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MID8076 Sustaining Midwifery Partnerships
|Semester 1, 2013 External Toowoomba|
|Faculty or Section :||Faculty of Sciences|
|School or Department :||Nursing and Midwifery|
|Version produced :||22 May 2013|
Examiner: Jill Scanlan
Moderator: Lyn Forrest
Pre-requisite: MID8001 and be enrolled in Program: MMID
Recommended prior learning: MID8070 or MID8073 or MID8074
Midwives use advanced interpersonal skills to develop and sustain midwifery partnerships with women who find child bearing or mothering particularly challenging. Using the principles of partnership and cultural safety, the midwife assists childbearing women and their families in such circumstances through provision and coordination of maternity and supportive care.
This course develops student's knowledge and wisdom in relation to women who, for psycho-social-spiritual-cultural reasons, find childbearing or mothering particularly challenging. Attention is given to the development of advanced interpersonal skills required to build rapport, work in partnership and to sensitively and effectively advocate for women. or assert oneself in situations of conflict. Interprofessional relationships and their influence on the role of the midwife are explored for the purpose of developing ways to strengthen professional partnerships. Analysis of social determinants of health will form the basis for understanding the complexities of women's health and experiences and the development of primary health care strategies. Factors, such as cultural barriers, disability, poverty, social disadvantage and exclusion, sexual abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, serious mental health problems, infertility, fetal/neonatal death and other complications which have the potential to influence the quality of the midwife-women relationship and maternity care during the childbearing continuum will be explored.
Students will self appraise their developing midwifery practice using the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council's National Competency Standards for the Midwife. Attendance at the two day residential school (or equivalent activity) is compulsory because the content is perceived to be emotionally challenging, with students benefitting from interaction with women, peers and facilitator.
On successful completion of this course students will be able to:
- Outline the components of the social determinants of health as they relate to childbearing women;
- Recognise the interplay of psycho-social-spiritual dimensions of women's lives on midwifery partnership;
- Promote and facilitate midwifery as primary health care;
- Develop therapeutic communication skills as interventions for women and families with complex psycho-social- spiritual needs;
- Refer women and their families to appropriate community services, organisations and allied health professionals;
- Address interpersonal relationship tensions that limit the effectiveness of professional partnership with colleagues;
- Undertake self-appraisal of midwifery practice using the ANMC National Competency Standards for the Midwife.
|1.||Partnership - maintaining & concluding effective partnerships with women; interprofessional partnerships; creating work environments which are supportive of partnerships;principles of cultural safety; facilitating adult learning; empowerment and birth plans; dealing with actual and potential conflict within the partnership; establishing and maintaining effective partnerships with groups; assertion, advocacy, conflict minimisation and conflict resolution; concluding the relationship and referring to community supports.||20.00|
|2.||Sustaining Partnership & Childbearing Women - women who may need more intensive midwifery support (NB: Although categories have been used to group particular special challenges together it needs to be noted that any woman may fit more than one category); Social determinants of health models and application to midwifery as primary health care; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women;women with special needs; women who may be without appropriate support; women who are or have been emotionally and/or physically injured; women experiencing anger, fear, suffering, loss and/or grief; women who experience particular postnatal challenges. Recognises the fetus' and neonates' needs in challenging childbearing situations.Perinatal mental health.||50.00|
|3.||Vulnerable parenting : As per Australian Supported Parenting Consortium 2011: Who are parents with disabilities; barriers to participation in the parenting role; capacity of parents with intellectual disabilities to raise their children; outcomes of children of parents with intellectual disabilities; child welfare interventions and family outcomes; teaching and supporting parents with intellectual disabilities; strengthening social relationships||30.00|
Text and materials required to be purchased or accessed
ALL textbooks and materials available to be purchased can be sourced from USQ's Online Bookshop (unless otherwise stated). (https://bookshop.usq.edu.au/bookweb/subject.cgi?year=2013&sem=01&subject1=MID8076)
Please contact us for alternative purchase options from USQ Bookshop. (https://bookshop.usq.edu.au/contact/)
Edwards, G & Byrom S (editors) 2007, Essential midwifery practice: public health, Blackwell, Oxford.
Pairman, S, Pincombe, J, Thorogood, C & Tracy, SK (editors) 2010, Midwifery preparation for practice, 2nd edn, Elsevier Churchill Livingstone, Marrickville, N.S.W.
Student workload requirements
|Knowledge Application and Assessment Tasks||12.00|
|Description||Marks out of||Wtg (%)||Due Date||Notes|
|3000 WORD CASE STUDY||60||49||06 May 2013|
|BE THE MIDWIFE||50||30||02 Jun 2013||(see note 1)|
|PORTFOLIO||20||20||07 Jun 2013||(see note 2)|
|PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE||1||1||07 Jun 2013||(see note 3)|
- Completion of `Vulnerable Parenting' package.
- Continuity of care experiences and paid placement ANMC competency scenarios and online reflection on practice.
- Details of the professional experiences required for MID8076 will be specified in the USQ MMID Professional Practice Portfolio.
Important assessment information
Students are required to attend a compulsory 2 day residential school at the beginning of the semester. If medical documents support a student's inability to attend residential school then the student will be advised by the course examiner of equivalent make-up work to be completed by the end of the semester. It is the students' responsibility to participate actively in all classes scheduled for them, including online discussion groups for reflection on practice with contiuity of care, and to study all material provided to them or required to be accessed by them to maximize their chance of meeting the objectives of the course and to be informed of course-related activities and administration. Students are required to attend a cultural awareness workshop before the end of semester 3. Students must have a total minimum of twenty (20) women recruited by completion of this semester (Concurrent with MID8075). If there is attrition of women in the continuity of care experience, Students may need to recruit a further 10 women to address this. Students must have participation with women in continuity of care which meets criteria outlined in the Professional Practice Portfolio. Details for ethical recruitment of women, commitment to continuity of care and documentation required for formative and summative assessment will be included in the Professional Practice Portfolio. The clinical requirement in this course contributes to the minimum requirement of the program of 800 hours clinical experience which must be carried out over the entire Program. Professional experience includes both paid clinical practice and unpaid supernumerary clinical practice. During clinical placement students must follow hospital policy and procedure and maintain safe, professional practice as outlined by nursing and midwifery professional bodies' (e.g. ANMC) practice guidelines. Clinical placement requires the student to attend Child, Youth and Family Health Services and a Community Based Midwifery Program and complete appropriate verification forms found in the Professional Practice Portfolio.
Requirements for students to complete each assessment item satisfactorily:
To complete each of the assessment items satisfactorily, students must obtain at least 50% of the marks available for a)‘Case Study’; b) ‘Be the Midwife and c) Portfolio requirements each and obtain 100% for ‘ Professional Practice.
To complete the Professional Practice satisfactorily, students must continue the clinical paid hours that contribute to the minimum 800 hour requirement of the program and submit professional placement verification forms as found in the Professional Practice Portfolio.
Penalties for late submission of required work:
If students submit assignments after the due date without (prior) approval of the examiner then a penalty of 5% of the total marks gained by the student for the assignment may apply for each working day late up to ten working days at which time a mark of zero may be recorded. No assignments will be accepted after model answers have been posted.
Requirements for student to be awarded a passing grade in the course:
To be assured of receiving a passing grade a student must submit all of the assessment items and achieve at least 50% a)‘Case Study’; b) ‘Be the Midwife and c) Portfolio requirements each and obtain 100% for ‘ Professional Practice.
Method used to combine assessment results to attain final grade:
The final grades for students will be assigned on the basis of the weighted aggregate of the marks obtained for each of the summative assessment items in the course.
There is no examination in this course.
Examination period when Deferred/Supplementary examinations will be held:
There will be no Deferred or Supplementary examinations in this course.
University Student Policies:
Students should read the USQ policies: Definitions, Assessment and Student Academic Misconduct to avoid actions which might contravene University policies and practices. These policies can be found at http://policy.usq.edu.au/portal/custom/search/category/usq_document_policy_type/Student.1.html.
The due date for an assignment is the date by which a student must despatch the assignment to the USQ. The onus is on the student to provide proof of the despatch date, if requested by the Examiner.
Students must retain a copy of each item submitted for assessment. If requested, students will be required to provide a copy of assignments submitted for assessment purposes. Such copies should be despatched to USQ within 24 hours of receipt of a request being made.
The examiner may grant an extension of the due date of an assignment in extenuating circumstances.
The Faculty will normally only accept assessments that have been written, typed or printed on paper-based media.
The Faculty will NOT accept submission of assignments by facsimile.
Students who do not have regular access to postal services or who are otherwise disadvantaged by these regulations may be given special consideration. They should contact the examiner of the course to negotiate such special arrangements.
In the event that a due date for an assignment falls on a local public holiday in their area, such as a Show holiday, the due date for the assignment will be the next day. Students are to note on the assignment cover the date of the public holiday for the Examiner's convenience.
Students who have undertaken all of the required assessments in this course but who have failed to meet some of the specified objectives of the course within the normally prescribed time may be awarded the temporary grade: IM (Incomplete - Make up). An IM grade will only be awarded when, in the opinion of the examiner, a student will be able to achieve the remaining objectives of the course after a period of non directed personal study.
Students will require access to e-mail and internet access to UConnect for this course.
Evaluation and benchmarking
Student evaluations will be compiled to evaluate the student experience, relevance of the course content and the effectiveness of course delivery. Clinical milieu data will be extrapolated to maintain Clinical contractual arrangements with appropriate and supportive clinical agencies. It is expected that all students undertaking this course will complete the online student evaluation.
Students will require access to e-mail and internet access to UConnect for this course
Harvard (AGPS) is the referencing system required in this course. Students should use Harvard (AGPS) style in their assignments to format details of the information sources they have cited in their work. The USQ library provides advice on how to format information sources using this system | <urn:uuid:6a0bee5f-b8d3-4a75-96fe-d231f7231eb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usq.edu.au/course/specification/2013/MID8076-S1-2013-EXT-TWMBA.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907651 | 2,569 | 2.125 | 2 |
Then and now: The local dinnerware from Boonton that still charms collectors
THEN: Boontonware, produced in Boonton
NOW: The dinnerware is still being made, in Ashtabula, Ohio.
Boonton didn't need Boontonware to put it on the map.
Named in 1761 for Colonial Gov. Thomas Boone (and originally called Boone Towne), Boonton supplied iron products for the military during the Revolutionary War.
A prosperous silk industry existed there by the time the town was incorporated in 1867.
And in the early 20th century, a "butter works" begun by E. A. Stevenson & Co. began making margarine in Boonton — a business that would eventually become one of the largest edible oil producers in the country.
Othmar Ammann, designer of the George Washington Bridge, was a Boonton resident. And famed actress-turned-politician Helen Gahagan Douglas was born there.
Still, it's probably safe to say that if a homemaker in Omaha knows of Boonton, it's because of the "Made in Boonton" inscription on the countless cups, bowls and plates produced by the Boonton Molding Co., beginning in 1946.
Today, an online search for "Boontonware" turns up thousands of sites, connecting browsers to nostalgic blogs such as Retro Chalet; social networking communities such as Pinterest and Modish; and the online marketplaces Etsy and eBay, among others.
The plastic dinnerware made in North Jersey for half a century remains popular for its durability, simplicity and, more recently, collectibility.
Like Melmac — a favorite collectible of the late pop artist Andy Warhol — it is made from a combination of melamine and formaldehyde. And it is relatively inexpensive, although it is susceptible to scratches and is not microwave safe.
Local collectors include Tena Roseanne of North Haledon, who said she only has "a few of the bowls. But now I am always looking for pieces at auctions."
Walter Lewis, who now lives in Tinton Falls, was another regular. "That used to be a major outing for us when I was a kid — going to buy plastic dishes! We'd go [to the factory] and then visit my dad's cousin, who lived in Boonton. It seemed like we drove for hours to get there from Palisades Park." | <urn:uuid:7f3ff906-de3e-4ca7-9bba-9dba5b510878> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northjersey.com/community/196728511_The_local_dinnerware_that_still_charms_collectors_hear_back__plastic_dishes_.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961108 | 509 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Galerie Nefer in Zurich is known to have handled material that has been returned to Italy by a major North American museum. For example the Douris phiale returned by the J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. 81.AE.213) was formed from a series of fragments acquired as purchases, gifts and loans in 1981, 1985, 1988 and 1992.
I happened to be checking details about the proprietor, Frieda Tchacos, and noticed that New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art had acquired a fragmentary red-figured pelike attributed to Euthymides in 1990: "Gift of Mrs. Frieda Tchacos, 1990" [MMA]. The accession number is given as 1990.305.
The fragment is noted in the Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 121 (Jul. 1, 1990 - Jun. 30, 1991) 32 [JSTOR]. This accession number, 1990.305, is listed as a gift of Dietrich von Bothmer.
Tchachos gave a fragment of a red-figured cup attributed to Makron in 1990: acc. no. 1990.170. It appears elsewhere as "Gift of Mrs. Frieda Tchacos, in honor of Dietrich von Bothmer, 1990" [MMA]. The fragment joined a cup acquired by the MMA in 1979, acc. no. 1979.11.8, "Mr. and Mrs. Martin Fried Gift, 1979" [MMA]. Bothmer was able to add two further fragments in 1989 [MMA], and another fragment in 1994 [MMA]. When was this cup broken up? How and where did Bothmer acquire these pieces? | <urn:uuid:acd5f3f8-aff3-4d85-a99d-01d6e873da2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2012/07/frieda-tchacos-and-new-york.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942347 | 352 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Seasonal Work Is Hard to Fill Regardless of Unemployment Rate
There was a time when a person would do just about anything in order to make ends meet. However, even with the unemployment rate dangling somewhere around 8 percent, many companies claim that they cannot find enough help to staff their operations.
Just last week, UPS Inc. said they still had about 200 positions, paying $8.50 per hour, needing to be filled in Louisville, Kentucky. In the meantime, companies like eBay subsidiary GSI commerce and Amazon are also hiring in the area, offering workers the potential to earn between $9.25 and $12 an hour to assist them in their packing and shipping departments.
Career experts say the reason so many jobs are left unfilled is because the work is temporary and highly competitive this time of year. Most people seem to be searching for long-term employment that comes with a benefits package and some level of security.
However, the unemployed might be acting too prudishly, as a recent career survey discovered that nearly 40 percent of all employers that hire seasonal help plan to offer some of those people full-time work—that’s 30 percent more than last year.
Experts say workers should treat a temporary job as an audition and utilize their time with the company to showcase just how good of a permanent employee they could be. | <urn:uuid:9c3b8217-98fd-4526-8525-ae18262c5576> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://961joyfm.com/seasonal-work-is-hard-to-fill-regardless-of-unemployment-rate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977681 | 272 | 1.625 | 2 |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - - A team of engineers and one of their new favorite tools just returned to Jacksonville after assisting Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans recover from Hurricane Isaac.
The group from Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) took their new mobile command center on the road for the first time, though they have had the tool since 2009. Onboard, the team has everything they need to be self-sufficient in a disaster zone.
"Having the mobile command post really makes a lot of difference because you never know what you're going to lose during a hurricane, so you never know what you're going to need," explained Project Manager Bill Bankhead. "So, being prepared, having a bus like this that we have all of our equipment in. That's the biggest key."
The mobile unit includes internet access, radios and cell service from multiple companies, in case one cellular signal provider loses coverage after a storm.
Once on base in New Orleans, NAVFAC engineers went from building to building assessing the damage so that crews could come in and immediately get them repaired.
"When a natural disaster occurs and the base is shut down for four or five days because of no power, it's critical to get them back up and running," said Bankhead.
According to Lieutenant Commander Ken Vargas, it is also important to fix damaged roofs, walls and windows quickly to avoid long term problems like water damage and mold from a hurricane.
After the storm, the NAVFAC awarded a contract for $7.4 million to a construction company to repair the affected buildings, but Vargas said it could have been much worse without the team's quick response.
"We had to get the folks in there fast to minimize that damage," explained Vargas.
The mobile command vehicle did not cost NAVFAC any money because it was no longer needed at another unit.
First Coast News | <urn:uuid:85868dad-2ba8-4c9f-adfc-e8fb554e3770> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firstcoastnews.com/rss/article/275394/162/NAS-Jacksonville-mobile-command-helps-Hurricane-Isaac-recovery-on-base | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975538 | 392 | 1.546875 | 2 |
iPads a hit with Merrillville students, parents
MERRILLVILLE, Jan 25, 2013 (The Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The Merrillville Community School Corp. has launched a one-to-one computer pilot program studying the effect on learning when students use computers throughout their day.
Of the 6,889 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at Merrillville schools, 2,500 are participating in the pilot program.
"The overall goal of this pilot program is to improve student learning and academic achievement," said Kelly Murphy, the school corporation's director of information technology. "We will monitor this goal with the selected classrooms during this school year. The possibility of expanding this program will be based on what kind of learning gains we find and the availability of funds."
Students will not take the devices home, Murphy said. Parents also are not required to make any payments regarding use of the technology. School officials are compiling a list of the software and applications used at school to give parents an opportunity to install them at home on their personal devices.
Installing and upgrading wireless networks cost $95,000. The district used capital projects money to buy 400 iPads for $220,000 that have been distributed among 15 elementary classrooms from kindergarten through fourth grade.
The district also spent $210,000 to buy 455 netbooks distributed among students in grades five through 12.
Merrillville joins other school districts, including the School Town of Munster, the School City of Hobart and the Tri-Creek Community School Corp. in offering a one-to-one computer program.
Merrillville teachers received the devices in June, and from then until November participated in a Professional Learning Community to develop procedures and activities to use with students in the classroom.
Most elementary school teachers said they are using the iPads to assist with reading and math and will prepare students for ISTEP-Plus testing using the technology.
Murphy hosted a meeting last week at the high school giving elementary school parents a program overview and an opportunity to ask questions.
Parent Diana Tadic, whose son Robert is a third-grader at John Wood Elementary School, said they have computers and the Internet at home, but Robert is enjoying using the iPad.
"It's a different world, with the Internet and computers and all of the devices that students have available to them," she said. "This program enables the students to know what's out there. The teachers really seem to be on top of it, and they're also focusing on Internet safety."
Robert said he likes using the iPad and is enjoying doing "math, multiplication and division" on it.
COMPUTER LABS ALREADY IN MERRILLVILLE SCHOOLS
Students in the Merrillville Community School Corp. have several computer labs:
24 labs at MHS/Freshman Center
9 labs at Pierce Middle School
9 labs at Merrillville Intermediate School
Elementary school labs: Salk (4), Iddings (5), Wood (3), Fieler (3) and Miller (3).
Additionally, each classroom in grades kindergarten through six has a four-station computer pod with a projector and document camera.
___ (c)2013 The Times (Munster, Ind.) Visit The Times (Munster, Ind.) at
www.nwitimes.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
[ Back To education 's Homepage ] | <urn:uuid:cb630262-7686-45db-b102-c92079420817> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://education.tmcnet.com/news/2013/01/25/6879022.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953463 | 712 | 2.25 | 2 |
Every day, some kids are out there hatching ideas, making plans, building dreams, all to make the world a better place. It takes a lot of courage to try to change things. We applaud young people who try to make a difference in their communities.
Are you involved in a project that takes courage?
Be Courageous - add your opinions to the box below and we will add you to the index.
The following is a sampling of stories written by courageous kids.
A Scary Memory a late night trip to the hospital.
Do Your Part you'll be happy you did!
Live Simply it all started with a coral reef.
Rights make Might observations by Tenille Williams
Women in History where are they?
Let's Stop Prejudice a poem and essay by Tina N. Huang, age 14
One Pair of Shoes - and a lot of good souls! by fifth graders at the Ramaz Lower School
"VOLUNTEER!" says the Happy Volunteer!
WHAT I BELIEVE by Crzy4Rng, age 14
Is This For Real? by Lynn Justiniano, age 14
Never Say Nevermind! Jessie Gill, age 9, talks about her hearing loss.
Making Waves Walter Dawson, age 12 - how his father's battle with Alzheimer's changed his life.
A Fond Memory This recollection of a very special class project was recently e-mailed to us.
Building Self-Esteem Sports is the key for Megan.
A Good Change Ryan tells us why going to a regular school is so important for him.
My Television Show Fifth Grader, Steve started his own t.v. show for kids to express themselves.
Have You Ever Been Misunderstood? 12 year old Lela almost lost her friends by being wrongly accused of being racist.
The Most Courageous Person I Know A terrible fire taught Soufian a lesson about courage.
Kids Can Make a Difference Flooding in Grand Forks brought Emily and her community together.
A Happy Helper How helping out made this school proud! | <urn:uuid:28dedb40-d4e0-4242-8fd5-d84b1db27c2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zuzu.org/courage.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932812 | 428 | 2.75 | 3 |
On Jason Sheet's blog, there's a new post that offers up a brief tutorial on implementing the soundex functionality in PHP.
Soundex is an algorithim to help determine if a word sounds like another word; it is commonly used to detect words that are incorrectly spelled or to make the suggestion "did you mean ? instead of !?" For example if you typed in smythe using soundex a program could look for other names that sound like it and find that smith and smythe sound alike.
In this article I will demonstrate a PHP implementation of soundex, in practice this implementation has little value because PHP itself has soundex() function already but this article should help you understand how it works better.
He jumps right in, mentioning the steps the script will take (seven of them) before getting right to the code. He's written up his own soundex functionality packaged up nicely in a reusable function and has even compared it to the built-in PHP soundex function for accuracy. | <urn:uuid:3565de9d-1146-4ddb-b161-c1e38440c043> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phpdeveloper.org/tag/soundex | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908479 | 204 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Setting Up an International Library: A Resource Guide
ALA Library Fact Sheet Number 16a
"How do I set up a library?" is a question the American Library Association receives from people in a wide range of situations. In some cases, the need is to organize a large personal or office collection; in others it is to set up a library where there is, at the beginning, only the desire to have library service where there is none, such as in a village where a Peace Corps volunteer is working.
Establishing a new library, or developing an existing collection of books and other materials into a library, involves several functions: creating the oversight or governance structure, defining the mission and purpose of the organization, securing funding, planning, developing a collection, securing or building an appropriate space, equipping the space, and marketing services. In all cases, planning for the collection should come first:
"A library collection should fit the mission for which it is created. The number of books it holds does not determine its worth. A well-selected library of 25 books could very well be an excellent library for its purpose."
-- Erma Jean Loveland
The American Library Association can provide guidance and information on your project in general terms, and in the American context. It is imperative to work with the governmental agencies and main library organizations of the designated country for any available assistance, both administrative and financial. The websites listed below can help you find the library-related resources of the designated country.
- IRRT (International Relations Round Table of the American Library Association) International Sustainable Library Development Interest Group (ISLD)
The ISLD serves as a clearinghouse of sustainable community-based library projects in developing areas of the world. This group mobilizes the power of ALA librarians to raise awareness of and make significant contributions to international library development. Librarians in developing countries can tap into resources for training and projects in their libraries.
- Library Associations Around the World: A Project of the IFLA Management of Library Associations Section, coordinated by the American Library Association, International Relations Office.
- The National Libraries Section of IFLA defers to the Wikipedia List of national libraries.
- International Relations Office (IRO) of the American Library Association, Email: email@example.com
Building international libraries
If you need book donations, you may be eligible to apply for donations from the groups named on ALA Library Fact Sheet 12: Sending Books to Needy Libraries: Book Donation Programs. Contact the groups directly for application information and eligibility criteria.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the United Nations, and other groups have resources freely available online:
- How to Set Up and Manage a Resource Centre. London: Healthlink Worldwide, 2003.
Healthlink Worldwide described this publication: This manual contains practical information on all aspects of setting up and managing a resource centre, from planning, fundraising and finding a suitable location, to collecting and organising materials, developing information services, and monitoring and evaluating the work of the resource centre.
- Koontz, Christie and Barbara Gubbin, eds. IFLA Public Library Service Guidelines - 2nd, completely revised edition. Berlin/Munich: De Gruyter Saur, 2010.
English e-book version available from de Gruyter Reference Global, open access e-book as of August 2011 including chapters as free Adobe Reader PDF files. Revisions of the 2001 first edition prepared by a working group of the section of Public Libraries chaired by Philip Gill. IFLA describes this new edition: The public library is the prime community access point designed to respond to a multitude of ever-changing information needs. These guidelines are framed to provide assistance to library and information professionals in most situations. They assist to better develop effective services, relevant collections, and accessible formats within the context and requirements of the local community. In this exciting and complex information world it is important for professionals in search of knowledge, information and creative experience to succeed.
- Wendell, Laura [for the General Information Programme and UNISIST]. Libraries For All!: How to Start and Run a Basic Library (RTF, Rich Text Format, 113 pages). Paris: UNESCO, 1998.
Laura Wendell described this publication in the preface: This book is for community leaders, librarians, library committees, volunteers, aid workers and others who are interested in the practical aspect of starting and maintaining a successful library. Throughout the developing world, countless dedicated people respond to the pressing need for information in their communities by helping to start a library. They often have no formal training in library science and overcome enormous difficulties to establish collections of resources that enrich their communities. This is a practical guide to help communities meet the challenges of setting up and running a library. It was inspired by my own experiences setting up a library with a community in West Africa and shaped by letters from hundreds of other aid workers and community librarians from around the globe. First-hand experience with the frustrations, challenges and rewards of setting up a library has given me a deep sense of respect for and solidarity with community librarians facing similar challenges. Like many of them, I am not a librarian by training and had to be very resourceful in seeking help and advice, which I have been fortunate to receive from many people and organisations.
Last updated: November 2012
For more information on this or other fact sheets, contact the ALA Library Reference Desk by telephone: 800-545-2433, extension 2153; fax: 312-280-3255; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org; or regular mail: ALA Library, American Library Association, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2795. | <urn:uuid:c19013f1-c799-45a6-9dfc-e9d46ccdc11c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet16a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910449 | 1,181 | 2.3125 | 2 |
In our post today we continue to share some photos of sites of signifance in the Roman Forum. Today’s photo features the Temple of Vespasian and Titus.
Wikipedia has some helpful generic info:
The Temple of Vespasian and Titus (Latin: Templum divi Vespasiani, Italian: Tempio di Vespasiano) is located in Rome at the western end of the Roman Forum between the Temple of Concordia and the Temple of Saturn. It is dedicated to the deified Vespasian and his son, the deified Titus. It was begun by Titus in AD 79 after Vespasian’s death and Titus’s succession. Titus’ brother, Domitian, completed and dedicated the temple to Titus and Vespasian in approximately AD 87.
Throughout Roman history, there was an emphasis on increasing the fame and glory of a family name, often through monuments commemorating the deceased. Therefore, the temple was constructed to honor the Flavian Dynasty, which comprised the emperors Vespasian (69-79), Titus (79-81), and Domitian (81-96). Historians question whether or not Titus and Domitian had a good relationship; however, Domitian ensured the deification of his brother into the imperial cult in order to exalt the prominence of the Flavian name. Titus and Vespasian were each deified through the ceremony of apotheosis. In doing so, tradition guaranteed that Roman citizens and subjects would honor Vespasian and Titus (or at least honor their genius) as Roman deities. This imperial cult worship was as much a sign of allegiance to the emperor of Rome, or as a political and diplomatic gesture, as it was a formal religion.
Structure. The Temple of Vespasian was in the Corinthian order, hexastyle (i.e., with a portico six columns wide), and prostyle (i.e., with free standing columns that are widely spaced apart in a row). It was particularly narrow due to the limited space, measuring 33 meters long and 22 wide. In a constricted space between the temple and the Concord, a small, two story vaulted room made of brick and concrete, and lined with marble, was built against the wall of the Tabularium, and apparently was dedicated to Titus.
Construction and Renovation. Titus began construction and presumably finished the foundations, made of tufa concrete, and the core of the podium, made of white marble. Domitian, however, completed the interior work after Titus’ death. The cella (inner) walls were in travertine, lined with marbles imported at great expense from the eastern provinces. The interior is highly ornate and the frieze depicts sacred objects that would have been used as the symbols, or badges, of the various priestly collegia in Rome. Around 200 to 205, Emperors Septimius Severus and his son, Caracalla, conducted renovations on the temple.
Click on image for larger view. | <urn:uuid:aedc5c9c-0bdd-45d5-9256-bbe8364a56b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bleon1.wordpress.com/tag/titus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97107 | 634 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The WINNERS have been decided. Congratulations to all of our competitors!
The nationally recognized Johns Hopkins University Business Plan Competition, hosted by the Center for Leadership Education, provides an opportunity for students to take a novel idea or innovative technology and develop a business plan based around it. Starting with a concept, students build an understanding of their target market, analyze potential competitors, craft an effective market entry strategy, and present their plans to industry professionals and venture capitalists.
The competition showcases the talent of our students as they present business plans developed over the course of the year. Each team gives a refined seven minute presentation followed by eight minutes of questions from a panel of judges compromised of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and alumni. All the business plans in each category are then reviewed and scored by a panel of judges.
AND THE WINNERS ARE...
General Business Winners:
1st Place -KIDVENTIONS
Kidventions is a toy company which leverages three-dimensional (3D) printing to empower our customers, kidventors, to create truly customized toys. Using intuitive computer aided design software, 123D Creature, kidventors can easily design virtually any figure or accessory in less than 15 minutes and watch as their toys materialize in 3D printers right in our store.
2nd Place - RESEARCH CALENDAR, LLC
Research Calendar, LLC is a technology company providing participant recruitment and market research services to corporations, hospitals, and universities. Research Calendar’s unique, simple, and real-time online marketplace bridges the omnipresent gap between the conductors and participants of studies to streamline the research process, improve demographic targeting, and decrease costs.
3rd Place - RHIZOID TECHNOLOGIES
Rhizoid Technologies is developing a suite of process technologies to improve crop yields. Our technologies will transform marginal and/or nonproductive spaces into highly productive croplands while simultaneously diminishing energy, labor, pesticide, and water inputs. In addition, we will reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff pollution by one to two orders of magnitude per ton of food harvested.
Medical Technology and Life Sciences Winners:
1st Place - PATHOS CLEARVIEW
PathoS (Pathology Solutions) delivers low-cost solutions that streamline the processes used in diagnostic pathology. Our first device, ClearView, is a mechanical stabilization system comprising a reusable applicator and a disposable component that enables pathologists to quickly prepare microscopy slides of mechanically-weak tissues, helping to prevent 66,000 unnecessary reoperations each year.
2nd Place - ECHOSURE
EchoSure has developed a novel, noninvasive technology which can detect vascular complications in reconstructive surgery patients, affording doctors time to fix the problems quickly. The dual component EchoSure system makes areas of interest easy to locate and analyzes the vessels in these areas to determine if the patients’ recoveries are proceeding well.
3rd Place - SYMPSOLUTIONS PRESENTS ACCURIGHT
SympSolutions has developed AccuRIGHT, a novel device to treat resistant hypertension within a clinician’s office. AccuRIGHT noninvasively eliminates the carotid body, a central contributor to hypertension, without an operating room, thereby expanding the eligible patient population and facilitating adoption.
Social Enterprise Winners:
1st Place - HEALTHIFY
Healthify is a Baltimore, MD based startup building a modular eHealth platform to help care teams address varied patient psychosocial risks and conduct smarter patient outreach. Our software improves health outcomes in primarily low-income populations by empowering patients with information on the basic resources needed to be healthy, contextualizing a patient’s environment for a healthcare provider, and leveraging mHealth tools to coordinate care and engage patients outside the clinical setting.
2nd Place - RAPID MALNUTRITION ASSESSMENT TOOL
Currently, the accepted metric used to assess malnutrition in children is mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), yet this method has numerous problems. Our newly developed device curtails errors in measuring arm circumference, plus we streamline the measurement process by leveraging low cost mobile phones as a method for data entry.
3rd Place - PQ INC.
PQ stands for “pink quotient” –kind of like an emotional quotient, but for gender sensitivity! Essentially, PQ is a gender sensitivity certification that will be made available to matrimonial web sites across India. For a small fee, potential brides and grooms can see if their future partner has a baseline level of gender sensitivity and also have access to information on ways to become more gender sensitive, while encouraging the same in their relationships. | <urn:uuid:8c5610cd-641b-486d-a6be-eac9796957ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jhu.edu/bpc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914953 | 957 | 1.585938 | 2 |
What Does Jamiacan Diana McCauly, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain have in Common?
Which books shaped your moral sensitivities in high school?
Sure the Bible of course, but were there other authors whose work fired your imagination and caused you to read by flashlight or a lamp, when everyone else was asleep?
Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, were two authors who took me on the journey of Victorian living and the rugged demands of living in that era.
Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House, The Pickwick Papers were just some of the novels that molded by imagination about being a young man.
Then there was Mark Twain. Huck Finn, and Tom Sawyer took me on many boyish adventures.
Ah, the power of the novel to shape our thinking. The novel is a fictional piece written in a narrative style. They tell stories, which are typically defined as a series of events. The novel has been a part of human culture estimated over a thousand years. This powerful literary device has been used to cleverly emotionally move the reader in ways not possible with a full frontal delivery of truth.
The stratification of the Jamaican society is reflected in its language, and skin color dilemmas, but there are treated as the elephant in the room that no one seem to notice.
Well Diana McCaulay has entered the orb of the novelist by deploying this literary device to bring us to a place to deal with some of our unspoken societal issues. In her first novel, Dog-Heart, she skillfully deals with the complexities of race and class in Jamaica.
We had the distinct opportunity to catch up with her and understand the motivation behind her award winning novel.
Click to listen to Diana’s wisdom.
Find out why her two national awards are much deserved.
This her debut novel, Dog-Heart, won a highly commended award in the National Book Development Council of Jamaica’s National Literary Awards in 2006, a Gold Medal in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s National Creative Writing Competition in 2008 and was published by Peepal Tree Press in March 2010.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. | <urn:uuid:57987b0c-1f1f-46bd-817f-e5ebe37859c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.jamaicans.com/metinking/2011/02/08/what-does-jamiacan-diana-mccauly-charles-dickens-and-mark-twain-have-in-common/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970825 | 475 | 2.75 | 3 |
John Bell and His Family - the Documented Record
By Phil Norfleet
The "Red Book" by M. V. Ingram contains a fair amount of genealogical information concerning the family and friends of John Bell (1750-1820). The purpose of this essay is to test the reliability of this information by comparison with extant official documents such as Federal Census Reports, deeds, wills, court minutes and church records.
Genealogical Information in the "Red Book"
The following is a series of quotations from the "Red Book" containing information of interest to genealogists and Bell family historians:
From Chapter 2:
with this tide of immigration came John Bell and his amiable wife Lucy and
family of promising children, also a number of likely Negroes, then slaves. They
landed with their train of wagons and splendid teams in the west end of
Robertson county, Tennessee, near where Adams Station is now located, on the
Southeastern line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, in the year
1804, ... surrounding himself with about one thousand acres of the best land on Red River;
From Chapter 3:
"John Bell, Sr.,
was born in 1750 in Halifax County, North Carolina. He was a son of William
Bell, a thrifty farmer and prominent citizen. ... In
1782 John Bell wedded Miss Lucy Williams, daughter of John Williams of
Edgecombe County, North Carolina, a man of considerable wealth and prominence in
the community. ... John
Williams approved the match, and gave his daughter a young Negro woman, Chloe,
and her child, named Dean, and with the means John had saved up, they bought a
farm in Edgecombe County, beginning a prosperous career.
They both embraced the Baptist faith and became earnest Christian
workers, living up to their religion through life.
years of prosperity having now attended the happy union, John Bell and wife
found a large family growing up around them – six children had been born to
them, and Chloe had eight, that had become valuable as slaves - a family of
seventeen. There was absolute
necessity for more elbow room; more land to give their boys a chance in life.
Then it was that Mr. Bell determined to emigrate to Robertson county, Tenn.,
settling, as he did, on Red River, some forty miles north of Nashville, which
history the reader is already familiar with.
the time the remarkable events in this history begun, they had nine children,
seven sons and two daughters: Jesse,
John, Jr., Drcwry, Benjamin, Esther, Zadock, Elizabeth, Richard Williams and Joel
Egbert. Benjamin died young; Zadock
was educated for the bar, and became a
brilliant lawyer. He settled in Alabama, and died in the flush of young
manhood, having a promising future before him.
The other seven lived to mature age, honored and useful citizens.
...The first marriage in the family was that of Esther, who wedded Alex. Bennett Porter, July 24th, 1817, Rev. Thomas Gunn officiating at the altar. ... Jesse Bell, the eldest son, married Miss Martha Gunn, daughter of Rev. Thomas Gunn. This marriage took place several months later. Both couples settled in the neighborhood, making a fair start in life, sharing the confidence and good will of the community. A year or two after the death of John Bell, Sr., the two families emigrated to Panola County, Miss., where they settled for life and raised large and interesting families, and have many descendants there at present. John Bell, Jr., the second son, was said to be the very image of his father, and developed the old gentleman's character to a great degree, and was distinguished for his firmness and stern integrity. He was a successful, farmer and a progressive citizen, and enjoyed the fullest confidence of the community. He served as magistrate during a term of years. John Bell, Jr., married Elizabeth Gunn, daughter of Rev. Thomas Gunn, and raised an interesting family. He died in 1861. John, Jr., Drew, and Alex. Gunn engaged in flat boating in 1815. They built generally two or three boats during the summer season, in Red River, at Thomas Gorham's, now known as the Sugg mill place. The boats were constructed of rough hewn and sawed timber, and were cabled to the bank, awaiting the Winter or Spring rise in the water, when they were loaded with all kinds of produce, ... to New Orleans, the southern mart. This was the only way people had at that time for shipping their produce to market, except by wagons. It was very slow, but generally sure, and always got there with the tide that left Red River. ... After arriving at New Orleans, and selling the cargo, the boats were worthless except for fuel or second-hand lumber, and they were sold for what the timber would bring, and the boatmen made their way home as best they could, generally walking, and arriving in time to build more boats for the next season."
An analysis of the official records in North Carolina and Tennessee indicate that there are several factual errors in the above cited extracts from the Ingram book.
Genealogical Information in the Official Records
The following Bell family genealogical data has been abstracted from various official records and presented here in the form of a chronology:
1721: William Bell of Isle of Wight County VA, marries Ann Jones, daughter of Richard Jones. [See Isle of Wight County VA, Great Book 2, page 84]
In North Carolina
28 April 1733: John Nairne of Edgecombe Precinct, Albemarle County NC, conveys a 100-acre tract of land on the south side of the Moratock (now called the Roanoke) River to a certain William Bell, also of Edgecombe Precinct. [See Edgecombe Precinct NC, Deed Book 1, page 73]
This is the earliest instance that I can find for the presence of anyone named William Bell in the Edgecombe area.
May Court 1754: The will of a certain William Bell, dated 01 December 1752, is entered into probate in Edgecombe County North Carolina. In the will, William mentions his sons Arthur and Joshua and daughters Mary Pyrent and Ann Bell. He bequeaths a 393-acre plantation to his son Arthur Bell that is situate " ... in the River Islands bounded by Marmaduke Norfleets Line ... " [See North Carolina Secretary of State Wills, Will Book 8, pages 107-108]
Please note that the wife of William is not mentioned in the will nor is a "widow's dower" mentioned in the subsequent probate papers. This constitutes strong evidence that William's wife was already dead at the time of he wrote his will in 1752.
My current conjecture is that this William Bell is the father of John Bell of Bell Witch fame. Even so, it is important to note that no one named John Bell, is mentioned in William's will. Since John Bell (supposedly born in 1750 per M. V. Ingram) is not mentioned in the will, the conjecture that John was the son of this William Bell is considerably weakened. However, this particular William Bell is the only person of that name, for whom I have been able to find evidence in the official records, who lived in the Edgecombe County area in the right time frame who could possibly have been the father of John. It is, however, quite possible that Ingram has the name of John Bell's father wrong. Certainly there are other errors in his account and he could also be wrong in this instance.
01 September 1773: William Barnes and Mary his wife, of Halifax County NC convey to John Bell of Halifax a 323-acre tract of land on the south side of Kehukee Swamp, joining Killingsworth, Blackman's Branch. Witnesses to the indenture were Theophilus Cotton and Jesse Dickson. Deed was recorded in Halifax County at the August 1774 Term of Court. [See Halifax County NC, Deed Book 13, page 157]
August Court 1793: The will of John Williams, Sr., dated 14 March 1792, is entered into probate in Edgecombe County NC. In the will, John Williams, Sr. mentions his wife and executrix, Mourning Williams; five daughters: Betsy, Mary (wife of Robert Lancaster), Milberry, Nancy and Lucy (wife of John Bell); and four sons: Benjamin, Jesse, Drury and John, Jr. Lucy Bell is to receive one Negro woman and her increase - presumably this is Chloe, who many years later, was listed as being 60 years of age, at the time the slaves of John Bell, deceased, were valued and divided in Robertson County TN in 1822.
23 January 1803: John Bell of Halifax County NC conveys to William Rawls of Halifax County NC, 376 acres of land on the south side of Kehukee Swamp and south side of Blackman's Branch, joining William Champion, Blount Whitmell, Tunstall, and [Marmaduke] Norfleet. Witnesses to the indenture were Henry Baker and T. Harris. Deed was recorded in Halifax County at the August 1803 Term of Court. [See Halifax County NC, Deed Book 19, page 164] Presumably, this is the same John Bell who in 1804 would remove to Robertson County TN.
September 1803: John Bell receives a letter of dismission from the Kehukee Baptist Association. [See church minutes]
20 April 1805: John Bell becomes a member of the Red River Baptist Church. He was received into membership by letter issued by the Kehukee Baptist Association back in North Carolina. [See Church Minutes, page 61]
27 August 1807: By indenture, dated 27 August 1807, William Crawford of Louisiana Territory conveys a 220-acre tract of land, situate in Robertson County TN on Red River, to John Bell of Robertson County. This indenture was recorded in Robertson County TN during the April 1808 Term of Court. [See Robertson County Deed Book E, page 126]
1815: John Bell patents a 100-acre tract of land in Robertson County (Grant Number 7376). [See TN Grant Book K, page 403] He now owns a total of 320 acres (220+100) of land.
July 1817: In July 1817, Major James Norfleet's eldest daughter, Elizabeth (some sources believe she was the daughter of Cordell Norfleet), died at the tender age of 15. She was interred in the Elias Fort Burial Ground. This cemetery was located on the Elias Fort plantation, on a hill overlooking Major James's mill on the Sulphur Fork. Elizabeth's funeral sermon was delivered by the famous Baptist preacher, Elder Reuben Ross. Elizabeth Norfleet had been a very popular young lady and was much beloved by the local community. Accordingly, her funeral service drew a very large audience. Elder Ross chose this occasion to publicly announce his rejection of the Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination. Such a theological position was, of course, heretical to the Primitive Baptist congregation (most were members of the Red River Baptist Church), to whom he was preaching. This incident is considered to be a major historical event for the entire Baptist movement in Tennessee!
13 January 1818: John Bell is excommunicated from the Red River Baptist Church:
"On motion the case of Bro. Bell was taken up (which is as follows) whereas, the jury of the Circuit Court for Robertson County found Bro. Bell guilty of violating the law of usury, as such we think the cause of Christ and Religion in the hands of Bro. Bell, and agreed at our November meeting to reconsider the business which was investigated and postponed from time to time until now. Now, although we cannot clearly see that Bro. Bell was guilty of taking usury, yet for the veneration, we have for the courts and have for our country, we publicly reprobate the idea of any of our members violating the statute laws of our country. As such we reprove Bro. Bell for giving cause of offence. Bro. Sugg Fort then preferred two charges with their specifications, that is to say, covetousness and treating the church with contempt on Sunday of our last meeting.
"Specification to the first charge. That Bro. Bell coveted and because he had it in his power, took $20 or thereabouts more than he let Batts have as stated by Bro. Bell in July 1816.
"Charge second. Specification. First, in saying we received a member yesterday (i.e.) our last meeting, who did not walk according to the Apostolic Order. Second, in saying hard contemptuous words against the church. Third, in attempting to withdraw his fellowship from us.
"Bro. Bell was found guilty of the first charge, but gave satisfaction for the second charge and the specification.
"The question was taken whether Bell's acknowledgement were satisfactory for the first charge? Answer. No. Whereupon, the vote was taken and he, the said John Bell, was excommunicated from our fellowship."
[See Church Minutes, page 148]
20 December 1820: John Bell, Sr. dies; he purportedly was poisoned by the Bell Witch.
12 February 1821: Since John Bell died intestate, it was necessary to appoint an administrator to settle his estate. Major James Norfleet (1767-1846) was one of the presiding Robertson County justices who, on 12 February 1821, appointed John Bell, Jr. as administrator of John Bell, Sr.'s estate. John Gardner and Jesse Gardner were consigners of the $10,000 bond that John Bell, Jr. was required to post. [See Robertson County Court Minutes, Volume 6, pages 193-196]
27 February 1821: Lucy Bell's dower portion of John Bell's real estate is laid off and allotted. The dower consists of a tract of land containing 106 and 2/3 acres. Since the widow's dower is equal to one-third of the total real property, we may calculate that the total land holdings of John Bell, at the time of his death, amounted to about 320 acres. This is consistent with the known land acquisitions of Bell in Roberson County but it is much less than the 1000 acres mentioned in most of the Bell Witch tales. The surveyor in charge of making the allotment was a certain H. Johnson. [See Robertson County TN, Will Book 3, page 268]
8 March 1821: Lucy Bell's dower portion of the personal estate of her husband, John Bell, is laid off and allotted. The allotment includes one Negro slave named "Dean." The officers of the court performing this allotment are: Hardy Grisard, James Johnson, Gabriel Masten, Joseph McNeal and John Gardner. These men were appointed by the justices (including Major James Norfleet) of the Robertson County court on 12 February 1821. [See Robertson County TN, Will Book 3, page 267]
8-9 March 1821: The sale of the personal estate of John Bell, Sr. is held. Besides members of the Bell family, buyers at the sale included James Norfleet, Josiah Fort, Thomas Porter, A. B. Porter, Joseph Woolfork, George Gardner, and Miles Gunn. [See Robertson County TN, Will Book 3, pages 269-277]
October Term of Court 1822: The nine (9) remaining slaves (Dean having already been allotted to the widow, Lucy Bell) belonging to the estate of John Bell, Deceased, are valued and divided as follows:
[See Robertson County TN, Will Book 3, page 503]
February Term of Court 1823: Major James Norfleet and J. W. Fort are the presiding justices when the final division of the slaves belonging to the estate of John Bell, Deceased, is returned and ordered to be recorded. [See Robertson County TN, Will Book 3, page 504] | <urn:uuid:aa42a297-bad6-47e9-adab-85bad4918beb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bellwitch02.tripod.com/the_documented_record.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974219 | 3,356 | 2.125 | 2 |
BRL-CAD, the world's oldest open-source software system
December 4, 2012
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (Dec. 4, 2012) -- Since 1938, the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., was the center for the United States Army's research efforts in ballistics and vulnerability/lethality analysis. That remained the case until 1992, when BRL was disestablished and its mission, personnel and facilities were incorporated into the newly created U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL).
But during the decades of providing support to the nation, BRL quickly became involved in the move toward modern computing. Indeed, nearly 70 years ago, BRL unveiled the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the world's first operational, digital computer.
The development of this computer was driven by the Army's need to speed calculation of firing tables. And ever since the development of the ENIAC, ARL has provided the U.S. military with unprecedented scientific computational capabilities.
One such capability was BRL-CAD.
As its name suggests, BRL-CAD -- a computer-aided design (CAD) system -- was developed before ARL existed. It has been used for nearly three decades in support of modeling, simulation and engineering analyses of military assets and their environments including the design and analysis of vehicles, mechanical parts and architecture.
Dr. Paul Tanenbaum, director of the Survivability/Lethality Analysis Directorate, used BRL-CAD early in his career when he was an analyst at the bench and then later when he served on the team developing and maintaining it.
"BRL-CAD is used in many types of analysis, and most particularly for ballistic vulnerability and lethality. Essentially every major vehicle and weapon system that the Army has acquired, or seriously considered acquiring, over the past quarter century has been analyzed by SLAD with BRL-CAD in conjunction with our other modeling tools," said Tanenbaum. "In order to simulate in software the accurate details of a weapon's effects on a target vehicle, you need a thorough and precise characterization of that vehicle's geometry, materials, componentry, et cetera. And you need to be able to very quickly process lots of queries of the form, 'what would a penetrator encounter if it proceeded along such-and-such a trajectory?' Those are BRL-CAD's two central capabilities: to represent system geometry and to query the daylights out of it."
Tanenbaum explains the importance of BRL-CAD to executing his directorate's mission.
"This ray-tracing, or shotlining, is central to SLAD's MUVES model [their analytical tool for vulnerability/lethality analyses of ballistic damage mechanisms against air and ground-mobile targets, ed.], which then walks threats along the trajectories, assesses how far they'd penetrate and what they'd hit, and concludes what would break, and thus which system capabilities would be lost and which retained," said Tanenbaum.
"So BRL-CAD is at the heart of SLAD's contributions to Army studies, live-fire test and evaluation, a host of major acquisition decisions, and even data tools that operational forces use in weaponeering, which is their pre-mission selecting of an optimum munition load to carry with them into an upcoming fight," continued Tanenbaum.
C. Sean Morrison, from SLAD's Software Development Branch has worked on BRL-CAD for more than a decade. He began working at ARL as a summer student in 1998.
"The CAD industry is 'big' to say the least -- about $6 billion last year, if I recall correctly," said Morrison. "Nearly everything around you …your computer, chair, desk, pen, phone, car and house was modeled and built with the help of CAD software. The industry is about the same size as the computer gaming industry, but isn't as visible since it's not something you'd likely use at home. It's complicated software that usually requires lots of training."
BRL-CAD is extensively cross-platform supporting Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris and more. Morrison said that the huge game-changer was in 2004 with the conversion of BRL-CAD into a free open source software system. As open source, it expanded international visibility and participation in the project to unprecedented levels.
"We went from over 2,000 site licenses acquired over a 15-year period to more than 2,000 downloads in the first month alone," said Morrison. "We're now averaging more than 10,000 downloads per month and millions of website hits per year," he added.
Morrison said that just seven years after converting to open source, BRL-CAD surpassed a million downloads.
"The Open Source Initiative describes open source as a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. It's more than just providing access to source code," said Morrison. "Open source software must comply with specific criteria that ensure others have the freedom to redistribute the software and make modifications. It encourages collaboration."
BRL-CAD is recognized throughout the open source industry.
According to an article written by Black Duck Software (the company that owns Ohloh), the oldest project on Ohloh is BRL-CAD. The history of this project dates back to 1979 when BRL needed CAD tools to help with simulations for combat vehicle systems. The article states that the BRL-CAD source code repository is believed to be the oldest public, version-controlled code base in the world that's still under active development, dating back to Dec. 16, 1983. With more than one million lines of primarily C code, and 48,500 commits, this project continues to be active 30 years later.
Morrison explains software programming languages.
"There are dozens of prevalent software programming languages to choose from, and BRL-CAD is predominantly written in one of the most popular languages called "C." Every time someone changes BRL-CAD, the change is committed to the VCS or version control system," said Morrison. "There had been [more than] 48,500 commits to BRL-CAD when the article was written and we recently just passed 50,000 commits."
The Ohloh project calculates statistics across open source projects. They watch changes, also known as 'commits,' made to those pieces of software as they happen.
"They scanned half a million source code repositories that they track and found that BRL-CAD was the oldest, still being actively developed surpassing even other wildly popular open source projects," said Morrison. "There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there -- Linux, Firefox, Drupal, WordPress, Apache Web Server, Open Office, GIMP. I guarantee you've used some of them without even knowing it. You've indirectly used dozens of open source technologies just by sending an e-mail."
Morrison himself has made more than 13,000 commits the past 15 years.
"Most software worth anything is held within a VCS that keeps track of all changes to software source code, data and other files. In layman terms, it's vaguely comparable to the 'track changes' feature in Microsoft Word, but much better," said Morrison. "It is basic software development infrastructure that allows people around the world to improve source code efficiently and simultaneously. Every change is recorded into a database and keeps track of exactly who did what and when."
BRL-CAD has a long history beginning in 1979 and it takes substantial effort to preserve the history on an active project.
"Its repository goes back really far," said Morrison. "When we converted to open source in 2004, I worked hard to make sure that all of our history was preserved. When we changed from one VCS to a different one, I again wanted to ensure all history was preserved. Black Duck's article highlights the oldest open source projects known on the planet."
The BRL-CAD open source community continues to engage in international collaboration. BRL-CAD was recently selected to participate in Google Code-in (GCI), a contest run by Google encouraging pre-university students age 13-17 to get involved with open source. It is intended to help students who may have wanted to get involved but didn't know where to start. The program runs from Nov. 26, 2012 through Feb. 4, 2013 when the Google Open Source Programs Office announces the winners via their blog post.
"This is a great opportunity where we can mentor students that will work our 'itty-bitty' tasks related to code, documentation/training, outreach/research, quality assurance, and user interface," said Morrison. "It's impressive that BRL-CAD is still being actively and continuously developed and improved after 30 years. BRL-CAD is more active than ever due to the conversion to open source." | <urn:uuid:1d4fcc98-756c-4348-a4e3-bff5c71ce63d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.army.mil/article/92288/BRL_CAD__the_world_s_oldest_open_source_software_system/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963914 | 1,875 | 2.765625 | 3 |
| Posted: July 31st, 2012
Federal spending on children fell for the first time since the early 1980s, according to the recent Urban Institute report, “Kids’ Share 2012: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2011.” An even larger decrease is projected for fiscal year 2012, with the largest declines in federal education programs. Gloomy forecasts through 2022 show federal outlays on children falling from 10 to 8 percent of the federal budget and also falling as a share of the economy, from 2.5 to 1.9 percent of GDP, below the pre-recession level of investment.
Why this downward trend? In the short run, the decline is driven by the exhaustion of funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. While expected, the loss of these temporary funds comes at a hard time. Many families still face economic hardships in the wake of the recession. States and localities have been hard hit by the recession and will be severely challenged to make up for this decrease.
Moreover, the drop in spending on children is not part of a general belt-tightening. In fact, total federal outlays increased by nearly $80 billion last year, after adjusting for inflation. Bottom line: it is the share of the budget spent on children, not federal spending as a whole, that is falling.
Over the longer term, structural forces in the federal budget are placing a squeeze on spending on children. Specifically, as the retired population grows and health costs continue to rise, spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is increasing so dramatically that more than half (51 percent) of the federal budget is projected to be spent on these entitlement programs by 2022. At the same time, federal revenues fall short of federal spending levels every year, resulting in a growing debt. By 2017, we will be spending more on interest payments than on children. With automatic growth driving spending for more than 60 percent of the budget, competition will be fierce for the remaining share.
While current projections suggest that the kids’ share of the budget will drop from 10 to 8 percent, the future could be even more grim. These projections assume that the spending caps in the Budget Control Act are followed—and defense spending is actually cut from 20 to 13 percent of the budget and “all other spending” (e.g., agriculture, commerce, the environment, transportation, etc.) declines from 23 to 16 percent (see figure below).
Kids Slated to Get Declining Share of Federal Budget
Children’s programs might be cut more radically if the Budget Control Act were replaced with a budget package that cuts less from defense and more from non-defense programs. Or a package that dropped the current exemption of low-income programs from automatic budgetary sequestration (an exemption that serves to protect many children’s programs). On the other hand, children’s programs would fare better if we had the political will to consider not just spending cuts, but also revenue increases, and if broad budget packages included proposals to stem the growth in Social Security and Medicare while still protecting current recipients dependent on those benefits.People
1 Comment » | <urn:uuid:57f2cf70-7a52-4351-bb00-b23b2299bc3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.metrotrends.org/2012/07/downward-trends-federal-spending-children/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949962 | 642 | 2.484375 | 2 |
USER COMMENTS 18 comment(s)
|With the advent (1:47pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
of multiple cell processors (Sony, Intel, AMD) working an oscillator into the mix would be a way to reduce cooling needs (everyone wants their processor to radiate around 200 watts for waste heat that you need to have a severbased fan design to keep cool so that grandma can play solitare).
Before that though I would think that processor companies would turn to much less intrusive technologies to remove heat rather than redesign their cores – things like SOI, Strained Silicon, Si28 substrates, Gallium Arsinide substrates, etc). Most of these types of technology would allow the same design to be moved to a different substrate and have no core redesign, and allow for cooler running chips. - by Headzero
|Makes me wonder (1:51pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
Does the human brain reverse compute with all those little electrical impulses, or is it grounded in some way. Maybe the brain increases our body temerature by .08-.6 degrees, and no one noticed. I'm looking forward to placing a genetically enhanced monkey brain into the cpu slot to play all my games, and then using chilled pigs blood as a liquid cooling solution. Not much to do with the article, but it's an idea. - by McDoogle
|cc: to Sander … (2:31pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
Bri – this is a message I sent on the topic to Sander a couple of days ago:
Interesting concept. In fact, I read about it about 3 years ago (and a couple of times since then, once on Geek.com!) … There are a couple of hitches though.
One hitch is that the “reversible” logic probably (I'm no expert in this) needs to have the concept of an LC (inductor-capacitor) circuit in order to 'elastically' move electrons from one holding bin ('1' state) to another ('0' or holding state).
[There was a diagram here, but geek.com doesn't allow them. Good reasons, too.]
Make a mental picture of a pair of capacitors of the same size, connected together via ground, one bearing a 2 volt charge,the other empty (0v). Connect them together, and the charge moves between, and they both stabilize at 1 volt.
Not terribly reversible.
Now, instead of just connecting the two caps together, bridge them with a small inductor. Inductors have the rather amazing ability to keep current flowing even after voltage is removed. Thus, they act as a kind of flywheel that not only moves current (electrons) from the charged cap, to the empty one, but also SUCKS them over… emptying the original, and nearly filling the empty one.
Much better. Now we have a nearly lossless charge-transfer between a pair of 'buckets'. Wibble those charges back and forth (and add a few electrons from time to time to make up for losses), and the logic circuit consumes nearly no energy to change states.
This is known as an LC (inductor-capacitor) tank circuit.
The key here is the use of a inertial “paddlewheel” element that doesn't consume energy. From my background in electronics and physics, and knowing that the CMOS junction (or any solid-state logic element for that matter) is largely “a capacitor” when its either a 1 or a 0, then the only device that sloshes, or paddles is the inductor.
And I'm not betting that itty-bitty nanoinductors are going to be available in sufficiently high inductance, and tiny size, to be integrate-able by the billions on the future generation of computing devices. I could be wrong, but it seems like a stretch.
But THAT analysis doesn't put the finger-of-death on the topic!!!
If instead of capacitors, charges and inductors, if logic were made up of nanowires (nano-cantilevers), charges and van-der-waal's force “sticky sockets”, then the springiness of the cantilever would function as the inductor. Only problem is, as mechanical devices go, even the tiniest imaginable nanowire/cantilever made from single-wall-carbon nanotube, perhaps a 10th of a micron long … would only oscillate at some 350 MHz. And that, Watson, would be the switching time. 3 nanoseconds (best case, probably 10x worst case). Not good. In fact, with the trends in microchips being toward sub 5-picosecond gate switching times, this is basically 3 orders of magnitude “bad”. I'd go back to nano-inductors.
So, what then WOULD make a good nanoinductor? Well – we've had them for about 35 years – Josephson superconducting quantum inductive devices [SQUIDS]. Only problem is that they desire to run at deep cryo temps (like 4°K). At those temps, since near-everything is superconducting, the whole issue of 'power loss' is kind of moot. So, “no go”.
I guess what I'm saying is that I've seen no convincing evidence that the charge carriers (electrons) can be shuttled to and fro nearly losslessly in a 'reversible logic' circuit without LC tanks. And there's the rub.
- by GoatGuy
|PS … (5:53pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
Adiabatic Systems appears to be full of 100% prime skunk oil. Their claim to a 'pad' circuit that is 75% more efficient than prior work, is just hugely amusing. Pad circuits by their very definition are efficient: made (conceptually) from two transistors (both MOS, not bipolar – for output) in series, either the 'top trannie' is in conduction, giving a “1″, the bottom is in conduction giving a “0″, or neither is in conduction, giving “High Z”. As is the case with all such 'clamped to PSS and GROUND' circuits, the respective trannies themselves dissipate very little power EXCEPT when they're swinging between on and off. Only then, momentarily, do they go into resistive-full-load mode.
Baskets of Bullchips! Just got to love all these wannabe's.
- by GoatGuy
|LOL (6:29pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
GoatGuy is great…I have def missed his posts! I am totally ignorent of pretty much everything he talks about…but i love warming my hands by the heat of his firing synapses lol! - by Not worthy!
|What about Embedded ? (7:05pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
Look at your mobilephone, that's doesn't exactly need a speedy CPU, this could be some niche.. It would be very nice if the uptime for mobiles was even more extended, I always hate to change reload betteries for mobile gear, especially when no wallsockets around… - by SargentLard
|Embedded… (7:47pm EST Fri Nov 14 2003)
A Mobile phone at this point “spend” 95% or more of its battery capacity on the packetized transmission of data to the receiving tower that deigns to talk to it. They're very miserly – one phone from Ericsson gets over 8 days of standby and 4 days(!!!) of talk time.
The whole point of the article – which I read it – is to promote the idea that bit-conservation could be used to substantially (10x to 100x) decrease the power of ultra-high density, ultra-high performance chips. It is the 'density' thing that I took umbrance to. The underlying idea is sound, but not very “microscale” optmizable.
– — – — – — –
PS: one utterly radical thunk I had inbetween writing the above and this is that when the switching speed of logic gates decreases into the femtosecond regime, the self-inductance of the conductors that move the electric fields around will be sufficient to act as the “paddlewheels” to suck dry the “one bucket”, and put its electrons in the “zero bucket”. But we're talking about some REAL fast transitions here, since the dimension is so small. What's it called? … transmission line physics.
I'm going to have to do some calcs, to see just exactly what the distributed-inductance/capacitance (“reactance”) there is on nanometer-scale conductors and mid femtosecond field transitions.
- by GoatGuy
|Keep it up Goat (11:19am EST Sat Nov 15 2003)
Keep on treating us to the out put of your grey matter. If you can make it work, we wish you many greenbacks in return. - by RCAman
|Binary and not trinary, etc. (7:15pm EST Sat Nov 15 2003)
“Split” the cells. In other words, have varying levels of current represent a certain digital logic. (Or analog, even.)
Fuzzy logic is monstrously efficient at solving real-time problems. With the ability to have an analog logic value in hardware (not software emulation), this is orders of magnitude to the good… well… for those folks who need that sort of thing.
I guess with die sizes (small is good) that could be attained with the minimum level of processing power using the most efficient algorithms… this would *NEVER* get considered…
Oh well. Wake me when they unveil the N-Gage redesign. I like a laugh after hibernation.
*Yawn* - by _D
|2 GoatGuy (7:18pm EST Sat Nov 15 2003)
You have some knowledge of physics, bet obviously not enough. Your theory about those capacitors in CPU`s is total crap. I won`t bother myself, explaining why, but it is NOT a bright idea, believe me. - by Nitro
|Ni-troll (11:01am EST Sun Nov 16 2003)
Wow, like we can totally believe you, man – NOT. Just saying the goat's capacitor jive is crap is easy. But getting all uppity like you don't have time to type in a few facts of your own is dissin' all of us, not the goat. Pretty lame. - by trollbane
|let's not lose focus… (4:19pm EST Sun Nov 16 2003)
The main heat concern is transistor leakage which gets worse with smaller feature sizes.
The recycling logic sounds like a good idea but it's not clear that it can be applied to each transistor without some design complexity and real-estate. - by fc
|I'm of the mind (11:49am EST Mon Nov 17 2003)
That the way to go is to develop less expensive cryo technology. I seem to recall a refrigeration system the put either on the shuttle or the space station that cooled using sound waves. If something like this could be made to reach cryo temperatures and do so relatively economically, we could all have single-digit Kelvin Pentium 9's someday.
Your comments, GoatGuy, please… - by Alien8
|Drooling over Moore+5 (9:37pm EST Mon Nov 17 2003)
Please! Drooling over generation Moore+5, Alien8, will only leave you frustrated. Have you no appreciation for what the real chip wizards have wrought? 65nm etchings @ 2.5Ghz is approaching the physical limits. The speed of light will not change nor will the number of copper molecules you can stack between channel walls 65nm apart. Chilling to to cryo just means you do not have to do not have to push so hard to keep the energy side of your equations from impacting the physical side, the speed of light does not change. Ponder the fact that something near a third of your chip real estate does nothing but keep all your gates 'in step'. All your devices spend a significant fraction of their time waiting for the clock to 'go high'. How cool would it be if each operation triggered the subsequent operation and numbers merged in hardware like they do in well written object oriented software? Async rules IP nets, why not at the chip level too? - by MetaHero
|Sorry, skipped Main Point (9:59pm EST Mon Nov 17 2003)
Sorry, almost forgot the main point! I second GoatGuy's opine. I heard, 2nd hand, about a Adaibatic demo some months ago and it really works. As GoatGuy pointed out the key issues for them, are size and speed. If you think in simple terms they have to add 'energy collection lines' and 'energy control circuits' to our already crowded geometries… like everything, it is a trade off. - by MetaHero
|adiabatic computing (5:35am EST Tue Nov 18 2003)
It looks like this technique should be used quite frequently with large loads. - by fc
|current topic (10:06am EST Fri Jun 04 2004)
With due respect , i want to say that i need some current topics in electronics for my seminars.
The title of my seminar is “GaAs in IC's”[GALLIUM ARSINIDE IN INTEGRATED CIRCUITS].
I shall be highly thankful to you if you give me the complete details of the same.
Reply me as soon as possible.
- by SUSHMA
|i touch my self (9:48pm EST Wed Jul 06 2005)
what about photonics?
- by ed | <urn:uuid:0a2f470c-f46d-4c67-8ac8-d76eb8d4da4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geek.com/chips/old-processor-technology-could-be-the-way-of-the-future-553596/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941397 | 2,951 | 2.65625 | 3 |
A reader sent a query yesterday regarding treatment of rib fractures, and specifically asking about epidural analgesia. Today, I’ll try to answer those questions.
Rib fractures, with or without other injuries, are a big killer in trauma patients. This is particularly true in the elderly. Overall mortality rates range from 3% to 13%, with the most import factor being pain. So what is the best way to manage patients with rib fractures to speed their safe recovery?
It’s best to attack this problem from three different directions simultaneously: pain control, respiratory hygiene (or pulmonary toilet if you’re a pessimist), and activity management.
There are many approaches to pain management, which include:
- Oral or IV analgesics
- Various types of blocks (intrapleural, intercostal, paravertebral, epidural)
- Topical agents (xylocaine patch)
- Stabilization (surgical only; belts and straps are bad for breathing)
Epidural analgesia is usually seen as the ultimate form of pain control, and is usually recommended for patients with multiple fractures or severe pain with inadequate response to medications and blocks. Much of the literature on its use is based on ICU patients who were not injured. A meta-analysis was conducted that specifically looked at epidural analgesia results in trauma patients, and found that it did improve pain management and some pulmonary function tests. However, there did not appear to be any change in mortality, ICU or hospital length of stay, or time on a ventilator.
Respiratory hygiene may involve simple measures such as coughing and deep breathing, incentive spirometry, and even mechanical ventilation in severe cases. Activity management consists of turning, sitting in a chair, walking, and forms of mechanical chest wall oscillation.
Bottom Line: The key to rib fracture management is a systematic approach that address all three dimensions of care based on objective patient measures. One size does not fit all, so more aggressive measures are warranted for more severe injury. I’ve attached an interesting patented scoring system and management algorithm, as well as two protocols from US trauma centers that range from simple (Vanderbilt) to more complex (West Virginia University).
Please feel free to comment, and I’d be happy to look at your protocol. Please email it to me!
Related post: History of epidural analgesia
- Rib fracture score and protocol (patented)
- West Virginia University rib fracture protocol
- Vanderbilt rib fracture protocol
- Effect of epidural analgesia in patients with traumatic rib fractures: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Can J Anaesth 56(3):230-42, Epub 2009 Feb 11.
- Rib Fracture Score and Protocol, US Patent #7,225,813 B2 - June 5, 2007
- regionstraumapro posted this | <urn:uuid:3d02aecf-4f63-442d-b64c-56ac4843725e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://regionstraumapro.com/post/7843371333 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921537 | 600 | 2.046875 | 2 |
One of things that we at FSC-Watch worry about is that the FSC seems to have such a poor memory - so poor, in fact, that it keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. So, to help it along, we are issuing here a list of some of the questions we have asked over the last few months, and that have never been answered. And we have an important new question too.
In what sense is wood covered by the 'Controlled Wood Standard' actually 'controlled', and by whom?
When is a murder not 'violent'? (This is a 'trick' question, so we'll give you the answer: when it's got anything to do with a company that the Tropical Forest Trust is aiming to massage through the FSC certification process)...[Continue]
Up until a few years ago, FSC's accredited certifiers were prohibited from certifying for other forest certification schemes, because of the obvious conflict of interest that this would represent. But, as has been the way of things in the FSC, such a ban represented an obstacle to the increase of the certifiers' profits, and was therefore duly done away with. (One of the more bizarre justifications offered for this profound weakening of the FSC's rules, from the now Chair of FSC's Board, Grant Rosoman, was that, if the certifiers were prohibited from 'moonlighting' for other schemes, then they would simply set up nominally separate organisations to get around this rule...[Continue]
FSC-Watch has been sent the following article by Svetlana Alekseeva, Chief Editor of "Forest Certification". It raises a number of serious questions about the motivation of various 'stakeholders' involved in FSC certifications in Russia.
Students of the history of global forest management and policy will recognise some of the underlying themes and concerns of this article. Over the last 100 years or so, wherever large 'forest frontier' areas come under extensive exploitation, the addition of new (often legal) requirements for 'sustainable forest management' are skillfully used by the larger interests to squeeze out their competitors, enabling them to consolidate their land-holdings and reduce their competitors' market share...[Continue]
Back in November 2006, FSC-Watch reported on the strange lack of consistency between SGS and other observers as diverse as Greenpeace and the World Bank, on the question of the legality, or otherwise, of logging in Papua New Guinea. Whilst most experts take the view that illegal forestry activities are rampant - possibly dominant - in PNG, SGS seems to believe that all log exports from PNG have been legal for the last 12 years...[Continue]
Back in January, FSC-Watch reported that the largest FSC certified tropical logging operation (Barama, in Guyana) had had its certificate suspended. One of the interesting aspects of this was that WWF had been working closely with the company for some time, providing technical advice and helping the company to get its certificate. This was clearly an embarrassment for WWF, who had only 9 months earlier breathlessly exclaimed that the certificate was a "record-setting accomplishment for tropical forest conservation in South America"...[Continue]
FSC-Watch was interested to learn recently that FSC Executive Director, Heiko Liedeker, has joined the Steering Board of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB), which is based in the Federal Polytechnic (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
According to its website, the newly established RSB "is a multi-stakeholder initiative to develop international standards for sustainable biofuels production and processing, hosted by the Energy Center at EPFL. The Roundtable will bring together non-governmental organizations, companies, governments, inter-governmental organizations, experts, and other concerned parties to draft principles and criteria to ensure that biofuels deliver on their promise of sustainability."
Liedeker will be joined on the Steering Board of the RSB by luminaries including Claude Martin, former Director General of WWF (under whose leadership WWF moved ever closer to the interests of the corporate sector); Rolf Hartl, of the Federation of Swiss Oil Companies; and Rebecca Heaton of BP...[Continue]
Finally, as the FSC's inspectors arrive at its doors for its annual accreditation inspection, Soil Association WoodMark has produced the long-awaited and overdue report of its 2006 surveillance of controversial Irish state forestry company, Coillte.
Many people, not the least Irish environmental and social stakeholders, will be disappointed that WoodMark has failed to cancel the certificate outright, in the face of overwhelming evidence of Coillte's non-compliance with FSC's Principles and Criteria. But what is revealing about the report is the number of 'Correction Action Requests' that WoodMark has had to issue in order to keep the certificate alive...[Continue]
The FSC is set to continue on its seemingly inexorable slide into becoming a 'self-certification' system with new changes to the Chain of Custody procedures. As announced in the most recent FSC Newsletter (see below), the FSC is currently piloting what are called 'multi-site' procedures, in which the FSC's accredited certifiers would not actually check all the relevent company facilities in order to issue a Chain of Custody certificate.
This will add a further layer of discredit to what is already an opaque, muddled and highly doubtful system...[Continue]
More than three months after its most recent surveillance visit, Soil Association Woodmark has still failed to produce a Public Summary report stating whether, or under what conditions, it believes that the Irish state forestry company, Coillte, can remain FSC-certified.
Soil Association Woodmark took over the already controversial certification of Coillte's 400,000+ hectares of mostly exotic plantations from SGS in 2004. Since then, increasing evidence has been presented to Woodmark about Coillte's non-compliance with the FSC Principles and Criteria...[Continue]
In November 2004, on a visit to Swaziland with Wally Menne of TimberWatch, I saw the destruction caused by fifty years of industrial forestry "development". Many of the plantations were established under a British "aid" programme run by the Colonial Development Corporation (now called CDC Group - a private equity company whose sole shareholder is the UK Department for International Development).
I saw Sappi's apparently endless pine monocultures and huge clearcuts...[Continue] | <urn:uuid:43ea6708-44ce-4182-b135-3325c76db691> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fsc-watch.org/archives/earlier/1180521480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965894 | 1,335 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Buniga Forest Walk: Meet the Batwa then and now
The Buniga Forest Walk is now open! Located in Nkuringo near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, this 1.5 km trail explores Buniga Forest, with its lush tree ferns and giant lobelia.
The Walk is guided by the local Batwa – an indigenous group of people who formerly lived nomadic lives in the forests of the Great Lakes region of Africa. While on the walk, tourists benefit from the Batwa’s extensive forest knowledge and survival skills, passed from one generation to the next. These skills include harvesting honey and trapping wild animals for food.
More than the opportunity to learn from the Batwa guides’ forest knowledge and survival skills is the opportunity to experience real Batwa culture as well – song and dance, burial and morning, jubilation at a successful hunt. As well as several forest dwellings that are impressive, fun and functional.
There are surprises at every turn.
The unique element of the Buniga Forest Walk is that you meet your Batwa guides in the forest as they lived in times past. But after completing the 1.5 km trail, you have the opportunity to meet your guides as they live today, in their settlement now outside of the forest. At the settlement, guests are welcomed with open arms and a wide range of Batwa handicrafts are for sale by members of the community.
Take an exciting stroll on the Buniga Forest Walk and meet the Batwa then and now!
The Buniga Forest Walk can be booked from the Nkuringo Community Conservation and Development Foundation office in Nkuringo and costs 25 USD per person, regardless of nationality or residency. Fees for the Buniga Forest Walk are allocated at 30% to Kisoro Local Government, and 70% to NCCDF, who pays the community and Batwa guides and reinvests the remaining funds in community conservation and development projects in the local area.
Tourists should allow approximately three to four hours for this activity and the Buniga Forest Walk is classified from an easy to moderate hike on a new and well-developed trail. | <urn:uuid:02100abe-3d99-44a7-9799-3d1e28de15f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.igcp.org/buniga-forest-walk-meet-the-batwa-then-and-now/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938674 | 444 | 1.921875 | 2 |
The regional court in Cologne, western Germany, ruled that the "fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights of the parents", a judgement that is expected to set a legal precedent.
"The religious freedom of the parents and their right to educate their child would not be unacceptably compromised, if they were obliged to wait until the child could himself decide to be circumcised," the court added.
The case was brought against a doctor in Cologne who had circumcised a four-year-old Muslim boy on his parents' wishes.
A few days after the operation, his parents took him to hospital as he was bleeding heavily. Prosecutors then charged the doctor with grievous bodily harm.
The doctor was acquitted by a lower court that judged he had acted within the law as the parents had given their consent.
On appeal, the regional court also acquitted the doctor but for different reasons.
The regional court upheld the original charge of grievous bodily harm but also ruled that the doctor was innocent as there was too much confusion on the legal situation around circumcision.
The court came down firmly against parents' right to have the ritual performed on young children. | <urn:uuid:56063d25-58f9-4334-9fe9-8e411427cace> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2012/6/27/german-court-rules-religious-circumcision-on-boys-an-assault-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991036 | 237 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Storage - Published on Tuesday, 14 August 2012 21:26 Written by Anton Karmehed
Mechanical drives are not optimal for ultraportable computers, but in the lower price ranges there are few good alternatives without limited storage capacity. Rumors speak of new superthin 2.5" harddrives with profiles of only 5mm to remedy this.
According to DigiTimes harddrive makers started planning for the new superthin harddrives in an attempt to meet with the demand for ultrathin computers with high capacities. Current 2.5" harddrives are 7 to 12.5 millimeter thick, but compared to mSATA SSDs there are plenty of millimeters to shed. The new 5 millimeter harddrives would save 30 percent space and enable even thinner computers with higher storage capacities without the price premium of SSD units.
With Intel's big focus on ultrabooks and its ultraquick boot times we expect these to be used in some form of hybrid solution, e.g. mechanical drives matched with NAND flash for cache. This would enable fast boot times and high storage capacity in ultrabooks, compared to SSD-based solutions.
Other sources suggest that the new 5 millimeter harddrives are still just in the planning stages and they are still trying to solve the stability problems of the write head and minimize the manufacturing cost of smaller drives. When and if the new superthin harddrives appears in built computers is not certain. The same source points out that starting next year we should see a higher competition for hybrid drives, which could speed up the development of the new format. | <urn:uuid:b53a03b9-5e6b-48eb-b24f-8e973fa5c660> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nordichardware.com/Storage/superslim-5mm-harddrives-in-development-for-ultraportables.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925992 | 328 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Do you enjoy learning new things? I certainly do! For the past few months I’ve been taking a yoga training intensive and loving every minute of it. It’s wonderful to be exposed to new ideas. As a part of my training I’ve been researching and writing about yoga philosophies. One that I’d like to share with you all is Bhakti Yoga.
Bhakti Yoga is one of the six major branches of yoga. The six branches are Bhakti, Hatha, Tantra, Karma, Raja, and Jnana. Bhakti Yoga really caught my interest, so I thought I’d share a little about what I’ve learned about it with you and how you might be able to incorporate it into your life to support your personal healing journey.
Bhakti is a form of yoga that aims to create a union with Creator (i.e. God, Source, etc.). The root of the word in Sanskrit includes the meaning “to worship”. Bhakti Yoga focuses on devotion, awareness of being, and service—acts that bring about feelings of love for and connection to Creator.
The Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba said, “…Bhakti Yoga, in simple words, means the art of worship. But it must be understood in all its true aspects, and not merely in a narrow and shallow sense, in which the term is commonly used and interpreted. The profound worship based on the high ideals of philosophy and spirituality, prompted by divine love, doubtless constitutes true Bhakti Yoga.”1
It is said that while all the other forms of yoga are valuable, Bhakti Yoga is the only path to Creator, enlightenment or Divine Realization. “Bhakti Yoga is described by Swami Vivekananda as, the path of systematized devotion for the attainment of union with the Absolute.”1
The path of Bhakti Yoga is a journey of devotion and honor at the highest form. One literally dances with Creator through surrender, worship, honor, devotion, and service to intimately connect with All-That-Is and Self Realize—that is—to know oneself fully.
The Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Hindu sacred texts, outlines nine main activities of Bhakti. It is understood that by following one or all of the activities perfectly, one can achieve enlightenment.
Sravana: Listen to virtuous poems or stories about Creator.
Kirtana: Sing or chant Creator praises.
Smarana: Remember Creator at all times; keep Creator in the forefront of one’s consciousness.
Padasevana: Expresses love for Creator through service to others.
Archana: Worship Creator through external images or through internal visualizations.
Vandana: Paying homage to Creator.
Dasya: Carry out Creator‘s commandments; meditate on the words of Creator.
Sakha-bhava: Experience Creator as a family member of dear friend.
Atma-nivedana: Surrender to Creator.
Bhakti Yoga can be practiced by a person of any faith or religion as it is a means of focusing the mind and creating space to see Creator in everyday life. It seems to matter less about the form Bhakti takes and simply distills it to devotion, worship, love… Since Bhakti Yoga means “to worship,” generally speaking one can create their own philosophy around what worship means to them. It is an open invitation for connecting to Creator to bring union and enveloping love.
“Many modern bhakti yogis believe that “the guru” can be found in all things. Bhakti, then, becomes a state of mind, a consciousness that involves embracing the Beloved—in whatever form that takes.”4 After researching this wonderful topic I began to see ways that I could include Bhakti Yoga into my daily life. Can you think of ways you can incorporate Bhakti Yoga into your life?
The essence of Bhakti Yoga can simply be distilled to gratitude, love, and appreciation. Consider taking a few moments and bring awareness to your breath. Notice the pause between the inhale and exhale. How do you feel when you do that? After you sit down to your meal, consider taking a pause to give gratitude for the food and nourishment you’re about to eat. These considerations you probably have heard before and they sounds simple, but a little bit goes a long way.
Taking brief moments of pause are known to decrease feelings of stress or tension, reduce blood pressure, improve digestion, and enhance overall well-being just to name a few. As you walk through your day, consider how you can incorporate Bhakti Yoga principles into your life. Thank about how you might find ways to honor your life and that which brings feelings of connection and appreciation to you. Enjoy!
1. Wikipedia. (October, 2012). Bhakti. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti
2. What is Bhakti Yoga? Retrieved from http://www.bhakti-yoga-meditation.com/bhakti-yoga.html
3. Wikipedia. (October, 2012). Bhakti Yoga. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti_yoga
4. Isaacs, Nora. (November, 2012) Everyday ecstasy. Yoga Journal. Retrieved from http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/2661
5. Practice of Bhakti Yoga. Retrieved from http://www.thesecretsofyoga.com/Bhakti/Bhakti-practice.html | <urn:uuid:9f980650-6279-4a95-b4bd-266d2bda5428> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vibranthorizons.com/author/admin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931233 | 1,195 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says OK for kids 14+
Edgy, teen-friendly musical comedy uplifts with song, heart.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Pitch Perfect -- a winning musical comedy about a fiercely independent college student -- will give teens (and adults) plenty to like. Expect some strong language ("s--t," "bitch," "d--k," and one use of "f--k"), drug references, and underage drinking (though it's not heavily emphasized). There's also some kissing and lots of sexual innuendo and some sexual discussion, plus several jokes about a lesbian character's attraction to other women in the group. Although the young women portrayed here are, for the most part, strong and confident, sometimes a shaming word, "slut," is used to refer to them.
- Families can talk about why Beca seems so jaded when she first steps on campus. Is her position -- that she doesn't need to be in college to pursue her dream -- defensible?
- Fat Amy calls herself "fat" as a way to get ahead of any possible bullying and because she's proud of herself just the way she is. What do you think of this approach? (Also, talk to your kids about bullying and how to handle it if it happens.)
- Are college campuses really rife with this much competition among student groups? Are a cappella groups this cutthroat? What's the realistic take on this?
The good stuff
Positive messages: Find your passion, and don't be afraid to take risks. Also: Open your heart to love, and it might find you. Joining groups may require you to overcome your skepticism and fears, but it may also lead you to even greater happiness.
Positive role models: Beca's individualistic streak extends to the rest of the Bellas in a positive way, though it does take them a while to learn how to be supportive of one another. Lots of emphasis on teamwork and how sometimes in the pursuit of the good of the team, a member has to be flexible and unselfish. Many jokes at the expense of the overweight, but the main overweight character also embraces her appearance to try to defuse bullying before it starts.
What to watch for
Violence: A melee breaks out -- though viewers don't really see any of the blows -- and a window winds up shattered. A sprinkling of verbal skirmishes, with name-calling.
Sexy stuff: Some kissing, plus plenty of sexual innuendoes about a few of the characters' sex lives. Some suggestive dancing during musical numbers. A couple's feet are shown sharing one shower, suggesting they're in the middle of intimate alone time. Characters use the word "slut" to refer to women who have non-serious sex partners.
Language: "Bitch" is frequent and casual (and "pitch," which sounds like it, is used as a stand-in). Also one "f--k," "s--t," "t--s," "slutbags," "ass," "crap," "hell," "d--k," and "Jesus" (as an exclamation).
Consumerism: With so many Apple products everywhere, it might as well be an ad. Also: Ping, Mad Libs.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Some scenes at college parties show freshmen drinking beer (and whatever else) from tell-tale red cups. Drug references. | <urn:uuid:16837c44-4abd-4cda-b130-e89b33905e52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fandango.com/pitchperfect_156075/criticreviews?date=10/23/2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962395 | 720 | 2.25 | 2 |
Ninety-four faculty members received new computers as part of this year’s TACIT program (see http://www.olemiss.edu/tacit/). Now in its twelfth year, TACIT provides for the cyclical replacement of faculty computers and is sponsored by the Provost’s Office and carried out by the Office of Information Technology (IT). Faculty members are given the choice between desktop, laptop, PC, and Mac. This year’s numbers were as follows:
- # PC Desktops: 35
- # PC Laptops: 19
- # Apple Desktops: 13
- # Apple Laptops: 27
As part of the program, faculty members attended three or more training sessions, including a general session that covered technology topics currently of interest. See http://www.olemiss.edu/tacit/training.html for a full listing of this year’s TACIT training sessions. The general sessions took place the week of October 25 and included lots of good discussion, which is summarized below for the benefit of any who may also be interested. See http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/it/TACIT2010.pdf for discussion slides.
Cell Phones as Clickers
What is the possibility of cell phones being used as clickers instead of separately purchased clicker devices? Several small private schools have had success in using iPhones and iPod Touch devices as clickers (see http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mobile-college-app-turning-iphones-into-super-clickers-for-classroom-feedback/4434). The problem is more challenging in an environment like ours where many different kinds of devices are in use and not all students have smart phones with data plans, but this is an area that we are watching closely. We have begun brainstorming on how we might be able to record attendance for classes and performances using the GPS capabilities of cell phones and the HTML 5 standard.
Cell Service in Oxford and on the UM Campus
Help is on the way for AT&T cell customers who live near the intersection of HWY 7 and HWY 6. AT&T is constructing a new cell tower in that area and expects for work to be completed by the end of November.
With regard to on-campus service, UM has partnered with a company called NextG Networks (see http://www.nextgnetworks.net/) to install a vendor-neutral Distributed Antenna System (DAS). A DAS is a network of small antenna nodes connected by fiber to a head-end. DAS technology has been used with great success in airports, malls, cruise ships, etc. and is beginning to gain popularity on college campuses with the first NextG university customer being Notre Dame.
We had hoped to have the DAS up and running by the start of football season, but establishing the first contract between NextG and AT&T has taken longer than expected, not only for UM but also for a number of other major universities. Most of the issues have been resolved and the designs approved. Phase one of the DAS project will include the football stadium, the Holman / Conner complex, the Ford Center, and the Grove. Plans are underway for Phase 2, which will address the northwest side of campus including the Mall area either by means of a new cell macro site (tower) or an extension of the DAS.
Both students and instructors have expressed interest in a mobile interface to Blackboard. Blackboard launched a free version for Sprint users earlier this year and is now making available a device-agnostic version for an additional licensing fee. UM is watching this closely and, with other universities, is requesting that Blackboard provide affordable licensing options.
Sending E-mail from Off-Campus
One of the most common questions that comes to the FTDC and IT Helpdesk is how to send e-mail from off-campus when you are not using a Web-based client such as Webmail. This requires a Virtual Private Network (VPN) client and account, which all employees already have. See http://vpnhelp.olemiss.edu/ for instructions on downloading the client and using VPN from an iPhone. Login to VPN with your WedID and password.
Student Use of E-mail
IT is upgrading the Microsoft Exchange environment which has provided calendaring services for employees in the past. In the future, this platform will provide e-mail and calendaring services for all UM employees. Calendar users have already been moved over, and other employees will be moved over in small groups over the next few months. In parallel, IT has been looking at Google mail for students. Several discussions with ASB leaders took place this summer, and a test platform has been established.
In the TACIT general sessions, faculty members expressed opinions both for and against outsourcing student e-mail. Some expressed enthusiasm about the possibility of using Google Apps for Education, whereas others expressed concerns about e-mails getting caught up in spam filters, being able to confirm that students receive e-mails, etc. There will be many more discussions with key groups from around campus before making a final decision. Separating out employee and student e-mail is an important first step.
In several of the general sessions, faculty members expressed dismay over the fact that students don’t seem to read e-mail. This is a common observation at other universities too and is part of the motivation for providing SMS text messaging as a new way for instructors and advisors to reach students. Right now, instructors and advisors can send text messages from the Ole Miss Today interface, and over eighty people have used this feature since it was first made available in late September. During Thanksgiving week, additional links will be added to myOleMiss to provide a one-step method to send text-only e-mail and SMS text messages. A mobile equivalent is also in the works. One thing to keep in mind is that text messages only go to the students who have opted in to receive them.
Student Use of the Network and Bandwidth Issues
One of the technology services most affected by increased enrollment is wireless access and overall available bandwidth. A specific example is the increased use of video streaming services such as Netflix on Demand by students in residence halls. Currently, the campus network is partitioned into three segments: research, general office, and residence halls. Network policies are in place to give priority to each segment and to certain types of traffic. In the evening, after 6 pm, more bandwidth is shifted to the residence halls. This fall, IT purchased more commodity Internet bandwidth. The IT network group is continuing to monitor this situation closely and is adjusting network policies in response to user feedback. Any faculty members who are experiencing bandwidth limitations in their offices or in classrooms should send details to firstname.lastname@example.org.
Faculty Activity Reports
A Faculty Activity Report Task Force was established in June by the Provost’s Office and is being chaired by Dr. Maurice Eftink. The task force made a key decision in July to continue with a structured database model for reporting completed activities. The next major decision will be whether to continue with a home-grown solution or move to a commercial product such as Sedona (https://sedonaweb.com/i/index.cfm) or Activity Insight by Digital Measures (http://www.digitalmeasures.com/ActivityInsight/).
The current system will be used in Spring 2011 and is being updated based on feedback from the FAR Task Force. In each of the general sessions, faculty members previewed the new screen layouts for entering activities and offered comments based on past experiences. The feedback on the new layouts was generally positive with the caveat that they really need to be able to try them out before making a final judgment. Faculty members noted the following as problem areas from past years: deleting activities, understanding the role of and managing activity dates (which affects the roll forward of activities from previous years), too many windows opening up, and reporting grants that fall outside of ORSP processes. Related topics included standardizing on reference software such as RefWorks or Zotero and then having interfaces to import research activities from that environment, using faculty activity report data to automatically populate tenure and promotion dossiers, and moving to a calendar year for reporting activities, which most thought would be helpful. | <urn:uuid:98f14aea-ed60-41d1-8ded-a20a1642163d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://technews.blog.olemiss.edu/2010/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956364 | 1,732 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Giving thanks is no small thing for the Christian.
But far too many of us have the wrong impression. Deep down we may see the summons to thanksgiving as pretty peripheral. Giving thanks — whoop dee doo — What really excites me is fill-in-the-blank.
It is tragic when gratitude seems obscure to the very people who have the most to be thankful for. To sinners forever saved by grace, thanksgiving should be significant. Even central. Healthy Christians are thankful Christians.
Central to Honoring God
In fact, Romans 1:21 shows us that thanksgiving is what we were created for, and it is “at the heart of what it means to be a Christian,” says Tremper Longman.
Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21)
There it is. Side by side with honoring God is giving him thanks. Don’t underestimate the centrality of thanksgiving. Gratitude is essential in doing whatever we do to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), and thanklessness is deeply intertwined with what it means to “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). This no small thing.
So Longman gives us this jarring angle: “The real difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that the former gives thanks to God” (How to Read the Psalms, 144).
In A Praying Life, Paul Miller adds some similar reflections about the centrality of thanksgiving for the Christian. While it was thanklessness that was “the first sin to emerge from our ancient rebellion against God’ (Romans 1:21), in our ongoing redemption, it is thanksgiving that “replaces a bitter spirit with a generous one” (89–90). (For a strong couple pages on “Cultivating a Thankful Spirit,” see Miller’s Praying Life, 89-91.)
Thanksgiving is important—essential—because the Christian life, from the beginning to end, is a life of extraordinary grace.
Created to Echo Grace
Thanksgiving “exults in grace,” writes John Piper. Gratitude was “created by God to echo grace.” We were created by God to echo his grace, and we’ve been redeemed by Jesus to echo his astounding grace all the more. Piper continues,
I exalt gratitude as a central biblical response of the heart to the grace of God. The Bible commands gratitude to God as one of our highest duties. “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name” (Psalm 100:4). God says that gratitude honors him: “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me” (Psalm 50:23). (Future Grace, 32)
There it is again. Note the close connection between thanksgiving and the massive biblical reality of honoring and glorifying God. Thanksgiving is big time.
Echoing Grace Without Nullifying It
But a danger lurks. The Bible doesn’t have much, if anything, to say about obeying out of gratitude. Giving thanks to God for what he has given to us is precious and essential—and so is trusting him for his ongoing provision in the future. Thanksgiving is beautiful, but it can go bad on us, if we try to give it Faith’s job.
There is an impulse in the fallen human—all our hearts—to forget that gratitude is a spontaneous response of joy to receiving something . . . . When we forget this, what happens is that gratitude starts to be misused and distorted as an impulse to pay for the very thing that came to us “gratis” [free]. This terrible moment is the birthplace of the “debtor’s ethic.”
The debtor’s ethic says, “Because you have done something good for me, I feel indebted to do something good for you.” This impulse is not what gratitude was designed to produce. God meant gratitude to be a spontaneous expression of pleasure in the gift and the good will of another. He did not mean it to be an impulse to return favors. If gratitude is twisted into a sense of debt, it gives birth to the debtor’s ethic—and the effect is to nullify grace. (32)
Thanks for the Past, Trust for the Future
Thanksgiving must learn to delegate, and not attempt to do all the work itself. Thanksgiving has an indispensible ally named Faith, and they need to stay in good communication.
Gratitude exults in the past benefits of God and says to faith, “Embrace more of these benefits for the future, so that my happy work of looking back on God’s deliverance may continue.” (38)
And Faith is eager to respond, “Thank you, Thanksgiving, for sending me your impulses of delight in what God has done. I’ll happily transpose those into faith and keep on trusting him. I’ll keep believing in Jesus for more grace.”
More Grace to Come
May God be pleased to fill us to overflowing with thanksgiving for his amazing graces—the greatest of which is the gift of himself in the person of his Son. And may thanksgiving give rise to great hope that the God who has so richly provided for us to date, will most certainly give us everything we need for our everlasting good—and increase for all eternity in showing us “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).
The grace we’ve seen so far is only a taste of the grace that is to come. Have your thanksgiving ready. There will be much more echoing to enjoy.
Recent posts from David Mathis — | <urn:uuid:122e70cf-ee0c-494e-9a97-af0b15aa730a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/thanksgiving-echoing-the-grace-of-god/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95416 | 1,257 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The modern world is heavily influenced by our computers and the internet. The use of information and the technology that delivers the information to us on a regular basis are everywhere. In fact there are certain occupations and entire industries that rely solely on the internet. With business transactions, consumer shopping and social interaction, it is safe to say that the majority of people are involved in some way with the web. Traditional companies, often referred to as a brick and mortar business, are taking advantage of the web and finding more ways to conduct transactions through the internet. To this end, business owners have realized the importance of having a well designed site that looks good, draws in new customers and keeps existing customers happy.
Using a Website Design Company
When using a website designer, the company will look at the big picture of your business. The idea is to understand what goods and services you currently offer and how you may look to expand in the future. From this foundation the designer can explore the traits and habits of your ideal customer. Having a firm picture of the ideal customer helps the designer implement the right attributes to the site in order to please the customer. It also provides information that can be used in a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy in order to keep the sit ranking high for particular searches.
Selling Through the Website
One of the greatest advancements in the internet is the evolution of commerce. People can easily buy almost anything their hearts desire through the web. When you are talking to website developer, make sure you have the capability to handler orders through your site. Whether it is a tangible product or a service, providing a way for people to give you money, 24 hours a day 7 days a week is an excellent way to boost revenue. If you offer an assortment of goods you will want to display the different items on your site along with a description, details about shipping and the cost. If you offer a service, such as commercial cleaning, you can provide a chart for your different prices, a contact form for people to request an appointment and even a miniature contract where customers can pay a retainer fee to hold your services for a particular time period.
Experienced and Qualified
All of this points to the fact that you need a qualified website builder who understands not only how to make a site but also how to maximize it for money making potential. | <urn:uuid:ee1a2c7f-c1c8-4950-a3a2-31ef96891667> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.quickfireinternet.com/blog/making-an-impact-with-your-website.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946649 | 473 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Internal Revenue Commissioner Douglas Shulman is being asked today to examine the tax-exempt status of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science.
According to a U.S. Department of Defense study performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has actively engaged in nuclear weapons research.
The 1987 IDA study documents Weizmann scientists developed a cutting- edge high energy physics and hydrodynamics program "needed for nuclear bomb design." Weizmann also worked on advanced methods for enriching uranium to weapons-grade through the use of lasers. The U.S. worried that Weizmann's supercomputers, if networked with other American-purchased supercomputers, would be used to reduce the size of warheads enough to fit on Israel's long range missiles.
In 1989, the U.S. denied a super computer export license to Technion in Israel after the university's scientists were discovered working at the Dimona nuclear facility. However by 1994, Weizmann had the second highest supercomputing capacity in Israel, trailing only Tel Aviv University.
According to the book "Israel and the Bomb" by Avner Cohen, Democratic Party fundraiser Abraham Feinberg was designated by David Ben-Gurion to raise funding for Israel's covert nuclear weapons program in 1958. In 1971, Feinberg became the president of the American and Israeli branches of the Weizmann institute. Feinberg donated funds to capitalize the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the 1960s. AIPAC's director published articles in the Near East Report denying Israel had a nuclear weapons program. Weizmann Institute President Daniel Zajfman was lauded in a program about Israeli innovations at AIPAC's 2010 Policy Conference.
The IRmep complaint asks Commissioner Shulman to investigate how Weizmann's tax-exempt U.S. fundraising branch finances Israeli nuclear weapons development. On January 11, 2010, IRmep Research Director Grant F. Smith and several callers confronted Shulman on NPR over lax IRS enforcement over U.S. tax-exempt organizations funding illegal West Bank settlements. Shulman publicly promised that "If a charity is breaking the tax law, is engaged in activities that they are not supposed to be engaged in, we certainly will go after them." According to outside reports, the IRS began screening new applications for tax-exempt status of organizations potentially involved in settlement funding. According to IRmep Director Smith, "Charitable funding laundered into clandestine nuclear weapons that destabilize and endanger the entire region simply has no place in America."
SOURCE Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy | <urn:uuid:55b4fc9e-4c9f-4d8f-8ca4-267c62421d73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2012/03/irs-asked-to-probe-links-between-aipac.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945876 | 537 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Fish and Game Q&A: How can I know which fish are legal to keep when fishing at night?
In support of the California Department of Fish and Game and its effort to keep hunters and anglers informed, Outposts, on Thursday or Friday, posts marine biologist Carrie Wilson's weekly Q&A column:
Question: Sometimes when I’m fishing at night from shore off the coast, I can’t always tell exactly what I’ve caught. Figuring out the difference in the dark between the perches that have different size restrictions can also be hard. I don’t want to break any laws, but I usually like to take one fish home to eat. If I do catch a restricted species of some sort by mistake, how much would I be fined? Also, how can I know exactly what fish are legal to keep and which ones are not? (John N., Malibu)
Answer: You are responsible for anything that you catch and keep. Citation fines can be found on the "Bail and Penalties" link at www.dfg.ca.gov/enforcement/, and then you can expect for additional court fees to be added. The best thing for you (and the fish) would be to plan to fish while it’s still light enough that you can be sure of exactly what you’re catching. Otherwise, you’d better have a mighty good flashlight. Not being able to distinguish what fish you have in the dark is no excuse.
For an easy reference as to which species can be kept and which cannot, log onto the click-able fishing map on the marine region website at www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/fishing_map.asp before you head out to fish. This is a great resource that you can always trust to be current. Just click on the map in the area where you intend to fish and a list of exactly what’s open, what’s closed and which species have special restrictions pops up. Click on any fish species you’re interested in learning more about and you’ll have access to their regulations as well as lots of interesting biological information.
Q: Sometimes when out hunting ducks, we bring the barbecue to cook up a mallard or teal. If I bring out a cleaned bird from a previous hunt and cook it, is this OK? (Jim M., Brentwood)
However, according to Department of Fish and Game Assistant Chief Mike Carion, if the bird appears to be fresh and in excess of daily bag for the day, it could lead to further investigation. If the person claimed it had been frozen and thawed, a warden may seize it and have the lab check the blood cells to see if it had indeed been frozen.
If it is in excess of the possession limit, there are no excuses, and the person would be subject to citation.
Q: I can find that with a shotgun I am allowed to have two rounds in the magazine, but I can’t find the regulation on rifles. I would like to know for sure before I go out into the field what I am allowed for both bolt action and semi-auto. Also, is there any restriction on the number of rounds when hunting with a handgun? (Steve)
A: As long as the rifle you’re using is a legal firearm for hunting and the magazine you’re using is legal for the public to possess and is not modified (e.g. police often have larger magazines), then it is legal to use with the capacity available. Same goes for handguns. As long as the guns are legal for hunting and not modified to carry larger loads, then you may use them. Remember that, when hunting in condor country, only non-lead bullets and shells may be used for the take of big game and non-game species. For more information on non-lead requirements, please check out www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/hunting/condor/.
Q: While on vacations, my wife and I enjoy shopping at flea markets, antique fairs and antique stores throughout the state, and I am amazed at the amount of wild game mounts, hides and antlers that are for sale. It is my understanding that selling any part of an animal that can be legally taken in California is against the law. What’s the deal? (T.K., Rancho Murieta)
A: You are correct, with the exception of antlers and hides. Antlers must be cut into blocks before selling. Whole antlers may not be sold. You can’t pick up shed antlers to sell unless you cut them up first. The only other exception is for taxidermists who prepare mounts for clients who never return to retrieve and pay for them. In this case, the taxidermist may sell the mount only for the amount required to recoup their hard costs of preparation.
If you have a question, you would like to see answered in this column, e-mail it to CalOutdoors@dfg.ca.gov.
Photo: An angler at sunset. Credit: Steve Hillebrand / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Follow Outposts on Twitter: twitter.com/latimesoutposts | <urn:uuid:f0a64f62-4f13-4d16-a995-6b44936772a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2010/10/fish-and-game-q-and-a-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955262 | 1,093 | 1.976563 | 2 |
County Formation in Acts of Tennessee > Smith County
ACTS OF TENNESSEE 1799, CHAPTER 2:
"An Act reducing the limits of Sumner County, and establishing two new counties, and repealing an act passed October the second, one thousand seven hundred and ninety seven, respecting commissioners for purchasing lands, laying out a town, and erecting a court house, prison and stocks in the said county, and appointing other commissioners for that purpose."
AND BE IT ENACTED, That Wallace Harris and Edward Guinn, are hereby appointed with power to both or either to ascertain by actual survey, the eastern boundary of the said county, from the northern boundary of the state, to the south bank of Cumberland River, and mark it, also to extend and mark a north and south line through the said county, from the said northern boundary to Cumberland River, so as to leave as near as may be, one moiety of the said county to the west, and the other moiety to the east of said line, for which service they shall be paid by the county, each two dollars per day, and each chain carrier and marker by them employed, one dollar per day.
AND BE IT ENACTED, That a new county be established by the name of Smith, to be contained within the following described bounds; beginning upon the south bank of Cumberland River, at the south end of the eastern boundary of Sumner County, thence north with the said eastern boundary, to the northern boundary of the state, and with the said boundary, east to whether it is intersected by the Cherokee boundary, run and marked agreeably to the treaty of Holston, thence with that boundary, to the Cany [sic] Fork of Cumberland River, thence with the said fork according to its meanders, to the mouth thereof, thence down the south bank of Cumberland River according to its meanders, to the beginning.
AND BE IT ENACTED, That another new county be established by the name of Wilson, to be contained within the following described bounds; beginning upon the south bank of the river Cumberland at low water mark, at the mouth of Drake’s Lick Branch, the north east corner of Davidson County, thence with the line of Davidson County, to the Cherokee boundary, as run and marked agreeably to the treaty of Holston, and with the said boundary to the Caney Fork, and down the Caney Fork, according to its meaanders [sic] to the mouth thereof, thence down the meanders of Cumberland River, by the south bank to the beginning.
AND BE IT ENACTED, That an act, entitled an act, to repeal an act, entitled “An act appointing commissioners and trustees, the former to fix on a place in the county of Sumner, and the latter to purchase lands, erect a court house, prison and stocks, and establish a town thereon,” passed at Knoxville, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six, and for other purposes therein mentioned, be and the same is hereby repealed.
AND BE IT ENACTED, That David Shelby, David Beard senior, James crier, Edward Guinn, and Captain James Wilson, son of John Wilson, be, and are hereby appointed commissioners, who, or a majority of them, shall have full power and authority to purchase sixty acres of land, situate within one mile and a half of the north and south line dividing as before directed, the said county into two moieties, on some part of which shall be erected the court house, prison, and stocks of the said county, on the best terms on which it can be obtained, and to take a deed or deeds or conveyance for the same in their own names as commissioners, in trust for the county, which shall be good and valid in law, and shall vest in them and their successors in office, a complete title for the uses in this act expressed. And the said commissioners shall, by a majority, have full power to elect any suitable person or persons to fill any vacancies that may happen in their own body, by death, resignation, or orhterwise.
BE IT ENACTED, That the said commissioners, or a majority of them, shall as soon as may be after purchasing and obtaining a title to sixty acres of land as aforesaid, cause a town to be laid off thereon, to be called and known by the name of Rutherford, for county purposes, reserving two acres near the centre thereof, on which shall be erected the courthouse, prison and stocks of the said county, which two acres in the plan of the said town shall be denominated the public square.
BE IT ENACTED, That the said commissioners be, and they are hereby authorized to sell the lots of the said town a public sale at a credit of six months, giving thirty days previous notice of such sale, by advertisement, at four or more of the most public places in the said county, taking bond, with sufficient security, for the payment of the purchase money to themselves and their successors in office. And the said commissioners, or a majority of them, are hereby authorized to execute in due form of law, deeds of conveyance, in fee simple, for the same, to the purchasers, which shall be good and valid in law, to all intents and purposes.
BE IT ENACTED, That the money arising from the sales of the aforesaid lots, shall by the said commissioners be applied to the building of the court house, prison and stocks; and they are authorized to contract with a suitable person or persons to erect the same; the court house to contain convenient rooms for the juries, and the prison to consist of two rooms at least
BE IT ENACTED, That the monies already appropriated by the county of Sumner, for the purposes aforesaid, shall be paid into the hands of the said commissioners, and be by them, or a majority of them, applied in paying for the lands purchased; and the overplus shall be an additional fund to that arising from the sale of the lots, to defray the expenses of erecting and compleating [sic] the court house, prison and stocks.
BE IT ENACTED, That the said commissioners shall keep a fair and regular account of all monies by them received and expended, which shall be laid before the court of the said county, when demanded; and if the monies already appropriated, shall not be sufficient to defray the expenses of the sixty acres of land, and erecting of the court house, prison and stocks, the court shall be have full power, by a county tax to make up the deficiency: Provided, that two thirds of the acting justices be present when the taxes are laid; and provided also, that the said tax shall not exceed six and a fourth cents on every white poll between the age of twenty one and fifty years, a tax not exceeding twelve and an half cents on every black poll between the age of twelve and fifty years; a tax not exceeding one dollar on each stud horse kept for the purpose of covering mares, and a tax not exceeding six & a fourth cents on each hundred acres of land in any one year, which shall be collected in the same manner, and by the same persons as public taxes are; and the monies arising from the said taxes shall be paid by the collector thereof, first deducting the same per centum for collection as is by law allowed for the collection of public taxes, into the hands of the aforesaid commissioners, or a majority of them, to be applied to the purposes aforesaid.
BE IT ENACTED, That the aforesaid commissioners shall give bond with sufficient security, in the sum of five thousand dollars, payable to the chairman of the court of the said county, and his successors in office, conditioned for the faithful performance of the duties enjoined on them by this act.
BE IT ENACTED, That the said commissioners, when the buildings are completed, shall lay before the court of the said county, a fair and just statement of the costs and expenses of said purchase and buildings, together with their receipts, and shall be allowed a reasonable compensation for their services by the said court; Provided that two thirds of the acting justices of said county be present when such allowance is made.
BE IT ENACTED, That is shall and may be lawful for the sheriff of Sumner County to collect the taxes for the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety nine, and all arrearages of taxes for every and any preceding year, in the same manner, and with as full authority, as if this act had not been passed; and Sumner County shall be liable to the payment of every demand that any of the citizens of Wilson or Smith counties, heretofore a part of the said county, may legally have for services rendered the said county, in the same manner as if this act had never been passed.
BE IT ENACTED, That courts of pleas and quarter sessions shall be held in the county of Smith, and the county of Wilson, with the same power and authority of the courts of pleas and quarter sessions of the counties heretofore by law established. The courts of the county of Smith shall commence on the third Mondays of the months of December, March, June and September; and the courts of the county of Wilson shall commence on the fourth Mondays of the months of December, March, June and September, with authority to continue by adjournment, from day to day, until the succeeding Saturday inclusive.
AND BE IT ENACTED, That the first court for the county of Wilson shall be held at the house of Captain John Harpole, and after at such place as the court shall adjourn to; and for the county of Smith, at the house of Major Tilman Dixson; and after at such place as the court shall adjourn to.
AND BE IT ENACTED, That elections for members to the General Assembly, the Governor and member of Congress, shall be held at the court houses of the counties of Smith and Wilson, on the days on which elections for such purposes are authorized to be held; and the sheriffs of the counties shall meet the sheriff of Sumner County, at the court house of said county, on the succeeding Monday, and with him examine the respective polls of election for the three counties, heretofore the county of Sumner, and declare the persons duly elected members to the General Assembly, and give certificates accordingly to the persons duly elected; and it shall be the duty of the said sheriff to transmit a statement of the poll of election for Governor and member of Congress to the Speaker of the Senate, in the same manner as directed by law, as the duty of sheriffs of counties heretofore established.
BE IT ENACTED, That it shall be the duty of the sheriffs of the counties of Wilson and Smith, each to hold an election at the place of holding court in their respective counties, on the first Thursday and the succeeding day of February next, for the purpose of electing one Colonel and two Majors for their respective counties, under the same rules, regulations and restrictions as prescribed by law for the election of such officers.
BE IT ENACTED, That the elections for company officers for the counties of Smith and Wilson, shall be held at their respective company muster ground, on the third Thursday in February next, in the same manner and form as appointed by law for electing company militia officers.
BE IT ENACTED, That the counties of Smith and Wilson, shall be in all cases whatsoever, considered as a part of the district of Mero. | <urn:uuid:24a366b6-a5cd-44ea-b3d8-0e665e66187f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tennessee.gov/tsla/history/county/actsmith.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966449 | 2,374 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Advice for Those Newly Diagnosed
Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes
Last Modified: June 17, 2010
Bob and Queenie
The first few days following a cancer diagnosis are like riding on top of a speeding train. You're hanging on for dear life and can't quite see what's ahead. Although every situation is somewhat different, this is what I generally suggest:
- Focus on one step at a time. If you're having a biopsy next week, focus on that biopsy and don't let your mind wander to what might happen next. It's easy to overwhelm yourself with thousands of "what if" questions.
- Family members, friends, and complete strangers will give you advice. Be wary if they say, "You should do..." Though well-intentioned, they don't know what's best for you. You do.
- Remember that cancer treatments change rapidly. The treatment that was standard three years ago may not be standard today. What you hear from people treated in the past is usually out of date.
- We often talk about cancer as a single disease, but there are over 200 types of cancer. Don't assume that what you hear about one type of cancer holds true for other cancers as well.
- Survival statistics are averages. They can be helpful if you want a general idea of what will happen, on average, to a large group of people with your disease, but they can't predict what will happen to you.
- Don't hesitate to get a second opinion if you think it might be helpful. Your doctor won't mind. (If your doctor does mind, you should get another doctor).
- A new cancer diagnosis is rarely a medical emergency. You generally have several days or even weeks to explore your options. (Some situations do require immediate attention - ask your doctor how long it's safe to wait before beginning treatment).
- Don't begin a radical "cancer curing" diet or major lifestyle change during treatment. Just eat sensibly and nutritiously, exercise moderately, and get plenty of rest. You can make whatever lifestyle and diet changes you want after treatment is over.
- Medications that control side effects have improved tremendously, but not every medication works equally well for each person. Don't suffer in silence. Tell your doctor when you feel lousy. Other drugs may work better for you.
- Nearly everyone undergoing cancer treatment experiences fatigue. It's probably the most common and least publicized side effect. Conserve your energy for activities that are most important to you.
- Recovery is not a straight line. You'll feel better one day; then you'll feel worse; then you'll feel better. Don't be discouraged by the down days.
- The end of treatment is not necessarily a time of celebration. For many people, it's the most difficult time because you want to get back to your old routine, but you still feel tired and blah. Be patient with yourself.
- Don't blame yourself for your cancer. It's usually impossible to say why an individual got cancer. And no one -- no one -- deserves cancer.
Bob is the Executive Director of the Cancer Resource Center. His articles about living with cancer appear regularly in the Ithaca Journal. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org
Reprinted with Permission of the Ithaca Journal
Original Publication Date: January 5th, 2009 | <urn:uuid:cb157a97-0321-4a91-8010-006af5ddf225> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oncolink.org/coping/article.cfm?c=6&s=31&ss=206&id=1093 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962229 | 695 | 2.109375 | 2 |
It’s beginning to seem as if all the middle-school children who would benefit from the restoration of yellow school bus service will be in college or in the work force by the time the legal dispute over the issue is resolved.
OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but we do know that all of the some 3,000 Staten Island seventh- and eighth-grade students who were denied the service by the Department of Education will have graduated by June of next year. So it’s possible that even if the lawsuit filed on their behalf nine months ago is eventually decided in their favor, they won’t derive any benefit.
In fact, it already has been decided in their favor. State Supreme Court Justice John Fusco ruled in December that the DOE’s decision to discontinue bus service for all seventh- and eighth-graders, regardless of the hardship for them, was made in an “arbitrary and capricious” fashion and “without concern for the welfare and safety of the affected students.”
In other words, it was not based on anything more than the city’s desire to jettison these kids from the bus-eligible rolls in order to save money.
But the City of New York, bullheaded as ever, refused to accept defeat and immediately filed an appeal of that reasonable ruling.
Last week, Sunnyside attorney Ronald Castorina Jr., who represents the plaintiffs, wrote in a brief filed with the Brooklyn Appellate Division court, “The actions taken by the [DOE] was clearly without any sound basis in reason, since it was taken, not [merely] without regard to the facts, but without any knowledge of the facts.”
He claims that the DOE decided to yank the waivers that entitled some middle-school upper-classmen to the bus service solely on the basis of “hearsay allegations of these old-timers in the Department of Education.”
And, he says, this was done without actually assessing the impact it would have on the children. On Staten Island, children typically live farther from their schools and, with inadequate public transportation, face a more difficult and dangerous commute, particularly on the South Shore, where there are not even sidewalks on many streets.
However, the city Law Department countered that the elimination of this service was undertaken as a “rational cost-cutting measure that was neither arbitrary nor capricious.”
So the case drags on and on as it wends its way through the courts, eventually, we expect, rising all the way to the state Court of Appeals many months from now.
And for what? So the Department of Education can save the mere $2.1 million a year it would cost to provide yellow bus service to all these students. And even that supposed savings may be exaggerated, given the many reports we’ve heard about mostly empty school buses riding around the borough each weekday.
Meanwhile, as Councilman Vincent Ignizio, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, points out, by the time all this is said and done, the city will probably have spent far more in squandered legal costs than it’s saving by denying bus service to these students. And this has come in what seems likely to be a losing cause.
Will this waste fall into the category of what the DOE considers “rational cost-cutting . . . that was neither arbitrary nor capricious”? | <urn:uuid:dae61375-322f-4195-9d82-7dfc4a32a05e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.silive.com/opinion/editorials/index.ssf/2011/03/does_pyrrhic_battle.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979735 | 722 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Scientist predicts disastrous sea level rise
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Dr James Hansen, a prominent and controversial NASA scientist, has written a paper predicting catastrophic sea level rises from the disintegration of polar ice sheets if the globe heats up by two to three degrees Celsius this century.
TranscriptKERRY O'BRIEN: Welcome to the program and first, as the world continues to absorb the import of the recent UN intergovernmental report on climate change, with its projections for increased temperatures, violent storms and rising sea levels, one of America's pioneering climate change scientists has raised a much more frightening scenario. Dr James Hansen, a prominent and controversial NASA scientist, has written a paper predicting catastrophic sea level rises from the disintegration of polar ice sheets if the globe heats up by two to three degrees Celsius this century. The IPCC report, written by hundreds of the world's top scientists, has predicted temperature rises of from two to six degrees Celsius if greenhouse emissions aren't reduced. Dr Hansen, who had a much publicised run-in with the Bush White House after accusing the administration of trying to gag him, has told this program that he expected both west Antarctica and parts of Greenland to collapse if temperatures reached 2 or more per cent, which could cause sea levels to rise at a rate of a metre every 20 years. Last night's program showed how up to 700,000 homes around the Australian coastline have been identified as being at risk from much lower sea level rises. The Hansen scenario would potentially displace hundreds of millions of people around the world. I spoke with Dr Hansen from London earlier today.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Jim Hansen, now we've had the IPCC report, do you believe the world has an accurate picture of the risks ahead for global warming?
DR JAMES HANSEN, NASA CLIMATOLOGIST: There is quite a large gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by the public. The one thing that I've become particularly concerned about is sea level rise, where the current IPCC report is going to suggest smaller numbers than the last report, although all of the information that we're getting in the last year or two points in a very much different direction. Now, in defence of IPCC, their procedure required that they stop getting new inputs more than a year ago and a lot of the data on ice sheet stability has come up in just the last year or two.
KERRY O'BRIEN: What are your particular fears with regard to the melting of the polar ice caps?
JAMES HANSEN: Well, the problem is that the climate system in general has a lot of inertia and that means that it takes time for the changes to begin to occur but then, once they do get under way, it becomes very difficult to stop them and that is true in spades for the ice sheets. If we once begin to disintegrate it will become very difficult, if not impossible, to stop them and we are beginning to see now on both Greenland and west Antarctica disintegration of those ice sheets. They're both losing ice at a rate of about 150 cubic kilometres per year and that's still not a huge sea level rise. Sea level rise is now going up about 3.5 centimetres per decade. So that's more than double what it was 50 years ago. But it's still not disastrous; it's a problem, but it's not disastrous. But the potential is for a much larger sea level rise. If we get warming of two or three degrees Celsius, then I would expect that both West Antarctica and parts of Greenland would end up in the ocean, and the last time we had an ice sheet disintegrate, sea level went up at a rate of 5 metres in a century, or one metre every 20 years. That is a real disaster, and that's what we have to avoid.
KERRY O'BRIEN: What is the most recent evidence of what's really going on with the ice caps, the Arctic and the Antarctic?
JAMES HANSEN: There are two things that are cause of concern. First of all, if we look at the history of the Earth, we know that at the warmest interglacial periods, which were probably less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today, it was still basically the same planet. Sea level was perhaps a few metres higher. But if we go back to the time when the Earth was two or three degrees Celsius warmer, that's about three million years ago, sea level was about 25 metres higher, so that tells us we had better keep additional warming less than about one degree. And the other piece of evidence is not from the history of the Earth but from looking at the ice sheets themselves, and what we see is that the disintegration of ice sheets is a wet process and it can proceed quite rapidly. We see that the ice streams have doubled in their speed on Greenland in the last few years and even more concern is west Antarctica because it's now losing mass at about the same rate as Greenland, and west Antarctica, the ice sheet is sitting on rock that is below sea level. So it is potentially much more in danger of collapsing and so we have both the evidence on the ice sheets and from the history of the Earth and it tells us that we're pretty close to a tipping point, so we've got to be very concerned about the ice sheets.
KERRY O'BRIEN: How good are the models on which world science is basing its climate change predictions?
JAMES HANSEN: Temperature we can, we now have that calibrated quite well, both in terms of how fast the Earth is now warming, which is about two-tenths of a degree Celsius per decade, and the climate models reproduce that, and the climate models can also reproduce the magnitude of the climate change from glacial to interglacial periods. So we're pretty confident of climate sensitivity, and what that sensitivity tells us is that if we want to keep warming less than one degree Celsius additional above that of today, we had better keep CO2 less than 450 parts per million, and perhaps even less than that. So we're really getting close to the tipping point, because CO2 is now 380 parts per million. It started out, 100 years ago, at 280, it's now 380 and it's going up 2 PPM per year. So if we stay on as business as usual, within about 30 years we will be past this level that, I think, is a very dangerous level.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You said a year ago that in your 30 years working in government you'd never seen such constraints on communication between scientists and the public. What's the evidence of that?
JAMES HANSEN: Well, it worries me a lot because in our country the government science agencies have public affairs offices which are now staffed with political appointees and those political appointees have a big impact on what science gets reported and how it's reported. And I'm very disturbed about that. I think that public affairs officials should be helping scientists speak in a language that the public can understand but they shouldn't be massaging the information. And the other example is reporting, testifying to Congress. I don't understand why a scientist's testimony has to be approved by the White House. Government scientists are paid by the public, paid by taxes and I think we're working for the public and for Congress, as well as for the executive branch, and I don't think that our testimony should be filtered.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You said just a couple of weeks ago that there should be a moratorium on building coal fired power plants until the technology to capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions is available. But you must know that that's politically unacceptable in many countries China, America, Australia for that matter, because of coal industry jobs and impact on the economy.
JAMES HANSEN: Well, it's going to be realised within the next 10 years or so that we have no choice. We're going to have to bulldoze the old style coal fired power plants. We can burn coal, provided we capture the CO2 and sequester it, and we're working on technology that would allow us to do that and we should have been working a little harder but, nevertheless, we will have, within five to 10 years, we will have that technology. In the meantime, we should be emphasising energy efficiency so that we don't need new old style coal fired power plants. We're just not doing that. Buildings could be 50 per cent more efficient. The architects and engineers will tell you they have the technology to do that, but if it's not required it's not likely to happen.
KERRY O'BRIEN: After your 20 years as a scientist of trying to raise awareness of the dangers of global warming, are you ultimately optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
JAMES HANSEN: I think that we're likely to pass the 450 parts per million, which is probably the dangerous level. However, I think there is a lot of encouraging evidence in the last year or two that people are starting to get it, and so - if we can keep it close to that level, and take some additional actions. You know, there are other climate forces besides carbon dioxide, and some of those - it would be very useful to reduce those. And so if we begin to address carbon dioxide and methane and black carbon and tropospheric ozone then I think we can avoid the dangerous climate change but we'll have to get going very soon.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Jim Hansen, thanks for talking with us.
JAMES HANSEN: Thank you.
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What is high cholesterol?
Lowering your cholesterol
Good and bad cholesterol explained
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For two out of three people with high cholesterol, changes to diet and exercise regimes alone aren't enough to control cholesterol and a cholesterol-lowering medicine may be needed. Your doctor is also likely to prescribe a cholesterol-lowering medicine to reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke if you are known to be at risk of heart disease, regardless of your cholesterol level.
You're at risk of heart disease if you have:
The main treatment of choice in managing high cholesterol is a type of medicine called statins. These have been shown both to lower cholesterol and to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. Taken as tablets, statins work by reducing the production of cholesterol in your liver and lowering the amount of 'bad' LDL cholesterol in your blood.
There are different intensities of statins. Your doctor may consider changing you to a stronger dose of statin or may prescribe additional treatments such as fibrates or bile acid sequestrants as well as your statin if your cholesterol is not adequately controlled
Many people, who have experienced a heart attack or unstable angina (chest pain that comes even at rest), may be put on high dose statins regardless of their cholesterol level, because their risk of having further complications is high.
You usually need to take statins for life as cholesterol levels start to rise again once you stop taking them.
Treating familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH)
If you have FH, it's likely that you'll need to take treatment for life to reduce the danger of heart attack or stroke. Normally, you'd be asked to try a statin, and your doctor will be aiming to reduce your cholesterol by 50%.
Succeeding in lowering cholesterol and reaching your target
level is a great achievement, but maintaining it is just as
important. Remember that it's vital to continue taking the
medication that your doctor has prescribed to control your
cholesterol. Even though you probably won't feel any healthier
while you're taking your medication, the chances are that it is
still helping to protect you against heart attack and stroke, and
if you stop taking it, your cholesterol levels are likely to
rise again quickly.
Whatever medicines you take, it's always a good idea to read the information leaflet inside the packet to make sure you understand what you are taking and any side effects that might affect you.
If you are pregnant or thinking of starting a family, it's
important you let your doctor know, as some medicines can be
harmful during pregnancy.
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Your details have been removed from the Pfizer life database | <urn:uuid:9e796d52-e114-4f5a-beba-2fd9874b272f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pfizerlife.co.uk/conditions/high-cholesterol/how-medicines-fit-in/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944972 | 668 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The Membership Manager Control requires additional stored procedures for complete functionality
A useful capability which is not available in the underlying SqlMembershipProvider, is the ability to change a UserName. This is the member's login ID and is used by the SqlMembership Provider as a lookup key in most of its internal database procedures.
In order to provide you with this functionality, the Membership Manager Control attempts to create a stored procedure named qd_aspnet_Membership_ChangeUserName which changes the username value for a particular member.
Another useful capability which is also not available in the underlying SqlMembershipProvider, is the ability to show you a password answer if it is being stored in clear text. To provide this functionality, the Membership Manager Control attempts to create a stored procedure named qd_aspnet_Membership_GetPasswordAnswer which, as you might expect, simply retrieves the password answer.
A frequently requested feature has been recently added to allow filtering on users that are not approved. Since the underlying SqlMembershipProvider has no built-in mechanism for listing unapproved members, the Membership Manager Control attempts to create a stored procedure named qd_aspnet_Membership_FindUnapprovedUsers in order to list the members who are unapproved.
If you are using SQL Server Express (in user instance mode), then the Membership Manager Control will normally have the security privileges to create and execute the two required stored procedures. If you are connecting to SQL Server using SQL Server or Windows Authentication, then it is likely that the Membership Manager Control will not have the rights to automatically create the stored procedures.
Missing Stored Procedures will not cripple the control
If the required stored procedures are not available, then the control will simply disable your ability to change user names and inform you of the problem when you attempt to do so.
Manually installing the stored procedures
If the Membership Manager Control was not able to set up the stored procedures for you, then you may do so manually by running the Sql Script, membershipManager.sql in a "New Query" window of Sql Server Management Studio. This script, available in the Program Files Folder where you installed the Membership Manager Control, basically creates the required stored procedures.
You must then provide execute rights for the account whose identity is being impersonated by your web application. On Windows Server, this is generally the "NETWORK SERVICE" account (Windows Server 2008 R2 provides additional identity options.)
If you require assistance in doing this, please contact our Support Department. | <urn:uuid:5987f3c1-793f-4a4a-9829-6daa852c7077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qualitydata.com/membershipmanager/Help/database | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910012 | 518 | 1.609375 | 2 |
What would George Meade, Robert E. Lee, Henry Burgwyn, Alonzo Cushing, Joshua Chamberlain, and the other heroes of Gettysburg have done with Twitter accounts?
That’s the goal of the first live team-tweeting effort by journalists covering this weekend’s annual reenactment of the epic Civil War battle – or at least one pivotal skirmish.
Four tweeters, armed with smartphones and recruited from two area newspapers, will deliver minute-by-minute coverage of the reenactment Saturday of the fighting at Devil’s Den as part of the battle’s 149th-anniversary event.
One reporter will file from the Confederate side and another from the Union perspective, said organizer Marc Charisse, editor of the Hanover Evening Sun.
“We thought it would enhance people’s understanding of what happened there,” said Charisse, also a Civil War historian, who will be providing color commentary @esmcharisse.
York Daily Record editor James McClure will tweet the “big picture,” Charisse said, an overview of the battle as the reenacted violence at Devil’s Den unfolds.
There’s no question that a few liberties are taken with the battle during the annual reenactment, which has attracted thousands of people to Gettysburg for decades. It is not fought on the actual battlefield (it’s staged on a farm about seven miles away); it is often, as this year, not held on the battle’s actual dates (July 1 to 3); and visitors pay $54 to watch the action over three days as an announcer provides the play-by-play.
Twitter, however, adds a new dimension of social media and instant communication for about 2,000 reenactors, who go to great lengths to replicate 19th-century warfare.
Full story can be found here.
(Hat tip to Chris Stowe.)
Don’t know if it has anything to do with this, but Tweety’s pose here looks awful familiar . . . | <urn:uuid:f961bd12-0b48-4189-b9f3-00207a244de9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://civilwarriors.net/wordpress/?p=4275 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922973 | 437 | 1.960938 | 2 |
A person who inherits under a will is a beneficiary. Pursuant to section 1 201 of the Uniform Probate Code, beneficiary designation means a governing instrument naming a beneficiary of an insurance or annuity policy, of an account with POD designation of a security registered in beneficiary form, or of a pension, profit sharing, retirement, or similar benefit plan, or other non probate transfer at death.
Class beneficiary designation is a designation that names a group of people rather than individuals by name. A beneficiary designation describes the mode by which a deceased personís assets are to be distributed upon his/her death. A beneficiary designation must be clearly written to make sure it is legally binding. | <urn:uuid:8affedb8-0f1b-4f01-9a8d-4a8c615172cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://definitions.uslegal.com/b/beneficiary-designation-Probate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916916 | 139 | 1.570313 | 2 |
What's the best book on how to *structure* an FPGA project?I just received an email from a reader asking a rather interesting question. His message read as follows:
Greetings Mr Maxfield. I have been enjoying your PLDL Newsletter. The personal touches of your blog-like commentary approach are a refreshing touch compared to the multitudes of letters that others tend to publish!
I have a question for you... As a reviewer of books and since you have the art of the casual response and expertise in the logic device arena, you are likely to be the perfect person to answer this question. After being exposed to logic devices for about 20 years, I still consider myself a newbie to programming logic devices as I have been around since the before FPGAs and have to keep myself current with newer technologies. I have been studying Verilog and using it in combination with schematics for my logic designs, most of which fit into the small to medium size FPGA devices. I can't seem to find a good book that gives suggestions about how to structure an FPGA project.
I have seen the end results of some other engineers in their logic projects and they range from a simple schematic logic design to a fairly complex text-only design that is based upon some sort of table of contents located in the main project file.
The people that have used the schematics tend to make what could be very large multi-page schematic designs. The people that use the Verilog text-only design seem to refer to a table of contents which could be rather involved, even if the project is a small FPGA or CPLD device.
Would you be able to recommend a book or other resource that would point me in a good direction for understanding how to create and format the structure of logic-based designs? My knowledge of the structure of projects is a result of learning how to use systems like Quartus (Altera), ISE Design Suite (Xilinx) and Diamond Suite (Lattice).
Please feel free to publish my question as I would expect that there are other experienced-beginners like me that could benefit from your answer. If you do publish, please E-mail me a response anyway and you need not publish my name.
This is an interesting question, because it reflects the way in which a lot of people think when their roots are in a schematic-based, pre-language-driven-design (LDD) world.
I really wish I was standing in front of a whiteboard right now. As this reader says, some people tend to visualize things purely in terms of schematics – others are happier to capture their designs purely in a hardware description language (HDL) like Verilog or VHDL. And then there are folks like myself, who tend to think of things as a hybrid of the two.
Again, I’m imagining myself standing in front of a whiteboard and I’m specifically thinking about how I would describe things to the reader who sent in this question. Let’s assume that we are creating an FPGA design that comprises 10 functional blocks. If we wished, we could capture the top level of the design as a block-level schematic as illustrated below:
Now, someone who comes from a purely schematic-based design background would be happy with the idea of “pushing” into each of these blocks and capturing their contents as lower-level schematics.
By comparison, someone who is familiar with language-based design would be happy with the concept of “pushing” into each of these blocks and capturing their contents using Verilog or VHDL (remember that we’re assuming a purely digital FPGA design here).
If we were to look at the textural HDL equivalent of our top level schematic – which we could automatically generate from the schematic capture system and which would then be presented in the form of the main HDL project file – we would see a list of calls to our ten functional blocks along with the connections (wires / interconnect) linking them together. This is what the reader describes as “…a text-only design that is based upon some sort of table of contents located in the main project file…” The ”table of contents” is actually the calls to the functional blocks.
A lot of people prefer this hybrid approach, whereby the top level of the design is captured graphically as functional blocks and the connections between them, while the contents of the functional blocks are captured in HDL (or as lower-level block-level schematics whose contents are subsequently populated using HDL).
Having said this, a lot of today’s digital logic designers are quite happy to simply capture everything in HDL. The point is that – irrespective of which way you do it – the highest level of the design is essentially a “Contents List” of the functional blocks forming the design. The way in which this “Contents List” is captures and/or presented – graphically or textually – is largely immaterial; they are simply different views of the same thing.
With regard to the question as to "Which is a good book that gives suggestions about how to structure an FPGA project” … hmmm, that’s a tricky one. For this particular reader I think that the hybrid technique of capturing a top-level block-level schematic and then populating the blocks with Verilog is the optimal approach… but which is the best book for this… any suggestions?
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]). | <urn:uuid:e06f9840-1db6-406a-bb25-db308b8ecb17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/other/4231242/What-s-the-best-book-on-how-to--structure--an-FPGA-project- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962308 | 1,278 | 2.34375 | 2 |
New tools for content creation are continually rising on the digital landscape. Today?s content developer must be able to navigate this world with confidence. This bachelor?s degree program is designed to provide the student with the knowledge, critical thinking, and organizational skills necessary for a creative and rewarding journey. Advances in high definition video, storage area networks, and software toolsets have brought about new competencies, enhanced quality, and improved workflow within the digital filmmaking and video production field.
With this in mind, the Digital Filmmaking & Video Production bachelor?s degree program is designed to offer a relevant curriculum to meet the needs of industry while creating an environment conducive to helping students grow intellectually and creatively to meet the demands of tomorrow?s marketplace. Students will have the opportunity to learn to formulate, construct, and deliver digital audio, video, and motion graphics. Graduates of the Digital Filmmaking & Video Production program will be able to apply the emerging digital production techniques to the changing world of mass communication while maintaining high standards of artistic expression.
The Digital Film and Video Production (DFVP) program begins with building a foundation of skill sets using video production hardware such as set-lighting, HD cameras, and other set-related technology as well as learning the basics of maps, masks, and mattes in Adobe?s Final Cut Pro Suite. This allows students to learn the logic that allows them to become effective non-linear digital video editors.
Within their first two years, students will become effective with HD-digital set, field and studio video production, and post-production using the Final Cut Pro Studio Suite. Students will then be introduced to audio-forvideo (four classes) and animation-motion graphics courses (four classes) that will allow them to enhance overall video production abilities. To balance the technical side of the curriculum, students will have training in scriptwriting, storyboarding, conceptual storytelling, producing, and directing. The final year in the DFVP program will be completed by writing, producing, and post-producing a faculty-approved senior project.
Entry-Level Career Opportunities: Production Assistants, Videographers, A/V Technicians, Assistant Editors, Studio Camera Operators, Production Technicians, Character Generator Operator/Graphics System Operators, Media Specialist and Associate Producers | <urn:uuid:1b63b7db-b30a-424c-9f6d-6cd94ad36dd1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ourstudentportfolios.com/ai/tampa/programs/media_arts/digital_filmmaking_video_production/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911009 | 464 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Hydra Joins the Acceleration Party... with multiple heads
- If you have a constant acceleration with a non-zero initial velocity, the time interval for stepping cannot be directly determined. A quadratic equation needed to be used to solve for the time interval. This is due to the fact that the motor speed is dependent on the stepping interval (delay between steps), and the distance the machine travels is also dependent on this velocity as well as the constant specified acceleration.
- (Solved) For some reason, every time I derive the kinematic equation to relate distance, velocity, and acceleration together I get a different result than that which is in the physics textbooks I have used in school. If V = delta x / delta t, and a = (V-Vo)/delta t, if you combine these you get a*deltat + Vo = V = deltax/deltat. Multiplying both sides by deltat, you get a*(deltat^2) + Vo*deltat - deltax = 0. The equation in my textbooks is1/2*a*(deltat^2) + Vo*deltat - deltax = 0. I was forgetting that the V term is actually Vavg which would equal (V-Vo)/2 which answers the factor of 2 difference. Thanks for pointing this out guys!
- Solving quadratic equations while moving is not a good idea. It was too slow and it was actually limiting my maximum speed (the delay from solving the equation was greater than the interval I was using for stepping). The whole idea of doing this is to allow for faster and smoother stepping so a change was needed. I decided the best way was to compute the acceleration scalers (% of desired speed) for each step and to store those in an array. See the next point.
- Storing large arrays (200+ items) of floating point numbers eats up SRAM real fast. A 200 item float array requires 200*4 Bytes = 800 Bytes! That is almost all of the available memory on the ATmega168! To fix this I scaled the acceleration scalers up to integer values. The scalers only range from 0.0 to 1.0 so this was not hard to do and it cut the memory usage in half (integers only require 2 Bytes instead of 4 Bytes for floating point numbers).
- I originally intended to have separate acceleration and deceleration calculations, but it proved to be must faster to just calculate the acceleration values and then duplicate those in reverse for deceleration. I also has a problem when solving the quadratic equation for negative acceleration. The radical is negative if Vo^2 < -2*a*deltax which can happen for deceleration. See the 2 figures below.
- So again, it was must easier to just use the acceleration calculations where acceleration is positive and the value inside the square root can never be negative. To help with this problem, I also added a startup speed variable so the motors can start from a specified velocity. For example, if they have no problem jumping to 0 to 30 inch/min, start them at 30 and then ramp up to 80. While this change, as well as only calculating the positive acceleration values got around this problem, I am still intrigued why this was happening.
v = dx/dt
a = dv/dt
-> multiply both sides by dt:
a*dt = dv
v = vo + a*t = dx/dt
-> multiply both sides by dt:
vo + a*t dt = dx
x = xo + vo*t + 1/2 a*t^2
Perhaps using this formula will also solve your problem of imaginary roots?
The error is quite subtle, but the error comes in the last step: When you have
a*delta t + vo = delta x / delta t,
you can't multiply both sides by delta t. It's because if you plot the a*delta t term, it's growing linearly in time (a triangle), and the velocity growth in time period delta t is the area underneath that triangle, which is 1/2 base times height. If you just multiply by delta t, then you're assuming it's a square, which gives you base*height but is off by the factor of one half :)
As an example, if you want to find the distance traveled by an apple falling for three seconds from rest, if you simply say delta x = 9.8*(3^2), you'll get twice the experimentally measured distance. Because you have to account for the fact that the apple goes more slowly at the start!
Anyway, good job on the software, I'm very excited about anything that supports multiple toolheads!
I use the same table for acceleration and deceleration as it is just a mirror image.
And nophead, thanks for the link! I'll definitely give it a read
Not true: a*deltat + Vo = V = deltax/deltat
True: a*deltat + V_o = V_final
True: V_average = deltax/deltat
Links to this post: | <urn:uuid:fdaa0123-6ff6-48a5-8111-6d818fd5c3c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://builders.reprap.org/2010/03/hydra-joins-acceleration-party-with.html?showComment=1268605700787 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925339 | 1,100 | 2.359375 | 2 |
“Steady growth is good news for railroads and the economy, but there is still more ground to cover before we return to pre-recession levels,” said AAR senior vice president John T. Gray. “Rail is vital to connecting business to the marketplace, and the gradual gain in intermodal traffic as well as carloads shows how broad U.S. economic recovery may be.”
Overall, 15 of 20 commodity categories saw carload gains on U.S. railroads in January 2011 compared with January 2010. Traffic gains in January were led by metallic ores up 63 percent; primary metal products, up 21 percent, and crushed stone, sand, and gravel up 16.2 percent.
Railroads in January also saw growth in the transportation of chemicals and grain. U.S. railroads originated 120,734 carloads of chemicals in January 2011, averaging 30,184 carloads per week, up 5.9 percent compared with January 2010 and the highest monthly average for chemicals in any January since AAR began tracking commodity traffic. Grain averaged 24,514 weekly carloads in January 2011, up 10 percent compared with January 2010.
The five commodity categories seeing declines for the month — grain mill products, primary forest products, coke, nonmetallic minerals, and waste and non-ferrous scrap — together accounted for less than 8 percent of total carloads for the month.
The Rail Time Indicators report, available at www.aar.org, comprises monthly rail traffic data framed with other key economic indicators to show how freight rail is connected to the broader U.S. economy. As previously announced, AAR has made several changes to certain carload commodity groups reported in the Weekly Rail Traffic Report which provides the basis for data in the Rail Time Indicators. Effective Week 1 of 2011, commodity Group 18, Waste and Scrap Materials, has been split into two groups: Iron and Steel Scrap (Group 18) and Waste and Nonferrous Scrap (Group 19). Commodity Group 19 has been renumbered to Commodity Group 20. Crude Petroleum has been moved from the new Commodity Group 20 to Commodity Group 13, Petroleum Products. Finally, Distiller’s Dried Grains has been moved from Commodity Group 8 to Commodity Group 7, Grain Mill Products.
For more information, visit www.aar.org. | <urn:uuid:ec1ecfbe-7489-4f22-b9f8-4ade2cf7aaa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.powderbulksolids.com/news/january-freight-rail-traffic-continues-steady-growth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957733 | 499 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Serious Screen Play
Newest labeling could help stem sun’s skin damage
Buying a sunscreen that really offers protection against skin cancer was supposed to get easier this summer. Instead, it could get even more confusing for consumers looking to protect their skin from the sun’s damaging rays.
New guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration to simplify over-the-counter sunscreen labeling were expected to go into effect in June. A six-month delay, however, means that not all product lines will be following the adjusted rules. Still, informed consumers should keep an eye out for sunscreens that voluntarily feature the new labels.
Gabriela M. Blanco, MD, Assistant Professor of Dermatology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, took time to explain how the new labeling can affect consumer choices:
Q. When the FDA guidelines go into effect, products will no longer be labeled “waterproof” or “sweat proof.” Instead only “water resistant” may be used. Will that mean reapplying more often?
A. Sunscreens have never been waterproof – all the ingredients eventually wash off. They should be applied 30 minutes before sun exposure to allow the ingredients to fully bind to the skin. Reapplication is just as important as putting on a sunscreen in the first place, so reapply the same amount every two hours and immediately after swimming, toweling off, or sweating.
Q. Sunscreens also will no longer be labeled with a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) higher than 50. Why isn’t higher better?
A. While an SPF of 2 will absorb 50 percent of ultraviolet radiation, SPF 15 blocks approximately 93 percent of all incoming UVB rays. SPF 30 blocks 97 percent; and SPF 50 blocks 98 percent. The reason the new FDA guidelines limit the maximum value of SPF to 50 is because there is insufficient data to show that products with SPF values higher than 50 provide greater protection for users than products with SPF values of 50.
Q. With the new guidelines, will different products be needed for children compared to adults, or for overall application versus the face?
A. People do not need different sunscreens. But there are “chemical free” sunscreens that contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide that are less likely to cause allergic reaction or irritation to the skin. These types of sunscreens are good options for children, and especially for anyone with sensitive skin. Regarding sunscreens for the face, some brands are less sticky, more sheer, and less comedogenic (acne aggravating) than others. Most sunscreens, however, work equally well for the face or body, and selecting more than one is more a matter of personal preference.
Q. Brands that don’t offer UVA and UVB ray protection and those with an SPF less than 15 will be required to warn on their packaging that spending time in the sun increases the risk of skin cancer and early skin aging. Why the cut-off?
A. Scientific data has demonstrated that products with an SPF of 15 or higher have been shown to reduce the risk of skin cancer and early skin aging, in addition to helping prevent sunburn. SPF 2 to SPF 14 only helps prevent sunburn. | <urn:uuid:906cc4ab-128e-4876-9e3a-b5a6afb80de9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/life-at/med-talks/sunscreen.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938248 | 679 | 2.84375 | 3 |
As the global economic crisis deepens, our broken health care system continues to neglect an increasing number of uninsured Americans, which will top 50 million this year. Tens of millions more who have health insurance still cannot afford the care they need. The resulting illness from inadequate health coverage will lead to missed days of work and lost jobs, making it harder for us to recover from the recession.
Two weeks ago, the House passed President Obama's economic stimulus plan, which includes $127 billion in federal funding to expand Medicaid and subsidize health insurance for the unemployed. Most of this has been retained in the Senate version of the bill as well.
These measures are a prelude to Obama's proposal for comprehensive health care reform, which will likely boil down to increased regulation of the private insurance industry and subsidies for the poor and middle-class to purchase coverage. Some Democrats will fight to include a competing public plan. However, a weak public plan in our current system could easily become a dumping ground for patients with costly and unprofitable illness who are already shunned by private insurers.
There is a better solution that will expand health care access to all Americans and also help our struggling economy: eliminate private health insurance and create a single-payer system that automatically covers everyone under one national health insurance plan. A single-payer system would be funded by progressive income taxation, rather than unaffordable premiums or employer contributions that distort labor markets and leave workers tied to undesirable jobs. It would also address the fundamental problem of costs.
Private health insurers drive up health care spending with unnecessary overhead - high executive salaries, decreased cost-efficiency from smaller insured groups, and profit. They also increase administrative costs for hospitals and physicians who must deal with hundreds of different insurance plans. As a result, Americans spend 31 cents of every health care dollar on administrative costs, by far the highest rate in the world and much higher than the 17 cents spent in Canada.
Further driving up costs is the unrestricted use of expensive and unproven technology and medications. Such waste is best controlled with a centralized system of payment, as has been done successfully by the Veterans Health Administration. A single-payer system would eliminate enough excess spending to provide every American with the same high-quality coverage, without spending more money than we already do.
China recently announced plans to spend $123 billion to provide universal health care for its 1.3 billion citizens. Two decades after free-market reforms dismantled their system of non-profit rural-based care, drugs and visits with physicians are now unaffordable for most of the poor, who often incur crippling debts to pay for care. Chinese economists argue that providing government funding for universal coverage is important for productivity. Also, not having to worry about catastrophic health care costs encourages people to consume rather than save, providing a direct boost to the economy. These same arguments apply to the United States, where half of all personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures are caused by medical bills.
Many politicians agree that a single-payer system is the best way to eliminate wasteful spending and provide health care to every American, but argue that we cannot win a battle with the narrow interests that defend our broken system. To quote President Obama during his inauguration speech: "Stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply." The economic recession and hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate bailouts and stimulus spending have changed everything. It is finally time for us to move to a single-payer system.
James Floyd, M.D., is an internist and health researcher with Public | <urn:uuid:4fafdb8d-10ca-4f2f-83bf-ec3e99739234> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-floyd-md/more-than-a-band-aid-for_b_165112.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959599 | 715 | 2.125 | 2 |
Introducing organizational change, such as the implementation of online human resources tools, can be a difficult task. Employees who are unable or unwilling to make the transition to a new way of working can be more of an impediment to change than faulty technical installations or poor supplier relationships. How can you help your employees adapt?
Trust and communication — If your employees trust you, they tend to experience greater levels of satisfaction and co-operation at work. Establish open, trusting and cooperative relationships by engaging your employees: communicate with them, empower them to make decisions and support their choices on a regular basis. In turn, they will be more inclined to trust your instincts when you introduce change to the workplace.
Employee status — Employment status can determine loyalty, so your part-time, seasonal or contract employees may feel less committed to your corporate goals and proposed changes. Include them in planning meetings and training sessions, or when you send out information. It is a good idea to involve all parties affected by an organizational change in the change management process.
Organizational culture — Your long-term employees often set the standards of acceptable attitudes and behaviour within your business. They may do so inadvertently; nevertheless, their influence on organizational culture is important. You should manage their participation carefully so that they do not impede change.
With a culture of teamwork established prior to introducing change, you have a solid foundation upon which to build your change effort. In this case, your employees are accustomed to teamwork and already share the co-operative attitude necessary for your success.
Leadership — Your role as a leader is important to the success of implemented changes. Implementing a new system is not a minor operational issue. Changes in your business processes are strategic in nature, so anyone in a leadership role within your business should support them.
Phases involved in implementing change
You can make it easier for your employees to adapt to the new technologies or processes by approaching the changes in phases: preparation, acceptance, implementation and commitment.
Preparation: Build the foundation that leads to commitment
It is up to you, as business owner, to help your employees understand the need for change. If you can explain what is involved, they may begin to accept what is expected of them.
Before you start, there may be some preliminary questions to consider:
- Is your own level of commitment to the change enough?
- Have you considered all available opportunities, choices and risks?
- Have you addressed any organizational or cultural barriers and provided for adequate training and support?
When you are ready, here are some steps that will help build the foundation:
- Identify the need for change. Be clear about why you want it and make a compelling business case for moving forward.
- Communicate with everyone involved early on to build trust and cohesion throughout the business.
- Encourage dialogue among those affected by the change, including part-time and contract employees and those working offsite. Your goal is to get information and set the tone for future communication.
- Determine how ready your business is to proceed with the change process by anticipating any sources of resistance within your business and the possible causes. Don’t try to suppress resistance; if it surfaces, deal sensitively with any emotional responses, and carefully manage expectations. Be clear about the results you want.
Acceptance: Get agreement and create a plan
To establish a course of action and get the support and resources to carry it out, you will need answers to the following questions:
- Who will own the new automated process?
- How should it be run?
- How will you use the information?
- Who is accountable for errors, inaccuracy, security risks and updating information?
- How will you measure business performance?
- Will the current organizational structure change?
When you implement different tools, you may have to redefine some jobs or create new ones, or even restructure departments and teams. Employees may fear that they will be unable to learn new skills, get along with new colleagues, or adapt to the new workplace.
Resistance is normal, especially if your employees don't know what to expect and are focused only on perceived losses. They need to participate in decision-making to feel that they have a voice and a sense of control over their fate. Supportive management and training can make all the difference.
At this point, you may want to consider the following steps:
- Have key stakeholders endorse the new plan and reinforce their commitment.
- Ensure that you have committed support in terms of money, time and people so that you can implement the change.
- Establish a team to design the implementation process and the new structure.
- Define the goals and targets that will move your business from its current situation to the desired position. Include short- and long-term goals related to suppliers, customers and competitors.
- Develop a vision statement of how your business will operate, so that employees have guidelines to help them deal with any unfamiliar situations they may encounter in the new environment.
Implementation: Make the changes
As you make changes, step back and analyze the new systems and processes to check for any problems within the technical systems and the workflow. If there is a negative impact on the effectiveness of your business, some redesign may be necessary.
Implementing the change could include:
- Physical and organizational restructuring
- Development of procedures and methods
- Installation and set-up of new equipment
Commitment: Sustain the changes
Reinforce the new process and behaviours expected of everyone involved through on-going communication. In order to establish commitment, you may have to:
- Assess whether the results meet your original expectations.
- Develop a system to continually evaluate and improve the process.
- Ensure on-going support for the process by celebrating successes and recognizing or rewarding desired employee behaviour.
- Date modified: | <urn:uuid:0d1dd98b-cb0b-4062-9167-4700a30feb69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entreprisescanada.ca/eng/page/2628/sgc-11/sgc-60/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935663 | 1,203 | 1.757813 | 2 |
In an article entitled, No Small Change, Ferriero writes:
The Pew Research Center recently published a report, “The Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future,” in which it found that 72 percent of experts agreed with the statement:He then goes on to offer his views on "the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration to change the way we do things, the way we think about things, and the way we deliver services to the public."By 2020, innovative forms of online cooperation will result in significantly more efficient and responsive governments, business, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions.
It is an interesting article and I find it especially interesting that the Archivist is using a blog in an attempt to directly reach the audience that his agency serves. He refers to himself as "Collector in Chief."
David Ferriero's blog may be found at http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/ | <urn:uuid:52023d72-49ef-4602-b752-093759910db3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/04/the-archivists-blog.html | 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 | 0.948778 | 194 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The truth is; No one likes the government forcing us to do things without discussion or input. Kind of reminds one of the founding battle cry of this country, no taxation without representation. Special Interests, such as the environmental activists, manipulate the legislative process to enable the passage of laws favoring their view with little or no balance or input from opposing viewpoints. Some of the initiatives are good, but it is not good to alienate entire segments of the population without discussion. Not to mention the misrepresentation that always accompanies such efforts. Dollar costs to society for many of the "environmental" initiatives range from balanced against the benefit, to those that could bankrupt the country. Beginning in the 1950's with requiring companies to put in necessary sulpher scrubbers to reduce smokestack emissions, through more unnecessary things like changing the formulation for Air Conditioning from a cheaper more effecient freon that was represented as destroying the ozone layer, to a much higher priced formula that is really no safer to the environment, but benefits the company who was supplying both but unfortunately who's patent for the older formula was running out, to water effecient toilets introduced in the 1980's that unfortunately would not flush, costing the housing industry billions of dollars to replace, to the current CO2 emissions being blamed for "Global Warming" which is the new "Sky is Falling" mantra for the green movement. If the currently proposed regulations are enforced fully they will cost trillions of dollars to implement, effectively bankrupting our economy. I remember in the 1970's there was an environmentally driven scare that there was going to be a new ice age, caused by, the exact same things that are supposedly causing global warming. Science cannot accurately predict the weather 5 days from now, so it does not logically follow that they can accurately predict global effects of anything over time. This is all about power and control. Any idea will do, as long as the group attempting to use it can manipulate government and people to achieve their goal. "Follow the money" as a way to understand the reasons behind things, could more accurately be stated; follow the money or power. No one likes being lied to or manipulated, and much of the anger being shown by the average voter is related to this. Light Bulbs. Not just light bulbs. It is about being forced to do something whether one wants to or not. | <urn:uuid:e3126f59-2a9f-46db-80b0-64b6f8da9cf7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timesfreepress.com/users/SamIam4460/comments/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970412 | 477 | 1.984375 | 2 |
- Missa ‘Vox Clara’ (Choral/Organ Score)
- A Mass in English for the 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal
- Rev. Scott A. Haynes, SJC
- 11" x 17" booklet format
- Product #: SY396
- View larger image
This a a new musical setting of the Mass in English for the 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal. Missa ‘Vox Clara’ was written by Fr. Scott A. Haynes, SJC, a priest at St. John Cantius in Chicago, at the request of Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Archbishop of Chicago. Cardinal George has served for over a decade on the Vox Clara Committee, established by John Paul II, to implement the authentic translation of the official Latin edition of the Roman Missal into English in such a way that reflects the rich, sacred and profound meaning of the Latin text.
Missa ‘Vox Clara’, approved for use by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and I.C.E.L., is written for SATB Choir & Organ but can also be effectively sung in unison with organ or as an SATB a capella work. | <urn:uuid:e0dea8fa-d0ca-4248-b7a7-96690acc9392> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://birettabooks.com/go/webstore/product/missa_vox_clara_choral_organ_score/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932422 | 256 | 1.789063 | 2 |
National economy at mercy of the markets, says IMF
THE Treasurer and the International Monetary Fund are at odds over whether the budget should return to surplus this financial year.
The fund has used its latest report on Australia to raise the prospect of abandoning the planned surplus, saying the authorities had ''scope to delay their planned return to surplus'' should the economic outlook deteriorate sharply.
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, will tell a business breakfast in Sydney today he intends to return to surplus regardless, saying although the task ''is made harder by a fall in commodity prices'', a surplus is ''still our best defence against the current global economic volatility and sends a clear message that we are committed to responsible fiscal policy".
However the IMF believes Australia's reputation is not at risk, describing its public debt as "modest" and saying it has "monetary and fiscal space" to respond to shocks.
It has upgraded its forecast for Australian growth this year from 3 per cent to 3.25 per cent but warns "risks are tilted to the downside".
"For example, a hard landing in China would reduce demand for Australian mineral exports, worsen terms of trade, reduce household income, and could trigger a fall in house prices," it says.
The fund paints a picture of an economy increasingly at the mercy of international markets saying "the increasing share of the mining sector in the economy implies Australia will be exposed more to volatile commodity prices, not only upward but also downward, as in recent months".
While the floating dollar can help cushion the national economy it "offers little help" to regional economies and the industries that suffer the most at the hands of international markets.
The IMF says investment outside of Australia's resources sector is likely to remain weak for some time and the rest of the economy will soon face the challenge of absorbing mining industry workers made redundant as the boom comes off its peak.
Mr Swan will tell this morning's breakfast he is an optimist about China. He will say his talks there have convinced him much of its slowdown is deliberately engineered.
"We really just need to keep things in perspective," he will say. "China is now 40 per cent larger than in 2008 so its growth rate can be 20 per cent lower for it to make the same contribution to global growth."
"It's like Usain Bolt easing off a bit at the end of the 100m because he's 10m in front and has already smashed the world record."
The fund's Asian head of mission, Masahiko Takeda, told reporters yesterday Australia had the ability to respond to both a deeper decline in Asian growth and a worsening European situation. ''Australia has policy space to mobilise,'' he said, noting that for the moment Australian policies struck a good balance between cutting debt and supporting growth. | <urn:uuid:48337e8a-15fa-4bde-93e6-80b39ebf12d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/national-economy-at-mercy-of-the-markets-says-imf-20120920-269r3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958983 | 567 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Trayvon Martin and America's Long History of Legalized Murder
A History of Violence: Trayvon Martin and America's Long History of Legalized Murder
By Michael Gould-Wartofsky; April 07, 2012 - Znet
At the Million Hoodie March, the name of Trayvon Martin was the first name on everyone's lips. But as the behoodied masses of mourners spilled into the streets of lower Manhattan, I heard other names, too, which soon joined Martin's in a litany of murdered children. As the names were spoken, sung, chanted, and echoed through the city streets, the assembled remembered a history that was supposed to have been long forgotten.
Among the marchers, an elder woman could be heard crying, over and over, to any who would listen: "I'm tired! I'm tired! I'm just so tired!" For this woman and others I spoke to, the story of Trayvon Martin's murder remained freighted, not only with the weight of the Martins' unspeakable loss, but with the weight of a history unspoken: above all, the long history of legalized murder extending from Judge Lynch all the way to George Zimmerman.
Extra-judicial "justice" came into its own in this country with the posse comitatus, the slave patrol, and the Fugitive Slave Laws of the 19th century. It continued into the 20th with the lynch mob, the Vigilance Committee, the Citizens' Council and the Klan. And it lives on today in the citizens' patrol, the Minuteman militia, the Patriot movement -- and your local precinct. For white-on-black violence has historically found willing perpetrators in police departments like Sanford, Florida's, as much as in private "neighborhood watches" like Zimmerman's.
This is a history of violence we have yet to truly reckon with. It is a history that teaches us, not only that violence begets violence, but that legalized violence on the part of the state begets extralegal violence on the part of private citizens -- violence, above all, against those marked by race, religion, or presumed place of origin as illegal, criminal, or "out of place."
Immigrants, too, have been targeted for extra-judicial execution, from the murder of 9-year old Brisenia Flores at her home in Arizona in 2009 to the fatal beating of Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi-American mother of five, in a suburb of San Diego just last month. Since 9/11, waves of anti-immigrant violence have coincided with waves of raids and round-ups by federal, state, and local agencies. Such hate crimes have been concentrated in counties (like Suffolk, NY and Maricopa, AZ) where law enforcement has been known to engage in rampant racial profiling.
Every surge in white-on-black and white-on-brown violence has followed a series of signs and signals, of winks and nods from lawmakers, law enforcement, and legal practitioners. The most obvious are the "Castle Laws" and "Stand Your Ground" statutes, which legalize the use of lethal force by private citizens. Less obvious, but equally insidious, is the reign of impunity for police officers who shoot to kill. And those who seek some measure of justice find the police as unwilling to investigate white vigilantes as they are to hold their own officers to account.
The line between law enforcement and lawlessness has been blurred in the streets of our towns and cities.
Take the case of 18-year old Ramarley Graham, who was executed, unarmed and in his own home, by members of the NYPD's Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit in the Bronx on February 2, 2012. Or take the case of 22-year old Rekia Boyd, who was shot dead in Chicago on March 22 by an off-duty police officer who claimed to be "standing his ground," like Zimmerman. Neither Graham's killer nor Boyd's has been charged with any crime at this time. Compare this treatment to that meted out to Black police officer Howard Morgan, facing up to 80 years in prison after being shot 28 times by fellow officers and living to tell the tale.
When cases do go to court, it is the justice system that is invariably indicted. The officers who fired 50 shots into 23-year old Sean Bell on his wedding day in 2006 were acquitted of all charges in 2008. Officer Johannes Mehserle, who pumped a bullet into the back of 22-year old Oscar Grant on an Oakland subway platform in 2009, was released after serving half of a two-year sentence. Similarly paltry charges await the Detroit policeman who, with reality TV crew in tow, gunned down 7-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in her sleep in 2010.
Here, then, lie the origins of vigilante violence in our times: a reign of impunity wherein the rule of law applies only to the ruled and the "tough on crime" crowd condones the very crime they purport to be fighting. This reign of impunity lends a veneer of legality to the private use of deadly force, bestows an aura of legitimacy on vigilante violence, and sanctions the paramilitary sensibility that has led so many white Americans to take up arms against their fellow Americans.
The recent record of the justice system testifies all too eloquently to the priorities that continue to guide its judgments: the priority of white life over Black life, indeed of white property over Black life, and of the liberties of white citizens over the rights of everyone else. Small wonder, then, that it is Black youth who are disproportionately stopped, frisked, arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated -- and, increasingly, executed, with or without a trial.
In the wake of Trayvon Martin's murder, many Americans are awakening to the reality that, nearly 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 50 years after the March on Washington, and three years after the inauguration of the first Black president, our past is hardly past. In the voices of the slain and in the voices of the living, it cries out for a reckoning.
Michael Alexander Gould-Wartofsky is a writer from New York City and a MacCracken Fellow in Sociology at New York University. His writing has received Harvard’s James Gordon Bennett Prize and the New York Times James B. Reston Award, and has appeared in AlterNet, The Huffington Post, Monthly Review, Mother Jones, The Nation, Salon, TomDispatch, and TruthOut, along with ZNet and Z Magazine. He is currently writing a book about Occupy Wall Street. His website is http://www.michaelgouldwartofsky.com. | <urn:uuid:ff5aab5b-203e-44e2-8af4-bd58791b7861> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mostlywater.org/trayvon_martin_and_americas_long_history_legalized_murder | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956665 | 1,370 | 2.375 | 2 |
Answers to questions about recent child sexual abuse cases
In the wake of recent high-profile sexual abuse cases, people are struggling to make sense of these situations and reconcile the allegations with their previously-held views of particular people, institutions, and the nature of child sexual abuse. Many adult victims of child sexual abuse are coming forward to share their stories, and people are asking questions about sexual violence. Many others are experiencing some degree of disbelief, anger, confusion, and grief; this type of trauma mirrors the feelings many sexual assault survivors experience - more evidence of the wide-ranging impact and harm caused by sexual abuse.
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) and the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) work closely together and share similar missions – to prevent all forms of sexual violence. NSVRC understands the impact on victims and their families; and the roles that organizations and communities can play in prevention; and ATSA understands the factors that may lead to the perpetration of sex offenses and the most effective methods of treatment and management for offenders. Both of these perspectives are critical in fully understanding sexual violence and its prevention. Recently, both organizations have fielded calls from media and others seeking insight into the complex dynamics of these alleged crimes. Some questions being asked include:
How could this happen?
Sexual violence thrives in silence, and it’s much more common than people think. Professionals on both ends -- who work with victims and people who sexually abuse -- are not surprised by many of the stories and dynamics in recent reports. They hear similar stories every day. What stands out in some of the recent high-profile cases is that there may have been witnesses to some of these alleged crimes; the seemingly large number of adults who may have known about them; and the way these particular stories have captured the public’s attention.
If this intense spotlight causes us to prioritize the well-being of our children; strengthen the services available to victims and their families; seriously examine the priorities and practices of our institutions; create thoughtful and effective laws to promote public safety; and commit to being engaged and responsible bystanders, then perhaps something good may develop as a result.
Why are so many survivors coming forward now?
As horrific as the stories are coming out of Penn State, Syracuse, the Citadel, churches, etc., it seems that the public, media, and some esteemed institutions may finally be “getting it.” Now, it seems society is ready to examine the dynamics of child sexual abuse and make it an open topic of conversation. Maybe some survivors feel that it is now safe to come forward, because people are listening? Perhaps they are just now realizing that what happened to them as a child was sexual violence? Perhaps they want to do their part to make sure that other children do not have to endure similar abuse? Whatever the reason, we applaud their courage and thank them for coming forward.
What should I do if someone discloses to me that they were a victim of sexual abuse?
If someone you know discloses sexual abuse, believe them, listen attentively, affirm the fact that they are talking about it, and remind them that they were not at fault. Avoid asking questions that may be perceived as blaming or judgmental such as, “Why didn’t you tell anyone at the time?” Instead, offer supportive statements such as, “That must have been awful for you,” or “I’m so sorry you were betrayed in that way.” Offer to help by asking, “Is there anything I can do to support you?” Oftentimes, sexual assault is committed by someone who is known and trusted. In these incidents, it can be very confusing. Feelings of betrayal may cause survivors to doubt others or themselves, but talking about it is part of the healing process. If someone wants to talk to an experienced advocate, help them locate their local rape crisis center or other community resources.
How could someone so well-respected do this?
Many Americans have deeply-ingrained, yet inaccurate, ideas about people who sexually abuse children. Perhaps it’s because of stories, media coverage or TV shows about children being abducted by strangers? Or perhaps the truth -- that most people who sexually abuse children are people that we interact with every day -- is just too overwhelming to grasp? When individuals sexually offend they are often perceived as “monsters” and are defined by their offenses. However when we look at an offender’s entire life, we realize that often they are not “monsters;” like everyone else, individuals who sexually abuse have multiple roles in society and have many aspects to their life and personality. Many of us have been focused on protecting children from stranger dangers that are relatively rare while ignoring the potential for abuse in situations that are much more common.
Does treatment work for sexual abusers?
Treatment of individuals who have sexually abused others is an essential component of a comprehensive system to prevent sexual abuse. The goal of sex offender treatment is to increase an individual’s accountability for their criminal behavior, assist people to develop the skills that will reduce the chance that they will sexually reoffend and increase community safety. Like other kinds of interventions, not every individual responds to treatment in the same way and some will benefit more than others. Any reduction in the rate of sexual abuse must be considered meaningful as it represents the protection of children and adults from victimization.
It is important to remember that many people who commit sexual violence are not apprehended and therefore are not provided the option of treatment. To demonize or ostracize people who are at risk of sexually offending often drives them deeper into silence and shame and prevents them from reaching out for help that could prevent a sexual offence.
What can I do?
We encourage people to continue asking questions, learn the truth about sexual abuse, and talk through feelings and concerns. Become familiar with local resources and experts. Find out about statewide prevention programs and where you can report suspicions of child sexual abuse. You do not have to personally witness something in order to report a concern. Pay attention to the children in your life, and who they are spending time with. Look for sudden or unexplained changes in their behavior. We do not need to become overly paranoid or suspicious of every interaction, but we can become more knowledgeable about potential red flags. Many adults who sexually abuse children seem to prefer the company of children over other adults, and they may create opportunities where they’re inappropriately alone with children. When in doubt, speak up, ask questions and report any suspicions. There are many resources available for helping people build skills to become more effective, empowered, active bystanders. Moving forward, decide what you can do by familiarizing yourself with available options. Model these behaviors in your own life, and support and encourage others to do the same.
What can institutions do?
Now is the time for institutions, organizations and workplaces to look at their own policies and culture. Do employees/students/volunteers know what to do if they suspect someone is being harmed? Is there a “whistle-blower policy” to protect those who report possible wrongdoing? Are there regular trainings on preventing sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence? Is there a general climate of respect and openness? Are there any pictures, calendars, cards, etc., displayed in the workplace that could be perceived as being disrespectful or exploitative? Are there physical spaces that are not easily observable where a crime could occur undetected? This is a crucial time for organizations to assess current practices and update expectations and priorities to prevent sexual violence and other harmful acts.
Sexual abuse thrives in silence. It’s time to talk about it.
Karen Baker is the Director of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in Enola, PA.
Maia Christopher is the Executive Director of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers in Beaverton, OR. | <urn:uuid:754d30f1-1bc6-466c-b63d-14fa86fb8cba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nsvrc.org/news/9215?qt-sidebar_qt_2=0&qt-sidebar_qt_1=2 | 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 | 0.964799 | 1,627 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Taste What You’re Missing: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good
Did you know …
- * Only 20% of what we experience as taste happens in the mouth?
- * The tongue does not have five different areas devoted to the five basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and umami?
- * Taste inclinations can be inherited?
- * Food tastes less sweet and salty with loud noise in the background?
- * The more you drink alcohol, the less likely you are to eat sweets?
Maybe you didn’t know all that, but you do know when food tastes good to you, right? In Taste What You’re Missing: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good, Barb Stuckey — a seasoned food developer to whom food companies turn for help in creating delicious new products — reveals that much of what we think we know about how taste works is wrong. She explains why kids (and some adults) turn up their noses at Brussels sprouts and broccoli, how salt makes grapefruit sweet, and why you drink your coffee black (or with cream and sugar).
As Stuckey tells the story behind why we love some foods and can’t tolerate others, she also provides eye-opening experiments in which you can discover your unique “taster type” and learn why you react instinctively to certain foods. You’ll find ways to improve your ability to discern flavors, detect ingredients, and devise taste combinations in your own kitchen for delectable results.
If you blog or write about food, this is a must-read book. If you simply enjoy food, this is a wanna-read. Either way, you can get a copy — gratis — thanks to Free Press and Cooks&Books&Recipes.
Notes: There are six ways to enter, but it’s not necessary to do all six entries. Choose whichever one(s) you like, and you’ll be entered in the giveaway. Giveaway ends at midnight (EST) on September 30, 2012.
Disclosure: Cooks&Books&Recipes receives books for possible review, though we make no promise that all books received will be featured. We highlight only those cookbooks that we feel will interest our readers. For this giveaway, we received a free copy of the book from the publisher. We received no monetary compensation for our review or giveaway. | <urn:uuid:9c20c40a-9051-4e04-9cf9-d77ac31ef257> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cooksandbooksandrecipes.com/2012/09/taste-what-youre-missing-a-giveaway/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936829 | 517 | 1.960938 | 2 |
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Ellensburg is incorporated on January 1, 1884.
HistoryLink.org Essay 5092
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On January 1, 1884, a Territorial Act ratifies the motion to incorporate the town of Ellensburg. Ellensburg is located in Kittitas County just east of the Cascade Mountains at the confluence of the Yakima River and Wilson Creek.
The area, which lies at approximately the geographic center of Washington, had long been a meeting place for Native Peoples. They held an annual gathering there each fall.
The first white settler was outlaw William Wilson, who arrived in 1867. Wilson built a small cabin which eventually became the trading post known as Robber's Roost. He led a band of Natives and controlled the Kittitas Valley during the 1860s. Anyone wishing to cross the Valley was obliged to pay Wilson and his followers a substantial toll.
Ellensburg is the county seat of Kittitas County, and serves as a banking, trade, and transportation hub for the region’s many farmers and cattle ranchers.
Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Washington, with additional material by Howard McKinley Corning, The New Washington: A Guide To The Evergreen State, Revised Edition (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1950), 464; “Ellensburg On-Line, TM,” (http://www.eburg.com/glance.html).
Travel through time (chronological order):
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What do you really need to know about starting, charging and ignition systems? Two things, basically. Electrical and ignition problems are often difficult to diagnose and replacing parts until a problem goes away creates a lot of unnecessary (and expensive) returns and warranty issues. That's why many stores have a "no return" policy on electrical components. Once the part has been installed on a customer's vehicle, he owns it. If the part turns out to be defective, it can still be exchanged for a free replacement. But if the customer is throwing parts at a problem and the newly installed part fails to fix it, he can't bring it back for a refund.
What's your role in all of this? Traditionally, the counterman's function has been part salesman and part order picker. Your customer tells you what part he wants to replace and gives you the year, make and model of his vehicle. You then look up the correct replacement part, pick it off the shelf (or order it from the warehouse if it is out of stock) and sell it to your customer.
You may also compare the old and new parts to make sure they appear to be the same. If your store has a battery tester and/or starter/alternator test bench, you may also offer to test the customer's original part to make sure it is defective. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary returns and warranty issues, but it does require the know-how to operate the test equipment.
Depending on the customer and the situation, you may also be asked for repair or installation advice. This requires a certain amount of system knowledge. You need to know what the basic parts are in the starting, charging and ignition systems, what these parts do, why they sometimes fail and any related items that should also be inspected or replaced (like cleaning, inspecting and replacing, if necessary, the battery cables when a new battery is installed).
In situations where there are various brands or types of parts to choose from, you may also have to provide additional information about the differences, benefits or cost advantages of Brand A versus Brand B; reman versus new or "economy" versus "standard" versus "premium" (good, better, best). This requires an in-depth knowledge of the products you sell as well as a higher level of salesmanship.
Some parts stores are also asking their counter people to diagnose customer's vehicles, too. When a customer comes in with a "Check Engine" light on, you may be asked to plug a scan tool into his vehicle to read out a diagnostic trouble code. The code will tell you something about the nature of the problem and, hopefully, which system or component may be involved. One thing to keep in mind about codes is they don't actually tell which part needs to be replaced. The code only shows a fault has been detected in a particular circuit or component, which means further diagnosis is almost always necessary to isolate and identify the fault.
A misfire code, for example, may tell you which cylinder is misfiring but not what's causing the misfire. It might be a fouled spark plug or a bad plug wire. But, it might also be a weak ignition coil, a dirty or dead fuel injector, or a compression leak caused by a burned or bent valve, or a blown head gasket.
Nobody said your job was easy. And it's only going to get harder as automotive technology becomes more and more complex. So let's quickly review the basic components in the starting, charging and ignition systems so you can better understand and sell these parts.
The battery is a voltage reservoir that provides electricity to crank the engine, and to operate the ignition system, onboard electronics and other electrical accessories. All automotive batteries are 12 volts (12.6 volts when fully charged). Inside are six cells with lead plates surrounded by an electrolyte, a very corrosive mixture of water and sulfuric acid. In "gel" batteries, the acid is held in a paste between the plates, so it cannot leak or spill. The chemical interaction between the acid and lead plates is what produces and stores the electricity.
Automotive batteries must be kept at or near full charge to function properly. If the battery becomes discharged (run down), it may not be able to provide enough current to start the engine or operate the other electronic or electrical systems on the vehicle. If the battery is left in a discharged state for very long (more than a few days), it can suffer permanent damage that will reduce its ability to accept a charge and produce current. Batteries can run down if there is a problem with the charging system, or if the vehicle is not driven often enough or long enough to fully recharge the battery.
Average battery life is only about four or five years. Hot weather shortens battery life by increasing evaporation of the liquid inside. Cold weather slows the chemical reactions and reduces the battery's ability to produce power. If a battery won't hold a charge, goes dead and won't accept a charge or tests defective, it must be replaced.
Batteries come in different "group" sizes that vary according to their dimensions and post configuration. A replacement battery must be the same or a compatible group size.
Batteries also have different power ratings. One of these is Cold Cranking Amps (CCA). Bigger is usually better. A replacement battery should have the same or higher CCA rating as the original battery (typically 450 to 600 CCAs). The bigger the engine, the more amps it needs for reliable cold weather starting.
When batteries are sold, sell the oldest ones first to keep your stock fresh. The date code reveals when the battery was manufactured. The number indicates the year, and the letter corresponds to the month (A = January, B = February, C = March, etc.).
Customers will also have to decide how much "warranty" they want to buy. Replacement batteries come with warranties that typically range from 24 to 72 months. As a rule, the longer the warranty, the better the battery - and the higher the price.
Batteries should be fully charged before they are installed. The vehicle's charging system should also be checked to make sure it is operating correctly. The charging voltage should usually be about 1-1/2 to 2 volts higher than battery voltage.
Other items that may be needed include battery cables, anti-corrosion washers for the battery terminals, a new battery tray and/or battery hold-down hardware and clamps.
The starter motor cranks the engine when the engine is started. There are several basic types: direct drive, gear reduction and permanent magnet. Starter motors usually last for many years because they are only used for starting.
The most common cause of starter failure is prolonged cranking. This causes the motor to overheat. Starters also wear out after years of service if the brushes, bushings or starter drive become worn. Starters also have a solenoid that routes current to the motor when the ignition switch is turned to the crank position. A defective solenoid will prevent the starter from working. The starter drive mechanism that engages the flywheel may also stick or fail preventing the starter from working. Most times, the solenoid and drive mechanism can be replaced separately.
A replacement starter (new or reman) must have the same bolt pattern and electrical connections as the original, and the same number of teeth on the drive gear. Exchange units must be the correct one for the application and complete to receive full core credit. Permanent magnet starters must be handled with care because the magnets are brittle and can easily crack. Related items that may also have to be replaced include battery cables and engine ground straps.
The alternator is a belt-driven generator that produces electricity to keep the battery charged, and to provide amperage for the ignition system, fuel injectors, fuel pump, lights and electrical accessories. Alternators produce alternating current (AC), which is converted to direct current (DC) by a diode trio (rectifier) on the back of the unit.
Alternator charging output increases in proportion to the electrical load on the charging system and engine speed. Charging output is controlled by a "voltage regulator" which may be mounted inside or on the back of the alternator "internally regulated," or somewhere else under the hood "externally regulated." On most newer vehicles, the powertrain control module (PCM) regulates charging output.
If an alternator is overloaded, it may overheat and fail. An alternator failure will cause the battery to run down and go dead. Symptoms of a charging problem include a low battery, dim head lights, hard starting or a charging system warning light.
A replacement alternator (new or reman) should have the same or higher amp rating as the original. If the replacement comes with a pulley (some do not), make sure it matches the original (same diameter, width and belt type).
Related items that may also need to be replaced include the regulator (externally regulated applications only), drive belt, battery cables and/or battery.
All gasoline engines use spark plugs to ignite the air/fuel mixture. Most engines have one spark plug per cylinder, but a few have two. Each spark plug has electrodes on the end which a spark jumps across when high voltage is routed to the plug from the ignition coil.
Spark plugs eventually wear out and can become fouled by carbon deposits. A fouled plug may misfire causing a loss of power and fuel economy, and a big increase in exhaust emissions. Fouled or worn spark plugs can make an engine hard to start and run poorly. Replacing the spark plugs can restore normal performance.
Under normal driving conditions, a set of standard spark plugs will usually last about 45,000 miles.
Refer to the vehicle owners manual for the recommended replacement interval. Long life plugs, which have center electrodes made of wear-resistant metals such as platinum or iridium, typically go up to 100,000 miles before replacement is needed. Plugs with platinum on both the center and ground electrodes ("double" platinum plugs) or those with multiple ground electrodes experience even less wear than plugs with a single platinum or platinum-tipped electrode. When selling replacement spark plugs, upgrading to a long life platinum or iridium plug can extend service intervals. For more information on long-life plugs, see Platinum & Beyond.
Spark plugs have different thread sizes (metric and SAE), different diameters, lengths, electrode configurations and "heat" ranges. Replacement plugs must be physically interchangeable with the original plugs and have similar heat characteristics. Follow the plug manufacturer's recommendations or refer to the vehicle owner's manual or emissions decal.
SPARK PLUG WIRES
The spark plug wires (ignition cables) carry high voltage from the coil or distributor to the spark plug. Some wires have carbon-impregnated fiberglass strands inside to carry the voltage while others have spiral-wound "mag" wire. There is one plug wire for each spark plug, and the wires can be replaced individually or in sets.
Plug wires can deteriorate with age causing misfires, hard starting and poor performance. Wires should be replaced if the boots or terminals are loose, damaged or corroded, if the wires are cracked or sparking or if their internal resistance exceeds specifications.
On late model engines with coil-on-plug (COP) ignition systems, there are no plug wires because the coils are mounted directly on the spark plugs. On engines with coil-near-plug (CNP) ignition systems, each individual coil has a short plug wire that connects to the spark plug. The wire is part of the coil assembly and cannot be replaced separately.
Wire sets come in various types: economy, standard, premium and performance. The higher the grade (and the price) of the wire set, the more durable are the materials used in the wires and insulation. As a rule, the whole set of wires should be replaced if one or more of the old wires are in poor condition. Wires should be installed one at a time so as not to mix up their firing order.
The ignition coil is a transformer that provides high voltage to fire the spark plugs (25,000 to 40,000 volts!). If the engine has a distributor, it will have one coil for the entire ignition system. If the engine has a distributorless ignition systems (DIS), there may be one coil per cylinder, or one coil for every pair of cylinders.
Coils seldom fail, but when they do they can't provide voltage to the spark plug(s). On a single coil ignition system, a coil failure will cause the engine to quit and prevent it from starting. On a multi-coil ignition system, it will cause a misfire in only one or two cylinders (if the coil is shared).
Coils can be tested by measuring their internal resistance with an ohm meter. If the coil's "primary" or "secondary" resistance is out of specifications, the coil needs to be replaced. Performance upgrade coils provide more voltage for reliable ignition at higher engine speeds.
Electronic ignition systems all use some type of transistorized switching module to turn the coil(s) on and off. On some vehicles (GM and Ford), the module may be mounted on or in the distributor. On DIS systems, it is often part of the coil pack assembly. Modules can be damaged by heat and vibration. A module failure will usually cause a no-spark, no-start condition. GM High Energy Ignition (HEI) modules in older vehicles require a thin layer of dielectric grease underneath to conduct heat away from the module. Forget the grease and the module may not live long.
Ignition modules may receive a trigger signal directly from a distributor pickup (magnetic, Hall effect or Optical), a crankshaft position (CKP) sensor or the PCM. A fault in any of these other components or the wiring can prevent the ignition system from firing.
Platinum & Beyond
Long-life, platinum-tipped spark plugs are used in most new vehicles because they provide significant benefits. Long-life plugs allow vehicles to meet emissions for up to 100,000 miles and reduce the need for maintenance. But the trade off is fewer replacement sales and less ignition-related service and repairs. Fortunately, long-life spark plugs have also created a tremendous sales opportunity for the aftermarket by providing a premium and more profitable product.
One spark plug manufacturer said sales of its premium platinum spark plugs continues to gain market share and outpace projections. Why? Because many people see the advantages of installing premium spark plugs (longer life, fewer misfires, better performance, fuel economy and emissions) and will spend a few extra bucks over the price of a standard spark plug to upgrade the ignition system when the plugs are replaced.
Plug manufacturers are also using other exotic materials in spark plug electrodes to extend plug life. Some of today's platinum plugs have side electrodes made of nickel-yttrium, chromium-nickel or silver-nickel alloys. In Europe, there are plugs that use yttrium for both the center and ground electrodes. The newest electrode material, though, is iridium, which is said to have even better corrosion and wear resistance.
Regardless of what types of metals or electrodes are used in a spark plug, no plug will magically transform a Kia into a Corvette. But premium plugs will provide the best possible ignition performance and continue to do so for a longer period of time than standard spark plugs. | <urn:uuid:3d2cee56-be3f-4af4-ae32-f4ccdc903ff7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dev.counterman.veridean.com/Article/37446/ignition_blast_off.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932853 | 3,198 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Assume that out of 100 people chosen randomly in a survey in Portland 30% indicate that they vote democrat.
a) Estimate the proportion of people in Portland which vote Democrat. Give a 95% confidence interval for that proportion.
b.) Test on the 95%-level the hypothesis that there are more than 50% which vote democrat. Determine also the p-value.
Since I don't have the expectaction, variance or the standard deviation I am having trouble with parts a and b. | <urn:uuid:51719428-e01b-40fe-b0d0-d115b0868f92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/219727/confidence-level | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915363 | 102 | 2.34375 | 2 |
By Melanie Kondor
College is long over for the spring semester, and many students are trying to stay active during their summer vacations. This time of year is filled with fun, relaxation, and -- most of the time -- the sun! Even though this summer started off as not-so-hot and oh-so-groggy (and full of rain), we still need to be safe and healthy in this hot and humid season. There are many great ways to be healthy and active during the summer, and they are all easy to do.
There are many hobbies that students are getting involved in to stay physically active this summer. It is not only important that our bodies stay active during the summer, but as college students, we should keep our brains active too. After speaking with several college students from the area, I learned a lot of new ways that students are staying active during their time off from school (some of these ways involve NOT having time off from school though!).
Some students that are staying active in the summer, like Nicole, a senior at Connecticut College, are studying abroad. Nicole is finishing up her study-abroad term this summer in London, England, and loving every minute of it. This is a great way to keep your brain active during your time off from school in the summer.
Another student keeping their brain active is Ryan, a senior at the University of Hartford. Ryan is taking a summer course in history online this summer. Stephanie, a graduate student enrolled in Fairfield University’s accelerated nursing program, is also working very hard to keep her brain healthy and active this summer. Her summer consists of several different nursing courses, lots of clinical hours in various hospitals, and, in her downtime, Sudoku puzzles! These are all great ways to keep our minds working hard in the summer when we are not in school; other (less expensive) ways to do so are to read books for pleasure, or to do crossword puzzles.
I also spoke with many students who are aiming to keep their bodies healthy and active during the summer. Meredith is a Bunnell High School graduate as of June and she is looking to avoid the dreaded “Freshman 15” before she even arrives at Hofstra University in the fall. She is doing so by dieting and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables during the summer; she has also given up fast food and pizza entirely!
Another student trying to stay in shape this summer is Veseth, a senior at UCONN. Veseth purchased a gym membership this summer and has been attending regularly since school got out in May. His good friend, Joe, also a senior at UCONN, often joins him at the gym when he does not work at a local distributing company. Joe’s job keeps him on the move constantly and it involves lifting heavy boxes all day; Joe says it is a great way to get paid to work out. Many students say that they find motivation in staying healthy especially during the summertime.
Some hobbies that students are getting involved in this summer are listed below. There are tons of other physical hobbies out there that are easy to pick up, especially with the warm weather of the summer months. Feel free to comment with your own hobbies!
-Frisbee or Ultimate Frisbee
-Baseball or softball
Some other general safety tips for the summer are as follows:
- Drink plenty of water! (About 6 or 8 glasses a day to be specific)
- Wear plenty of sunscreen and reapply immediately after swimming
- Also reapply every 2-3 hours when outdoors
- Be sure to wear a helmet when biking, rollerblading, etc.
- Wear light colors in the summer as they reflect the sun’s energy
- Avoid alcohol and caffeine consumption as much as possible; these types of beverages as well as carbonated beverages, like soda, can dehydrate the body.
- Wear hats or sunglasses when outside.
- Eat light meals more often during the day.
- Especially fruits and veggies
Some things that I am personally doing to stay active this summer include returning to my high school job at Stop & Shop, as well as interning here at Church Hill Classics! I am also keeping myself busy by going for runs around my neighborhood, attending a few concerts and shows (for all ages) with friends, and spending time with my family. Other plans for my summer involve some serious beach time (with plenty of sunscreen!), maybe a road trip here or there, and of course visiting some friends from school.
Check out these links for more information on staying active this summer:
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission - Summer Fun Brings More Emergency Room Visits
eHow.com - How to Stay Healthy During Summer
Every College Girl - Fun Ways to Stay Fit This Summer
The Ball State Daily News - College, high school age Hoosiers more active and healthy, report shows | <urn:uuid:b1e10bbc-d044-4d4f-851d-d59b238a2142> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diplomaframe.com/blog/tabid/178/entryid/148/How-Do-College-Students-Stay-Active-in-the-Summer.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975016 | 1,007 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Top 9 Choking Foodsby Lindsay Hutton
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), one child dies every five days from choking on food, making it the leading cause of death in children ages 14 and under. The AAP is calling for the food industry to change the design and labels of foods that pose a choking risk to young children. Read on to discover the biggest choking hazards, and find ways to make them a little safer for your child.
1 of 10
Hot dogs are one of the most common foods that children choke on. To minimize risk, cut them lengthwise and then chop them up into very small, irregular shapes. | <urn:uuid:9af150a6-e854-4286-8e08-7c60a826b1f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://life.familyeducation.com/slideshow/safety/65468.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933767 | 132 | 2.703125 | 3 |
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Stop hunting and poaching! Rhinoceroses are an endangered species in Africa. Imagine you are on a nature reserve in Botswana working to conserve these precious animals.
At the end of the 20th century, African rhinoceroses came close to extinction. Why? Rhino horns were very valuable. They were sold to make medicines and dagger handles. The demand for rhino horn led to mass hunting and poaching.
African countries such as Botswana have game reserves that are committed to increase the numbers of rhinoceros. They are conserving rhinos in safe, heavily guarded sanctuaries. Conservationists plan to relocate and reintroduce rhinos to places they may have lived historically.
On the reserves, you could come face to face with a rhino! Rhinos have very poor eyesight, so they sometimes mistake a large vehicle for an enemy. They charge aggressively! After they are close enough to see how large their target really is, they usually veer off to avoid a confrontation. Imagine if you were in one of these vehicles!
Cover your art area with newspaper. Use recycled boxes and Crayola® School Glue to construct a model of a four-wheel drive vehicle like one you might see on a nature reserve. Air-dry your vehicle.
On construction paper, use Crayola Washable Markers to create jungle-like camouflage, crisp black and white zebra stripes, or any pattern of your choice. Experiment with overlapping colors, drawing fine lines with marker tips, and making broader lines with the side of your marker. Cut the paper to fit the body of your vehicle. Glue on. Air-dry the decorated vehicle.
Cut windows from white paper. Draw black silhouettes on the windows. Glue on and air-dry. Cut four circles for wheels from corrugated cardboard. Paint with Crayola Washable Tempera Paint and Paint Brushes. Air-dry wheels flat. Glue to vehicle. Air-dry vehicle on its side.
Study books, pictures, and films about rhinoceroses. Learn about their eating habits, size, weight, habitats, and other interesting facts. Use Model Magic to sculpt a full-grown rhinoceros, which would be approximately 2/3 the size of your vehicle. Air-dry at least 24 hours.
Mix black and white paint to make a gray rhinoceros color. Paint your rhino. Air-dry the animal.
Glue your rhino and vehicle onto a cardboard base. Use markers on construction paper to draw and color bushes, grass, trees, and any other terrain. Add tabs on the bottom of your drawings. Cut around drawings and tabs. Bend tabs and glue in place on cardboard base. Air-dry your entire display. You’re ready for a Rhino Rescue!
How in this media rich era can we use students’ creative energy to develop original songs and visual posters that captur
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People around the world give thanks for their food. Celebrate a harvest of pineapples, pumpkins, or pomegranates-and sho
Display the 7 principles of Kwanzaa in a one-of-a-kind accordion window book.
Create a Model Magic® finger puppet of a president you research then use puppets to interview other presidential finger
Picasso’s art career spanned many decades and included a variety of styles and influences. Create a portrait collage ins
Create your own coral reef and learn about these delicate ecosystems.
Update an ancient craft with contemporary designs and art materials. These holiday ornaments are light and unbreakable,
Paper-bag puppets hold original poetry about pirates, pets, or any preferred topic. Young writers put the puppet's arms
Our crayons have been rolling off the assembly line since 1903, and you can see how it’s done.
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Be the first to know! | <urn:uuid:beaaaedc-9d12-493b-b4ea-864a02b29883> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crayola.com/lesson-plans/rhino-rescue-lesson-plan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919554 | 821 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Perception/Reaction/Outcome Problem 1
Here is one of those hypothetical realities about which I am proposing we use as a means of opening ourselves up to possibilities. (I like to use the game boy's jargon now to make my points...now ain't this 'fun'?)
Let's keep this first one short so we can all focus on it and come up with some possible (or probable) outcomes. based on what may, or may not, be reality as we all understand it.
Just suppose that all the people I told you about being involved in this were, in fact, really involved in this going all the way back to 93. Imagine that what I told you all about the nurse 'setting me up' for an attack by a group of his co-workers was in fact TRUE, (come on...humour me) and that those people you decided were really just a manifestation of my paranoid delusional mental illness, were those same people, who got caught psychologically abusing a worker. So they then decided to conceal the truth about what they did to take care of their own interests. Suppose the hospital administration then told them they were not to admit to anything.
In theory now, do you think that group of people would be quite happy to go along with that instruction?
Do you think they would tend to go along with what the original protagonist had done because of their “participation” in it?
Do you think they would have any sense of guilt at all, or would they perhaps look for ways to blame their victim for it?
Is blaming the victim for being a victim a fairly common phenomenon?
Do you think that may have something to do with such participants wanting to delude themselves that such things could not happen to THEM because they won't CHOOSE to be a victim?
Does that idea give them a false sense of security?
Does it also help them to excuse themselves in what they do when they help to victimize someone by handing the responsibility for their thinking and behaviour, to their victim?
Do you suppose that is what that line in the psychiatric nurse's so called 'training' (in my own hypothetical case) means when it states“what you do with problems is hand them to someone else?”
Do you think they notice that when they do that, they simultaneously support and enable the aggressor who can then 'hide' in plain sight within the group?
Now if such a hospital administration were to focus on politics and appearances as their first priority, would that end up eventually affecting them negatively as a direct result of such a focus? Could they be blindsided about what was to come?
What if they pulled in a whole lot more people to actually observe the targeted victim? Could that end up being a real problem for them in the end, if all those people were, in fact, the 'strangers' the targeted victim 'claimed' were talking about her, right in front of her, like she was not there?
Would such an administration regret that they had not listened to the victim when she had come to them offering them resolution, with discretion, long before this all went public?
Even if no one took any legal action at all against the aggressor who started it all, would everyone else believe that their own reputations were not harmed by their failure to deal with the problem with all the ethics and integrity they CLAIM is what they are all about?
Is it even possible to keep such an event 'secret' when all these people are involved in it even if you continued indefinitely to tell the victim there were no 'people' in it and that nothing had happened in reality at all?
Do you think that the destruction of the victim’s concrete life as a result would matter to them at all? Or would the victim be considered to be expendable?
Is it possible that the people in control of everyone and everything (or who want to be anyway) could end up destroying their own reputations BECAUSE of the desire to control everything and everyone?
It sounds almost like self destructive, self fulfilling, prophecy doesn't it? Or is that just me reading too much into things again?
I am speaking hypothetically of course but, is it not a good mental exercise for all of us to theorize about possible ultimate outcomes, preferably before they get so bad that any salvaging of the reputations of those involved becomes pretty much impossible? | <urn:uuid:de7dc0fa-f45b-438c-bbfe-ee14350c333f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.counterpsych.com/aspx/m/802449/beid/407822 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988398 | 906 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The visitor center, museum area and video room are all wheelchair accessible. There are wheelchairs available for visitor use upon request.
Did You Know?
Russell Cave National Monument is the oldest rock shelter used regularly for a home in the Eastern United States. It was inhabited during all Prehistoric time periods: Paleo, Archaic, Woodland and Mississippian. Virtually every culture for over 10,000 years is represented by artifacts found here. | <urn:uuid:d14b4267-2a1a-4f35-8f01-3df5740a1b90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/ruca/planyourvisit/accessibility.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93959 | 90 | 2.1875 | 2 |
‘…an Obama defeat will speed our nation’s decline…pushing us toward a more fractious America…’
…the likely Romney focus on deficit control will risk another recession while precluding needed public investment in infrastructure, green technologies, and education. America’s future depends on such public investment much more than on controlling the deficit immediately. An Obama victory is the nation’s best defense against retreat from its future responsibilities, from caring for the poor and protecting middle-class opportunities, from the country’s growing commitment to minority rights and its global responsibility to set values of fairness and good sense—not just more troops and targeted drones—as a model for the world. Since last fall, Obama has talked a better game than he did in the first years of his presidency…A second term could be a more enlightened one, and he may yet become one of America’s finest presidents. This will be a historically critical election.
more, at Commonweal (an “Independent journal of religion, politics and culture edited by lay Catholics.” | <urn:uuid:01c24753-b0d2-4027-98e9-abede120a994> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesmithian.tumblr.com/post/29838725066/an-obama-defeat-will-speed-our-nations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954717 | 222 | 1.84375 | 2 |
- SPECIAL REPORTS
Many companies are rearranging their assembly operations into cells. According to an Industry Week survey, 19 percent of U.S. manufacturers practiced cellular manufacturing last year. In addition, when plant managers were asked what lean practices they rated as "extremely effective," cellular manufacturing was singled out by the greatest number of respondents—50 percent.
Cellular manufacturing is loosely defined as small-batch production of parts, subassemblies or final assemblies using machines grouped closely together into cells. Often arranged in a U shape, cells are typically dedicated to a narrow range of highly similar products. Ideally, the cells contain all the equipment and resources necessary to assemble their products.
The list of potential benefits of cellular manufacturing is impressive. It can reduce inventories of work in process (WIP) and finished goods. It can decrease both setup time and throughput time. And, it can improve product quality and increase flexibility.
That said, cellular manufacturing is not for everyone, nor does it always produce the desired results. Equipment underutilization is one potential drawback, and the strategy may be at odds with traditional cost-accounting methods or union work rules. And while manufacturers may have little difficulty arranging machines closer together, the real trick is achieving continuous flow.
To learn the real story about cellular manufacturing, ASSEMBLY magazine hosted a panel discussion at the Assembly East show in May in Fort Washington, PA. Key personnel from four leading regional manufacturers argued the pros and cons of this critical manufacturing strategy. The panelists were:
- Jack Czajkowski, vice president of operations for Stryker Howmedica Osteonics (Rutherford, NJ), a manufacturer of artificial joints and other medical devices.
- James H. Curren, integrated product team and support cell manager with Boeing Military Aircraft and Missile Systems (Ridley Park, PA).
- Don Mingos, senior manufacturing engineer with the Productivity Solutions Group at Ingersoll-Rand Co. Tool & Hoist Div. (Athens, PA).
- John Vitellaro, a senior manufacturing engineer with Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems (Archibald, PA).
Q: Why did your company consider cellular manufacturing? What benefits have you seen from it?
Czajkowski: Our big challenge was inventory. We make hip and knee replacement joints, and doctors have to bring a lot of different parts to surgery. We can’t afford to keep all those parts in inventory. At the same time, we can’t afford any delays in shipping. Since we implemented cellular manufacturing, 98 percent of our customers can expect same-day shipment. Costs have been reduced by 10 percent annually since 1992, while sales per employee have more than doubled.
Mingos: Over the past 15 years, we converted our entire facility to cellular manufacturing. Both WIP and finished product inventories have been reduced by more than 50 percent, and manufacturing cycle time has been reduced by more than 75 percent. So it’s been a drastic change to our way of life.
Curren: For us, cells grew out of Boeing’s overall approach to lean manufacturing. One of the main drivers was inventory. The cost of keeping a lot of inventory adversely affected our ability to bid for jobs. If we were to compete, we had to take a lean approach to the whole facility. With the help of cellular manufacturing, we went from a push system to a pull system. Now, we only keep one shift-set of parts inventory in the queue, which opened up a lot of extra floor space for us to take on more work.
We build the Apache and Chinook helicopters, as well as the V-22 Osprey, and we intermingle their production now. It’s not segregated. We are better able to use our people with the work in cells. Training is a lot easier.
Vitellaro: We realized that if we didn’t start reducing costs, we risked losing a $10 million program from the Navy. How do you reduce cost? Eliminate waste. How do you eliminate waste? One way is through cellular manufacturing. When we were done, we went from 8,000 square feet to 2,700 square feet, and all the cells feed each other. We went from carrying $4 million of WIP inventory per day to $180,000 per day. As a result, not only did we keep that $10 million program, we also secured an additional $80 million in business to build other things.
Q: Did converting to cellular manufacturing result in job losses?
Curren: Yes, we eliminated a lot of inventory management jobs, and we got out of the fabrication business. But, better than half of everyone who lost their job was placed into an assembly position. We retrained folks who had been here 15 to 25 years and done nothing but run machine tools or control parts inventory. These people made a commitment to us, so we owed it to them to bring them into the assembly arena.
Q: What incentives do you use to get workers to embrace cellular manufacturing?
Curren: We organized employee involvement (EI) teams for each cell. We also instituted gain-sharing systems for each aircraft program. Incentives are handled not so much by team, but by whole aircraft programs or by the whole plant. When we first started, morale was at an all-time low. But now it’s starting to be embraced and people are running with it. We’re moving into a new $30 million facility dedicated to the V-22 Osprey, and the entire layout was designed by the workers from the floor.
Czajkowski: Our incentive is continued employment! You can talk about cellular manufacturing with your workforce, but in some cases, you have to do it, or you’re out of business.
Q: How long does it take to implement cellular manufacturing?
Czajkowski: It depends on the organization. I’ve implemented cellular manufacturing in a union plant, where I’m at now, and in a nonunion shop.
In the nonunion shop, our people absolutely embraced it. Within a year, we saw the mind-set turn around. The people who were the problem were the exempt and salaried staff, because we put them into cells, too.
If you’re unionized, it takes a little longer. We had to agree to a memorandum of understanding with the union as to what flexibility meant, what the expectations were, and how much people could move around. The real militant union people on the floor gave us a hard time. But we worked through it.
Curren: Boeing is a union shop, and we had to build cellular manufacturing into the contract, including the gain-sharing system. We grade each team by level of achievement. We’re almost at the point now where we can give each team a daily metric to meet, such as defects. We meet for a minimum of an hour each week to talk issues. Approximately 84 percent of our workforce is in EI teams, and our goal is to have 100 percent. There is an incentive to be an EI leader. EI leaders earn an additional 75 to 80 cents per hour.
Q: How do you organize EI teams?
Curren: Each cell has its own team. At first, we tried to organize teams by skill: sheet-metal assemblers, airframe builders, aircraft electricians, aircraft mechanics. However, once we started moving the work into cells, we had aircraft electricians and mechanics working within the same cell, so we got away from skill-based teams and organized teams by cell or shop. When you do that, you often get a lot of new ideas. An electrician may have a suggestion for mechanical installation.
At the lower pay grades, our contract allows us to combine electricians and mechanics jobs into a new job—aircraft assembler. Workers in that job can do everything up to splicing wires or hydraulic tubing. They can do the initial routes. In our next contract, we’re going to push for more cross-training to give us more flexibility.
Czajkowski: We require extensive cross-training. Our goal is to have each worker spend 5 percent of the year in cross-training. For each skill, every team member is rated as to whether he can’t do it, he can do it with help, he can do it fully, or he can teach others to do it. Then, every month, the teams have to report on their progress. How many people know all the different tasks? How many people have progressed to the next block?
According to our agreement with the union, anyone can be asked to do a higher skill level, but they can’t be disciplined if they can’t do it. And, they can be required to do an equal or lower skill job. That gives us a lot of flexibility in the shop.
Curren: We involve both line workers and line supervisors, and you have to listen to their ideas. Once they saw that their ideas were embraced, there was no resistance. And, a lot of their ideas made sense. After all, these people are touching the product every day. Now that the teams are in place, my biggest problem is involving the support organizations, such as engineering and quality.
Q: How do you work with suppliers to reduce inventory and implement just-in-time manufacturing?
Czajkowski: In some cases, such as forgings, inventory is kept on our floor on consignment. We get billed for it as we use it. In other cases, such as bar stock, our suppliers visit our plant regularly to replenish our racks. We let the suppliers determine the minimum and maximum levels.
Vitellaro: We work with our suppliers. We want them to realize the value of cellular manufacturing, too. When some of our suppliers get an order, they want to start cutting chips right away. They don’t know what it is to be lean. They don’t know about single-minute die exchanges to cut down on machining time. They’re still working on 4-hour setups for this machine and 3-hour setups for that machine. So, we tell them what we’re trying to do, and we share our knowledge with them.
Q: How has cellular manufacturing affected your inventory turns?
Vitellaro: Our goal is "take one, make one," but we knew we couldn’t do that right off the bat. We decided to keep 1 day of inventory on the floor, and 1 day behind it. That way, I have a 1-day cushion in case something happens. We’re not Toyota. Our suppliers are not all within a 100-mile radius of our plant. If a truck blows up on the way to the plant, my line’s down. We had to put some rules in place about clamping down on inventory.
Q: How do you integrate process departments, such as painting or injection molding, into workcells?
Vitellaro: We just bought a powder coat line. We brought the cell right to the paint line. We really wanted to bring the paint line to the assembly line, but we couldn’t do it.
After we installed the powder coat line, a new product came up that needed to be painted. However, after we considered setup Arial, we discovered that it was easier to get another paint booth than to go through constant changeover.
There’s no doubt that we have extra capability now, as a result of cellular manufacturing. SomeArial, a machine has to work at its own pace. A wave soldering machine or a reflow oven, for example. So you do have to maximize equipment utilization, and you may need to compromise. We have a process that requires a silver-filled, conductive epoxy. It’s very expensive, about $4 per gram. Within the required cycle time, we can only do four units before the batch is exhausted. So if I practice "take one, make one," I’m throwing out a lot of expensive chemicals.
But, don’t think I’m sitting back. I’m always on the lookout for an epoxy with a longer cure time. Once you set the rules, don’t be afraid to go back and change them.
Czajkowski: We’ve tackled that issue in two ways. The first option is always to get that process into the cell. We had a large heat-treatment furnace. Five cells fed it, and it had a 5-hour cycle time. Later, we found some furnaces that we could actually put in the cell, and now heat treatment is part of the takt time of the cell.
The other option is to treat that process as an in-house vendor. That’s how we handle our packaging department. Its takt time matches that of the feeder cells. The department’s performance is measured on turnaround time. Any part that hits its door by 5 p.m. must be ready to ship that night.
Vitellaro: We put our packaging equipment right into our cells. After we mapped out our processes, we found that workers were walking 1,486 feet to get a container! So you have to map out your factories! A spreadsheet analysis can help, too. You may find that there’s one part that you don’t want to be in business doing, because it upsets the whole apple cart.
Finally, you don’t need to go big. Equipment should always be the right size for what you’re doing.
Czajkowski: I agree. You need to look at the products that are coming off that process line. It may make sense to split some of them off into a less automated line.
Q: What’s the best way to justify cellular manufacturing? Traditional cost-accounting methods may be at odds with this approach! For example, it’s supposedly much more cost-efficient to make 1,000 widgets per hour than it is to make 1,000 widgets per day, even if that’s only what’s needed.
Czajkowski: Ask your accountants how much inventory you’re holding and the cost of carrying that inventory. You should be able to compare the cost of a day’s worth of inventory with the cost of an hour’s worth.
Vitellaro: You also need to look at setup Arial. If you’re still customizing every setup, if you don’t have tooling that you can just pop in and out, that mucks up the waters.
The standard banking formulas say that more inventory makes you a sound corporation. Those rules have to be rewritten. We have the same problem. We use a lot of standard accounting formulas, because that’s what the government accountants want to see. They want to count the parts and accrue the labor. So I show them. I have four parts in queue, 40 minutes worth of work. Do they care about 40 minutes worth of work? Well, no. So why are they counting it? Count what’s been shipped!
If the accountants force you to look at their black-and-white world, just remember that total cost is total cost. You don’t make any money making 10,000 metal parts. You make money shipping completed products.
Q: How do you know if a cell is working? What do you measure?
Mingos: We measure output, manufacturing cycle time and takt time. Our goal is to have our product when we need it. We still pay too much attention to minutes produced. That’s being pushed aside, but it’s hard to let go.
Curren: We measure the average flow for a particular cell, takt time, inventory and defects. We give each team a target, and we post the results so each team can see how it’s doing. We look for repetitive defects. If the same defect pops up three or four Arial in a row, that may trigger an engineering change or a job sequence change.
Czajkowski: Our primary metrics are quality-related: defects and scrap.
We also measure customer service level. We guarantee same-day shipment to our customers, no matter what they order, so each team is measured according to how well they meet that goal. If the customer orders 100 parts and we ship 99, that’s a 99 percent service level.
We measure lead time, which is the time a work order is cut in the shop to the time the product is available to the customer on the shelf.
We measure inventories of raw materials, WIP and finished goods.
And lastly, we look at cost reduction. Every team has an annual cost-reduction goal of 10 percent, and that’s not based on inflation. If their product cost is $10 this year, it’s must be $9 next year, and $8.10 the following year, ad infinitum.
Vitellaro: The best metrics are ones that employees can actually control. Don’t give them anything they can’t work with, and remember—it’s about eliminating waste. If you’re drifting away from where you want to be, you want immediate feedback. You don’t want metrics that are so far away that it takes 3 days to review them.
If the goal is to reduce inventory, then you want to monitor your cycles. How do you monitor your cycles? Kanban. Start bar coding things.
It’s OK to let the customer help drive your metrics. If your customer is concerned about cycle time, then that’s something you want to look at. | <urn:uuid:52cc0102-4dae-4cb2-a0bf-0416683388aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.assemblymag.com/articles/83542-the-perils-and-profits-of-assembly-cells | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963022 | 3,732 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Ensign art shows are themselves a kind of art. The whole is greater than the parts. The Ensign ran art shows in the last two Ensigns and this is my idiosyncratic critique.*
December: Madonna Mothers
Once you’ve clicked on the link above, click on the Featured Article “A Mother and An Overflowing Heart.”
In theory I have no quarrel with art showing bright, happy mothers with bright, happy babies, bathed in light. Art doesn’t have to focus on the ugly. But having almost all of the paintings that way cloys. I liked the statue, probably because its harder to be bright and happy and backlit in bronze. I also liked the painting “She Also Serves,” mostly because its reference to Milton’s “On His Blindness” with its famous last line: “they also serve who stand and wait.” I never thought of applying it to pregnant mothers before.
I was bugged that almost all the mothers were shown with babies until I read the introduction and saw that the theme was mothers and children in the type and shadow of the nativity.
January: Book of Mormon Stories
Once you’ve clicked on the link above, click the Featured Article “It Came to pass.”
Book of Mormon stories isn’t the most coherent theme for a collection and including a Joseph Smith painting made it less coherent. The works weren’t arranged in any particular order either. You move from an angel appearing to Samuel the Lamanite to Moroni’s visit in the fields to Joseph Smith to Enos praying to Nephites walking with their flocks, to Lamanite maidens at the pool of Shemlon, to several Tree of Life works to incidents of Lehi’s journey to Christ’s appearance.
The painting of the angel appearing to Samuel the Lamanite is called “He Did Bring Glad Tidings to My Soul” by Walter Rane. Its arresting. The painting succeeds with the formal, dramatic posing of Samuel and the angel and the angel’s otherwordly aspect. Its the one painting of all these that has most stuck in my mind.
The painting Go Tell Your Father, by Winborg, of Moroni appearing to Joseph near the fence, has some visual symbolism that I really like. At first glance Moroni is nothing special, and probably even a little too bright and shiny in the Mormon devotional style. Then you look at Joseph Smith, who is neither colored realistically nor shinily. He’s all in shades of dull copper. Its like seeing two different orders of being. Oddly the landscape is in yet a 3rd style.
The Minerva Teicherts appeal to me. Incidentally, there’s an article about Teichert in the latest BYU magazine that I recommend to you. She was a character.
I love the Tree of Lifes except for the painting. I don’t imagine Lehi as the Maharishi Santa Claus.
The Waters of Mormon by Jorge Cocco has a landscape like you might find in New Mexico. I can’t help liking it.
Dawn of a Promised Land by Frank Thomas shows Lehi’s company arriving in the promised land. It has a Punic look which I like but the perspectives seem off.
Behold Your Little Ones by Gary Kapp shows a Christ in brilliant white robes appearing to children who are in shadows with dingy-colored clothes. In all theireare three paintings that try to show angelic and exalted beings in contrast to mortal humans. This is the least successful of them. The difference between our state and theirs isn’t just a difference in physical light. Its a spiritual difference, so the paintings that take a more symbolic approach come off better. The Samuel the Lamanite painting, in particular, uses pose and drapery and the play of light and shadow to symbolize the difference in a way that is much more artistic, if that’s the word I want, then just giving Christ brighter clothes.
On the inside back cover there’s a painting of Lehi’s company journeying that’s also impressive (click here and then go to the next to last page). The travelers are all strung out in a line. Lehi and Nephi are in front. They are all dressed in clothes that look Middle Eastern, except for Nephi, who is dressed in in clothes that in the idiom of Mormon painting are Nephite. Its an interesting way of showing that this is no ordinary journey. Its a journey into the Nephite future.
*I don’t know much about visual art or canons of criticism. | <urn:uuid:0aeb2e34-3a7f-49b1-ab02-482d5d5f488f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2008/01/madonna-moms-and-book-of-mormon-stories/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954339 | 992 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Hubby cooked a sweet soup dessert called “binignit” for the children’s feeding program that we did in two areas here in our Barangay. This soup is cooked in coconut milk and thickened with milled glutinous rice. It consists a thick mixture of root crops such as sweet potatoes, yautia, taro, jack fruit and sago or tapioca pearls.
The photo above is the colorful sago or tapioca balls. It is traditionally cooked and eaten in various forms. Sago is often produced commercially in the form of pearls. Sago pearls are similar in appearance to tapioca pearls and the two may be used in some dishes. When it is cooked, it became translucent, soft and spongy. Aside from binignit, sago is also a popular cold Filipino drink named as sago’t gulaman. | <urn:uuid:41d024fa-d54f-4ee7-95bd-e5522b04b1e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foodandculture.info/2012/03/colorful-sago/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969608 | 187 | 1.835938 | 2 |
POSTED: Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 7:05pm
UPDATED: Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 7:30pm
EL PASO - Starting Monday, El Pasoans are urged to conserve water.
Because there's almost no water in the Rio Grande, the El Paso Water Utilities will have to shut down treatment of river water at two of its plants.
That plus the rising temperatures outside is the cause for EPWU to ask for your help in conserving water for at least the next two weeks.
Everyone is being asked to only water their lawns once a week, take shorter showers, fix any leaks in homes or businesses and only run appliances like dishwashers when there's a full load.
For a full list of tips click here . | <urn:uuid:d18f6b5a-2bb5-422f-90d6-059d3615b803> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ktsm.com/print/node/52942 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949673 | 161 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center Gallery
About the Gallery
Applications are being accepted for 2014 beginning January 1, 2013. Apply now.
Directions: It is free to enter the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center and view the exhibit. The center is open seven days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The main entrance is located at 40001 State Road 9336, approximately 10 miles southwest of Florida City.
Did You Know?
Limestone is the porous, sedimentary rock you see in the Everglades. These rocks are made of calcium and contain fossils of sea life, evidence of ancient seas that once covered the area. The limestone aquifer under the Everglades acts as the principal water recharge area for all of south Florida. | <urn:uuid:0230576e-25e9-4314-a591-8ca0a958e05a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/coe-visitor-center-monthly-art-exhibit.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94313 | 167 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa's Development
Report of the High-Level African Panel on Modern Biotechnology
Authors: Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa, Ismail Serageldin
This report is about the role of biotechnology in the transformation of African economies. The implications of its recommendations, however, need to be seen beyond the confines of biological innovations. They address critical issues related to Africa's place in a globalizing economy.
Undertaken at the request of heads of state and government this report demonstrates what is needed to build the required capacity to harness and apply biotechnologies to improve agricultural productivity, public health, industrial development, economic competitiveness, and environmental sustainability (including biodiversity conservation) in Africa. It also shows that the measures needed to address biotechnology will strengthen Africa's capacity to adapt other technologies to economic development. In fact, previous inabilities to build capacity in fields such as information technology hamper the continent's efforts in biotechnology. This report has placed these systemic considerations in the context of the role of innovation in economic transformation. It challenges Africa's heads of state and government to take seriously the importance of a coordinated approach in promoting technological innovation in development.
African governments have recognized the importance of regional cooperation to address possibilities and the range of issues associated with biotechnology. Within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) they have resolved to promote programmes that will generate a critical mass of technological expertise in targeted areas that can exploit high growth potential from biotechnology to develop Africa's rich biodiversity, improve agricultural productivity and develop healthcare products. In the context of the African Union (AU), African leaders resolved to take a common approach to address issues pertaining to modern biotechnology and biosafety by calling for an African common position on biotechnology.
For more information about this publication please contact the STPP Web Manager at 617-496-1981.
Full text of this publication is available at:
For Academic Citation: | <urn:uuid:565f6020-a7c6-41e9-9399-8b8ab8fe8dfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/17382/freedom_to_innovate.html?breadcrumb=%2Fexperts%2F2413%2Fnatalie_black%3Fgroupby%3D3%26page%3D1%26hide%3D1%26id%3D2413%26back_url%3D%252Fexperts%252F%26%3Bback_text%3DBack%2Bto%2Blist%2Bof%2Bexperts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903137 | 426 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Fiddlin’ Bud Zorn
The fiddle music of Georgia is rooted in the music of many ethnic groups. None exerted more influence on the songs and styles of white country fiddlers than African Americans. Valdosta's Fiddlin' Bud Zorn knows this from personal experience. Of German and Irish heritage, he grew up in the Chattahoochee River Valley of the 1920s and 30s, where he was deeply influenced by the music of his black neighbors. This is a story of crossing color lines in the segregated south and the man who inspired young Bud to a lifelong passion with the fiddle. Special thanks to Fiddlin' Bud Zorn. The Sounds of South Georgia is made possible with support from Valdosta State University, and from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
Photo by Laurie Kay Sommers, 1999. | <urn:uuid:0fa8a4aa-f374-4bd8-914e-1016c4f3ec69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ww2.valdosta.edu/library/find/arch/folklife/radio/2i_zorn.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954348 | 184 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Halley Diary — October 2004
October Web Page By Allan "Tommo" Thomas
Hello there, and welcome to October�s web diary. My name is Allan Thomas, I�m Station Electrician, and I shall be your guide this month.
Well, the weather here at Halley has perked up considerably this month, we are now well into 24 hour long daylight, and blue skies abound. This has meant that the weather is good enough to run our base vehicles, so plenty of work as been going on outdoors.
We have raised loads of empty fuel dumps that were buried during the winter, and used a lot of these renewing our drum lines to the coast. This gives us a �road� to follow to and from the caboose at windy if the weather worsens and the drum-lines are also our main highways for relief later on in the year.
We have also moved all of our containers out of their icy winter shackles, and raised the drums surrounding the base � our perimeter, which has seen an increase in skiers and runners circling it on good evenings.
There has been plenty of activity with power-kites too this year, more and more base members seem to use the big flat white of Halley to enjoy this sport, either on skis or snowboards.
The scientific uses of kites are well known at Halley and there have been a few serious flights this month too, with kites carrying monitoring devices up into the atmosphere, as well as carrying Stephan to the caslab!
We have also had more than our fair share of sun phenomenon this month, with plenty of sundogs, halos and sun pillars, caused by ice particles in the atmosphere, they are certainly a distraction when you have to dig the melt tank each morning, and are very beautiful to see.
With the onset of the sunshine though, it�s time for us to start wearing our sunscreen, it gets very bright here during the day, and goggles or sunglasses are a must.
Although it is very bright and sunny, we still have to wrap up, as even little gaps in clothing can cause a bit of �frost-nip� and a red patch of skin, luckily we all use our common sense with the right clothing and keep frost-nip at bay.
|Click here for a larger image.|
The post-winter trips are coming to an end, and with them finishing next month we shall get to see Ed a bit more, he�s never here!
Ed has been taking us all out on our trips since the beginning of September, and with only one more trip to go, I think he is looking forward to doing his cleaning duties and melt tank along with the rest of us. (Honest)
Most of his time back on base has been spent maintaining our camping equipment, the wooden Nansen sledges we use don�t like being bumped into skidoos or dropped into wind-scoops, and Ed has had a couple of repair jobs this month to keep our gear in tip-top shape.
One job that we are undertaking with great expectations is the laying out of our runway, here at Halley we groom and lay out a 2km long runway, for incoming planes, and this was done on the last weekend in October, we may be needing it soon, but I shall leave that for next months diary.
On the social side of things this month, we had a repeat of our popular �murder mystery� night once again organised by Rhian and Vanessa, this time the theme was Italian Mafioso murder, and an exciting plot sped us through a sumptuous Italian meal provided by Kev. At the end of the evening, and after much fluffing of lines the murderers turned out to be� Gareth and Jeff�(And they seemed such quiet boys)
You might think that Frank�s costume was not very scary, but if you compare him to what he was like before, I think you�ll agree it�s pretty scary.
Well I am trying to sum up my time at Halley, as it is nearly at an end.
2 years have just flown by, and soon I shall be heading onto pastures newer and greener.
This is probably the whitest, coldest place I have ever been fortunate to see.
But, it is also the most breathtaking place I have been, and I have loved every second of it.
| All my love to my family and friends, see you all in march (Get the beers in).
Click here to see a bigger image. | <urn:uuid:cc082c69-c5a3-4ef2-ab47-129288c1855c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/diaries/halley/2004/10/index.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97543 | 948 | 1.625 | 2 |
ISO 639 and RFC 3066bis
jcowan at reutershealth.com
Fri Jun 25 21:57:59 CEST 2004
Addison Phillips [wM] scripsit:
> If a code has been reserved so that it will not be assigned, then that code
> is an unassigned code. Unassigned codes are not valid. Thus, reserved codes
> are not valid.
Correct. But we are already treating some of them as valid in RFC 3066 (the
transitionally reserved ones) and I'm arguing for treating some of the
exceptionally reserved ones (the oddball territories) as valid too.
All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part John Cowan
that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part www.ccil.org/~cowan
that cooks with olive oil, and the part that www.reutershealth.com
cooks with butter. -- David Chessler jcowan at reutershealth.com
More information about the Ietf-languages | <urn:uuid:08c389bd-8e56-4229-aa19-5342db5dbc00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2004-June/002064.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905047 | 223 | 1.546875 | 2 |
This post features the third scenario I have chosen for my series on spirited children. To view the rest of the series, please visit the following links:
- ADHD or Spirited?
- Spirited Children part 2: Positive Labeling
- Spirited Child part three: Understanding Temperments
- Spirited Kids Part Four: Sleep
- Eating Habits of the Spirited Child
You know that old saying, if you pray for peace God will give you opportunities to practice peacefulness, if you pray for humility God will give you opportunities to practice being humble, and so on? I think that applies to writing blog posts too. This morning I looked at my marker board with ideas for posts written on it, and I thought I should start working on the sixth post in my series on spirited children. The topic happened to be discipline, and now I’m thinking maybe it was a dumb idea to start writing it. Since 7am this morning I have had opportunity after opportunity to teach discipline to Buddy, Girlie, and Pal.
To be truthful, it really started five days ago when each of the kids had extra car rides, overnighters, and Easter events. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean we shouldn’t have done any of that, I’m glad they have so much family nearby to learn from, play with, and enjoy their friendship, but on the other hand we have learned a valuable lesson: Overscheduling is the #1 destructor of discipline and order in the home. It was a wonderful weekend for all of us, but now we are paying for it with tantrum, after tantrum, after tantrum. Just watch what happened when I put kid tattoos on Buddy and Girlie…
Nothing like a day like today to remind me how much I have to learn myself. On that note, here are some things I have picked up from The Difficult Child by Stanley Turecki and Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka about disciplining spirited children.
Before anything can be done about difficult behavior in a child, parents must realize that whatever disipline techniques they are using (and I’m not talking about punishment) are not working. Says Stanley Turecki:
Difficult children tend to get locked into certain behavioral patterns, but so do parents in response to the behavior. This kind of repeated negative interaction causes the difficult pattern to worsen… this is very common with children who are demanding and stubborn because of their negative persistence, and whose parents reason and explain too much.” (emphasis mine)
Okay, like, just slap me in the face why don’t you?! Papa sometimes has to tell me to just stop talking because when the kids get into a rut of disobedience, I fall into a rut of whining. Not exactly your kodak moment! Turecki also says:
The constant battling arises for the most part from an established habit pattern (editor’s note: remember that phrase) between the child and the mother… Not only is the child repeatedly misbehaving; it is very important for the mother to realize that her ineffective response has also become habitual, and is in fact reinforcing the bad behavior.”
The solution to the parents’ ineffective response pattern?
“Try to aim for an attitude that is kind, yet firm; absolute when dealing with truly relevant misbehavior, yet flexible with minor annoyances, friendly and very much on your child’s side, yet very clear about who’s in charge.”
Easier said than done, and obviously it will take time to develop an effective response pattern. Thankfully, Turecki and Kurcinka offer specific tips on how to prevent and intervene during episodes of bad behavior in our spirited children.
First, learn to recognize environments, behaviors, or other triggers that set your child off on the wrong foot. Many of them you can avoid, and those you can’t you may be able to prepare your child to handle them ahead of time. Help them to notice their growing intensity before it overwhelms them. Some things proven by parents to head off an outbreak before it becomes hard to manage include: calming activities, humor, exercise, extra sleep, and teaching them that time-outs are a good way to calm themselves.
Teach them how to find yes, to reach a win-win solution. If you understand what is bothering your child, you may be able to come to a conclusion that suits both your needs, without “giving in” to their fancies. Instead of saying “no” to something, try offering a “yes” solution. For example, instead of “stop jumping on the couch!” try “come down here and dance to the music”.
Protect them from overstimulation. As I described at the beginning of this post, sometimes too much change, organized activity, or electronic equipment winds kids up without giving them a chance to vent. Give them words to describe their feelings, teach them to recognize when their getting overstimulated, and try some of the parent-solutions listed above.
When you want to get an important message to your child and it doesn’t seem like their paying attention, try sending your message in different ways; touching them while giving directions, maintain eye contact, keep the message simple, and avoid asking a question if their isn’t a choice. Tell them what they can do, and limit the number of distractions you give at one time.
Sometimes you just can’t stop the tantrums from happening. You miss the cue, you weren’t present when they got wound up, however it happened, you find yourself face to face with a wild child. What to do? Here is the six step process Kurcinka suggests:
- Ask, can I deal with it now? If you can’t handle it, disengage quickly. Leave the room, compose yourself, then come back.
- Become the leader. Stand back, become neutral, think.
- “Frame” the behavior. Recognize the behavior.
- Is it temperment? If yes, try to manage it, not punish it. Be sympathetic, use eye contact, label the behavior, offer a solution.
- Is it important? if it’s not temperment, is it important? If not, disengage. A child throwing a tantrum because he is trying to get his way needs to understand he won’t get attention for his selfishness.
- Effective reaction. Respond sternly and briefly to tantrums that may bring harm to themself, to someone else or their environment, or they are in an environment that is not appropriate for expressing feelings.
There is a differenece between “temperment” tantrums and “manipulative” tantrums. If the child is throwing a tantrum as a result of temperment, it will seem like he can’t help it. They need to hear from you that they are overwhelmed by their emotions, that you will help them stop, that it’s alright to cry but not to kick, bite, or hit, and that you will help them to stop what is overwhelming them. Stay with them during the tantrum, touch them gently, and try to identify the source. Potential solutions to prevent tantrums include: reducing the demands on them during peak tantrum times, ensure good sleep, offer pacing as a way to release energy, make sure rules and consequences are clear, and (outside of a tantrum) talk with them about what happened and what strategies you can develop together to prevent tantrums.
In the next, and last post of this series, I will address how you can link specific behavioral problems to specific temperment traits, but for now you should remember that the key to a happy child is prevention of bad behavior and early intervention of tantrums. Spot the danger signs, get neutral, label, then intervene. Think “cool off”: when the child is about to get wild, stay calm, look into their eyes, say “you’re getting too excited”, then tell him/her it’s time to cool off and find a time-out distraction, a change of activities. If this becomes a pattern, your child may eventually tell you him/herself when a ”cool off” is needed.
There is one more specific example I wanted to share, and that is for the child who gets “locked-in”. If they get locked onto something, you must bring it to an end or the struggle will be perpetuated and increase in intensity for both you and your child. Again, be neutral (I am talking to myself too!), firm, label, and take an early stand. Say “you have asked for ____ three times already. You are not going to get it so stop asking.” If they ask why, say “there is nothing more to discuss” and stop responding, leave the room if you must and explain later that whenever you say no you mean it.
How to punish
You’ll notice I have spent a lot of time focusing on active prevention, but there does come a point when punishment is appropriate. This is what Kurcinka recommends when it is clear punishment is in order:
- Be brief. “You’ve done this, it’s not allowed, your punishment is this.” Never say more.
- Don’t negotiate. If the child asks why, answer with, “becuase that’s the rule”.
- Be firm. Don’t sweet-talk or end with “okay?” (I do that all the time, just so you know)
- Don’t warn too much. One reminder is fine, but after that act. Follow through on consequences.
- Be practical. Try to relate the consequence to the action, and consider the age of the child. Some parents use spanking as a punishment, and while we do support this, it doesn’t work either every child all the time. Distraction, time-outs, and grounding are also effective options.
- Be single-minded. Ignore the child’s attitude, the message of punishment still gets through.
Remember the phrase I asked you to remember at the beginning of the post? Established habit pattern. This is something I really want to start working on as a family; developing good habits. I recently read Smooth and Easy Days, a free ebook by Sonya Shafer with Charlotte Mason on how developing specific good habits makes the days with your children easier. Doesn’t that sound nice?? I’m still debating which habit I want to focus on first, but whichever it is, it will be a family effort.
Stay tuned for the last post of this series, Planning for Success! How you can make those smooth and easy days a family team effort. | <urn:uuid:825822a3-d2cc-4263-96f5-64e2fa9d0461> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanfamilynow.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/disciplining/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953388 | 2,296 | 1.679688 | 2 |
It is hard to imagine summoning the courage to walk up to 100 miles toward an unknown refugee camp in another country. That more than 700,000 refugees from Somalia already made this journey is remarkable. Of course many who started the journey did not make it to the end. Others perished at home, either too weak to leave in the first place or prevented from leaving by Al-Shabaab.
USAID’s FWD Campaign is using infographics to make the crisis more comprehensible on the macro level. But to understand the human side of the crisis we turn to our partners working on the ground in the Horn of Africa as they share their stories of the people impacted by famine, war, and drought.
Here is part of one such compelling story provided by Helen Keller International:
Little Abdulay Sahal Mohamed from Somalia arrived with his family five days ago. His entire family – his parents and six other siblings – walked for 21 days before reaching a reception point at the Kenya/Somalia border to be transported to Dadaab by UNHCR.
I can tell just by just looking at Abdulay that he suffers from severe acute malnutrition. He’s three, but weighs only 6.1 kg (13.4 pounds); his arms are very thin, measuring 9.2 cm. His father, however, considers him “very lucky”; two of his younger siblings died during their journey from starvation.
Since Abdulay cannot take food orally, he is on nasogastric tube. His condition is improving and he could be referred to outpatient care soon. At the Ifo Refugee Camp, another 3,000 children under five years old are severely malnourished, with more arriving every day.
Another compelling story comes from the International Medical Corps. Part of their story reads:
Thousands of Somali people are fleeing their country for survival and in hope of a better life for their children and themselves. They arrive with very little except for the clothes they are wearing, some extra pieces of fabric and, if they are lucky, jerry cans. These ‘jerry cans’ are simply old, plastic oil containers.
During their journeys, which for some take up to two months by foot, there are very few, if any remaining water sources on their path suitable for drinking due to the drought in East Africa. Jerry cans are the only way to carry this basic necessity with them.
By the time they reach the refugee camps, these water containers are often filled with green algae and offer a breeding place for many types of diseases.
Learn more about this Simple Campaign to Ensure Safe Drinking Water for Somali Refugees at International Medical Corps.
Finally, Catholic Relief Service compiled an interactive photo gallery where you can click on one of six images to learn the stories of individuals who walked day and night to reach shelter. All of these individuals are now residents of the Dadaab in Kenya, now the world’s largest refugee camp. Here is an example of one of these stories:
“I left Somalia in a group of several families, 29 people. I was about 5 months pregnant when we started walking. It was all on foot, no vehicle, 330 miles. I was so hungry when I was walking. There were a lot of hyenas and lions. The men threw stones at them to protect us. It took 2 months and 25 days to get here. I gave birth in the camp. My baby boy was sick when he was born.”
– Farheya Ahmed, Refugee
See the full photo gallery at Catholic Relief Service. | <urn:uuid:95b72a39-1533-4e86-afd1-833767b8891b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.usaid.gov/2011/10/fwd-the-faces-behind-the-crisis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974332 | 729 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Verses with the word proceedeth in the New Testament (4 verses):
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. | <urn:uuid:a30882ae-0692-4efe-9a60-1ca020ca6541> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artbible.info/concordance/p/429-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911155 | 150 | 1.5625 | 2 |
by Harry Fisch, M.D.
Say “biological clock” and most people think of women. Most people know that a woman’s ovaries stop producing eggs at some point and that natural fertility ends with menopause. But most people don’t know that men have biological clocks too.
The male equivalent to menopause is andropause, which is a steady drop in the levels of male sex hormones that affect fertility, sexual desire and sexual performance. The male biological clock doesn’t strike midnight and stop like the female clock, it just slowly unwinds.
The effects on fertility and sexual performance in men can be significant. For example, men 35 or older have half the chance of fathering a child within 12 months, compared with a man who is a younger than 30. In addition, as men age, the genetic quality of their sperm declines significantly.
Unfortunately, infertility is almost always viewed as a “woman’s problem” by both men and many doctors. For a lot of reasons, the field of fertility treatment sometimes ignores the male role despite the fact that in any instance of infertility, the problem is as likely to be with the man as it is with the woman.
The lack of attention to male infertility, the lopsided media and advertising attention paid to female infertility, and the profit motive combined to create a silent epidemic of male infertility. It’s a trend that’s made more acute by the related fact that couples are waiting longer to have children. The number of births to parents older than 35 has more than doubled from 1970 to 2000. There has been a corresponding rise in rates of infertility.
Each year about six million American men and women realize they have a fertility problem. Sadly, most of these couples assume first that the problem must be with the woman, and second, that their only option is some sort of assisted reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not against IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies – they are terrific for the right couple at the right time. It’s just that I’ve also seen too many couples jump into IVF before they need to, before they’ve understood all their options, and before the male side of the equation has been thoroughly explored for possible problems.
The male biological clock affects more than fertility, of course – it affects sexual performance, overall physical health, mental function and intimate relationships. Problems with male sexual performance are even more widespread than infertility – despite the huge success of erection-enhancing pills. To the 30 million men with erectile dysfunction must be added the millions more whose sexual pleasure is eroded by premature ejaculation, lack of sexual desire, or inability to have orgasm. And, obviously, these conditions don’t just affect the men – they impact their partners as well.
Viewing male sexual health through the lens of the male biological clock is a new and helpful way of approaching things. First, it reminds couples that difficulties with sexuality or fertility are as likely to arise on the male side as the female side of the equation.
Acknowledging the reality of the male biological clock creates a level playing field at the outset. No longer is the man merely a bystander, cooling his heels in the waiting room, assuming his anatomy and physiology are perfect while his partner is poked and prodded to uncover an assumed problem. And even if a problem is found on the woman’s side, simply recognizing that it could as easily have been with the man makes it more likely a couple will feel united in their effort to conceive a child.
Reprinted with permission. Dr. Fisch is the director of the Male Reproductive Center in New York City. He is a board-certified urologist and microsurgeon who is also one of the nation's leaders in the diagnosis and treatment of Men's health issues as well as sexuality and fertility problems in couples. He is the author of The Male Biological Clock and Size Matters. | <urn:uuid:64cc6ec9-742b-4230-b7a9-573c8eb472fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theafa.org/blog/the-male-biological-clock/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967518 | 832 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Guacamole is one of those popular Mexican foods that is easy to make and very nutritious. There are many versions in Mexico itself, like a delicious one with tomatillos and avocado leaf, as well as many distortions that find their way back to Mexico (like the version in My Mexico
from Zacatecas with of all things sour cream!). Guacamole is often served alone or as part of a botana
with totopos, to accompany tacos, or as part of that extravaganza of a dish, Carne Asada a la Tampiqueña (The Art
, page 287).
There is a lot of advice about how to keep guacamole from turning brown if it is not eaten when freshly made: by adding lime juice (which is not always appropriate), leaving the pits immersed in the mashed flesh, keeping it in an airtight container, and the latest foolproof one of pressing plastic wrap over the surface. (I shudder to think of the action of the fat off the avocados on the plastic!) My advice is don't make it in advance. Have everything already chopped, crush the base ahead of time, and mash the avocados at the last minute in front of guests. Why not? But be sure you have a nice-size molcajete (see page 298) to do your show in style. Of course, the perfect guacamole has
to be made in a molcajete so the flavors are intensified by the crushing of the ingredients—cutting them just isn't the same. But if you don't have one, you can blend the base of onion, chile, cilantro, and salt and then mash in the avocados to a rough texture; don't blend to a smooth consistency—texture means flavor!
The recipe that follows is one that I first came across when I went to Mexico in 1957, and it seems to me to be a classic. One of the simpler northern versions with little wild chiles, onion, and lime juice is delicious, as well as the guacamole with the surprising combination of fruit, chiles, and avocado from Guanajuato (My Mexico,
page 106). See the advice about buying avocados in advance on page 95, and no sweet onions, please!Makes about 2 1/2 cups (625ml)
2 heaped tablespoons finely chopped white onion
4 serrano chiles, finely chopped (yes, seeds and all), or to taste
3 heaped tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro
Sea salt to taste
3 avocados (about 1 pound/450g)
About 1/2 cup (125ml) finely chopped, unskinned tomatoes
1/4 cup (63ml) finely chopped tomatoes
1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped white onion
2 heaped tablespoons finely (but not too finely, just prettily) chopped cilantro
Put the onion, chiles, cilantro, and salt into a molcajete (see note above) and crush to a paste. Cut the avocados in half and, without peeling, remove the pit and squeeze out the flesh. Mash the avocado roughly into the base and mix well. Stir in the tomatoes and sprinkle the surface of the guacamole with the toppings. Serve immediately.
Excerpted from From My Mexican Kitchen by Diana Kennedy Photographs by Michael Calderwood. Copyright © 2003 by Diana Kennedy Photographs by Michael Calderwood. Excerpted by permission of Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. | <urn:uuid:68603678-e8e6-4ca2-8fea-7c2066d32ff5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.randomhouse.com/book/91528/from-my-mexican-kitchen-by-diana-kennedy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914604 | 754 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The Gazette is a daily newspaper based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States. It has the second largest circulation in Colorado, behind the Denver Post.
ad in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph
with the misprinted telephone number that led to the NORAD Tracks Santa
In 1946, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Colorado Springs Evening Telegraph merged to form the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph. The same year, it was purchased by R.C. Hoiles's. Freedom Newspapers.
An ad by a Colorado Springs-based Sears store in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph in December 1955 with a misprinted telephone number to call Santa Claus sparked numerous Christmas Eve telephone calls by children on December 24, 1955 to the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado asking about Santa Claus and led to the current NORAD Tracks Santa program.
The paper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for feature writing. Its name was changed to The Gazette in 1997.
The sale of The Gazette to Clarity Media, a subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation, closed on November 30, 2012. Joe Hight of The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), another Anschutz-owned newspaper, was named editor.
See also
External links | <urn:uuid:88cb176d-f1af-41fa-9d5e-346131175ba5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gazette_(Colorado_Springs) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92917 | 260 | 1.507813 | 2 |
|Dangers: Cats seem to especially enjoy chewing on these colorful, glowing sticks and necklaces. Though not highly toxic, the liquid material inside of glow jewelry and glow sticks contains a substance called dibutyl phthalate. This compound is capable of causing immediate stinging or a burning sensation on any tissue that it contacts.
Clinical signs: Dramatic salivation is the most common sign upon ingestion; this is especially true in cats. Other signs include pawing at the mouth, running frantically, hiding or acting fearful, and vomiting.
Treatment: Typically, gently rinsing the mouth or exposed area with water is sufficient to remove the liquid. Additionally, offering a safe treat will help remove the unpleasant taste from the cat’s mouth.
Prognosis: Excellent; signs generally resolve in minutes to hours.
Next July Fourth danger: Hot weather and heat stroke | <urn:uuid:9dc998fc-62fa-4007-b38d-55f68f4a53d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://veterinaryteam.dvm360.com/firstline/%20ArticleStandard/Article/detail/676006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912473 | 182 | 2.03125 | 2 |
In "The Demon-Haunted World" astronomer Carl Sagan wrote about the theory that
the alien abduction experience is remarkably similar to tales of demon abduction common
throughout history. "...most of the central elements of the alien abduction account are
present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls,
communicate telepathically, and perform breeding on the human species. Unless we believe
that demons really exist, how can we understand so strange a belief system, embraced by the whole Western world (including those considered the wisest among us), reinforced by personal experience in every generation, and taught by Church and State? Is there any real alternative besides a shared delusion based on common brain wiring and chemistry?"
Gee Carl is that the best you can come up with? You'll accept demons as an explanation but can't wrap your mind around the idea of extraterrestrials actually being here on Earth? I wonder if he ever thought WHY reports of alien abduction are similar to Succubi etc. Perhaps because they have similar if not the same sources. Our ancestors wouldn't have understood high tech stuff. They still relied on superstitions and assumptions.
All this shows is how out of touch with reality this guy could be. What he did is substitute one for another. Now I want an explanation where demons etc. come from. But Sagan conviently leaves that part out. I'd accept ETs existing alot quicker than anything demonic. There's far more evidence for them.
And no dilusion is going to manifest itself in the such closely similar ways with as may people that have reported abductions. Especially over the period of time that reports have come in.
So in summation Mr. Sagan I thoroughly took apart you "evidence." And I don't even have a science degree.
Exhibit B: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Michael_Jacobs
David Michael Jacobs is an American historian and recently retired Associate Professor of History at Temple University, specializing in twentieth century American history and culture. He is well known in the field of Ufology for his research into alleged alien abductions and UFOs.
Jacobs obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973, in the field of intellectual history. He wrote his dissertation on the controversy over unidentified flying objects in America. A revised edition of his dissertation was published as The UFO Controversy in America by Indiana University Press in 1975.
As a faculty member of the Department of History at Temple University, Jacobs specialized in Grey alien geography and history of 20th-century American popular culture. He stated that his current research interests "involve a delineation of the role of anomalous experiences in personal and cultural life." For over 25 years Jacobs has taught a course on "UFOs in American Society
It stands to reason that with over a quarter century in the study of Ufology that if Dr. Jacobs had come across evidence that led him to believe abduction reports were not true then he would have stopped and moved on to something else. But the fact that he's been at it this long strongly indicates there's something to it.
How many years of study do the skeptics put in before they make they're assessments?
The belief by skeptics that abduction reports are made to get attention.
Ok show me ONE person who is so desperate for attention and can't get it any other way that they'd make up something like this. There are so many easier and better ways to get attention that don't result in ridicule from others. | <urn:uuid:3b2eb87f-a0e0-4596-b77b-7e8e23512795> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theblackvault.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=5926 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971754 | 727 | 2.078125 | 2 |
RALEIGH -- An exotic animal ban in North Carolina is one step closer to reality. Some local private zoo and sanctuary owners were in Raleigh Thursday fighting proposed senate legislation that would prohibit them from housing exotic animals like these. Tregembo Zoo on Carolina Beach Road would be one business affected if the bill is passed. Owners say they would be forced to shut down the zoo... And lose a lot of money in the process. Sherry Tregembo said, "It'd be a huge loss. We're the biggest zoo for probably a couple hundred miles. We get hundreds of school kids in the spring and summer and then get summer camps. It's a huge loss." New Hanover County already has regulations in place that prevents private homeowners from owning exotic animals. If this bill is passed, regulations would go into effect statewide.
- Video Central
- About WWAY | <urn:uuid:65786c05-7706-40a1-b505-825364daf1c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwaytv3.com/exotic_animal_ban_one_step_closer_in_n_c/06/2007 | 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 | 0.95715 | 177 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Texas Gov. Rick Perry fills out his papers to be on the New Hampshire's presidential primary ballot, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry fills out his papers to be on the New Hampshire's presidential primary ballot, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. Jim Cole/AP
Has any modern major-party presidential candidate in recent memory ever given a speech that left so many people afterwards asking if he was under-the-influence during his talk as was the case after Texas Gov. Rick Perry's now infamous appearance (short version) in New Hampshire last Friday? (Longer version.)
If so, that name doesn't come readily to mind.
The part of running for president that all White House aspirants must master to have the best chance of getting elected is looking like a president. It's a high standard, set first by Washington, amplified by Lincoln and the presidents Roosevelt and others.
Candidates have to get voters to imagine them sitting in the Oval Office, standing behind a podium with the presidential seal, greeting the leader of China on the South Lawn or, perhaps most importantly, ordering U.S. men and women military members into war zones.
Part of appearing presidential is always seeming in control of one's self if not events. As much as they are hated by so many people, long, national presidential campaigns stress-test a politician and a candidacy like few other endeavors.
Can a candidate maintain the level of discipline demanded by such campaigns? Can he or she take the withering and constant pressure? Being able to do so is part of appearing presidential.
The Perry stock bubble had already burst after some of his not-ready-for-prime-time debate performances. His campaign had hoped to gain traction by putting some meat on the policy bones by announcing his optional flat-tax plan.
But Perry, who was already appearing increasingly marginalized, at least in national and state polls, clearly lost ground with his, at times, over-the-top performance in that New Hampshire speech. What should have been a run-of-the mill opportunity to deliver his campaign message became raw material for Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. And exceedingly good material it was.
It was the kind of speech that will make it harder, not easier, for many voters to imagine him sitting in the Oval Office. If people were left after a speech asking if the candidate was drunk, that politician by definition has failed the presidential test, at least in that moment. | <urn:uuid:cc060d8f-9221-41fa-a578-37e1588c5c0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/11/01/141859349/will-voters-see-a-president-in-rick-perrys-nh-speech-likely-not | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980012 | 507 | 1.523438 | 2 |
A daughter of Muhammad, by his first wife Khadijah. She married ‘Ali the cousin of Muhammad, by she had three sons, al-Hasan, al-Husain, and al-Muhsin; the latter died in infancy. From the two former are descended the posterity of the Prophet known as Saiyids. Fatimah died six months after her father. She is spoken of by the Prophet as one of the four perfect women, and is called al-Batul, or “the Virgin”, by which is meant one who had renounced the World, also Fatimatu ‘z-zubra, or “the beautiful Fatima.”
There are three women of the name of Fatimah mentioned in the Traditions: (1) Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad; (2) The mother of ‘Ali; (3) The daughter of Hamzah, the uncle of Muhammad.
Based on Hughes, Dictionary of Islam | <urn:uuid:beddd4ad-45cd-4029-9159-1c4377a195e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.juancole.com/library/dictionary-of-islam-hughes/fatimah | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988411 | 209 | 2.640625 | 3 |
If you're looking to test and develop your English skills, we can help you. Whatever your level, we can offer courses, resources and exams to suit your needs.
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You will have to take a free placement test before registering. This test takes place in our centres, and consists of a written exercise, an oral conversation with a teacher and a counselling session. You will hence have the opportunity to meet our pedagogical team and discover our facilities. This will help you select the course that matches your needs and availabilities.Learn more
Learn English with activities You can learn English online with the British Council’s free website for adult learners. The site contains hundreds of pages of audio, text and video content and over 2,000 interactive exercises. You can become a member and contribute to the site, interact with other users and download free resources.Learn more | <urn:uuid:bc3de84b-2489-4eb7-aab7-2f109f6de5d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britishcouncil.fr/en/english | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951424 | 387 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Best-selling Scottish children’s author to attend Britannica’s prize-giving ceremony
in celebration of International Literacy Day 2010
Edinburgh-born Linda Strachan, author of the popular Hamish McHaggis series, to present prizes
to the winners of Encyclopædia Britannica’s Scottish national competition
Event: Scottish competition prize-giving ceremony
Date: Wednesday 8th September 2010
Time: 2:00pm – 5:00pm
Venue: Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, EH3 5NZ
- To mark International Literacy Day (8th September 2010), a special prize-giving event will take place at the beautiful Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh in celebration of Scottish history and literature. Highly acclaimed children’s author Linda Strachan, whose works include Dead Boy Talking, Spider and the popular Hamish McHaggis series, will present prizes to the winners of a national competition which was launched by Edinburgh-born Encyclopædia Britannica in July.
- Over 3000 library members from all over Scotland logged on to Encyclopædia Britannica either from a library computer or from home to complete a short, entertaining quiz covering key elements of Scottish history, politics and literature.
- Natasha MacNamee from Dunfermline (Junior category), wins an 8 GB iPod nano, Craig Simpson from Dirleton (Student category), wins an 8 GB Apple iPod touch and Carol Caldow from Auchinleck (Adult category), wins an Apple MacBook computer.
- Invaluable for anyone keen to get help with their homework or project research, pursue a personal interest or get the background to the latest news, Encyclopædia Britannica is available free online to Scottish public library members from within the library as well as from their home PC using their library card. The information from Britannica’s 4,000 global contributors is easy to use. It is media-rich with thousands of graphics, videos, audio clips, interactive games and quizzes that make it an exciting resource to use. There are separate home pages for adults and children making it easy to use and age appropriate for everyone. Britannica Online offers multiple resources in one location – encyclopaedic articles, biographies, news headlines from the BBC, the classics and much more.
- Ian Grant, Managing Director of Encyclopædia Britannica, comments: “Encyclopædia Britannica is proud of its Scottish heritage and the long-established relationship with Scotland’s public libraries in providing local communities with access to the latest accurate information. Our national competition was created to raise awareness of the fantastic resources provided by local libraries and encourage people to take advantage of them.”
Notes to editors:
- To attend the prize-giving event, please RSVP to Jennifer Jackson, Livewire Public Relations, by 27th August 2010, on 020 8339 7440 or email: email@example.com.
- About Encyclopædia Britannica:
Encyclopædia Britannica has been a leader in reference and education publishing since 1768. Britannica has been a pioneer in electronic publishing since the early 1980s. It publishes products which can be found in a variety of media, from the internet to mobile phones to books.
- About Linda Strachan:
Edinburgh-born Linda Strachan, author of over 60 books, writes for all ages, from young children to teenagers and adults.
Her works include the best-selling Hamish McHaggis series as well as a writing handbook for newly published and aspiring authors. Her first teenage novel – the highly acclaimed ‘Spider’ - was published in 2008 and was a finalist in the Red Book Awards. It was also on the long list for the Lancashire Book Awards, the Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's Books and is currently on the shortlist for two further awards, the Catalyst Book Awards (October 2010) and the Dumfries Burgh Book Awards (February 2011).
Her latest novel for teenagers ‘Dead Boy Talking’ was published in June 2010.
For more information about Linda, visit her website: www.lindastrachan.com.
# # #
Livewire Public Relations
Jenny Jackson or Louise Peto
+44 (0)20 8339 7440 | <urn:uuid:e4b4b4eb-2121-43ba-903f-4425e4b65d1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.co.uk/press/2010-09-08.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913087 | 907 | 1.765625 | 2 |
IT trade body Intellect is calling for the chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne to abandon the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC).
Intellect argues that, since datacentres underpin a modern digital economy, the growth in data volumes is leading to increased IT investment. However, according to Intellect, investment is however already going elsewhere.
Intellect argues that the UK’s overly complex legislation and burdensome taxes – with CRC as a tax on energy consumption – is a deterrent to investment.
Ahead of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, Julian David, director general of Intellect said: “It is of great concern that other European nations are putting in place legislative frameworks and tax incentives to foster growth, whereas in the UK we are doing the exact opposite. As a first step, but by no means the solution, we must scrap the CRC and implement a specific climate change agreement for datacentres.”
Read more about green datacentre measures
Antony Walker, deputy director, Intellect said: “Climate change agreements were developed for energy-intensive sectors, like aluminium production. Nobody really considered datacentres.” He said that in terms of energy usage, a datacentre is not analogous to a large factory, where the CRC is used to hammer down energy usage.
Walker said CRC puts a price on energy use, which affects the take-up of datacentre facilities. “As the industry increases its energy use, it will get increasingly penalised.” Intellect argues that a climate change agreement would recognise that datacentres are energy-intensive.
But, since they aggregate computing and storage in a single place, they are more efficient than running multiple smaller sites.
“As more stuff goes into the cloud, you aggregate computing. A datacentre is the most efficient place to run computing,” said Walker. | <urn:uuid:ff32754f-29b0-4ab2-882d-045642a8bc7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240173786/Intellect-calls-on-chancellor-to-scrap-CRC-datacentre-carbon-tax | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937445 | 388 | 2 | 2 |
Dismantling the filibuster
Three young senators want to limit the chronic power to obstruct
THE SENATE easily overcame a filibuster yesterday to pass a major package of tax cuts supported by the president and both parties. For a moment, it was possible to imagine that this troubled institution could function effectively. But the tax deal is an exception, and a rare one, to the culture of obstruction that has long plagued the Senate, especially for the last two years. Use of the filibuster — debating indefinitely as a means of preventing a vote or other action — has skyrocketed, slowing business to a crawl. Were it not for the Democrats’ decisive majorities in both houses, it’s hard to see how anything would have been accomplished. That advantage will disappear when Republicans take over the House in January.
A trio of young Democratic senators is hoping to limit this chronic power to obstruct by reforming Senate rules. Tom Udall of New Mexico, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Michael Bennet of Colorado each have put forward thoughtful improvements intended to increase transparency, encourage bipartisanship, and focus the Senate’s attention on legislating.
There is ample reason for change. The filibuster is something of an historical accident. Until 1917, the Senate tended to operate by informal majoritarian rule. Senators could filibuster, but did so sparingly and with a different strategic objective than they do today: to gauge the intensity of the majority’s commitment to a bill, which, if it was strong enough, usually meant the bill could pass. But as the Senate’s workload increased, it became necessary to develop a way to end a filibuster. This led, in 1917, to the cloture rule for cutting off debate so the Senate could proceed to other business. Today, the rules require “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn’’ — usually 60 of 100 — to invoke cloture, which means that as few as 41 senators can bring the process to a stop.
For the past two years, the Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has used the filibuster more often, and more effectively, than any of his predecessors. He has compiled a remarkable track record — Democrats would call it shameful — of holding together the 41 Republican senators, and thereby thwarting or delaying nearly every Democratic initiative. And that’s not all: last year, an extension of unemployment benefits that eventually passed 98-0 was forced to surmount three filibusters over the course of five weeks. Republicans have even blocked votes on judicial nominees offered up by fellow Republicans. All of this serves as a way to paralyze the Senate and frustrate the Democratic majority. For historical context, Lyndon Johnson presided over a single cloture vote in his three terms as Senate majority leader. This Congress has so far required 87.
This is not how the Senate should work. But the rules are difficult to change — to do so requires 67 votes — and by custom roll over with each new Congress. (The crowning irony is that any effort to reform the filibuster can itself be filibustered.) Thus has the 60-vote requirement for cloture endured since 1975.
On the first day of the new Congress in January, Udall plans to introduce a deceptively simple bill, stipulating that the Senate consider its rules anew every two years, as does the House, and establish them by a simple majority. This would make it easier to lower the cloture requirement, which in turn would make obstruction by filibuster more difficult. Merkley would ban the filibuster on motions to begin debate and take up amendments, on the sensible grounds that this would foster engagement and new ideas. Bennet would require the minority party actually to show up and launch a filibuster — currently, the mere threat is sufficient — and also add a series of escalating requirements to sustain one, so it couldn’t be employed simply to delay.
Each of these ideas is a model of thoughtful, nonpartisan reform that would still preserve the power to filibuster. But the prospect of any of them being enacted looks disappointingly slim.
There are two major obstacles, one process-oriented, the other political. Opponents in both parties worry that revising the rules every two years will prove a slippery slope, and that changes will not be limited to the filibuster. The majority would constantly be tempted to eliminate the minority’s powers, eventually rendering the Senate a smaller version of the House. The bigger objection is that abusing the filibuster has proved highly effective — just look at how quickly frustrated voters returned Republicans to power. That may be an ignoble reason. But even frustrated Democrats know they’ll someday be the minority party — maybe soon.
Joshua Green is senior editor of The Atlantic. His column appears regularly in the Globe. | <urn:uuid:2a549e87-9cdf-4817-af1b-6ba6dd8fbd81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/12/16/dismantling_the_filibuster/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956671 | 973 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Friday, September 23, 2011
Medical Reports: Sitting Down Syndrome
Most of us do it all day long, we sit at a desk or in front of a computer but exactly how we sit could leave us injured over time. 7s Diana Diaz shows us how to avoid what doctors are calling "Sitting-Down Syndrome."
WSVN -- Rosanne Mathews is competitive and loves showing off her moves on the tennis court. So when she started having severe back and neck pain she assumed it was from all of her rough activity.
Rosanne Mathews: "My lower back muscles felt so weak that I would go from a seated position to try and stand, and I would feel like my muscles were going to collapse, and I was going to fall down."
But Rosanne got an interesting diagnosis from Coral Springs chiropractor Andrew Wasserman. The doctor told her she had "Sitting Down Syndrome" or SDS.
Andrew Wasserman: "We came up with the term "Sitting-Down Syndrome" after many years of seeing many patients coming in with similar symptoms of neck, back pain, wrist, elbow, shoulder pain."
Rosanne Mathews: "That is strange that I'm injuring myself as active as I am by just simply sitting."
Like most of us, the 48-year-old spends much of her work week sitting down hunched over a computer.
Rosanne Mathews: "If I'm at meetings, a lot of time sitting at a conference table. And really slouching a little too much."
Dr. Wasserman says he's treating more students and office workers for SDS than ever before. He asks patients to sit at his desk so he can see what they are doing wrong.
Andrew Wasserman: "They'll show us some of the worst positions where the screen may be over on the side. The keyboard over here and they have to crane their neck."
He says the first key to sitting correctly starts with your feet.
Andrew Wasserman: "You want to make sure they are flat on the floor."
If your feet don't touch the floor, put a phone book under them. Also, give yourself some leg room under the desk or table.
Andrew Wasserman: "Make sure that you slide in all the way so the chair is low enough, you're not hitting the surfaces under the work stations."
Then, line up your lower body.
Andrew Wasserman: "What you want to do is have a 90 degree angle so the knees, the feet and the hips are all aligned with each other taking the pressure off the lower back."
When it comes to your upper body, he says to sit up straight and slide all the way back in your chair, don't hunch or slump forward or to either side.
Andrew Wasserman: "The ears, elbows, and shoulders are all in alignment with the hips. And then the arms, elbows and shoulders are at 90 degrees to the keyboard. You don't create a lot of stress and tension up to the neck and to the upper back."
Your computer screen should be right in front of you and can't be too high or too low.
Andrew Wasserman: "You want to make sure the computer screen is at eye level or slightly below eye level without having your head having to go up or down to much, which creates a lot of tension and stress."
Rosanne had to get a combination of treatments for several months to help ease her back and neck pain.
Rosanne Mathews: "I feel great."
Now she doesn't just concentrate on her work, she focuses on a new way of sitting.
Rosanne Mathews: "I have to erect my spine. I have to have my feet on floor, so I don't have all these problems."
Diana Diaz: "Dr. Wasserman also says you should take stretching breaks at least once each hour."
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Dr. Andrew Wasserman
10394 West Sample Road
Coral Springs FL | <urn:uuid:be5f8322-ea7f-4a06-b014-b62d8249f7ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wsvn.com/features/articles/medicalreports/MI93156/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961972 | 816 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Charred organic residues on a potsherd were examined by gas chromatography and found to contain the fatty acids from large mammals. These results
suggest that meat products were cooked in the pot. [Photo and analysis courtesy of John Morris]
Besides studying what is in the soil, archaeologists can study the soil itself for clues about how an archaeological site was formed, what processes buried the site,
what kinds of materials may have been buried there, and so forth. Analyses may look at the texture of the soil and its chemical composition (organic matter, nitrogen,
phosphorus, pH, etc).
Archaeologists might also study organic residues found on artifacts such as potsherds or stone tools. Using techniques such as Capillary Gas Chromatography,
archaeologists working with chemists can sometimes identify the kinds of plants or animals that might have been cooked in a pot, or cut with a stone tool. These techniques
are still very new but show great promise for new information. | <urn:uuid:8112ef8e-a82a-4b42-8849-9d87fd7fe571> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uwlax.edu/MVAC/ProcessArch/ProcessArch/lab_soilschemical.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963856 | 202 | 4.125 | 4 |
Petitioner: Les Wallace
29 September 2012
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure the provision of recycling facilities within school playgrounds is mandatory. In addition to call for a national survey of in school practice and teaching on reduce, reuse and recycle to ensure current best practice becomes the standard practice.
Fig.1: Source separated recycling facilities in school playgrounds will help develop the recycling habit early in life to be applied in the home and workplace. Children can also influence their parents to participate in existing kerbside recycling schemes and promoting recycling probably does more to develop anti litter attitudes than traditional anti litter work. Playground recycling should be mandatory.
Fig.2: The aftermath of T in the Park 2006. If we fail to provide the best possible education and practice on reduce, reuse, recycle in schools as possible the consequences for the environment and society are dire. Image courtesy of John Ferguson.
30 October 2012: The Committee took evidence from Les Wallace. The Committee agreed to write to the Scottish Government/Education Scotland, COSLA, Zero Waste Scotland, Eco-Schools Scotland, the General Teaching Council for Scotland and Falkirk Council. Link to Official Report 30 October 2012 (474KB pdf)
8 January 2013: The Committee agreed to close the petition under Rule 15.7 on the grounds that matters are being addressed through various current and forthcoming regulations, projects and initiatives. The Committee also agreed to write to COSLA reminding it of the duties that fall to local authorities. Link to Official Report 8 January 2013 (474KB pdf)
After more than twenty years since kerbside recycling began in earnest in Scotland we are STILL NOT ensuring that children are being taught about reducing waste and being encouraged to recycle effectively. Investment in domestic recycling schemes and the success of workplace waste reduction is suffering badly because of this. It also means that anti litter work is compromised as recycling is almost certainly a better method of preventing litter than traditional anti litter work.
There are no basic mandatory requirements for how well waste reduction is taught or practiced. As a basic requirement ALL school children should have recycling facilities in their playgrounds. We also need a national survey on how well reduce, reuse, recycle is taught and practiced in schools to ensure that best practice becomes standard practice. | <urn:uuid:16dc5562-1c02-429b-baa1-2ad80b29ae57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/GettingInvolved/Petitions/playgroundrecycling | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95213 | 462 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Effective multifactorial interventions reduce the frequent falling rate of older patients by 30% to 40%. However, clinical consensus suggests reserving these interventions for high-risk patients. Limiting fall prevention programs to high-risk patients implies that clinicians must recognize features that predict future falls.
To identify the prognostic value of risk factors for future falls among older patients.
Data Sources and Study Selection
Search of MEDLINE (1966-September 2004), CINAHL (1982-September 2004), and authors' own files to identify prospective cohort studies of risk factors for falls that performed a multivariate analysis of such factors.
Two reviewers independently determined inclusion of articles and assessed study quality. Disagreements were resolved by consensus. Included studies were those identifying the prognostic value of risk factors for future falls among community-dwelling persons 65 years and older. Clinically identifiable risk factors were identified across 6 domains: orthostatic hypotension, visual impairment, impairment of gait or balance, medication use, limitations in basic or instrumental activities of daily living, and cognitive impairment.
Eighteen studies met inclusion criteria and provided a multivariate analysis including at least 1 of the risk factor domains. The estimated pretest probability of falling at least once in any given year for individuals 65 years and older was 27% (95% confidence interval, 19%-36%). Patients who have fallen in the past year are more likely to fall again [likelihood ratio range, 2.3-2.8]. The most consistent predictors of future falls are clinically detected abnormalities of gait or balance (likelihood ratio range, 1.7-2.4). Visual impairment, medication variables, decreased activities of daily living, and impaired cognition did not consistently predict falls across studies. Orthostatic hypotension did not predict falls after controlling for other factors.
Screening for risk of falling during the clinical examination begins with determining if the patient has fallen in the past year. For patients who have not previously fallen, screening consists of an assessment of gait and balance. Patients who have fallen or who have a gait or balance problem are at higher risk of future falls. | <urn:uuid:58df61bd-d4e7-48d3-9291-c910295c09de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=204916&quizId=2304&atab=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921088 | 432 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Thursday June 10, 2010
Off the Farm
We descended upon Thompson Finch Farm like we had never left the farm before. The bad kids in the back, we giggled, whispered and expressed our joy to be on another farm and not hoeing, planting, or laying black plastic. We observed weeds in raspberries, watched explanations of machinery used in strawberry transplanting and weeding, and laughed at garlic scapes dangling from a particularly crunchy girl's hair.We realized the importance of having the right equipment for getting the job done.
The seven am wake-ups have begun this week, the mornings seem to stretch as if they are an entire day or days unto themselves. Harvests are in the mornings so that no leaves lose their crunch or roots their luster and so with our coffee we have kale and radishes and turnips, dunking and cleaning and 'processing' with the crust still on our eyes hidden by sunglasses. The afternoons are slightly more merciful unless they bring too much sun to burn our skin and dry the soil complicating planting almost as much as the impossibly rocky fields.
The tomato, tomatillo, cucumber and squash seedlings have loved this moist rainy weather. Laura is grateful for this because there is no irrigation in the other field. We took a chance with that one, but the little seedlings that could have so easily wilted in the harsh sun and silty rocky soil. When unrolling a haybale to mulch the pathways of the many, many tomato rows a litter of very young voles spilled out. They cried and shivered as we attempted to warmly relocate them to the edge of the field. Voles are nearly as cute as baby moles, in my opinion.
It seems as if everyone is settling into their farming personality, you know the one: harried by work and distractions and a personal life yet there getting it done on farm even under adverse conditions. Seeing the organism that is a group of people working together is fascinating to me, and I'm learning how to evaluate the functioning of it and maybe one day I'll be able to influence it in a positive way at the right time... | <urn:uuid:ab2e9f34-7722-4768-afac-0bff1eb67483> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heirloommeals.com/blog/category/heirloom-breeds-seeds/P44 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96495 | 445 | 1.5 | 2 |
Sophia Siskel, center, president of the Chicago Botanic Garden, joins others Tuesday in a tour of the garden's North Lake after its shoreline restoration project was completed. (Keri Wiginton, Chicago Tribune)
The Chicago Botanic Garden on Tuesday unveiled the largest perennial planting in its 40-year history — a 10-month project that uses native plants to knit the soil surrounding the garden's North Lake into a firm, erosion-resistant mixture that also enhances the habitat for animal life.
The experts who engineered the project at the Glencoe site say it can be a guide for similar efforts at thousands of lakes and ponds in northern Illinois that suffer from erosion.
The goal is to make a friendly environment for freshwater inhabitants like turtles, fish and reptiles, as well as migratory birds, like a great egret that has begun calling North Lake its home.
After draining 54 million gallons of water from the lake in December, the Botanic Garden and the Army Corps of Engineers collaborated to regrade 1.25 miles of the lake's edge to create shelves for underwater plantings to accompany shoreline plants — more than 120,000 perennials in total, officials said.
Erosion traditionally is controlled with boulders and sheet piling that extends above the water's surface. But with this project, the Botanic Garden opted for "bioengineering" techniques that also would enhance water quality and provide a healthy habitat for plants and animals.
Bob Kirschner, director of restoration ecology at the Botanic Garden, hopes the project can act like a testing laboratory for others to learn from.
"We want to make all the mistakes that can be made for the end users so they can look at what we did here and go home knowing it can work," he said.
Erosion is largely due to fluctuating water levels, and it's common among thousands of small lakes and retention ponds across the area, Kirschner said. At the Botanic Garden, a heavy rain can cause the water level to rise up to 5 feet, he said. Without proper grading or plants along the shore, changing water levels can cause the bank to collapse.
"You end up almost with a vertical bank, and that will essentially perpetuate itself forever because there are no plants to hold the soil in place and now the steepness of the grade is so extreme that plants can't move in," Kirschner said.
He said choosing the correct plant life is essential in establishing a long-lasting shoreline that withstands the water and the work of animals such as muskrats, deer, geese and ducks.
Project designers selected plants from more than 200 native species, some of which extend their roots nearly six feet down and "knit the soil in the shoreline together" to protect it from erosion, Kirschner said. Custom plastic meshing protects the shallow depths from bottom-feeding fish like common carp.
More than 1,000 shrubs also were installed because of their value to migratory birds that follow the Lake Michigan coast, he added.
As the Botanic Garden on Tuesday celebrated the completion of the project, the sixth in a series of shoreline restorations that began in 1999, a great blue heron flew across the lake, providing an unexpected example of what a thriving wetland can provide — even one within earshot of a major highway.
John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, noted the difficulty in successfully establishing plantings in an urban wetland, and that Kirschner and his team's work on the project will benefit others.
"I think you all have written a book on how to do these things," Rogner said. "You're the tip of the spear and we all as wetland restoration practitioners have a lot to learn from your experiences here."
Kirschner said he hopes the Botanic Garden can help influence private owners, as well as public entities like park districts, to use similar techniques on their shorelines.
"This is entirely applicable for implementation on a small scale in a homeowner's pond," Kirschner said. "It's not going to cost them $59, but for a lot less money than oftentimes the structural enclosures or stone and sheet piling, it can be just as effective a solution — and we think looks nicer as well." | <urn:uuid:d33e81a1-f216-435d-91f9-374bdf9d99c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-04/news/ct-met-botanic-gardens-restoration-20120905_1_native-plants-shoreline-restoration-project-bob-kirschner | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95663 | 887 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Boston Declares Health Emergency
Following flu related deaths, Boston has declared a public health emergency.
Massachusetts has reported 18 flu-related deaths (all elderly patients) since the unofficial start of flu season October 1st. In Boston four deaths have been reported. The city is working to set up flu vaccination clinics and offer free flu shots.
The city is fighting one of the worst flu seasons since at least 2009 when H1N1, or swine flu, spread throughout the U.S. The city says they have 700 confirmed cases of the flu. That’s quite the increase from last year, only 70 cases where reported. ‘The Weekly Flu Advisory’ issued by the CDC lists Massachusetts as one of 29 states reporting high levels of ‘Flu-like illness.’ Maine is currently ‘Moderate’ in flu activity. However, the flu is considered ‘widespread’ in Maine and more than half the country.
Officials say it’s not too late to be vaccinated. Young children and the elderly are at the highest risk for flu-related complications. Experts also remind you that a flu shot dose not prevent you from getting the flu, it helps lessen the symptoms. | <urn:uuid:7082cd48-0c6c-432e-bdd2-7143a2a2c4d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://z1073.com/boston-declares-health-emergency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963601 | 251 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Most Active Stories
Wed January 23, 2013
Secretary Clinton Set To Testify On Benghazi Attacks
Originally published on Wed January 23, 2013 1:34 pm
Update at 3:30 p.m. ET. Clinton Testifies Before House Committee:
One of the defining moments of Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state was her strong advocacy for U.S. military intervention that helped oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
But as she prepared to step down from the post, she faced a grilling from Republicans in both the House and the Senate over what went wrong in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, when four Americans were killed, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
A feisty and combative Clinton said she took responsibility for what happened in Benghazi. But she insisted the Obama administration did not intentionally mislead the American public when it initially indicated that the attack grew out of a protest over an anti-Islam film.
Clinton also said that prior to the attack, she did not see requests for additional security at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he viewed that as grounds for dismissal.
"Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post," Paul said to Clinton. "I think it's inexcusable.
Clinton, meanwhile, became emotional when she recalled the day that the coffins of the four slain Americans were returned to the U.S.
"I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews [Air Force Base in Maryland]," she said. "I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers, the sons and daughters, and the wives left alone to raise their children."
Clinton has not said what she plans to do next. But Wednesday's testimony raised the question of how events in Libya may affect her legacy as secretary of state.
Will she be remembered as a leading proponent for U.S. military involvement in Libya, which helped topple Gadhafi? Or will that be overshadowed by the deadly attack on Americans in Benghazi that followed?
Update at 11:20 a.m. ET. Sharp Exchanges With Republicans:
During questioning by the Senate committee, Republicans focused on the dispute over the Obama administration's account of the Benghazi attack. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, and other officials initially referred to protests in Benghazi that spiraled out of control, rather than calling it a terrorist attack.
The Obama administration now acknowledges there were no protests in Benghazi. But Republicans continued to press Clinton on the administration's handling of case.
"The answers, frankly, that you've given this morning are not satisfactory to me," said John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has been one of the sharpest critics. "People don't bring RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and mortars to spontaneous demonstrations."
Clinton was feisty in her responses, as this C-SPAN video illustrates.
When Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, pressed her on the details of what the administration knew in the days immediately after the attack, Clinton said, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
"It is our job to figure out what happened and to do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again," she said. "The fact is, people were trying in real time to get to the best information."
The State Department did not immediately interview the Americans in Benghazi, Clinton said, because her department did not want to be seen as interfering with an investigation by the FBI and others.
Clinton's testimony comes at a time of growing turmoil in north and western Africa. Libya's new leaders are still attempting to establish control, Mali is embroiled in a civil war, and last week, dozens were killed after extremists seized a gas plant in Algeria.
Clinton referred to this in her opening remarks:
"The Arab revolutions have scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region. And instability in Mali has created an expanding safe haven for terrorists who look to extend their influence and plot further attacks of the kind we saw just last week in Algeria."
Update at 9:25 a.m ET. Clinton Again Takes Responsibility:
At the first of two congressional hearings today during which she's expected to face tough questions about last September's attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began by telling senators that "as I have said many times ... I take responsibility."
"Nobody is more committed to getting this right," the outgoing secretary also told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger, and more secure."
The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died in that attack. Critics, and an independent report, have concluded there was "grossly inadequate" security at the mission in Benghazi prior to the attack
We'll continue to monitor her appearances and update with highlights.
Meanwhile, here's our original post with more background:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a strong supporter of the U.S. involvement in Libya in 2011 that helped oust the country's long-time dictator, Moammar Gadhafi.
U.S. and NATO air power was seen as crucial in helping Libyan rebels topple Gadhafi, who was among several autocrats driven from power in the Arab uprisings.
But now, as Clinton prepares to depart her post, she goes before Congress on Wednesday to talk about the more recent upheavals in the region that haven't gone as planned.
Her testimony before separate Senate and House committees is set to focus on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. Libya.
Yet her appearance, which has been delayed by injury and illness, comes at a time when Algeria and Mali have also been rocked by unrest.
Islamist rebels, including some who previously fought for Gadhafi, have seized northern Mali. French troops have gone to Mali to support the government in the south, and the U.S. has provided planes to assist the French.
In addition, three Americans were among dozens killed when Islamist radicals seized hostages at a remote gas plant in eastern Algeria, near the Libyan border.
As NPR's Michele Kelemen reported on Morning Edition, "Secretary Clinton readily admits it has been difficult for the U.S. to gather intelligence in what she calls one of the most remote areas on the planet."
An independent panel found there was "grossly inadequate" security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi prior to the attack (an unclassified version of that report is posted here). One State Department official has resigned and three more are on administrative leave.
The attack also demonstrated how difficult it has been for Libya's new leaders to establish control over armed groups, a problem that's growing in the region.
As Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group told Morning Edition:
"You now have more jhadists who are free to roam around. Many have been released or escaped, broken out from prison. [They have] more access to lethal weapons, because weapons have been abudant in Libya in particular, but elsewhere as well, as these uprisings were taking place."
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing is set to start at 9 a.m. ET. The House Foreign Affairs Committee's session begins at 2 p.m. ET. C-SPAN plans to webcast the hearings here. We will update later with highlights. | <urn:uuid:699933de-c1f2-484e-890d-7efd440db5c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ksut.org/post/secretary-clinton-set-testify-benghazi-attacks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973799 | 1,593 | 1.726563 | 2 |
If the past few years are anything to go by, things will hot up in the Southern Ocean over the coming weeks and it will have little to do with climate change.
It has become something of a summer ritual that clashes occur in the Southern Ocean between the Japanese whaling fleet and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Since 2006, the protest activities of Sea Shepherd have been on the rise, attracting more and more attention from the media, and also the Japanese and Australian governments.
In mid-December, Australia - along with the Netherlands, New Zealand and the US - issued its regular exhortation of concern that protest activities in the Southern Ocean could lead to a loss of life among protesters and whaling crews. These calls are made against the backdrop of the January 2010 collision between the Sea Shepherd trimaran Ady Gil and the whaler Shonan Maru 2, resulting in the Ady Gil losing its bow and eventually being scuttled.
The current whaling season again promises to be contentious. Emboldened by the whalers' declaration that they were ending their 2010-11 hunt early as a result of protest activities, Sea Shepherd has declared its aim is to prevent the Japanese taking a single whale.
The whalers, on the other hand, have reportedly enhanced their security capability to further rebuff Sea Shepherd's protests. Given the determination of both sides, this is a volatile mix in a treacherous maritime environment.
Though this season's whaling clashes will occur within the Australian search and rescue zone in the Southern Ocean, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has previously admitted its capacity to respond to a maritime disaster in the region is limited due to the remoteness of the region and availability of assets.
This season is also the first time since the Ady Gil incident that the Japanese have been whaling in the Australian search and rescue zone. In the interim, Australia has taken Japan to the International Court of Justice challenging the legality of its whaling program. However, the wheels of international justice move slowly and it may not be until 2014 that Australia has its day in court.
Australia does have the option of going to court early and asking for provisional measures. This is a form of international injunction that, if issued, would halt all whaling until the court gave a final judgment. However, to date, the Australian government has shown no interest in pursuing that option.
Is Australia, then, just a spectator as the Japanese whalers and Sea Shepherd head for more high-stakes clashes? As was highlighted in 2010, Australia can very quickly become a part of any Southern Ocean incident because of its search and rescue responsibilities. Australia's capacity to respond is limited - but it does have at its disposal a purpose-built ship capable of patrolling the Southern Ocean. The Australian Customs Vessel Ocean Protector has been given the task of patrolling the area as part of the Southern Ocean Maritime Patrol and Response Program. The Ocean Protector is capable of being deployed to maintain a watching brief on clashes between the whalers and Sea Shepherd. However, Environment Minister Tony Burke has ruled out this option.
Such a course of action would be prudent and also provide Australia with possible legal cover against Japan. In recent years, Australia has come under increasing Japanese pressure to inspect Sea Shepherd vessels on their entry into Australian ports. In the three years to 2011, the police boarded the Sea Shepherd fleet upon their return to Hobart in compliance with a Japanese request under an international maritime terrorism convention. While no prosecutions have arisen, they highlight the increasing Japanese agitation over the impact of Sea Shepherd's activities.
Mindful that it would not want its actions to compromise its international court case against Japan, Australia may see value in deploying the Ocean Protector not only to watch over the whalers and Sea Shepherd, but also to demonstrate to Japan its commitment to the safety of life at sea and the suppression of maritime terrorism.
This would allow Australia to remain neutral in the whaling clashes, but retain a capacity to provide assistance and not compromise its prospects in the International Court.
Donald R. Rothwell is Professor of International Law at the Australian National University's College of Law. | <urn:uuid:61756354-75f3-4b4c-ac79-1ab329e21125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mandurahmail.com.au/story/89236/australia-limits-its-whaling-response/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963556 | 837 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Iran's powerful Guardians Council has winnowed the field of hundreds of aspiring presidential candidates to four men, all of whom are current or former senior officials, excluding all bids by women or independent candidates to succeed incumbent Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
The clerically dominated vetting body approved the candidacies of Ahmadinejad, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Musavi, former parliament speaker Mehdi Karrubi, and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps head Mohsen Rezai. It rejected 471 other applicants.
Iran's reformist camp is represented by Musavi and Karrubi, each of whom is considered a serious challenger.
Rezai, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who is among the five Iranian officials wanted by Argentina for their alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, is widely regarded as a dark horse, with little chance to win the race.
The same day as the Guardians Council announcement, incumbent Ahmadinejad announced the successful test-firing of a new missile capable of reaching Israel and Southeastern Europe.
With Tehran bracing itself against outside scrutiny over its nuclear ambitions, and with Moscow and Washington debating the necessity of a U.S.-backed missile shield in Europe, the firing of the missile was seen as a possible attempt by Ahmadinejad to draw public support ahead of the June 12 election. Incumbent Attacked
While Musavi, Karrubi, and Rezai have all began campaigning, the Iranian president has not officially launched his campaign. But he has already been accused by his three rivals of getting an early start to his campaign by using his presidential powers and government resources to travel to Iran's provinces to buy votes.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) has made his preference clear.
Ahmadinejad's government has denied the accusations, and the president himself has blasted the criticism of his recent travels as "election immorality."
The incumbent's challengers have also blamed him for the poor state of Iran's economy.
The 55-year-old Rezai has warned that Iran is headed toward "an abyss," while Musavi has pointedly asked where the oil money that the Iranian president promised to bring to people's tables has gone.
Ahmadinejad is also come under criticism from his opponents for his confrontational approach to international issues, and his questioning of the Holocaust.
"First of all, the Holocaust existed," Karrubi said in a recent video interview posted on his campaign website. "Secondly, the Palestinians themselves say, 'What [is the use] of bringing such things up?' Thirdly, it [the Holocaust issue] is not related to us."
The 72-year-old Karrubi, who ran against Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election and has received the backing of some prominent reformist figures and of pro-reform student groups, is considered a serious challenger.
But many expect the 67-year-old Musavi to be Ahmadinejad's main challenger. The former prime minister, who describes himself as a fundamentalist reformer, has been publicly backed by former President Mohammad Khatami.
"I consider Musavi a religious intellectual," Khatami recently told backers in an effort to encourage them to throw their support behind Musavi. "Musavi's dedication to morals is among his outstanding traits, as is his sympathy for people."
Musavi, an architect and a painter by trade, has been praised by many for his management of Iran's struggling economy while running the government during the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.
He has promised to pursue detente with the West but has said that Iran must first gain international trust over its nuclear program. However, he has stopped short of saying Iran should halt its controversial uranium-enrichment activities, which have raised fears in the West that they could be part of an effort to build nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad leads several official polls that have been made public by Iranian media, although many question the reliability of the polls. Observers widely agree, however, that while Ahmadinejad will face a tough race, he will be hard to beat.
Former President Khatami (left) has backed Musavi (right).
He reportedly has the support of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and Musavi and Karrubi have complained that state broadcasters give the incumbent biased coverage.
The hard-line president is also believed to have the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Khamenei has not publicly expressed his support for Ahmadinejad, but as Paris-based political analyst Hassan Shariatmadari told RFE/RL's Radio Farda, there have been strong hints.
"Without naming any of the candidates, Khamenei has clearly introduced his candidate -- which is Ahmadinejad -- to the people," Shariatmadari said. "What is more important is that he makes signals to the Guardians Council, the Basij force, and other key bodies that can interfere in the election [to Ahmadinejad's advantage]."
Among those deemed not fit to stand for office by the 12-man Guardians Council was female parliament deputy Rafat Bayat. As a conservative, Bayat's registration had pundits speculating whether the watchdog body might approve her candidacy, seeing as the Guardians Council had said there was no barrier to a woman running for the presidential office. Overall, more than 40 female candidates did not make the final list.
More predictably, the candidacies of two former lawmakers who have been critical of the Iranian establishment were not approved. The majority of those disqualified lacked political experience.
Mohammad Seifzadeh, a prominent lawyer who heads the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, says the screening process by the Guardians Council prevents the election from being free and fair.
"The election is a race between government candidates, not people," Seifzadeh says.
The election campaign for the June vote will go on until June 10. The Interior Ministry has said that the results will be announced a day after the June 12 election, and there will be a runoff between the two leading vote-getters if no one wins a majority in the first round.
About 46 million Iranians are eligible to vote.
Ahead of the June balloting, human rights activists warned of an increase in the repression against government critics, women's rights advocates, and student activists in the country. | <urn:uuid:5470b40a-5f48-4c39-9d7e-618b2b66efdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rferl.org/content/Four_Candidates_Approved_To_Run_In_Irans_Presidential_Vote/1735949.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981577 | 1,305 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Three coders (one from Windows, one from Solaris and one from Linux) down at the toilet. Here comes the one from Windows, uses half liquid soap, wipes his hands with half a roll of paper, and tells the others:
- at Microsoft we learn that there is no matter how many resources consumed, if the job gets done well.
Then the one from Solaris comes, washes his hands but with less soap, wipes with less paper and it says:
- at Solaris we learn that resources must be saved if the functionality exceeds 90%.
Then the one from Linux comes and doesn't washes his hands. The others were amazed:
- What, you do not wash your hands?
- At Linux we programmers have learned not to piss on our hands. | <urn:uuid:1ce7e3cb-0ede-4a72-86e9-fd5a7aed3587> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marianzburlea.com/three-coders-one-windows-one-solaris-and-one-linux | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96876 | 162 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Who is Society?
Those who are seen.
Where are we?
We are between the seen and unseen.
What is Society?
Society is a fragile structure.
Where is Society?
Society is located between the greenlights.
When did Society become?
Society became when travelling arrived.
Why is Society there?
Society is there to validate the conscious.
How is Society?
It is naught.
Do we "really" see ourselves in Society?
Collectively and unconsciously, yes. Consciously, no. Both exist and existence is of the mind which creates the observation.
Should we be able to see ourselves in Society?
Only with one self, yes. With two selves, no. That would be far too dangerous, thus we must recuse our recluse.
What do we see Society is?
I see it as a collective of ideals formulated between the spheres of conjugal neural transmissions. | <urn:uuid:e89d0c47-9d46-4270-8657-29445777cd17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clubconspiracy.com/forum/showthread.php?p=65404 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960648 | 198 | 1.640625 | 2 |
[Disponible en español — The author has kindly shared with readers of The Victorian Web the following essay, which first appeared in the January 2003 issue The Wildean: A Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies, published by the Oscar Wilde Society. Thanks to Donald Mead, Chairman, The Oscar Wilde Society, for his assistance.]
One OF THE minor characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray is the Jewish manager Isaacs, who runs the theatre that Sibyl Vane acts in. 1 He is part of a tawdry naturalistic environment, but his Jewishness is stressed so much, and he is so unsympathetically presented, that the reader cannot help feeling a bit surprised and even startled. We first meet Isaacs in chapter 4, when Dorian says to Lord Henry:
A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. ‘Have a box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. [pp. 47-48]
Dorian's dislike of Isaacs is not simply personal: it has strong anti-Semitic overtones. Nor does it seem to have any limits. Dorian attacks him again and again. A few pages later, for instance, he says:
On the first night I was at the theatre, the horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. . . . He was a most offensive brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to "The Bard," as he insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a distinction. [p. 50]
Sibyl Vane is also repelled by Isaacs. At the beginning of chapter 5, when her mother encourages her to be civil to him because he has lent them money, Sibyl replies: "He is not a gentleman, and I hate the way he talks to me" (p. 55). The implication is that Isaacs has sexual designs on Sibyl. The mother's praise of Isaacs, moreover, is simply meant to underline how unsympathetic a character she is: her main interest is in exploiting her daughter, not in helping and guiding her.
Nor is the attack on Isaacs, with its heavy anti-Semitism, placed completely in the mouths of Dorian and Sibyl. At the opening of chapter 7 Wilde joins in, using his authorial voice:
For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily, tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands, and talking at the top of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand, and assuring him that he was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a poet. — The Picture of Dorian Gray (p. 68)
Lord Henry's liking for Isaacs is, of course, part of his paradoxical nature. A while later, as Sibyl acts very poorly, the audience loses interest and begins to talk loudly and to whistle. Wilde describes Isaacs's uncouth reaction: "The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage" (p. 70). This is our last glimpse of him. After Sibyl's death, we hear no more of "the [grinning] old Jew" (p. 51).
What are we to make of all this? Is Wilde indulging in an uncharacteristic outburst of anti-Semitism, or is there a deeper reason for his surprisingly hostile and racially prejudiced portrayal of the Jewish manager? The answer, I think, lies in the nature of Wilde's novel. Without exception, the characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray are meant to represent various art movements in the nineteenth century and before: it is not only Sibyl who is inseparable from art. Basil Hallward, for instance, is meant at the beginning of the novel to evoke Dante Gabriel Rossetti as painter. The early Rossetti painted beautiful, innocent-looking women; Basil does the same thing, but concentrates on a young man instead. As the novel develops, moreover, Basil is associated strongly with John Ruskin. To a large extent, Lord Henry Wotton is Wilde's "imaginary portrait' of Walter Pater. As Richard Ellmann has observed: "Lord Henry is forever quoting, or misquoting, without acknowledgment, from Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Plagiarism is the worst of his crimes. He brazenly takes over the best-known passages" (317). Wotton is meant to represent Pater, but Pater as misunderstood by the young men who were corrupted by his Renaissance (text). Dorian exists both as a picture and as a human being. As he deteriorates, he becomes the type of the Decadent while his picture comes to reflect Decadent art's obsessive and extreme exploration of the evil in human nature. Sibyl Vane represents an innocent movement in English literature. She is all of Shakespeare's heroines rolled into one, but she also suggests the poetry of the early Tennyson, which concentrated on the artist isolated in a beautiful world of art. Like the Lady of Shalott, whom she clearly echoes when she says to Dorian, "I have grown sick of shadows" (p. 71) she steps out of this world into life and immediately perishes as a consequence. Even the minor characters are linked to Victorian art movements. Jim Vane and his mother, for instance, are straight out of Victorian melodrama. Wilde makes this very clear when he has Sibyl say to her brother: "Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in" (p. 61). Interestingly, the most recent book on the Jew in modern English literature, Bryan Cheyette's Constructions of "the Jew' in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations, 1875-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), barely mentions Wilde and makes no mention of the character Isaacs.
What, then, of Isaacs? Does he fit into this framework, and if so, how? The oily Jewish entrepreneur is a stock figure in the popular literature of Wilde's day, and it is almost certain that Wilde meant him to be another representative of Victorian melodrama and to contribute to the unattractive atmosphere surrounding Sibyl. He is clearly her equivalent of Caliban. But one cannot stop here. Wilde pushes the anti-Semitism to the point of parody, prompting the reader to ask further questions. It is my view, which I offer simply as an educated hypothesis, that Isaacs is at least in part Wilde's response to George Eliot. The most prominent and towering example of the portrayal of the Jewish community in the final decades of the century was Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876). In Daniel Deronda she displayed a warmly sympathetic attitude towards the Jewish community and used it to criticise non-Jewish English society. Wilde disliked Eliot considerably. In The Decay of Lying [text], written shortly before The Picture of Dorian Gray, he enumerated then criticised the various novelists of his day for abandoning "lying" in favour of scientific accuracy and realism. He wrote of George Eliot: "Mr. Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot's novels as being like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus, but M. Zola's characters are much worse" (p. 1075). Wilde, then, associated Eliot with Zola and saw her as part of a movement whose drift led ultimately to that terrible enemy of aestheticism, naturalism. It is true that Eliot is realistic and often mercilessly critical in her analysis of her characters and their motives. She abandons this attitude only once — in presenting Daniel Deronda in particular and the Jewish community in general. Deronda is uncharacteristically idealised by George Eliot. Unlike her other characters he is, quite simply, perfect.
Isaacs in my view is a deliberate parodic inversion of Daniel Deronda. Although this cannot be proved, there are indications which point in that direction. George Eliot describes Deronda as "young, handsome, distinguished in appearance" (p. 5). and of course impeccably well-dressed and a member of the upper orders. Isaacs, on the other hand, is old, ugly, repulsive in appearance, ridiculously dressed, and lower class. Daniel Deronda opens with a memorable scene in which Gwendolen Harleth is gambling at a roulette-table while Deronda looks upon her with disdain:
But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda's, and instead of averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly conscious that they were arrested — how long? The darting sense that he was measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself in a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen of a lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the moment with conflict. [pp. 3-4]
The superiority of the Jewish Daniel to the gentile Gwendolen is established at the very beginning of the novel and is confirmed as the book develops. Wilde inverts and exaggerates this situation in the Dorian-Isaacs relationship. It is Dorian, the young, rich and handsome English gentleman, who looks down upon the Jewish manager, seeing him as a member of an inferior species.
Later on in the novel, George Eliot focuses on Daniel Deronda's hands and describes them:
Look at his hands: they are not small and dimpled, with tapering fingers that seem to have only a deprecating touch: they are long, flexible, firmly-grasping hands, such as Titian has painted in a picture where he wanted to show the combination of refinement with force. [p. 137]
There is a similar but less extended focus on Isaacs's hands in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde tells us that he has "fat jewelled hands' that he waves as he talks. Isaacs's hands, unlike Deronda's, are sweaty, vulgar and repulsive.
In another memorable scene in Daniel Deronda, we are told of the young Daniel that he is a gifted musician:
Daniel had not only one of those thrilling boy voices which seem to bring an idyllic heaven and earth before our eyes, but a fine musical instinct, and had early made out accompaniments for himself on the piano, while he sang from memory. Since then he had had some teaching, and Sir Hugo, who delighted in the boy, used to ask for his music in the presence of guests. [p. 124]
When his uncle Sir Hugo, however, suggests to him that he may wish to pursue a musical career, Daniel refuses with disdain and is extremely insulted: "That Sir Hugo should have thought of him in that position for a moment, seemed to Daniel an unmistakable proof that there was something about his birth which threw him out from the class of gentlemen to which the baronet belonged" (p. 125). Wilde compactly counterpoints this scene when he has Dorian say in describing the theatre Sibyl acts in: "There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away" (pp. 48-49). This inversion, moreover, extends the anti-Semitic overtones beyond the figure of Isaacs.
In Eliot's novel, Daniel becomes Gwendolen's mentor and he finally leads her to salvation. The best thing that happens to Gwendolen is that she falls into Daniel's hands. Isaacs's relationship with Sibyl, however, is quite different, for his purpose is to use her for his own profit and he binds her to him contractually. Dorian says to Lord Henry: "We must get her out of the Jew's hands. She is bound to him for three years — at least for two years and eight months — from the present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course" (p. 53). When Gwendolen learns that her family has gone bankrupt and pawns her necklace, Daniel reclaims it and sends it back to her anonymously. But Isaacs lends money to the Vanes not out of goodness but in order to increase his hold on them. While Daniel is selfless and generous, Isaacs is selfish and money-grubbing. He is interested in Sibyl for monetary and sexual reasons, while Daniel's interest in Gwendolen is humane and completely non-mercantile.
Finally, after Daniel Deronda learns of his Jewish identity, he embraces Zionism and decides to abandon England and travel to the Middle East to establish a Jewish state for his people. In this respect also, Isaacs is his mirror opposite. Not only does Isaacs stay in England but he clings on tenaciously to English culture, as embodied in its most august representative, William Shakespeare. Isaacs never abandons Shakespeare and is even proud that he has been ruined five times by "the Bard." Isaacs's multiple ruin by Shakespeare is symbolic. For it was Shakespeare more than any one else who established the negative image of the Jew in English literature in his portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Thus, Shakespeare has ruined Isaacs not only financially but also culturally, racially, religiously and socially. For Isaacs to continue to cling to "the Bard' is perhaps pathetic, but for George Eliot — Wilde seems to be saying — to try and reverse the image of the Jew established by Shakespeare is even more pathetic and hopelessly futile. In portraying Isaacs, then, Wilde is not only functioning within the long-standing Shakespearean tradition but also reversing George Eliot's highly sympathetic and unrealistically idealised portrait of Daniel Deronda and the English Jewish community. He presents Isaacs as Eliot's real ideal, Zola, would have, placing him in a seedy naturalistic setting and making him an integral part of this setting.
But the question remains: Is Wilde anti-Semitic in The Picture of Dorian Gray, or is he simply anti-George Eliot? There is no trace of anti-Semitism in any of Wilde's other works. In his personal life, moreover, Wilde had several Jewish friends, most notable of whom was Ada Leverson, whom he called "the Sphinx." His friendship with Ada Leverson began before he published The Picture of Dorian Gray and continued until the end of his life. He corresponded with her about his novel, but there is no mention of Isaacs in their letters. It is quite possible that Ada Leverson — who later became a successful novelist herself — understood Wilde's purpose and accepted it. She was one of Wilde's guests at the opening performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. And after Wilde's disgrace, while his former friends were deserting him in droves, she and her husband stood firmly by him and remained helpful and loyal until the end. Between trials, for instance, Wilde stayed at their home, Ernest Leverson visited him in prison, and on his release Ada Leverson was waiting to receive him. This is hardly evidence of anti-Semitism. It is in my opinion fair to say that, had George Eliot never written Daniel Deronda, there would probably have been no Isaacs and no mention of the Jewish community in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This does not exonerate Wilde of the charge of insensitivity, however. It is difficult to imagine a Jew reading Wilde's novel without being offended by the passages on Isaacs. Some recent editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, moreover, have gone so far as to resort to editorial tampering to tone down or remove the anti-Semitic remarks: the word "Jew" is eliminated altogether and replaced by the word "man' or "manager' wherever necessary. (See the Dell Laurel and Signet editions of the novel, for example). That no individual Jew or Jewish organisation protested in Wilde's day about the portrayal of Isaacs is revealing. What it shows us is that the Jewish community in Wilde's day was weak, unorganised and uninfluential. It was in the habit of maintaining a low profile, trying to blend as much as possible into the non-Jewish society it was part of, and waiting for others — a new George Eliot, perhaps —to leap to its defence.
I would like to end by saying that I offer this reading of Isaacs in the hope that I have followed Arnold's dictum and seen "the object as in itself it really is." If I have missed the mark, however, I am sure that Wilde at least, were he still around, would have been delighted by this example of "the critic as artist" and would have stressed that the highest criticism is creative and subjective, seeing "the object as in itself it really is not"! I leave it to my colleagues to judge whether I have followed Wilde's advice or Arnold's.
1. Isaacs appears in both the shorter 1890 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was serially published in Lippincott's Magazine, and in the fuller 1891 version.
3. For a full analysis of the characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray as representatives of various nineteenth century art movements, see Nassaar, Into the Demon Universe, pp. 37-72
Cohen, Philip K. The Moral Vision of Oscar Wilde. (Rutherford, NJ.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. New York: Harper, Colophon Edition, 1966.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf, 1988.
Hart-Davis, Rupert, ed. Letters of Oscar Wilde. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962.
Nassaar, Christopher S. Into the Demon Universe: A Literary Exploration of Oscar Wilde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.
Raby, Peter. Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Shewan, Rodney. Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism. London: Macmillan, 1977.
Wilde, Oscar. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Third Edition. Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1994.
Last modified 24 December 2005 | <urn:uuid:3022633d-bb6e-4c90-a150-5caa3f04af13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/nassaar1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975166 | 3,985 | 2.15625 | 2 |
With $24.99 per year, consumers can add music which was not acquired from iTunes like songs imported from a CD or downloaded from other sources to her iCloud music collection.
Music can then be played on any iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac or PC whenever they want and wherever they are, without syncing.
iTunes will make their minds which songs in their collection are available in the iTunes Store. Particularly, music with a match is automatically added to iCloud on any tablets. If there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, your music is already in iCloud. When consumers’ music is in iCloud, they can stream and store it to any of their tablets. In addition, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality even if their original copy was of lower quality.
Matching a user’s iTunes library in the cloud takes just minutes. On the contrary, Google’s Music Beta and Amazon’s Cloud Player services ask consumers to upload song files to “cloud lockers” themselves and provide no matching selections.
If iTunes Match users allow their subscriptions run out and don’t pay to re-up, their iCloud libraries would revert to the songs they’ve purchased from iTunes. | <urn:uuid:98a6856f-5165-40f1-ab11-af96723ad7bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.wareseeker.com/fp/technology-news-events/apple-to-fix-itunes-match-beta/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947433 | 266 | 1.648438 | 2 |
You may think that deciding on the right handset is the hardest -- and costliest -- part of shopping for a new cell phone or smartphone. But the plan you choose is just as important. After all, you may spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on cellular service over the life of your phone, so finding cheap cell phone service can save you lots of dough.
Should You Go Prepaid?
A prepaid phone plan is one of the best ways to save money on cellular service. Instead of signing a contract and paying for a certain monthly plan, you only pay for the minutes you use. And, as an added bonus, you're not tied in to a lengthy service contract. Still, a prepaid plan is not for everyone.
If you decide that a prepaid plan is for you, you have several options. Most of the major carriers offer prepaid options.
You also can find prepaid plans from smaller carriers.
Should You Buy an Unlocked Phone?
An unlocked phone is one that does not come with cellular service, and is not "locked" to a certain cellular carrier; you buy the phone and then supply the service yourself. It's another way to get contract-free -- and often cheaper -- cellular service. But, keep in mind that buying an unlocked phone is very different from buying a prepaid phone. You supply your own cellular service to an unlocked phone. And, while the service may be cheaper over the lide of the phone, unlocked phones themselves are typically very expensive, costing hundreds of dollars.
Should You Sign a Contract?
There's no doubt that avoiding a lengthy contract with a cellular carrier can save you money, but, sometimes, committing to a service contract is the way to go. If you absolutely have to have the latest and greatest phone, for example, you may be forced to sign a contract in order to get it. But not all contracts are created equal.
If you decide that a contract is right for you, shop around before signing on the dotted line.
Is a Family Plan for You?
If you have more than one cell phone user in your family, you may be able to save money by opting for a family plan. A family plan only works if everyone in the family is using a phone from the same wireless carrier, but if you are, such a plan can offer significant savings. You may be able to share minutes between family members, make free calls to one another, or add additional lines for as little as $10 per month.
Can You Get a Discount?
Did you know that your employer may make your eligible for certain service discounts? Or that, if you're a senior citizen, your bill might be reduced? Ask your carrier to see if these discounts apply, or to find any others that might make for a lower monthly bill.
It's Not Too Late!
So, you're already tied into a lengthy service contract, paying big bucks every month for your cellular service. You're not out of luck yet! Did you know that one of the best ways to save money on your cell phone bill is to ask? That's right: ask. Simply call your cellular carrier and ask them to reduce your bill. They're more likely to say yes than you might think. | <urn:uuid:e3c949cb-10a6-466f-9ab5-afaec3674f28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cellphones.about.com/od/smartphoneservice/a/cheapest-cellular-service-plan.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957549 | 658 | 1.507813 | 2 |
This spring, St. Dominic parish will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of their church. Nearly forgotten is the old church and the tumultuous debate that preceded its ultimate demolition in the Fall of 1985. Tradition-minded parishioners joined with preservationists in the community to try to save the old church building. The contest attracted letters to the editor of the Northfield News from around the country, and newspaper articles in the Faribault Daily News and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
With the help of Hayes Scriven and the Northfield Historical Society, I have assembled a handful of photos that perhaps explain why so many were so attached to the lovely old red-brick building. More photos and analysis of the episode available on my blog.
[All photos courtesy of The Northfield Historical Society]
See the large slideshow or this small slideshow: | <urn:uuid:f56db936-63bb-425f-a67d-6d3aed403109> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://locallygrownnorthfield.org/post/tag/demolition/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945275 | 175 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Denny answers:Easter is about how Jesus died for our sins on the cross and then came back to life on the third day. We could call Easter Jesus’ Resurrection Day!
Many people think that Easter is about Easter egg hunts, the Easter bunny, chocolate candy and toys, but for a Christian, that’s not what Easter is about at all. The true Easter story begins with the story of Christmas. The Christmas story tells how God sent Jesus to this earth as a baby who was born to Mary and Joseph. Jesus was not only a man but God in human form. As Jesus grew up, He never sinned, which means He never displeased God.
Jesus knew that all people do sin, though. We all sin when we do, say, and think wrong things that displease God. Because of our sin, we deserve to spend eternity without God. But, because God loves us, He sent His only Son Jesus to give us a way to spend eternity in heaven with Him. He didn’t deserve to die because death is the punishment for sin, and He had never sinned. But Jesus died on the cross to take the punishment we deserve for our sins. Because God accepted His death for sin, God brought Jesus back to life. If we believe and trust in Jesus to forgive us from our sins, we will go to heaven to be with Him when we die.
For Christians, Easter is the time when we remember what Jesus did for us—He died for our sins, came back to life and is now waiting for us in heaven!
Go back to:
- “Christ carried our sins in his body on the cross so we would stop living for sin and start living for what is right. And you are healed because of his wounds” (1 Peter 2:24, NCV).
- “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).
- “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18). | <urn:uuid:58640fd8-9fc5-419d-864c-790c442d197a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gqkidz.org/easter.html | 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 | 0.973253 | 484 | 2.5 | 2 |