseminates fungal propagules from
infested areas to other parts of the garden. Increased frequency
and duration of irrigation favor
disease development. Symptoms usually appear following a
warm, wet period. The disease is severe in fine-textured
soils that drain slowly and in highly compacted soils. The
Phytophthora species that attacks peppers and
eggplants also affects tomatoes.
of inner root tissue | <urn:uuid:e05a72e4-e536-403d-b599-80d9fc7e3a52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/VEGES/DISEASES/LIFECYCLE/lcphytophthora.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920008 | 217 | 3.609375 | 4 |
About Stitch Red
Stitch Red is a national heart disease awareness campaign supported by the Needlearts industry. The campaign is driving efforts to draw attention to heart disease, the #1 killer of women in the United States, help people understand their risk factors for the disease and encourage the adoption of healthier lifestyles to protect their heart health.
A majority of manufacturers and designers throughout the industry are creating and selling Stitch Red products to benefit the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) in support of The Heart Truth®. Local yarn stores across the country are supporting the campaign by carrying these products and hosting Stitch Red events to raise awareness about heart disease.
Additionally, a new book called Knit Red that is authored by Jimmy Beans Wool Owner Laura Zander, is drawing further awareness about the importance of heart health. Featuring 30 eye-catching, red, heart health-inspired garments, accessories and their patterns, as well as personal stories about heart disease from industry greats, Knit Red also provides tips, resources and recipes for heart-healthy living supplied by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and NHLBI's campaign--The Heart Truth®.
About The Founders
Doug and Laura Zander, co-owners of Jimmy Beans Wool, founded this high-profile campaign in hopes of reaching the 98% of women who make up the Needlearts industry with the message of the importance of heart health. They wanted to inform women of the dangers of heart disease, encourage them to lower their risk factors for the illness and help them stay heart healthy. They were able to make this possible by partnering with the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute's The Heart Truth® to launch Stitch Red.
Stitch Red was originally a collaboration between Laura and her friend and marketing mentor Marta McGinnis. At one friendly coffee meeting, Marta shared that she had recently survived a major heart attack. Laura has also been touched by heart disease, as her young and fit husband Doug had recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Through these experiences, both women were shocked to learn that heart disease is the #1 killer of women in the United States.
Sadly, Marta passed away in 2008 before Stitch Red ever got off the ground. She will forever be a driving inspiration for the campaign! | <urn:uuid:153cc236-f790-4ae3-9f8a-cce395921485> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stitchred.com/aboutUs.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96038 | 487 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Hi. I’m having a very diverse liquid-cooled case mod project. The system will be running with some copper and aluminum parts in a single loop that I can’t and will not avoid. Here are the cooling parts:
1X 240MM rad.
2X 120MM rads.
4X aluminum tunnel OCZ Flex RAM.
So here my questions:
What is the chance for corrosion to occur when running under Anti-corrosion coolant, a piece of sliver coil, changing coolant every three months? I’m talking about long term for at least 5 years and 2hrs of usage every day.
If the corrosion is unavoidable what else I could do to slow down or stop the corrosion process?
Where the corrosion will takes place first? On aluminum or copper or both?
How can I tell if there is corrosion inside of the radiators? What are the effective ways to clean them?
These might be hard to answer but I want to hear your real experience and thoughts. Some of the parts in my project are really hard to find/replace if something went wrong. Thanks! | <urn:uuid:b544a78b-7920-4130-aa87-eb8205af33de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?282547-Copper-Aluminum-rig.-Are-you-an-anti-corrosion-expert&p=5132186 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902286 | 236 | 1.773438 | 2 |
President Barack Obama is welcoming home troops who served in Iraq, offering up their service as a lesson of the nation's character.
"There's a reason our military is the most respected institution in America," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "They don't see themselves or each other as Democrats first or Republicans first. They see themselves as Americans first.
"For all our differences and disagreements, they remind us that we are all a part of something bigger, that we are one nation and one people."
Obama marked the end of the Iraq war earlier in the week, meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in advance of the last American troops leaving Iraq by Dec. 31. The withdrawal caps a war in which nearly 4,500 Americans were killed, about 32,000 were wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent.
"Our troops are now preparing to make their final march across the border and out of the country," Obama said. "Iraq's future will be in the hands of its own people."
The president met with troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Wednesday to discuss the end of the war and to honor the military's sacrifice. Obama opposed the war as a state lawmaker and then made ending the war in Iraq a key part of his 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama said the nation needs to enlist soldiers returning home in the rebuilding of the nation's economy, noting that his grandfather's generation returned home from World War II "to form the backbone of the largest middle class in history."
"This is a moment for us to build a country that lives up to the ideals that so many of our bravest Americans have fought and even died for," Obama said. "That is our highest obligation as citizens. That is the welcome home that our troops deserve."
Republicans said in their weekly address that soldiers returning home are most concerned about finding a good job and cited the 1,700-mile Keystone XL oil pipeline as an example of a project that could put people back to work.
Republicans have pushed for a swift decision on the pipeline proposed from Canada to Texas. Obama recently announced he was postponing a decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 elections to allow for more time to study the environmental ramifications of the proposal. An agreement reached by Senate leaders Friday night on a two-month extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut and jobless benefits would require Obama to decide within 60 days whether to grant a permit for the pipeline.
The pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. The project is expected to create up to 20,000 jobs.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said the project would transport 700,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada and the "steady source of energy from our friend and ally here would make us less dependent on energy from the volatile Middle East -- and that is good for America."
Environmentalists have opposed the project but some unions have supported the plan, complicating Obama's decision.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:e9e2caea-e4bc-45a5-8ec9-af7822c2dd4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.witn.com/news/military/headlines/Obama_Welcomes_Home_Troops_From_Iraq_135784873.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973212 | 641 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Candidate tidal disruption events from the XMM-Newton slew survey
Publication date: 08 Feb 2007
Authors: Esquej, P., et al.
Copyright: ESOContext. In recent years, giant amplitude X-ray flares have been observed from a handful of non-active galaxies. The most plausible scenario of these unusual phenomena is tidal disruption of a star by a quiescent supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.
Aims. Only a small number of these type of events have been observed and confirmed to date. The discovery of more cases would allow a number of fundamental conclusions to be drawn about properties such as the frequency of tidal disruption events, the distribution of quiescent black hole masses and their influence in the context of galaxy/AGN formation and evolution among others.
Methods. Comparing the XMM-Newton Slew Survey Source Catalogue with the ROSAT PSPC All-Sky Survey five galaxies have been detected a factor of up to 88 brighter in XMM-Newton with respect to ROSAT PSPC upper limits and presenting a soft X-ray colour. X-ray luminosities of these sources derived from slew observations have been found in the range 1041-1044 erg s-1, fully consistent with the tidal disruption model. This model predicts that during the peak of the outburst, flares reach X-ray luminosities up to 1045 erg s-1, which is close to the Eddington luminosity of the black hole, and afterwards a decay of the flux on a time scale of months to years is expected. Multi-wavelength follow-up observations have been performed on these highly variable objects in order to disentangle their nature and to investigate their dynamical evolution.
Results. Here we present sources coming from the XMM-Newton Slew Survey that could fit in the paradigm of tidal disruption events. X-ray and optical observations revealed that two of these objects are in full agreement with that scenario and three other sources that, showing signs of optical activity, need further investigation within the transient galactic nuclei phenomena. | <urn:uuid:6334f3c8-1d8b-46dd-a14f-6323ea3295fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hubble.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=49072 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923602 | 431 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
What "Trademark" Means
When you hear me say that we are in a series of messages on the thirty-year theological trademarks of Bethlehem, don’t think niche branding. Don’t think “thirty-year exclusives.” I don’t even like the word distinctives. It seems to connote a desire to be doctrinally different from others. Our mindset is exactly the opposite. We’re suspicious of being different from the historic teachings of the church. The last thing we want to preach is new doctrines exclusive to us. When we say “trademarks” we mean truths that are defining and shaping and precious. We don’t mean views that we’ve come up with and that set us off from the rest of the church of Christ. We don’t want to be set off. We want to be arm in arm with millions of faithful followers of God’s word. Truth does divide. But it also unites. And it is the uniting power of truth that we delight in most.
So we are always testing our interpretations of the Bible by looking back into church history. If we can’t find our interpretations there, we would be very slow to preach them in this pulpit. Cults and sects are born in the minds of leaders who crave to be different. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Christian Science—these were born in the minds of teachers who wanted new revelations and interpretations, and found them. They were restless with the limitation of the Bible and its historic understandings.
There is a lot of healthy and warranted warning these days about historical hero worship. Warnings about inordinate and uncritical admiration and imitation of historical teachers like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, the Puritans, Edwards, Wesley, Spurgeon, Barth, Chesterton, Lewis, etc. But we should be careful not to overdo this criticism. People with great historical heroes tend not to think of themselves as heroes. They're too busy learning from them. Which means that, for all its dangers, admiring a great line of historical heroes will at least keep you from starting a sect.
Wise Foundations and Deep Roots
Our instincts are much more in that direction. Our thirty-year theological trademarks are not new, they’re not distinctive to us, they are not a niche, they are not exclusives, they are not eccentric. They all have wide foundations in the Bible and deep roots in the history of God’s people. And if any of them ever deserved to be guarded from the distortion of novelty it is today’s trademark, namely the gospel of Jesus Christ.
My title is “God in Christ: The Price and the Prize of the Gospel.” Meaning: God in Christ is the Price and the Prize of the Gospel. The prize of the gospel is the Person who paid the price, God in Christ. In other words, the gospel is the good news that God in Christ paid the price of suffering, so that we could have the prize of enjoying him forever. God paid the price of his Son to give us the prize of himself.
To unfold the meaning of this and to show how biblical it is I think it will be helpful to take three snapshots of the sermon title from three different places. One from Romans 5. One from church history. And one from 1 Corinthians 15.
Price and Prize in Romans 5
Keep in mind that the word “gospel” means good news. In this case God’s good news for the world. What is the price and the prize of that good news according to Romans 5? Here’s the price in Romans 5:6–8:
While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The price of the gospel is the death of Christ. Verse 6: “Christ died for the ungodly.” Verse 8: "Christ died for us." God loved us while we were sinners and paid a price so that we might have an infinite prize. That price was the death of his Son. And what was the prize that he bought for us when he paid that price? Verses 9-11:
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
What did God purchase for us by the price of his Son? Verse 9: “We have now been justified by his blood.” And more. Verse 9b: Because of that justification we will be saved by him from wrath. What do we need to be saved from? The wrath of God. “Much more shall we be saved from the wrath of God” (verse 9). But is that the highest, best, fullest, most satisfying prize of the gospel?
No. Verse 11 begins with another “much more.” Verse 10 ends: “We shall be saved by his life.” And verse 11 takes it up a level: More than that: we rejoice in God.” That is the final and highest good of the good news. There is not another “much more” after that. There is only Paul’s saying again how we got there. Verse 11b: “through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
The end of the gospel is “we rejoice in God.” The highest, fullest, deepest, sweetest good of the gospel is God himself, enjoyed by his redeemed people. Hence the title of this message: “God in Christ: The Price and the Prize of the Gospel.” God in Christ became the price (Romans 5:6–8), and God in Christ became the prize (Romans 5:11). The gospel is the good news that God bought for us the everlasting enjoyment of God. That's what I mean when I say "God is the gospel."
Price and Prize in Church History
The second snapshot of our sermon title is from church history. For five hundred years protestant Christians have summed up the gospel in terms of the five “solas” which is Latin for “only” or “alone.” And all I do in giving you this summary is add one that is implicit in the others. So in these historical forms I would define the gospel like this:
As revealed with final authority in Scripture alone
the Gospel is the good news that
by faith alone
through grace alone
on the basis of Christ alone
for the glory of God alone
sinners have full and final joy in God alone.
All these affirmations are grounded in the Bible.
- Scripture alone is the final authority for revealing and defining the gospel of Christ (Galatians 1:9): “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” The apostolic delivery of the gospel is final and decisive.
- By faith alone (Romans 3:28): “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Faith plus nothing is the way we receive the gift of justification.
- Through grace alone (Ephesians 2:5, 8-9): “When we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — . . . For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
- On the basis of Christ alone (Hebrews 7:27): “Christ has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.” (See Hebrews 9:12; 10:10). Once for all and decisively. Nothing can be added to the work of Christ to cover our sins and that work cannot be repeated.
- For the glory of God alone (Ephesians 1:6): “God predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace.” God saved us in such a way that there would be no human boasting (Ephesians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31), but all would show his glory.
- “Full and final joy in God alone (Psalm 16:11; 73:25f): “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
This is the gospel as millions of Christians have thought about it for centuries, and we are happy to link arms with this great Reformation heritage: “God in Christ: The Price and the Prize of the Gospel”
Price and Prize in 1 Corinthians 15
The third snapshot of our sermon title comes from 1 Corinthians 15. What I see here is that the gospel has six elements or six aspects, five of which are explicit in the text and one of which is implicit. Verses 1–4:
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
Six Indispensable Elements of the Gospel
Here we see six elements of the gospel. If any of these six was missing, there would be no gospel.
1. The gospel is a divine plan. Verse 3b: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” In accordance with the Scriptures written hundreds of years before he died. Which means the gospel was planned by God long before it took place.
2. The gospel is a historical event. Verse 3b: “Christ died.” The gospel is not mythology. It is not mere ideas or feelings. It is an event. And without the event there is no gospel.
3. The gospel is the divine achievements through that event — that death. Things God accomplished in the death of Jesus long before we ever existed. Verse 3b: “Christ died for our sins.” For our sins means this death had design in it. It was meant to accomplish something. It accomplished the covering of our sins (Colossians 2:14), the removal of God’s wrath (Romans 8:3; Galatians 3:13), the purchase of eternal life (John 3:16). These are objective achievements of the work of Christ before they are applied to anyone.
4. The gospel is a free offer of Christ for faith. Verses 1-2: “. . . the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.” The good news of God’s achievements in Christ become ours by faith, by believing, by receiving. Not by giving a performance or by deserving or working. What God has done is free to all who will have it. It is received by faith. Without the free offer of Christ for faith there would be no gospel.
5. The gospel is an application to believers of what God achieved in the death of Jesus. So when we believe we are forgiven for our sins (Acts 10:43); we are justified (Romans 5:1); we receive eternal life (John 3:16) and dozens of other benefits (which is why I wrote a book called Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die). The gospel is the powerful personal application to us of what God achieved for us on the cross.
6. The gospel is the enjoyment of fellowship with God himself. This is implicit in the word “gospel,” good news. If you ask: What is the highest, deepest, most satisfying, all-encompassing good of the good news, the answer is: God himself known and enjoyed by his redeemed people. This is made explicit in 1 Peter 3:18: “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” All the other gifts of the gospel exist to make this one possible. We are forgiven so that our guilt does not keep us away from God. We are justified so that our condemnation does not keep us away from God. We are given eternal life now, with new bodies in the resurrection, so that we have the capacities for enjoying God to the fullest. Test your heart. Why do you want forgiveness? Why do you want to be justified? Why do you want eternal life? Is the decisive answer: "because I want to enjoy God"?
In summary then, “God in Christ is The Price and the Prize of the Gospel.” The prize of the gospel is the Person who paid the price. The gospel-love God gives is ultimately the gift of himself. This is what we were made for. This is what we lost in our sin. This is what Christ came to restore. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
As Edwards Explains
I offer this to you on behalf of Christ. Indeed I urge to receive it. It’s free. All it takes is for you to see the beauty of Christ and receive him as your Treasure and your Lord and your Savior. This is what it means to believe the gospel. To give you one final enticement I will read the most beautiful description I have ever read of what I mean by saying God is the gospel and that the love of God is the gift of himself. It comes from Jonathan Edwards in 1731 when he was 28:
The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life’ that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God’. The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.1
1Jonathan Edwards, “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption, by the Greatness of Man’s Dependence upon Him, in the Whole of It (1731)” [sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:29-31] in:Wilson H. Kimnach, Kenneth P. Minkema, and Douglas A. Sweeney, ed., The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 74–75. | <urn:uuid:f2a09502-5462-404b-ab33-dacdab8b7441> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/god-in-christ-the-price-and-the-prize-of-the-gospel?turn_off_admin_bar=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974325 | 3,747 | 1.523438 | 2 |
A Good Conscience
What is conscience?
"The knowledge of our acts, states, or characters, as right or wrong; the faculty, power, or principle which decides on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our actions and affections, and approves or condemns them; the moral faculty; the moral sense." Webster.
"As science means knowledge, conscience etymologically
means self-knowledge ...But the English word implies a moral
standard of action in the mind as well as a consciousness of our own
actions. ...Conscience is the reason, employed about questions of
right and wrong, and accompanied with the sentiments of approbation and
What effect is the application of the blood of Christ expected to have upon the
"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Heb. 9:14.
When once purged by the blood of Christ, in what condition is the conscience of
"Because that the worshipers once purged
should have had no more conscience of sins." Heb. 10:2.
In his defense before a certain council, how did Paul say he, had
"Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before
God until this day." Acts 23:1.
When one lives as the apostle declared he had, in all good conscience, in what
condition will his conscience be?
"And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience
void of offense toward God, and toward men." Acts 24:16.
What does the apostle say the act of baptism is to the candidate?
"The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us
(not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a
good conscience toward God), by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 3:21.
What else will a good conscience lead one to do?
"For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure
grief, suffering wrongfully." 1 Peter 2:19.
If one repels the Spirit of God from him, and refuses to have his conscience, or
knowledge of himself, quickened, what is the result?
"Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared
with a hot iron." 1 Tim. 4:2.
When one's conscience is well enlightened, what will it do for the individual?
"For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that
in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the
grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world." 2 Cor. 1:12.
With what is a good conscience connected?
"Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure
heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." 1 Tim. 1:5. | <urn:uuid:0ca38c21-9d22-4941-a6ca-68eafade48c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://projectrestore.com/library/biblereadings/br128.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931653 | 621 | 3.125 | 3 |
Judge Richard A. Posner's A Failure of Capitalism gives away its thesis in the title. There are many culprits in this timely book, but capitalism itself, specifically laissez-faire capitalism, shoulders most of the blame for the current financial crisis. Posner claims we are in the midst of a depression caused by a market failure born of the deregulation of the financial sector. Though his history of the crisis is occasionally illuminating, his arguments for increased regulation of the financial sector are unpersuasive.
A federal appellate judge and prolific author, Posner is modest enough to call his book a work in progress and reminds us that we are still learning lessons from the Great Depression. Yet he believes it's not too early for some rather dramatic conclusions: banks are the lifeblood of a capitalist economy, and their deregulation allowed the market failure that caused this depression; therefore they must be more heavily regulated so they cannot wreak such havoc again. Given Posner's reputation as a champion of deregulation, interventionists have seized upon his surprising endorsement of re-regulation-with the loudest hosannas coming from the failed regulators themselves.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, for instance, has recently called for the creation of a "systemic risk regulator," an entity whose purpose would be to police those financial intermediaries deemed so large or integral that their failure would threaten the entire financial system. Good idea, perhaps, but the job description sounds very much like that of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose mandate is to "foster the safety, soundness and vitality of our economic and financial systems." The head of the New York Fed while much of the recent trouble was brewing? Timothy Geithner.
Had Posner not started with the conclusion that deregulation is to blame, he might have asked whether the crisis was caused by deregulation, or by misguided regulations and inept regulators. It's the kind of analysis he might be good at.
Credit Default Swaps (CDS) take a beating in his book because they are unregulated instruments that played a role in the crisis. Warren Buffet famously called Credit Default Swaps "financial weapons of mass destruction," and George Soros recently said they should be outlawed. Posner uses the Lehman bankruptcy as an example of the dangers posed by CDS:
Suppose bank A had insured Lehman against a loss of $X, and bank B was insured by Lehman against a loss of $X. Then A should have given B $X, rather than both getting entangled in Lehman's bankruptcy. But the bankruptcy was so sudden that the A's and the B's didn't have time to find each other, and so were left uncertain about their position in light of the bankruptcy.
Here Posner is quite specific, and gets it exactly wrong. Using Lehman's collapse to prove that the Credit Default Swaps are instruments of financial havoc ignores what actually happened. Lehman's failure was a perfect storm. Lehman was not only the fourth largest U.S. securities firm, it punched above its weight in fixed income, and specifically in credit derivatives. It was both a huge dealer in CDS and one of the most common reference names to be traded in individual swaps and CDS indexes. Worse, the settlement of Lehman Credit Default Swaps was about as bad as could be imagined. The settlement price determined by dealer auction was a measly 8.625 cents on the dollar, that is, a loss of more than 91 cents on the dollar. This means that of the $400 billion in Lehman CDS outstanding, Protection Sellers (those long Lehman, i.e., betting that the value of Credit Default Swaps would go up) had to pay $365 billion to the Protection Buyers (those short Lehman). Before the settlement of those swaps last October, concerns surrounding the payments were widespread. The New York Times's Floyd Norris worried that "we do not know how many such swaps are even outstanding, let alone who is on the hook to pay." But settlement was a non-event. Given the widespread trading in Lehman CDS, and the near zero recovery rate, it is remarkable that the CDS market was able to function as designed. More impressively, there does not appear to have been a significant knock-on effect, whereby counterparties to Lehman faced outsized losses; most firms that traded with Lehman seem to have had sufficient collateral.
While it is fashionable to decry the unregulated nature of CDS, the market did its job fairly well because the collateral system among banks and hedge funds insured that most of the money that Protection Sellers would need to pay Protection Buyers was already in place. Posner joins many commentators who seem wholly unaware of these collateral arrangements. His chaotic scramble of a bunch of As and Bs running about trying to identify each other simply never happened.
* * *
Posner makes the same mistake that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made last summer when he decided to bail out AIG. While most of the banks that traded with Lehman had collateral against their exposure, most who traded with AIG did not. AIG was the 800-pound gorilla and was able to bully counterparties, often getting away without posting collateral—unless it were ever downgraded, whereupon it would face massive margin calls.
Facing imminent downgrade, and realizing it would not be able to post sufficient collateral to satisfy its contractual obligations, AIG found an equity partner in the U.S. taxpayer. We know a large part of the taxpayer's investment went to satisfy the "margin calls" of banks and brokers to whom AIG had sold protection. We also know that Goldman Sachs, Paulson's old firm, got the biggest slice of the pie.
Paulson apparently believed that if AIG failed, the stress to the system would be too great and systemic collapse would follow. Posner shares this view of the system's fragility—thus his call for more regulations. AIG's unusual arrangement became a metaphor for the whole system. But AIG's collateral arrangements were the exception, not the rule.
There is a widespread view that the derivatives market is the Wild West, and that it is nobody's job to know who owes what to whom. Many seem to believe there are vast exposures lurking undetected by regulators. This view is nonsense. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) publishes a Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities that lists this information for the nation's largest banks, the top five of which represent 96% of the total amount. Want to know the volume of credit derivative contracts entered into by the Regions bank of Alabama? It's in Table 12.
Posner does a better job of introducing what many have called the "shadow banking system," that complex interplay of banks, hedge funds, structured investment vehicles, mono-line insurers, and derivative products companies. He points out, correctly I think, that there is not all that much difference among these various actors in providing credit intermediation. A hedge fund that is selling protection via a CDS is providing credit much the same way that a bank is in making a loan.
I think Posner is correct that in their essential credit creating capacity it makes little sense for banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds to be operating under vastly different regulatory regimes. Banks are regulated by the Fed, the OCC, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the FDIC, and state regulators. Each state has its own insurance regulator. And hedge funds, as we hear again and again, are barely regulated at all. It seems clear that the regulatory structure is inefficient and likely to be gamed. It is and it was. But surprisingly for an astute observer like Posner, he seems to miss the main point: the high correlation between the level of regulatory scrutiny and the contribution to the credit crises.
Back in 2006 there was a general recognition that credit was too easy to obtain, whether for housing, commercial real estate, consumer finance, or corporations, and trouble of some sort would surely strike. At the time the dominant view was that the future would be a replay of the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM)crisis. In 1998 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had organized a bailout by LTCM's largest creditors to avoid collapse in the financial markets. The anticipated chain of events was a large hedge fund failing and taking down its lenders in a chain reaction. Instead, the banks failed, threatening the hedge funds. The rush to re-regulate ignores the reality that the least-regulated entities in the system—hedge funds—fared far better than the highly regulated entities like banks and insurance companies.
One would have expected this negative correlation between regulation and success in weathering the storm would have leaped out at Posner. It is the type of interesting insight he normally pounces on. He does notice that hedge funds fared a good deal better than banks, but rather than explore this interesting point, he uses the Bernie Madoff affair as further proof of the need to regulate hedge funds.
The lessons from Madoff seem very different from the ones Posner wants to draw. First, in a nation with over 8,000 hedge funds managing more than $1.3 trillion, cases of undetected fraud like this one appear to be extremely rare. Second, it is now well known that the SEC had clear warnings of problems with Madoff's funds—whistles were blown—but failed to act on them. In fact, the relatively good performance of hedge funds in general could force the conclusion that the informal networks regulating hedge funds—the scrutiny of funds of funds, outside consultants employed by pension fund investors, credit departments of bank lenders, and rigorous internal risk management—did a far better job sniffing out risk than the regulators keeping watch over banks.
Posner is so sure that deregulation caused the crisis, he hardly bothers to offer any evidence that it did. It didn't. There are really no linkages between specific deregulatory actions and the current crisis. Unfortunately, his admonition to go slowly in crafting new regulations is likely to be ignored, and the failed regulators are busy drafting new rules to cover past incompetence. To the extent Posner provides ammunition for the re-regulators, he does us all a disservice.
* * *
What few commentators have questioned with any rigor is, why did banks become so heavily exposed to these housing risks in the first place? A more complete analysis would look more closely at the types of risks taken by the banks that fell into trouble. Overwhelmingly they lost their shirts on low-yielding, highly rated securities that exposed them to "tail risks," supposedly small chances of horrific outcomes. Because such supposedly safe securities had low yields, the banks needed to commit massive amounts of funding to buy them. They were thus exposed to a small, but it turns out, not that small, chance of total failure. Why did they own this stuff? Why did the regulators let them own this stuff?
Banks owned these disastrous securities because, in large measure, the risks were rated AAA. Therefore, in the economy of both the bankers and their regulators, they did not have to hold much capital against the securities. AAA securities that yielded 30 or 40 basis points of net interest margin were attractive to banks only because the regulatory regime allowed enormous leverage on such highly rated securities. It was called "regulatory capital arbitrage," and it was a disastrous game, but it was a direct response to a regulatory environment where risk assessment was outsourced to the rating agencies.
Owning huge amounts of high rated, low yielding assets—in retrospect a doomsday trade—was a direct response to a regulatory regime that mandated capital requirements based on ratings. It was not a failure of regulation to detect or prevent excess leverage. Leverage grew in response to foolish regulations.
The government's paw prints are all over this crisis. The effective duopoly enjoyed by Moody's and S&P is and was a government construct. U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)rules endorsing Moody's and S&P as "Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" were only recently amended to broaden the field. Imagine a world where ten or twelve rating agencies competed freely. Much has been made of the fact that issuers pay for their own ratings. This is not ideal; but the real problem stems from the SEC's anointment of only a few.
* * *
John B. Taylor's slim collection of essays was rushed to market, but we should be thankful that it was. Both Posner and Taylor charge Alan Greenspan (chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1987-2006) with primary responsibility for the housing bubble. Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, provides compelling evidence to support the charge. Greenspan himself has of course denied any responsibility for this, pointing out that there was a global savings glut that contributed to massive inflows into many asset classes, including housing.
Taylor will have none of this. In a simple and cogent analysis, he shows that there is no evidence to support the global savings glut theory, and then demonstrates that the housing bubble was highly correlated, both here and abroad, with deviations from less discretionary approaches to monetary policy such as the Taylor Rule.
The Taylor Rule (named after him) is a simple monetary policy rule that prescribes how a central bank should adjust its interest rate policy in response to inflation and macroeconomic activity. If the Fed had followed such an algorithm, it would have started raising rates at the start of 2002, over two years before Greenspan actually began to hike them. Taylor demonstrates concretely what others have suggested with less evidence. The decision to leave rates below 2% between 2002 and 2005 was a direct contributor to the contemporaneous overinvestment in residential housing. He argues that this excessively cheap money was a chief cause of the housing bubble. His graph showing that across Europe deviations from the Taylor Rule are highly correlated with excessive investment in housing stock is particularly convincing.
Taylor, like Posner, goes easy on Greenspan, faulting him for essentially analytical errors: keeping rates too low for too long, overestimating the risk of deflation. Neither author mentions the political debate from that time. Was Greenspan giving too much consideration to the dynamics of the election cycle? Recall that in 2003, with the George W. Bush and John Kerry campaigns in gear, many were predicting, correctly it turned out, that Greenspan would be reluctant to jack rates until after the election. He would try not to do to Bush 43 what some had accused him of doing to Bush 41, namely, undermining his reelection with a tight monetary policy. As Greenspan the Maestro begins more and more to look like Greenspan the Fumbler, rules look more attractive, and the Taylor Rule seems better than most.
Taylor points out that, in the crisis of '08, the government initially misdiagnosed the problem as one of insufficient liquidity (not enough money in the system) rather than counterparty risk (financial institutions being fearful of dealing with one another because they did not know who might be the next Lehman). The government's rush to provide liquidity through various funding facilities missed this important distinction, and wasted precious time.
Worse, the federal government exacerbated the crisis by "supporting certain financial institutions and their creditors but not others in an ad hoc way, without a clear and understandable framework." Bear Stearns failed, Fannie and Freddie got rescued, Lehman was allowed to fail, Washington Mutual failed, AIG got rescued. None of it made sense at the time; none of it makes sense in retrospect.
Taylor looks for guiding principles in these bailouts and, finding none, criticizes the government for not having a predictable framework for intervention. He calls for the development of a framework for exceptional access to government support. Certainly it has been painful watching Paulson and Geithner simply winging it.
Taylor suggests that we look for guidance to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which, after a tumultuous string of emerging market crises in the mid- to late 1990s, adopted in 2003 an "exceptional access framework," allowing for the restructuring of debts in preference to continual IMF bailouts. The example seems appropriate. The linchpin of the IMF framework is that bondholders in emerging markets debt now face the prospect of severe restructurings if the countries' policies head off track. The IMF will not always be there, and creditors face the real threat of having their holdings diminished. Consequently, creditors police the economic policies of nations to whom they lend. The tragedy of our bailout is that the bondholders of the most reckless banks now apparently hold obligations that are virtually government-guaranteed. So while Citibank's stock is still down more than 90% from its high, Citibank's bonds are trading close to full face value.
By advocating a new framework, Taylor implicitly supports incumbent regulators who claim they lacked the tools and the authority to deal with these faltering financial behemoths. But do we need a new framework? Current regulations require that such institutions be put into receivership. That was the framework; in the panic of last fall it was abandoned.
* * *
A popular current view is that the Lehman experiment with market discipline was a disaster. Taylor correctly argues that, after Lehman's collapse, the threat to the system was uncertainty. Who would be next? At that point there was a need for regulators to identify which financial institutions were healthy, and which were not. Regulators missed this opportunity, markets unraveled, and beginning with AIG those deemed too big to fail got bailed out.
In retrospect, it appears that the regulators failed to separate the strong from the weak because they simply did not know which was which. The fact that Geithner was initiating stress tests on the nation's 19 largest banks in the first quarter of 2009 surely points to massive regulatory incompetence. What in the world had he been busying himself with beforehand? Apparently, before April 2009 regulators did not know which financial institutions could weather a 25% downturn in home prices and an unemployment rate above 10%. These same folks now want more authority.
It was, and is, the primary responsibility of regulators to know which banks have insufficient capital to weather expected and unexpected economic upheavals. As the unexpected becomes likely, regulators have a duty to protect the system by shuttering the weakest players and, if necessary, fortifying the strongest so that systemic collapse is not a realistic threat. We don't need new regulations or a new framework to accomplish that.
The Obama Administration's latest proposals for financial reform seem to envision a superhuman regulator who will catch excesses before they occur. This is naïve. Regulators need not be heroes if creditors have an interest in being vigilant; and creditors will have such an interest if recklessness faces the penalty of real loss. Unfortunately, we have just assured all creditors that their interests will be protected, no matter how reckless they are. | <urn:uuid:811677ff-dcb4-4ee3-b68c-1dc85d0477fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1662/article_detail.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973536 | 3,889 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Today the Clear Spring School first grade students made Christmas trees cut from a triangular piece of wood. Each piece is sawn from the triangular stock that tapers from 3 1/2" down to nothing at the other end over a 13 inch length. It is an easy project, and the children will do the painting and final decorating in their classroom. The project starts with two students teaming up to make the angle cut from one end of the 3 1/2" x 13" board to the other. Then each has their own sawing and drilling to do to complete the tree. | <urn:uuid:57fbb806-fcc2-4f95-ba63-d7e031080064> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-trees.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961411 | 126 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Originally Posted by EireEngineer
Stompk proposes that if the thrust of a rocket engine produces forward force by pushing against air, how does a shuttle move around in an environment without any air?
A rocket generates thrust not by pushing against air, but by explosivly ejecting gas generated by burning the fuel.
The shuttle moves in space via the use of gas releasing jets that produce the required force, and by burning the RSS engines to accelerate.
I'm so thankful for the many ROCKET SCIENTISTS who post on this forum.
From where have you and STOMPK attained your degrees and for whom do you work at present? | <urn:uuid:2921cdc7-2a79-4e67-a52d-be7958bb633b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clubconspiracy.com/forum/showthread.php?p=61228&mode=threaded | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924956 | 135 | 3.59375 | 4 |
strictfp is a Java keyword that restricts floating-point calculations in order to ensure portability. The modifier was added to the Java programming language with the Java virtual machine version 1.2.
Older versions of JVMs were always use strict floating-point, means all values used during floating-point calculations are made in the IEEE-standard float or double sizes. This sometimes result in a numeric overflow or underflow during calculation, even if the end result would be a valid number. However JVM 1.2, does not restrict to all the numbers used in floating-point calculations limited to the standard float or double precision.
While some applications, might require having precisely the same floating-point
behavior for every platform, even if some platforms
could handle more precision. In such situations, a programmer is free to use the modifier
strictfp to make sure that calculations are performed as in the
earlier versions?only with floats and doubles.
The modifier can be combined with classes, interfaces and methods.
Strict floating point behavior are typically used by
compile-time constant expressions. While other expressions use strict floating-point math
whenever they are
contained in a method, interface, or class which uses the
modifier in its declaration.
If you are facing any programming issue, such as compilation errors or not able to find the code you are looking for.
Ask your questions, our development team will try to give answers to your questions. | <urn:uuid:b9efe545-1a0d-4fd7-9eb6-b58eadc61106> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roseindia.net/help/java/s/strictfp.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933852 | 303 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Last revised: 23rd February 2011
Credits: TearRing Saga
lawsuit page (background information), TheEnd (Famitsu interview Q1 &
2 and screenshot caption translations)
Also known as the early stages of TearRing
Hidden (not so deeply) in the TearRing
Saga files is this promotional
After Thracia 776 was
Kaga left Intelligent Systems to form his own company, Tirnanog. His
company's first (and possibly only) game was to be Emblem Saga-
the successor of the Fire Emblem
series- for the original Playstation. Right before
the game's release, its title was changed to TearRing Saga, which according to
publisher Enterbrain was due to "various circumstances". Many fans
speculated that the change was made to prevent Tirnanog and Enterbrain
from being sued by Nintendo. Regardless, Nintendo filed a lawsuit not
long after TearRing Saga's
release, which eventually resulted in Enterbrain being found guilty and
breaking the Unfair Competition Law, but not for breaching the
The majority of the information about Emblem
Saga originates from a featured article by Famitsu (a famous
Japanese gaming magazine published by Enterbrain), which also
included a detailed interview with Kaga.
Anyway, the purpose of this article is to show what Emblem Saga could have been like...
with Developer Shouzou Kaga about his new game!
A new story linked deeply to the
existence of Manaketes
---First, let us listen to Mr. Kaga's
comments about the games he's made so
far, as well as this game's relationship to them with regards to the
Kaga: I've made five games,
which took place on three continents.
Emblem Saga takes place on a
fourth continent called "Forceria" and its
atmosphere is the same. In this world, the Manakete tribe once
flourished, and they built a highly advanced civilization. As history
went on and they faced destruction, how did they deal with humans, the
masters of the new age? The Manaketes... or rather, ancient dragons are
involved deeply in this game. As they faced destruction, many of them
chose to sleep underground eternally
and hide their faces from the world, but there were those
among the Manaketes who resented the humans. The story concerns those
wicked men who sought to use their strength and the people who opposed
them, as well as the shrine's holy guardian dragons who appeared
because of a certain pact.
The final story used in TearRing Saga
is largely unchanged. The only difference is the continent's name,
which was changed to Lieberia. The Manaketes were also changed to
"Emiyus", possibly because the word "Mamkute" (the Japanese name for
Manakete) is copyrighted by Intelligent System, although so is "Pegasus
Knight", but they're still in the game...
screen of Warner, a Social Knight. His
portrait belongs to Julius in the final game. The stats to the right of
the portrait are: Attack,
Range, Accuracy, Avoid, Critical and Attack Speed.
Towards the middle are the new "Attribute Resistance" gauges. The higher
the gauge value, the higher the defence bonus the character receives
when being attacked by a
weapon of that type.
The stats to the bottom left of the screen are: Strength, Skill, Speed,
Luck, Defence, Magic, Resistance, Max HP, Movement and Cost. Warner's
equipment consists of an Iron Sword and Vulnerary.
it's said that empathy is
going to be a strong point of
your new game's characters. What kinds of characters are going to
Kaga: About the empathy, I
blame the scenario (laugh). This time, you will once
again cry at the sad parts and laugh heartily at the funny
ones. Of course, I want to write sweet conversations that will put you
on edge and dramatic words as well. I can't mention specific details
characters yet, but I'd like to create an old (father-type) guy with
the charm of
an innocent child, as well as a certain vile-looking but kind-hearted
character. Also, I'd like to have a sensual Arabian-type young man and
woman in her thirties (laugh).
There seems to an unused portrait of an Arabian-style youth in the
final game. The evil woman could be referring to Sierra. The article
also showed off artworks of Kate and Julius.
---Will characters from previous games make a
Kaga: A certain shape-shifting youth will
have an important role, in the guise of a mysterious bard and sage.
Since this game occurs in the same time period as the first game, Dark
Dragon and Sword of Light, more characters may return if the
The "shape-shifting youth" could only have been Xane.
---Dark Dragon and Sword of Light takes place at
the same time, so that must mean the main hero is related to Marth!
Kaga: No, not quite. These two games
aren't directly related. Although a young hero like Marth will appear
---You just mentioned that a young hero like Marth
would appear "as well", what does that mean?
Kaga: Oh, that! Like in past games, the
game's story will be centred around a young prince, but that doesn't
mean there will only be one main character.
There will be multiple main characters?
Gaiden-style elements of the game
Kaga: I've always thought that allowing
players to choose the main character would be interesting. This time,
there will be multiple "armies" that can be controlled on the world
map. As for which characters can lead an army, each character has a
rich background, so any character has the potential to become a main
character. Although the missions that each army can undertake is fixed,
but there will be a lot of freedom from the middle and onwards, and you
can focus on your favourite army to progress the story.
|Players could freely
divide their characters into armies of up
to 8 units each and move them around the map, "just like in Fire Emblem: Gaiden."
The characters within an army may be able to support each other to
develop love or friendship.
The army being selected belongs to Faris of the Remris Knights. Their
tactician is Warner (presumably the character from the screenshot
above). The stats to the right side of the portrait are: Emblems, Gold,
Income, Cost, Army Strength and Storage.
The menu items to the bottom left of the screen are: Move, Create
(army), Unit, Item, Wait and Pass (forfeit your turn?).
properties of each army already been
decided from the start?
Kaga: Of course, the starting attributes
will be fixed to some extent, but they will change depending on the
player's methods of playing. This time, we've considered various areas
related to each army's attributes. Based on these areas, players can
make their own decisions as to how to personalise their characters. For
example, if you only fight in arenas, by the end of the game, your army
may become proficient in arena battles, but it may be weak in group
battles. Another example, say you constantly battle cave monsters,
perhaps your army will become invincible against monsters, but their
personalities will become negatively affected.
---Sounds very interesting! So, depending on the
enemy and location, the properties and personalities of the armies will
Kaga: Additionally, character growth will
also be related to their relationships with others. If two unrelated
characters fight together in the same army, perhaps they will become
lovers or close friends by the end...
---A lot of effort has been made to craft character
growth, I bet this will also affect the story!
Kaga: There is another new change related
to growth. Past characters possessed something known as growth rates,
which is basically using fixed chances to decide growth. This time,
instead, there will be growth curves, which vary according to
character. This allows us to have things such as fast growth and slow
---I see. So if you don't try out each character,
then you won't know which characters are good or bad.
Kaga: That's right. Although they start
off weak, but by the end they may become shockingly good!
---Next up, I want to ask about the game's
difficulty level. Why have you created this game in the image of
Gaiden, which is considered a low-difficulty strategy game?
Kaga: About this problem, we have various
means to solve this. One would be to design the story battles to
increase the strategic challenge. Not to mention, the artificial
intelligence has been given a huge upgrade, and the enemies will be
very efficient in both strategy and combat. Also, because battles
utilise an isometric perspective and units have their own direction,
ancient basic war strategies like rear attacking or surround and
annihilate can be faithfully recreated. To incorporate war strategies
used by famous generals like Hannibal and Caesar into the games has
been one of my goals.
isometric view that was going to be implemented in Emblem Saga, as is often
used in tactical RPGs such as Final
Like those games, the direction of each
character plays an important role- attacking an enemy from
the back would give the attacker a distinct advantage. In the final
version, the isometric view was scrapped in favour of the standard top
down view used in Fire Emblem.
The character being highlighted is Reitel, the "Crimson Lightning". His
class is Prince. The stats to the right of the portrait are: Attack,
Range, Accuracy, Avoid, Critical and Attack Speed.
as these, are there other new elements?
Kaga: Although I cannot describe them all
at this current stage, but in the future, there will probably be
endurance and cost to consider. Endurance will reduce after performing
actions or when attacked by an enemy. After falling below the halfway
point, it will reduce the character's fighting ability and when it
reaches 0 the character will be incapacitated. As for cost, this is
used to pay for units, and is deducted from your possessed gold
whenever the army moves. There will be many methods to increase the
amount of gold in possession, but the most effective is to utilise
Emblems. When an army possesses an Emblem, they will be recognised as
an official squadron of their kingdom, allowing for an increase in
income each turn.
In TearRing Saga's data,
there is an
unused Emblem, which states that it has this effect (although it
doesn't appear to do anything).
---What other methods of gaining gold are there?
Kaga: Other methods include investigating
caves and ruins, fighting in the arena, sending mercenaries on missions
and Thieves can also obtain gold.
---I see. To finish off, can I ask about any new
features that we can expect due to developing for the Playstation?
Kaga: Is that it? I am personally
interested in where the save date is stored, which is outside of the
physical software. We are considering making the save files for this
game affect the next game. If it becomes a series, the situation may
arise where characters from this game pass on their attributes to the
next. Although I say this, but this is still very far from now, so I
don't know what may become of this idea. In any case, I hope that this
product will leave a good impression on players. Please look forward to
Runan, one of the main characters of the game, initially had blue
hair and was of the Lord Knight class. However he ended up with brown
hair instead and started off as a Knight Lord. The hair colour change
was probably because the previous Fire
Emblem heroes mostly had blue
hair (eg. Marth, Arum, Sigurd), but then again the brown hair makes
Runan look like a total Leaf (the hero of Thracia 776) clone... Also Sigurd
had the Lord Knight class. | <urn:uuid:e160d778-5261-41f5-802e-b61199991dc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.serenesforest.net/general/emblemsaga.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946898 | 2,646 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Pearl producers meet over safety standards
WA's Pearl Producers' Association says producers are planning to meet to assess whether safety standards in the industry can be improved.
The ABC's Four Corners program last night raised questions about safety in a story about the death of Jarrod Hampton, 22, while pearl diving off Broome in April.
The association's Brett McCallum says the industry was recently deemed to be meeting Safe Work Australia's guidelines.
Mr McCallum says while safety will be discussed at the meeting, it was not prompted by the Four Corners program.
"If there's been errors made or gaps in what we need to do, then the industry will assess those and try to meet them," he said.
"The industry is meeting over the next few weeks as an industry in total and we'll be reviewing the outcomes to date and where we might move forward in the future."
The industry is waiting on a Coroner's report.
Although the police report into Mr Hampton's death has been finalised, the Coroner has to wait for a Worksafe WA report which could take years to complete.
McCallum says the industry meets current safety standards.
"Paspaley will assess their procedures, no doubt, and the industry through our guidance material to our members in our code of practice will also be reviewed to see if there can be improvements made," he said.
The Maritime Union of Australia has called for a number of safety measures to be implemented.
Among the measures, a spokesman says first aid training should be compulsory for deckhands and skippers, as well as the requirement for a higher ratio of experienced to trainee divers on all pearling vessels. | <urn:uuid:742b52a1-075e-414b-a284-9db934e85e42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-10/pearl-producers-meet-to-assess-safety-standards/4121358 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964467 | 347 | 1.507813 | 2 |
This is the second part of an article I was asked to write to explain nanotechnology and the debates surrounding it to a non-scientific audience with interests in social and policy issues. This article was published in the Summer 2007 issue of the journal Soundings. The first installment can be read here.
There are many debates about nanotechnology; what it is, what it will make possible, and what its dangers might be. On one level these may seem to be very technical in nature. So a question about whether a Drexler style assembler is technically feasible can rapidly descend into details of surface chemistry, while issues about the possible toxicity of carbon nanotubes turn on the procedures for reliable toxicological screening. But it’s at least arguable that the focus on the technical obscures the real causes of the argument, which are actually based on clashes of ideology. What are the ideological divisions that underly debates about nanotechnology?
Underlying the most radical visons of nanotechnology is an equally radical ideology – transhumanism. The basis of this movement is a teleological view of human progress which views technology as the vehicle, not just for the improvement of the lot of humanity, but for the transcendence of those limitations that non-transhumanists would consider to be an inevitable part of the human condition. The most pressing of these limitations, is of course death, so transhumanists look forward to nanotechnology providing a permanent solution to this problem. In the first instance, this will be effected by nanomedicine, which they anticipate as making cell-by-cell repairs to any damage possible. Beyond this, some transhumanists believe that computers of such power will become available that they will constitute true artificial intelligence. At this point, they imagine a merging of human and machine intelligence, in a way that would effectively constitute the evolution of a new and improved version of humankind.
The notion that the pace of technological change is continually accelerating is an article of faith amongst transhumanists. This leads to the idea that this accelerating rate of change will lead to a point beyond which the future is literally inconceivable. This point they refer to as “the singularity”, and discussions of this hypothetical event take on a highly eschatological tone. This is captured in science fiction writer Cory Doctorow’s dismissive but apt phrase for the singularity: “the rapture of the nerds”.
This worldview carries with it the implication that an accelerating pace of innovation is not just a historical fact, but also a moral imperative. This is because it is through technology that humanity will achieve its destiny, which is nothing less that to transcend its own current physical and mental limitations. The achievement of radical nanotechnology is central to this project, and for this reason transhumanists tend to share a strong conviction not only that radical nanotechnology along Drexlerian lines is possible, but also that its development is morally necessary.
Transhumanism can be considered to be the extreme limit of views that combine strong technological determinism with a highly progressive view of the development of humanity. It is a worldwide movement, but it’s probably fair to say that its natural home is California, its main constituency is amongst those involved in information technology, and it is associated predominantly, if not exclusively, with a strongly libertarian streak of politics, though paradoxically not dissimilar views seem to be attractive to a certain class of former Marxists.
Given that transhumanism as an ideology does not seem to have a great deal of mass appeal, it’s tempting to underplay its importance. This may be a mistake; amongst its adherents are a number of figures with very high media profiles, particularly in the United States, and transhumanist ideas have entered mass culture through science fiction, films and video games. Certainly some conservative and religious figures have felt threatened enough to express some alarm, notably Francis Fukuyama, who has described transhumanism as “the world’s most dangerous idea”.
Global capitalism and the changing innovation landscape
If it is the radical futurism of the transhumanists that has put nanotechnology into popular culture, it is the prospect of money that has excited business and government. Nanotechnology is seen by many worldwide as the major driver of economic growth over the next twenty years, filling the role that information technology has filled over the last twenty years. Breathless projections of huge new markets are commonplace, with the prediction by the US National Nanotechnology Initiative of a trillion dollar market for nanotechnology products by 2015 being the most notorious of these. It is this kind of market projection that underlies a worldwide spending boom on nanotechnology research, which encompasses both the established science and technology powerhouses like the USA, Germany and Japan, but also fast developing countries like China and India.
The emergence of nanotechnology has corresponded with some other interesting changes in the commercial landscape in technologically intensive sectors of the economy. The types of incremental nanotechnology that have been successfully commercialised so far have involved nanoparticles, such as the ones used in sunscreens, or coatings, of the kind used in stain-resistant fabrics. This sort of innovation is the province of the speciality chemicals sector, and one cynical view of the prominence of the nanotechnology label amongst new and old companies is that it has allowed companies in this rather unfashionable sector of the market to rebrand themselves as being part of the newest new thing, with correspondingly higher stock market valuations and easier access to capital. On the other hand, this does perhaps signal a more general change in the way science-driven innovations reach the market.
Many of the large industrial conglomerates that were such a prominent parts of the industrial landscape in Western countries up to the 1980s have been broken up or drastically shrunken. Arguably, the monopoly rents that sustained these combines were what made possible the very large and productive corporate laboratories that were the source of much innovation at that time. This has been replaced by a much more fluid scene in which many functions of companies, including research and innovation, have been outsourced. In this landscape, one finds nanotechnology companies like Oxonica, which are essentially holding companies for intellectual property, with functions that in the past would have been regarded as of core importance, such as manufacturing and marketing, outsourced to contractors, often located in different countries.
Even the remaining large companies have embraced the concept of “open innovation”, in which research and development is regarded as a commodity to be purchased on the open market (and, indeed, outsourced to low cost countries) rather than a core function of the corporation. It is in this light that one should understand the new prominence of intellectual property as something fungible and readily monetised. Universities and other public research institutes, strongly encouraged to seek new sources of funding other than direct government support, have made increasing efforts to spin-out new companies based on intellectual property developed by academic researchers.
In the light of all this, it’s easy to see nanotechnology as one aspect of a more general shift to what the social scientist Michael Gibbons has called Mode II knowledge production. In this view, traditional academic values are being eclipsed by a move to more explicitly goal-oriented and highly interdisciplinary research, in which research priorities are set not by the values of the traditional disciplines, but by perceived market needs and opportunities. It is clear that this transition has been underway for some time in the life sciences, and in this view the emergence of nanotechnology can be seen as a spread of these values to the physical sciences.
In the UK at least, the opposition to nanotechnology has been spearheaded by two unlikely bedfellows. The issue was first propelled into the news by the intervention of Prince Charles, who raised the subject in newspaper articles in 2003 and 2004. These articles directly echoed concerns raised by the small campaigning group ETC. ETC cast nanotechnology as a direct successor to genetic modification; to summarise this framing, whereas in GM scientists had directly intervened in the code of life, in nanotechnology they meddle with the very atomic structure of matter itself. ETC’s background included a strong record of campaigning on behalf of third world farmers against agricultural biotechnology, so in their view nanotechnology, with its spectre of the possible patenting of new arrangements of atoms and the potential replacement of commodities such as copper and cotton by nanoengineered substitutes controlled by multinationals, was to be opposed as an intrinsic part of the agenda of globalisation. Complementing this rather abstract critique was a much more concrete concern that nanoscale materials might be more toxic than their conventional counterparts, and that current regulatory regimes for the control of environmental exposure to chemicals might not adequately recognise these new dangers.
The latter concern has gained a considerable degree of traction, largely because there has been a very widespread degree of consensus that the issue has some substance. At the time of the Prince’s intervention in the debate (and quite possibly because of it) the UK government commissioned a high-level independent report on the issue from the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. This report recommended a program of research and regulatory action on the subject of possible nanoparticle toxicity. Public debate about the risks of nanotechnology has largely focused on this issue, fuelled by a government response to the Royal Society that has been widely considered to be quite inadequate. However, it is possible to regret that the debate has become so focused on this rather technical issue of risk, to the exclusion of wider issues about the potential impacts of nanotechnology on society.
To return to the more fundamental worldviews underlying this critique of nanotechnology, whether they be the rather romantic, ruralist conservatism of the Prince of Wales, or the anti-globalism of ETC, the common feature is a general scepticism about the benefits of scientific and technological “progress”. An extremely eloquent exposition of one version of this point of view is to be found in a book by US journalist Bill McKibben. The title of McKibben’s book – “Enough” – is a succinct summary of its argument; surely we now have enough technology for our needs, and new technology is likely only to lead to further spiritual malaise, through excessive consumerism, or in the case of new and very powerful technologies like genetic modification and nanotechnology, to new and terrifying existential dangers.
Despite the worries about the toxicology of nanoscale particles, and the involvement of groups like ETC, it is notable that all-out opposition to nanotechnology has not yet fully crystallised. In particular, groups such as Greenpeace have not yet articulated a position of unequivocal opposition. This reflects the fact that nanotechnology really does seem to have the potential to provide answers to some pressing environmental problems. For example, there are real hopes that it will lead to new types of solar cells that can be produced cheaply in very large areas. Applications of nanotechnology to problems of water purification and desalination have obvious potential impacts in the developing world. Of course, these kinds of problems have major political and social dimensions, and technical fixes by themselves will not be sufficient. However, the prospects that nanotechnology may be able to make a significant contribution to sustainable development have proved convincing enough to keep mainstream environmental movements at least neutral on the issue.
While some mainstream environmentalists may still remain equivocal in their view of nanotechnology, another group seems to be embracing new technologies with some enthusiasm as providing new ways of maintaining high standards of living in a fully sustainable way. Such “bright greens” dismiss the rejection of industrialised economies and the yearning to return to a rural lifestyle implicit in the “deep green” worldview, and look to the use of new technology, together with imaginative design and planning, to create sustainable urban societies. In this point of view, nanotechnology may help, not just by enabling large scale solar power, but by facilitating an intrinsically less wasteful industrial ecology.
If there is (or indeed, ever was) a time in which there was an “independent republic of science”, disinterestedly pursuing knowledge for its own sake, nanotechnology is not part of it. Nanotechnology, in all its flavours and varieties, is unashamedly “goal-oriented research”. This immediately begs the question “whose goals?” It is this question that underlies recent calls for a greater degree of democratic involvement in setting scientific priorities. It is important that these debates don’t simply concentrate on technical issues. Nanotechnology provides a fascinating and evolving example of the complexity of the interaction between science, technology and wider currents in society. Nanotechnology, with other new and emerging technologies, will have a huge impact on the way society develops over the next twenty to fifty years. Recognising the importance of this impact does not by any means imply that one must take a technologically deterministic view of the future, though. Technology co-evolves with society, and the direction it takes is not necessarily pre-determined. Underlying the directions in which it is steered are a set of competing visions about the directions society should take. These ideologies, which often are left implicit and unexamined, need to be made explicit if a meaningful discussion of the implications of the technology is to take place.
Gibbons, M, et al. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge. London: Sage.
David Berube (in his book Nano-hype, Prometheus, NY 2006) explicitly links the two interventions, and identifies Zac Goldsmith, millionaire organic farmer and editor of “The Ecologist” magazine, as the man who introduced Prince Charles to nanotechnology and the ETC critique. This could be significant, in view of Goldsmith’s current prominence in Conservative Party politics.
Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties, Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, available from http://www.nanotec.org.uk/finalReport.htm
Enough; staying human in an engineered age, Bill McKibben, Henry Hall, NY (2003)
For a recent manifesto, see Worldchanging: a user’s guide for the 21st century, Alex Steffen (ed.), Harry N. Abrams, NY (2006)
See for example See-through Science: why public engagement needs to move upstream, Rebecca Willis and James Wilsdon, Demos (2004) | <urn:uuid:fe173b56-da46-4bc9-b6fc-1963d0d7b43c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?m=200708 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953879 | 2,947 | 2.359375 | 2 |
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.
In the wake of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and the resulting renewed debate on gun control in the United States, The Stone will publish a series of essays this week that examine the ethical, social and humanitarian implications of the use, possession and regulation of weapons. Other articles in the series can be found here.
How do people justify their ownership of guns?
In the outcry that follows nearly every case of mass gun violence in the United States, there is nearly always a fixation on “the right to bear arms” clause in the Bill of Rights. There is however, a specific human rights claim that justifies gun ownership that should instead be the focus of this debate: self-defense.
Self-defense is a right we can all claim. But what sort of weapon should we use to ensure it?
“Protection from unwarranted bodily harm” is a basic right that we all can claim. It makes sense that people should be able to possess a weapon appropriate to that end. But what sort of weapon? There are two important concepts that can help us make this determination: (a) weapon damage coefficient — basically, the extent of damage that the use of a particular weapon is designed to cause; and (b) minimum force necessary to produce a result — that result being protection against bodily harm.
Trauma surgeons I’ve spoken with on this matter report to me that among those admitted to intensive care, for the most part, are not those who have suffered from weapons with a low damage coefficient: fists and small percussive objects (like sticks, books, china plates and thin drinking glasses). These patients have a very high recovery rate. Those who are treated for knife wounds are next — they have a lower recovery rate. Then come those admitted for injuries caused by larger percussive objects are next (like thick bottles, bats and chairs). Then there are the firearms injuries.
With firearms, the weapon damage coefficient makes a jump in kind. Death and permanent injury rates are significantly higher. When the firearms are rapid-fire automatic weapons (like assault weapons) not only does the rate get even higher but so does the collateral damage (more people killed or injured aside from the intended victim). This trend continues with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. No longer is one able to contain the target to a single person, but the target will almost by necessity include a score or more of victims (and considerably more property damage). Next are anti-aircraft hand-held devices, and finally, if one continues on the weapons continuum there is the nuclear bomb. Depending upon where it is detonated it could kill as many as 6 million people, in one of the world’s most populous cities.
Weapons exist on a continuum. Some weapons advocates seem intent on moving along the continuum in order to possess weapons of higher and higher damage coefficient. Their rationale is that the bad guys will have more powerful weapons and so must I in order to defend myself. The logical end of such a scenario is the destruction of humankind. Since no rational person wants that, everyone must, upon pain of logical contradiction of what it means to be human (an agent seeking purposeful action to achieve what he thinks is good), agree that there must be weapons control somewhere on the continuum.
Weapons control is a given. No one can logically claim that everyone should be able to possess nuclear weapons. Thus everyone must agree to the concept of weapons control somewhere on the continuum. This point is logically necessary. The only question is where on the continuum of weapons do we begin banning weapons? And though, as we see in the case of state nuclear proliferation, the fact that rogue countries may develop nuclear weapons does not deter us from trying to stop each new potential member in the ultimate annihilation club. Among citizens of any country, the fact that weapons bans are hard to enforce is not an argument against trying to enforce them. Moral “oughts” (in a deontological sense) are not determined by what is easy but by what is right.
Second, we have the “minimal force dictum,” which says that instead of the escalating scenario set out above, individuals should always employ the minimum force necessary to deter a threat, and that they should first depend upon law enforcement (in developed societies) to protect them.
The inclination to resort to gun ownership to ensure safety is really a form of vigilantism.
The first condition refers to stopping an attack with words or fleeing the scene if no weapon is necessary. If a fight is going to occur and you can stop it with your fists, then they should be used. If a stick is needed, then use it only so long as one is in jeopardy. The problem occurs when one cannot thwart an attack with these natural means. Should people resort to knives or even guns? For the sake of clarity, let us call these situations extreme. There might be some personal prudential advantages to using weapons like guns for personal protection, but there are alternatively some severe dangers to public health.
This leads to the second condition: people should first depend upon law enforcement to protect themselves. What stands behind this provision is very important: the real good of having a social structure in which individuals give up certain individual liberties in order to become citizens of a society. When one leaves the state of nature, then one relinquishes the right personally to inflict punishment upon wrongdoers. This right is given over to the society (the sovereign — which in a democracy is the people; see John Locke).
One condition for a citizen entering a society is the trust that societal institutions will protect her and run the society fairly. If one is unhappy with the current state of affairs, the legitimate venue is the ballot box and not a rifle or some other weapon. The rule of law dictates that within a society we rely upon our police and legal system to make us secure. The inclination to resort to gun ownership to do this is really a form of vigilantism. This worldview arises when people seek to exercise state of nature authority when they have left the state of nature. This is really a form of the free rider mentality and works contrary to the rule of law. This vigilante worldview ends up making us all less secure.
I agree that the world is a dangerous place, but the greatest threats occur because of viruses and bacteria. There is a greater cause to be afraid of drug-resistant tuberculosis than there is being shot while on the way to work. There is also statistically more cause to be afraid of driving on the freeways of the United States than there is of being a potential victim of a criminal wielding a weapon. The reason for this failure in accurate risk assessment is that people have false conceptions of individual dangers and what is and what is not in their power.
Read previous contributions to this series.
This inability to adequately assess risk and socially responsible avoidance strategies causes irrational response reactions. This is the acceleration on the continuum of weapon damage coefficients mentioned above. There must be a limit. The question is how to draw it and how to interpret the minimum force dictum.
I have argued elsewhere that the imagined safety of owning a gun is illusionary for most ordinary people. Part of this illusion concerns the dual concepts of: (a) ease of use, balanced by (b) apparent ease of effective use. These are not the same; and because of this much confusion results. Under the ease of use criterion, most low caliber handguns are easy to use. You point and pull the trigger. Low caliber handguns have virtually no kick-back. This ease of use makes them the weapon for choice for teenage gangs and the non-organized-crime-drug sub-culture —when was the last time you heard of a drive-by knifing?
But the ease of use is not the same as ease of effective use. Those drive-by shootings often miss the real target and kill bystanders. This is because it is not easy to be an effective pistol shooter. Unless one regularly puts in practice time at a firing range and engages in emergency drills, the risk of being ineffective with one’s firearm and causing injury to innocents is significant.
A colleague of mine in our criminal justice program, Michael Bolton (who was an Arlington County police officer for more than 20 years), told me that even experienced police officers need constant practice or they will not be allowed to carry guns. He told me that often experienced officers thought that such check-ups were not necessary, but Bolton assured me that the regulations were there for a fact-based reason: guns carry such a high damage coefficient, and are so difficult to use effectively — particularly in emergency situations — that they should only be in the hands of people competent to carry them. This reality of the difficulty of effective use is often dismissed by the general public because of the simple ease of use. Most ordinary citizens do not credit the need for constant training and practice in order to be responsible gun owners.
How many civilians who wish to carry guns would submit to semi-annual range reviews and emergency drills in order to keep their licenses? Without such continuing education and documented competency, a gun owner is very likely to falsely believe that he is safe and protected (because of ease of use and high damage coefficient) when he really is not (because guns require a high skill level in order to be used effectively). Those who fall short of such accountability standards are a public health threat that is more dangerous than their constructed worldview of fear.
Michael Boylan is a professor and chairperson of philosophy at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., and was a fellow at The Center for American Progress in Washington, from 2007 to 2009. His most recent book is “Morality and Global Justice: Justifications and Applications” (2011). | <urn:uuid:5b13b780-e12d-4375-9130-791d194e375f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/the-weapons-continuum/?comments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956841 | 2,002 | 2.5 | 2 |
DIAGNOSIS: INTRAVASCULAR LARGE B-CELL LYMPHOMA WITH EXTENSIVE SELLAR INVOLVEMENT.
In the reported case of a 63 year-old man showing a fulminant clinical course consisting of progressive dementia, cerebellar ataxia, myoclonus, alternating hemiparesis, right VI nerve palsy and somnolence, differential diagnosis comprised primarily a metastatic disease (e.g. primary tumor like renal cell cancer or melanoma), a systemic lymphatic disease and a brain stem encephalitis. A sellar mass of 3.2 cm in maximum diameter was diagnosed one month before death. Autopsy revealed an intravascular large cell lymphoma (IVLL).
Intravascular large cell lymphoma (IVLL) is a rare neoplasm characterized by the proliferation of lymphoma cells predominantly within the blood vessels. It most likely originates from a unique subtype of B cells, their normal counterpart being of germinal center/post germinal center B-cell (6)
According to the WHO classification it is considered a subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (3). Probably, some cases previously diagnosed as primary CNS lymphomas may have included IVLL cases (4). PCR studies revealed that IVLL might be associated with EBV infection, but in the majority of cases such association could not be established (1). Clinical manifestations are typically neurologic and dermatologic, but it is often diagnosed solely at autopsy (5). In general, IVLL is a very aggressive lymphoma which responds poorly to chemotherapy and death occurs in most cases within a short time following presentation, according to the immunohistochemical gene expression profiles delineating IVLL as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma of activated type. Although an more or less extend extravascular tumor component is a known feature of IVLL, the peculiar phenotype of intravascular proliferation is not clarified and still controversial. Probably the tumor cells are unable to extravasate because of the disturbance of adhesion profile on the tumor cells and/or endothelial cells. Of these the ß1-integrin CD29 is documented to be lacking on IVLL (7).
In our case, the patient presented with a mass lesion which initially could be seen only 2 months before death, but reaching a diameter of 4 cm by the time of his death. The determinant histologic feature of IVLL is the intraluminal presence of tumor cells and thus the extensive extravascular involvement of CNS with diffuse infiltration of lymphoma cells seen in our cases is remarkable since this finding is described in only 13 cases in the literature (4). Beside the mass in the CNS, the large tumor in the adrenal glands and surrounding tissue is a known feature of IVLL (2, 8) and probably contributed to the fever (8) that is often encountered in IVLL (9). This is the first published case of an intravascular B-cell lymphoma to become predominantly manifest as a large sellar tumor mass.
We thank Gudrun Albrecht, Institute of Brain Research, University Tuebingen, Germany, for excellent photographical preparations.
Contributed by Michel Mittelbronn, Annika Wersebe, Michael Weller, Walter Hewer, Richard Meyermann, Edwin Kaiserling, Rudi Beschorner, Stefan M. Kröber | <urn:uuid:862889cf-c734-4aa8-a507-9c300679803e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://path.upmc.edu/cases/case510/dx.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910721 | 707 | 1.59375 | 2 |
If you have ever moved out of Auto-Mode of you camera you have probably encountered one of these problems with photography. In fact, there are some problems that you may have come across just because you didn’t move out of Auto-Mode. In other words, you may have encountered problems no matter what you do, lets look at the 13 most common problems with your food photos.
13 Most Common Problems With Your Food Photos
In the next couple of weeks, I plan to write about some of the most common problems that you may come across while making photos.
In these next few posts we will look at the photographic problems in details and we will talk about how to identify the problem, reason why these problems occur and how to solve these problems.
In this first post, we will tackle the first exposure related problem.
1. Overexposed Food Photo
When a photograph has some areas that are so bright that it distracts the purpose of the photograph and its subject, the photo may be overexposed. This may be technically correct, however there is a subtle distinction that should be understood. While having very bright areas in a photo may mean that certain areas are overexposed, it is important to see if the subject itself is properly exposed.
How to Identify – An overexposed photo can be identified if the subject of the photograph is way too bright to clearly see the characteristics and details of this subject. In the example below, this will be more clear.
Reason – So why are some photographs overexposed? Overexposure occurs when the amount of light that reaches the sensor or a film is more than the intended amount of light. Intended amount of light would translate into the degree of brightness a photographer wanted in the photo. It may mean that either the aperture was too widely open, or shutter speed was too low or both these reasons contributed to the overexposure.
Solution – An overexposed photograph can be easily corrected in post processing, however, the idea here is to avoid overexposure before taking the photograph. This means that you need to know how to correctly expose the subject and how much light should enter the camera and fall on the sensor/film. This judgment comes only after taking lot of photographs.
Example – Let’s look at the example below. In this case, the prawns are overexposed at left bottom area. The lower prawn is “too white”. This seems like a photograph taken with on-camera flash without diffuser. (If you can do me just one favor please do this – never ever use on-camera flash without diffuser)
Too Bright ╪ Over Exposure
One thing to keep in mind here is that, overexposure can be used creatively and can enhance the photograph by a great degree. As I mentioned before, the key is to expose the subject properly and in order to do that, you may end up overexposing some other areas of the photograph.
This distinction is important. Look at the photograph by Mowie below. Here the subject is well exposed, however the background may seem a little too bright. This is a perfect case when too bright ╪ overexposed. Visit Mowie’s blog Mowielicious for more awesome photographs. If you haven’t heard it yet, his blog also won, “Good Looking Blog” award in January 2010. Say him Hi and congratulate him on Twitter.
Coming in Future Posts
In the next few posts, we will look at remaining 12 most common problems with food photos.
- False Colors
- Grainy Pictures
- Out of focus Photos
- Shaky Photos
- Glare (or Flare)
- Red-Eyed Chefs
- Wide angle distortion
- Spotty pictures
- Tilted horizontal
- Poor Composition
Has this Helped?
If you think this is helpful, bookmark on delicious this post or shrae this on twitter.
Did I miss any of the problem that you have seen in photos? Please comment below and I’ll add that to the list.
Photo Courtesy – Bright Orange by snaphappydan | <urn:uuid:a96f9a92-5a25-471d-abba-c89420b44d9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.learnfoodphotography.com/13-most-common-problems-with-your-food-photos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948904 | 862 | 2.125 | 2 |