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Viewing PDF documents
- — 01 September, 2000 09:41
Adobe Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com) is the most common Windows program available for viewing PDF files, and is available for a variety of platforms including Linux. The Linux version has the same look and feel as its Windows counterpart, with the same features.
Another program available for viewing PDF files under Linux is called Ghostscript (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript/), by Aladdin Enterprises (www.aladdin.com). This PostScript language interpreter and development engine views, prints and converts PostScript and PDF files. It can be used as a plug-in point for Linux printer drivers, and is also a program similar to Adobe Acrobat Distiller for PDF writing. Considering that Acrobat Distiller retails for around $550, the free distribution of Ghostscript with this extended functionality is quite impressive. Moreover, Ghostscript is a general graphics engine with several interpreter front ends, including support for a range of popular graphic formats such as TIFF and JPEG.
The most recent release of Aladdin Ghostscript is version 6.0, which can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs600. Version 6.0 supports PostScript LanguageLevel 3 and PDF 1.3 interpreters, and PDF writer improvements. Licensing agreements prevent us from providing version 6.0 on the cover CD; however, the previous version, 5.50, is released under the General Public Licence and is on the CD.
Although Ghostscript interprets Post-Script and PDF files, it does not have a graphical viewing application. Other programs have been written for this purpose, Ghostview being one: it is a basic application that allows different viewing angles. The limitation of its functionality is understandable considering the current version, 1.5, is dated 1993. A more recent program for viewing PDF documents is gv 3.5.8, although it is still quite dated, from July 1997. This program offers a variety of viewing options including portrait, landscape and upside down. Page size can be scaled from 0.1 to 10 magnification. The pages are navigated via a side scroll bar. However, there is no individual page scroll bar, therefore pages must be controlled by dragging the mouse pointer.
We have provided Adobe Acrobat Reader, Ghostscript 5.50, Ghostview 1.5 and gv 3.5.8 on the PC World cover CD. | <urn:uuid:45500d8f-ecda-44ef-865d-d74a98c46821> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/157635/viewing_pdf_documents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900259 | 513 | 1.5 | 2 |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee has declared a state of emergency as a precautionary measure to get emergency operations under way as the eastern portion of the state continues to see significant icing.
Although ice was beginning to melt in Middle Tennessee by midmorning on Friday, Tennessee Emergency Management Spokesman Jeremy Heidt said the state Highway Patrol was working 20 separate wrecks in the Clarksville area.
Heidt said there were also multiple wrecks in East Tennessee due to ice on the roads. State officials were working with Kentucky to try to stop motorists from traveling into the areas of Tennessee that are the most icy or congested from earlier wrecks.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Department was salting roads to try to melt the ice.
The winter weather system also moved through Kentucky, causing icy roads and school closures in some areas.
Police said there were several accidents in the Elizabethtown area, and the southbound lanes of Interstate 65 were shut down after a 10-vehicle pileup.
In addition, freezing rain caused a number of school systems in central and southern Kentucky to cancel classes.
Other areas, including Metro Louisville, hadn't reported trouble on roadways Friday morning and schools were on a normal schedule.
(Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) | <urn:uuid:cfbc707b-0073-471f-81c2-0cb7fc2cb067> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newschannel5.com/story/20706999/state-of-emergency-declared-for-icy-conditions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978767 | 265 | 1.554688 | 2 |
striving for excellence
Work is only work if you prefer to be somewhere else. Work tends to be a negative perception of a task which we reluctantly approach. Work is only labour when we forget to see our life as it truly is – an opportunity to be creative, enrich others and be enriched ourselves. When we are able to see work in this way, we find something called enthusiasm inside. When we are enthusiastic we work well and we are valued. We are used as a role model. When we work well it is much easier to say no when we need to, for we know our own value, and we are not dependent on others’ approval to feel good about ourselves. When we put love and enthusiasm into what we do, it rebounds in the form of opportunities and blessings, two of the most important ingredients of a truly wealthy life. | <urn:uuid:3ad55eb5-29b4-4472-92b7-33ed7682e298> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lifeacousticandamplified.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/striving-for-excellence/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948793 | 171 | 1.726563 | 2 |
There have been alot of posts during this challenge on Gods and Goddesses. I thought that I might scratch this itch by providing you with some Norwegian Mythology, and tell you a story about the beautiful Goddess Idun, keeper of the golden apples. Minnie is back and as usual she has something she wants to say.
In norwegian mythology, Idun was the goddess of spring and rebirth. She and her husband Bragi, the god of music and poetry, lived in Åsgard, which was the home of the gods. Iduns most important duty was to be the keeper of the golden apples. These she carefully protected in a basket which she opened each day allowing all of the gods to take and eat one. Doing so kept them youthful, beautiful and immortal.
The prose "Edda" which is a book of Norwegian legends written in the 11th century, contains a story about Idun and the magic apples. One day Loki, the trickster god, was captured by a giant named Thiassi. The giant refused to free Loki until he agreed to bring Idun and the apples to Thiassi's home. Loki gave his word and sped off to Åsgard.
He invited Idun to bring her apples and walk into the forest, where he knew of some even more precious apples. Eager to compare her special fruit with that mentioned by Loki, Idun joined the trickster. As soon as they reached the forest Thiassi in the form of an eagle, dove from the sky and seized the goddess and her apples.
Without Idun's apples, the gods began to age. Horrified by this they demanded that Loki rescue Idun from Thiassi. Loki flew to the giant's home disguised as a falcon and once he arrived there he changed Idun into a nut, and hid her in his claws. It didn't take long for Thiassi to discover this, so he became an eagle again and followed Loki. As soon as Loki and Idun were inside Åsgard, the gods lit the walls on fire. Thiassi's wings caught on fire as he crossed the flames and once he dropped to the ground the gods killed him.
Hope you enjoyed the story, maybe I will tell you more about Norwegian mythology another day. | <urn:uuid:b3ea4879-bd77-4934-9ef2-278588b2bd68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sivmaria.blogspot.com/2011/04/itchy-for-idun.html?showComment=1302542914345 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987271 | 470 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Summer Night, 1886
Oil on canvas, 133 x 151 cm
The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design - The National Gallery, Oslo. NG.M.02745
In the summer of 1886 the group of friends who had met while studying in Munich gathered at Christian Skredsvig's farmstead home Fleskum, outside Kristiania (Oslo). The Fleskum artists' colony is highly significant in the history of Norwegian art: it marks the definitive breakthrough of plein-air painting and heralds the arrival of Neo-Romanticism. Peterssen's sensitive Summer Night is a major work of that summer gathering, and a major work in his oeuvre. We look down into the still water of the lake and the glow of the last light of a long summer's evening. We do not see the sky itself; instead it is implied by the reflection of the crescent moon in the smooth water. Peterssen has transposed an idea from Puvis de Chavannes' famous Bois sacré (1884) to a specific Norwegian landscape setting. The elegiac mood possibly has symbolic overtones. The contrast between the vigorous trunk of the tree growing in the foreground of the picture and the dead birch lying rotting in the lake hints at the course of life, from youthful growth to inevitable death. | <urn:uuid:1e1642b7-7af5-492f-93f0-8b901f92c18b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artsmia.org/mirror-of-nature/nordic-art-detail.cfm?nor_art_cat=65&lng=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903528 | 274 | 2.390625 | 2 |
A recent article in The Straits Times highlighted the growing trend of home owners and tenants renting out spare rooms to paying guests for short periods of times (such as a few days).
Websites such as Airbnb, Wimdu, 9flats and Roomorama have sprouted to facilitate these lettings by effectively creating a marketplace for renters and rentees.
Airbnb currently has over 230 listings for rooms for rent in Singapore, which can be stayed in for as low as $40 a day, or less than one fifth what a typical hotel room would cost. Some hosts even offer premium services such as breakfast and complimentary toiletries and EZ-link cards.
From the host's perspective, it's a great way to earn some extra dollars from a spare room, while from the guest's perspective they can save a lot of money and get a different experience versus staying in a hotel.
The catch? It's illegal
Sounds like a win-win idea… but it's illegal. According to the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), private residential properties can only be rented out or sublet for periods of six months or more.
A spokesman said they would investigate cases of breaches, and those caught will be issued enforcement notices. If they do not stop they can be fined up to $200,000 and/or jailed for up to a year. Neither the HDB nor JTC allow short-term subletting either, so those caught doing so can face penalties. HDB homeowners may even get their flats confiscated.
The URA's rationale for banning this practice is that "transient occupiers" may disturb and inconvenience other residents. A Singapore Hotel Association (SHA) spokesperson voiced concerns about how unregulated guesthouses could compromise the safety and health of the guests, and that any complaints from tourists might create adverse publicity for Singapore.
Is the renting out of rooms really that bad?
Personally, I believe that short-term room renting should be allowed. As one of the hosts in The Straits Times article put it, doing so "democratizes the marketplace" and is a win-win for both the hosts and guests.
For the hosts, they can earn extra income from their asset while meeting new people from around the world. For the guests, they have a greater choice of accommodation at affordable prices, and can choose the experience they would like to have. In my travels, my favorite places to stay were often not the fancy hotels but small bed and breakfast places where you get to enjoy the local hospitality.
If this practice became widespread, the losers would be the hotels and hostels as they would face greater price competition and an increased supply of rooms, which is probably why they are against it. In my opinion, the risks stated by the URA and the SHA are probably overstated, given that this practice has been going on for over five years and we do not seem to have any major incidents arising from it.
Of course, if renting out rooms were allowed, the URA would still play a vital role in investigating any complaints lodged by neighbors and residents if a nuisance was being created, and could take action against offenders instead of banning it outright.
While negative incidents could indeed affect a tourist's impression of Singapore, I believe on the whole that allowing the short-term renting of rooms would actually have the opposite effect — it would allow tourists to experience true Singaporean hospitality, and get an understanding of the local culture that they would never get by staying in a fancy hotel.
It would also allow "asset rich and cash poor" homeowners to monetize their asset and increase their incomes, while exposing Singaporeans to people from all over the world, leading to increased cultural tolerance and understanding.
Hopefully the regulations can be reconsidered, and amended to benefit the homeowners and not just the hoteliers.
By Mr. Propwise, founder of www.Propwise.sg, a Singapore property blog dedicated to helping you understand the real estate market and make better decisions. Click here to get your free Property Beginner's and Buyer's Guide. | <urn:uuid:1f39cf42-538d-4d17-abf2-59578d70891e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/property-blog/short-term-room-rentals-allowed-144142994.html | 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 | 0.968072 | 829 | 1.632813 | 2 |
proton beam radiation therapy
(PROH-ton beem RAY-dee-AY-shun THAYR-uh-pee)
A type of radiation therapy that uses streams of protons (tiny particles with a positive charge) that come from a special machine. This type of radiation kills tumor cells but does not damage nearby tissues. It is used to treat cancers in the head and neck and in organs such as the brain, eye, lung, spine, and prostate. Proton beam radiation is different from x-ray radiation. | <urn:uuid:845dc66a-0952-4750-80f1-f2ea25c406df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uchospitals.edu/online-library/content=GLOSCDR270726 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932601 | 112 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Glen - First, to clear up one thing. When I showed the two "Pyrex" jugs I wasn't suggesting that the second was innovative or some sort of big break-through. The method has been used before. I was simply giving it as an example of a very sensible way of getting rid of a two part mould and replacing it with a solid mould - desirable for all sorts of reasons.
Now back to your pictures. The lower ones show a two part press mould. It is a very good illustration of a press mould, showing the very strong hinge and locking knuckles which are essential. The jug handle, although being pressed in the way I showed, looks as though it is intended later to be bent down and attached at the bottom. I suspect there is a bit of artistic licence in the length of handle.
The upper pictures clearly show a blow mould as it is intended to be held shut by hand or by a simple latch with no real strength and, of course, the jug shown could not be pressed in the shape shown. I am, however, totally baffled by the jug handle which would be impossible to do in a blow mould. Are the two sets of pictures supposed to tell a story (bottom first) of some sort of press and blow process? If so they remind me of the sort of fanciful things which often appear in patent specifications although these are clearly not patent drawings.
I am about to go away for five or six days so any follow-up will not get a reply until then. | <urn:uuid:94b0cf46-d703-418b-9c72-1676453e6513> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,2218.msg43008.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970482 | 311 | 1.601563 | 2 |
ill-afford, leading geo-strategist Parag Khanna has cautioned.
"There is irrefutable evidence that global supply chains create jobs," Khanna said on the sidelines of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit here.
"Technological progress replaces people. But it creates far more jobs than it destroys. Retail is also part of the same process of modernisation," said Khanna, a director at the Hybrid Reality Institute.
In his latest book Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human Technology Civilization, Khanna makes a case for 'geo-technology' as the third edifice of modern development paradigm, along with geo-politics and geo-economics.
The government has withstood mounting political pressure to roll-back decisions to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, to hike diesel prices and to cap the sale of subsidised cooking gas.
"I would urge politicians to not be too concerned about the rather fallacious argument that modernisation and technology lead to loss of livelihood," he said. "Globalisation of supply chain demonstrably raises the standard of living and improves lives. That is true of iron miners in Zambia as well as women in rural India."
In the absence of intelligent policy and appropriate focus on infrastructure, India's so-called 'demographic dividend' could well turn out to be a legacy that will be difficult to shrug off, warned Khanna.
"Demographic dividend is not value-neutral," he said. "There is no such thing as demographic dividend unless we use it well."
"I would say at this point, India is kind of 50:50. It may reap dividends of this army of youth joining the workforce. But it may equally fail to do so. I am of the view that Indian demography has been a curse, as of now. You cannot wipe away the legacy and erase the past," he said.
On corruption, Khanna said "it is not an India-specific problem" and infrastructure - or rather the lack of it - is hurting India's growth process more than any other aspect.
"There are several instances of highly developed societies that are also highly corrupt," Khanna said.
"There is no doubt that corruption is a nuisance and a hindrance to growth, but it is a largely universal problem, unless you are talking about Norway or Singapore," Khanna added.
"Infrastructure, apart from creating jobs and income, also empowers people. Telecommunication is the biggest example of how the freedom of physical mobility has empowered people and resulted in immense gains for society and economy," he said. | <urn:uuid:f5966420-5e8e-4823-b2b1-fa19f42f9e40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindustantimes.com/BusinessSectionPage/Chunk-HT-UI-HTLeadershipSummit2012-TopStories/Thought-leaders-guide-growth/Article1-960229.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964083 | 538 | 1.953125 | 2 |
APPLETON, Wis. (AP) -- The Appleton Area School District is telling parents there are several confirmed cases of whooping cough in district schools.
A letter posted on the district's website says there have been several cases of pertussis at four schools: Classical, Kaleidoscope, North High School and West High School. Ferber Elementary also has been added.
Assistant Superintendent Ben Vogel tells The Post-Crescent the district is letting parents know what they can do so the illness doesn't spread further.
Whooping cough spreads through the air with face-to-face contact with a sick person.
The district's letter warns that pertussis symptoms are difficult to differentiate from a common cold, and parents should contact a physician if a child develops pertussis symptoms.
Appleton schools are not in session due to the holiday, but classes resume Tuesday.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) | <urn:uuid:3503f9a0-2ca4-4ea4-a3c5-f7131e9deb8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wsaw.com/news/health/headlines/Appleton_Schools_Warn_Parents_of_Whooping_Cough_136397513.html?site=full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953693 | 194 | 1.796875 | 2 |
In the era of Photoshop, we all know photography is no longer a pure art form. Now, ten artists intend to push the medium even further by injecting other disciplines like cinema, sculpture, poetry and painting. Opening tomorrow at The Hole is Attachments, featuring The New York Times Art’s writer, Andrew Kuo, multifaceted photographer Jason Nocito, and BULLETT’s own, Sandy Kim, among others. Curators Kathy Grayson and Tim Barber, creator of website and Smartphone app, Tinyvices, assembled a compelling dialogue on the potentialities of media. The result is an often kaleidoscopic and inherently surreal wandering through the dimensions of digital time and space; in other words, this show is trippy as hell. Not for one with a weak stomach, Asger Carlsen’s photographs depict supposed sculpture in a form that is half-human and half-mutated mound of flesh – a bit like a Francis Bacon work come to life. Katie Steciw uses programmed technology to create a collage with hidden imagery and text – an enlightening scavenger hunt, to say the least. Finally, Sandy Kim’s most recent documentations of the dingy cubbyholes of youth culture will tile two walls of the exhibit. These pieces and more will all come together to create Attachments, an overt reference to the transmission and intersection of media. Needless to say, don’t be surprised when you stumble upon some of these artworks on Tumblr.
Opening Reception: October 20, 6-9 PM, The Hole, 312 Bowery. (Show runs until November 3rd.) | <urn:uuid:14a7794c-3f32-4e7b-bed7-7b613f9dfff1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bullettmedia.com/article/attachments-featuring-sandy-kim-jason-nocito-and-asger-carlsen-opens-at-the-hole/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926903 | 338 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Heart health is on a lot of people's minds these days, especially as more and more people are developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type II diabetes. You may think that you're on your way to figuring it all out, too. Eating a heart-healthy diet? Check. Engaging in regular exercise to improve your cardiovascular fitness? You bet. Working to achieve or maintain a healthy weight? Of course.|
So when new products comes to market, whether a prescription medication you see on a TV commercial or the latest "functional foods" from the grocery, you probably feel confused all over again. Plant sterols and plant stanols are becoming increasingly popular as supplements and food additives. If you've seen (or used) orange juice, yogurt, and chocolates that boast cholesterol-lowering benefits, then you've probably encountered plant sterols and stanols without even knowing it. The foods that contain them boast heart healthy benefits on their packages, which may have caught your interest. So what are these sterols and stanols? Do you need them? But maybe more importantly, will they really help to lower your cholesterol?
What Are Sterols and Stanols?
Plant sterols and plant stanols are phytoesterols (small but essential components of certain plant membranes). They are found naturally (in very small amounts) in some vegetable oils, nuts, grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. Research has shown that plant sterols and plant stanols have the ability to help lower cholesterol. Hoping to cash in and make common food products even "healthier," food manufacturers have taken these phytoesterols from their naturally occurring sources, concentrated them, and added them to common foods that wouldn't normally contain them, such as vegetable oil spreads (margarine), mayonnaise, yogurt smoothies, orange juice, cereals, and snack bars to name a few.
How Do They Work?
When you eat food that contains dietary cholesterol (which is found in animal products like meat, eggs and dairy), your intestinal tract absorbs that cholesterol and puts it into the bloodstream. Plant sterols and plant stanols are chemically similar to dietary cholesterol found in animal products. So when the sterols and stanols travel through your digestive tract, they get in the way of dietary cholesterol, preventing it from being absorbed into the bloodstream. Therefore, less total cholesterol is absorbed by your body when plant sterols and stanols are present. The cholesterol that is not absorbed leaves the body as waste. With regular use, plant sterols and plant stanols can result in a reduction in blood cholesterol levels.
Are They Safe and Effective?
Plant sterols and plant stanols have been studied for over 50 years. More than 140 published clinical studies have shown that plant sterols and plant stanols lower total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol. For example:
Because of the proven efficacy of sterols and stanols, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved this health claim:
“Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include at least 1.3 grams of plant sterols or 3.4 grams of plant stanols, consumed in two meals with other foods, may reduce the risk of heart disease.” A food product may carry the health claim if the product itself is also low saturated fat (1g or less per serving), low in cholesterol (20mg or less per serving), and contains no more than 13 grams of total fat per serving and per 50 grams.
How much do you need?
The American Heart Association's (AHA), Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations (2006) state that individuals should consume plant sterols and plant stanols from a variety of foods and beverages every day—just as they would use cholesterol-lowering medication to maintain LDL (bad) cholesterol reductions from these products. The AHA also notes that maximum effects are achieved at plant sterol and plant stanol intake of approximately 2 grams per day.
As stated above, plant sterols and stanols can occur naturally in foods or be fortified into other food products. Check out the chart below for examples of foods that contain them. Note: All amounts have been converted to grams of sterols in order to provide equivalent measures per product (0.8g sterols = 1.3 g sterol esters = 3.4 g stanol/stanol esters).
Keep these points in mind if you choose to ad plant sterols and plant stanols to your diet: | <urn:uuid:a52d9fcd-4f0d-4d0c-ac7b-6b8aeeb25141> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/nutrition_articles.asp?id=1180 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952094 | 938 | 2.640625 | 3 |
This handsomely bound volume is a welcome addition to the literature on animal ethics. Its thirty-five articles include traditional approaches to animal ethics -- utilitarian, contractarian, and Kantian -- as well as more recent contributions that highlight virtue, ecology, and literature. Claims that animals deserve or do not deserve moral consideration are debated in articles that appeal to the philosophy of mind and to cognitive ethology. Finally, several articles discuss issues concerning human uses of and interactions with animals -- zoos, pets, medical experiments, hunting, agriculture, and the creation of chimeras and genetically modified organisms. The text of each article is between 10 and 36 pages, making each suitable for reading in a single sitting. The Introduction contains useful summaries of all the articles and indicates quite correctly that these articles were not written for a general audience; they are for people doing serious philosophy.
There is not enough space in this review to make meaningful comment about most of the articles, so let me just say that the first two articles are on the history of animal ethics in ancient and in early-modern philosophy. They are quite well done.
Like several of the articles, Christine Korsgaard's excellent Kantian contribution discusses the differences between human beings and (nonhuman) animals to determine morally relevant differences that affect the extent to which animal life or welfare should be of direct moral concern. A major difference discussed by Korsgaard and some others in the volume is self-consciousness. Many animals can perceive the world and exercise causal reasoning about it, but, so far as we know, only people can identify their own desires and thought processes, criticize these desires and thought processes, and attempt to change them. For these reasons, only human beings are moral agents in the Kantian sense.
The bottom rung on the ladder toward self-awareness and moral responsibility is often thought to be the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror. Korsgaard properly distances herself from placing much emphasis on this test, as less visual animals, such as tigers, may identify themselves through a sense other than sight, and most social animals would seem to have some sense of self in order to act in ways that are appropriate to their places in their social order (101).
Korsgaard's signal contribution to the debate about our treatment of animals is that the respect we have for human beings on the Kantian basis of their being moral agents requires that we respect the bodies of those human beings, "the self for whom, or from whose standing view, things can be naturally good or bad." Sentient animals also have this kind of natural self, so Kantians should accord them some claim, although a lesser claim than moral agents, to moral consideration in their own right (108).
R. G. Frey's account of the relationship between utilitarianism and animals comes to just about the same conclusion. Frey rejects Peter Singer's views on animals because, Frey claims, Singer focuses too much on pleasures and pains in people and animals and not enough on the overall richness of lives. Judged on the basis of richness, people tend to have much more valuable lives than do most animals. An important constituent of such richness is the set of abilities that make most people moral agents. Frey acknowledges this claim to be a Kantian element in his reasoning (191). Because he retains the utilitarian element of caring about pleasures, pains, and the general quality of experience regardless of species, he rejects speciesism and agrees with Korsgaard that animals are morally considerable in their own right.
Frey's emphasis on the richness of life being enhanced through membership in a moral community with reciprocal obligations (191) connects his utilitarianism to contractarianism as well. However, Frey rejects the claim made by some contractarians (including Peter Carruthers in this volume) that animals are not of direct moral importance. But when push comes to shove, Frey thinks that utilitarians should almost always prefer human welfare because of the richer lives that humans typically lead. Hence, unlike some other utilitarians, Frey does not clearly reject factory farms, medical experimentation with animals, zoos, or any other currently controversial uses of animals for human welfare.
The warrant for Frey's embrace of a utilitarian standard closer to that of J.S. Mill than to that of Jeremy Bentham (and Peter Singer) is methodologically opaque. It leads to conclusions that support what many people consider common sense, but growing up in the racially segregated South, Frey rejects common practice (and presumably the associated common sense) as appropriate moral standards. Perhaps Frey is just appealing to his (and our) intuitions. However, from a utilitarian perspective, are such intuitions any better than common sense and common moral practice as guides to conduct?
Contractarianism, the third major perspective in normative ethics in our time, is related to animal issues by Peter Carruthers, who rejects the direct moral considerability of animals. He has two arguments. The first is a reductio ad absurdum. He argues on the basis of some interesting concepts in the philosophy of mind that even insects have propositional attitudes and that utilitarians concerned to maximize preference satisfaction are therefore required by consistency to include insect welfare in their calculations. Taking this result to be absurd, he rejects the utilitarian standard. I am not competent to assess the soundness of this argument.
Carruther's second argument, by contrast, his contractarian argument, is transparently flawed. He argues that if all morality stems, as he believes it does, from a hypothetical contract among self-interested moral agents, the contract cannot include animals as direct subjects of morality because animals are incapable of the kind of moral reasoning and reciprocal restraint required of contractors. But how can all of morality stem from the contract? Carruthers notes that according to Scanlon's contractarianism, "moral rules are those that no rational agent could reasonably reject who shared (as his or her highest priority) the aim of reaching free and unforced general agreement on the rules that are to govern behavior." (385) This aim is obviously a moral one, so at least one moral principle precedes the contract; all morality cannot stem from the contract. Rawls's version of contractarianism also requires moral commitments to precede the contract. To get off the ground, Rawls's contractarianism requires general acceptance of the moral rule that one should obey the dictates of one's (hypothetical) contract. This moral rule is a condition of making the contract, not a result of the contract. And if one moral position is independent of the contract, others could be as well, including the position that animals are of moral importance in their own right.
Carruthers acknowledges in a footnote that neither Scanlon nor Rawls continued to believe (if they ever believed) that all morality could be derived from a contract. But Carruthers does not address the reasons for this view, much less does he justify differing from them. So, he is aware of a potentially fatal flaw in his reasoning and purposely ignores this flaw, seeming to hope that his readers won't notice. This is the strategy of an advocate, a lobbyist, or a lawyer pleading for a client, not of a philosopher from whom we expect greater intellectual honesty.
One of the gems in this collection, and there are many, is Rosalind Hursthouse's relation of virtue ethics to the treatment of animals. Besides containing a very good, short introduction to virtue ethics, the article shows that much nuance is appropriate to the proper treatment of animals. She argues cogently for pluralism of values and perspectives against those who try to meet all moral contingencies with a single or a small number of principles.
Tzachi Zamir, in another gem, does the same thing for the literary approach to animal ethics that Hursthouse does for the virtue ethics approach. This is the most compelling and interesting advocacy of the literary approach that I have ever encountered. Literature affects our perceptions, and one of the bases of all moral action is perception of the situation at hand. Zamir illustrates this thesis and shows its importance with a series of interesting examples.
One section of The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics contains four articles devoted to the relationship of person theory to the moral status of animals. Sarah Chan and John Harris employ evidence and concepts from the field of cognitive ethology to argue that some animals, "in particular great apes and cetaceans," are sufficiently self-aware to deserve the right to life (322-23). We should respect such rights to life regardless of attendant inconvenience, such as to the tuna industry which regularly kills some dolphins as by-catch (324).
My favorite of the four articles in this section, however, is the long, detailed, and analytically tight article by Michael Tooley on the personhood of animals. He gives cogent reasons to reject contractarian approaches which deny moral standing to animals (349-50), and then, using concepts drawn from work in the philosophy of mind, casts serious doubt on Tom Regan's animal rights position (360-65).
Some articles consider bio-technological developments which currently and increasingly in the future call the human-animal distinction into question. Chan and Harris conclude their article on personhood with a discussion of the possibility of enhancing animal abilities to such an extent that many more animals may become persons. They seem to embrace this brave new world while recognizing that it will challenge our concepts of personhood.
Julian Savulescu defends the practice of creating genetically modified animals (GMAs), whether by "transferring genes from one species to another" (creating transgenic animals), "mixing the sperm of one species with the ovum of another" (creating hybrid animals), or "mixing cells from the embryo of one animal with those of a different species" (creating chimeras) (641). Chimeras of the quail-duck variety have been produced already in attempts to study embryonic development. Savulescu sees value in recently created mice with functional human brain cells as models for certain human diseases. A yet-to-be-created human-chimp chimera may be used to study the development of human language (648-49). "The final chapter in human evolution might be to rationally design life itself and keep all life on earth under such control" (660). Savulescu discusses needed safeguards and current uncertainties about moral status, but in the end endorses such practices in general by replying to four major criticisms.
Henry T. Greely also defends the production of human/nonhuman chimeras. The SCID-hu-mouse, for example, has a human rather than a mouse immune system, making it helpful in AIDS research (671). Greely argues that we don't really have to worry about such morally problematic cases as chimpanzees with human brains because there isn't enough room for a human brain in a chimp's cranium (683).
The articles by Savulescu and Greely are fascinating but, I think, troubling. Although they reply to objections from social conservative critics of the practices that they (with some qualifications) endorse, there is no substitute for having social conservatives speak for themselves. I find the articles in this volume insufficiently skeptical of the ability of human beings to react beneficently under conditions of unprecedented power and moral uncertainty. A rejoinder from a social conservative would be a welcome addition to the volume.
Of the several valuable articles on practical ethics, I found Hugh LaFollette's discussion of animal experimentation in biomedical research to be particularly helpful. His measured account does not claim that all experimentation on animals is immoral or unhelpful, but he uses historical evidence and sound reasoning to question the morality and utility of the vast majority of such experimentation. Some of the objections to curtailing experimentation that he entertains and some of the replies that he offers were new to me, and I have worked in this field. Missing, however, are two considerations regarding the use of animals in tests of medications designed for use by human beings. First, it is sometimes objected to curtailing experiments on animals that the only alternative is experimentation on human beings. One reply is that although many animals are used to assess the safety of medications for human beings, we end up experimenting on human beings anyway. Differences between people and animals (which LaFollette emphasizes) are such that safety of a drug for animals is no guarantee of safety for human beings. Implicit recognition of this fact is the use of only several human beings in Phase I clinical trials of new medications. These few human beings are at jeopardy whether or not animal studies preceded their use of the drug in question.
The common reply by advocates of animal experimentation is that animal studies reduce the jeopardy to human beings of drug trials because drugs found toxic to animals are not given to human beings. However, this just raises the second consideration. Given the differences between people and animals, it is possible that many drugs that are toxic to experimental animals would be safe and effective for human beings. The practice of animal trials may be depriving people of the enormous medical help that could come from medications which are toxic to experimental animals. In short, only experiments on people can determine what medications are helpful and harmful to human beings.
The other articles in the practical ethics section are also worth serious attention. Clare Palmer, for example, bases duties to domesticated (as opposed to wild) animals on historically created relationships between people and those animals. Although their sentience is a necessary condition for duties to animals, it is not sufficient to account for many such duties. We generally have more duties to domesticated than to wild animals because domesticated animals are those which we have purposely made vulnerable and dependent on us. But we may also have special duties to some wild animals, especially to those whose lives we have disrupted through habitat destruction. Readers may be pleased to find that Palmer shows the principles she develops do not require any special solicitude toward urban (wild or feral) rats.
Elizabeth Harman makes a strong case that painlessly killing what she calls "animals of intermediate mental sophistication, including dogs, cats, cows, and pigs" (726) is morally wrong except where there are overriding moral considerations. Although she does not discuss the issue, this article has implications for eating the meat of humanely-raised livestock which are killed painlessly.
Stuart Rachels does address the issue of vegetarianism, providing vivid descriptions of the horrors of factory farming. He goes on to give an excellent overall moral defense of vegetarianism. Gary Varner, by contrast, finds a place for hunting -- not so much sport hunting as what he calls therapeutic and subsistence hunting -- among thinkers who care about both environmental health and animal welfare. He engages such major thinkers in these fields as J. Baird Callicott and Tom Regan but, it seems to me, fails to give sufficient consideration to the possibility of introducing wild predators to preserve ecosystems from the ravages of overpopulated deer and other herbivores.
David DeGrazia's article on zoos and Hilary Bok's article on pets are among the gems in this volume. In sum, this anthology makes a substantial contribution to scholarship on animal ethics. I recommend it highly. | <urn:uuid:786bb4f4-b4d9-4616-9da1-c7cdf90f5a52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/28320-the-oxford-handbook-of-animal-ethics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953344 | 3,097 | 3.046875 | 3 |
A plurality of non-voters favor President Barack Obama in the presidential race, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Wednesday.
Forty-three percent of registered voters who said they will not vote this election would otherwise vote for, or lean toward voting for, Obama, compared to 20 percent who favor Republican rival Mitt Romney and 18 percent who would favor an unnamed third party candidate. Among those who are not registered to vote and said they would not vote, the same proportion (43 percent) favor Obama while 23 percent would prefer a third party candidate and only 14 percent would prefer Romney. Fifteen percent of both registered and unregistered non-voters said they were undecided.
While most polls in an election year focus on likely voters, Suffolk's poll is unique in focusing on the opinions of non-voters. The July 30 to August 8 poll of 800 U.S. adults included 401 who said they will vote, 327 who said they will not vote and 56 who said they are undecided about whether they will vote or not.
The poll showed that non-voters tend to be less educated and younger than likely voters. Also, they demonstrated less political knowledge when asked to name the current U.S. vice president.
Non-voters are more likely than voters to not have a high school diploma or GED (20 to 13 percent) and to have at most a high school diploma or GED (44 to 41 percent). Voters, on the other hand, are more likely than non-voters to have an associates or bachelor's degree (33 to 27 percent).
The sample of non-voters also included a higher proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds than the sample of voters (16 to 11 percent), and a lower proportion of those over 65 years old (12 to 18 percent).
When asked to name the vice president of the United States, 34 percent of non-voters and 42 percent of voters correctly identified Joe Biden.
About half, 46 percent, of non-voters also did not vote in the 2008 election. Among those who did, most, 33 percent, voted for Obama while 17 percent voted for John McCain.
The poll's margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 3.47 percent. | <urn:uuid:7ed631fe-ba4b-452a-a65a-d5e78d7274da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/poll-non-voters-prefer-obama-80057/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96613 | 466 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Keeping time with Seattle's history
What was the real purpose for capturing this engaging tableau of Pike Street culture, mid-20th century? Hint: It's about the clock.
Special to The Seattle Times
Take a tour through local history
The Seattle Times Historical Archive is a searchable database of Seattle Times newspapers from 1900 through 1984. The archive reveals pages as they were originally published, with stories, photos and advertising.
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HERE AN AUTUMNAL sun brightens the endearing clutter of Pike Street on Nov. 6, 1953. The date has been hand-printed on the negative, and the time — approaching 2:25 p.m. — is marked on Dr. James Sender's street clock standing tall above the old sidewalk.
By 1953 Sender, a past president of the Northwest College of Optometry, had been fitting glasses in this neighborhood for more than 20 years, although his office here at 108 Pike St. is nearly new. Sender shared the address with the Mirror Tavern, where some customers surely found their future reflected in a glass of beer. You can see a large part of the bar's sign hanging above the sidewalk behind Sender's clock.
Judging from the optometrist's advertisements, with the move of his office, Sender began turning his attention from eye care to selling jewelry and fixing timepieces, including his big one out front. It was once nearly obligatory for jewelers in the business district to have a clock on the sidewalk.
I have learned from Anne Frantilla, Seattle's deputy city archivist, that the purpose of this public-works recording was not to compose an engaging tableau of Pike Street culture, mid-20th century, but to spy on Sender's clock and, with more snaps, other big clocks in the area. In 1953, a piqued Seattle City Council was hoping to get rid of street clocks. Too often, they chimed, the clocks knocked pedestrians' knees while keeping poor time. The council did not succeed. In 1980, a different council declared the 10 surviving street clocks historic landmarks.
Frantilla also directed me to Rob Ketcherside, a Seattle historian with an interest in Seattle's street clocks. See his website at www.zombiezodiac.com/rob/ped/clock.
Check out Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard's blog at www.pauldorpat.com. | <urn:uuid:c183917e-caa9-4f0d-b9c3-9f8ea5a99f57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seattletimes.com/html/pacificnw/2020198933_pdorp03.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9559 | 500 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Mon Nov 09 09:48:52 GMT 2009 by Forlornehope
Whenever this idea is suggested, no one ever mentions the Coriolis acceleration. A good example of this is the way in which air flows round atmospheric areas of low pressure, rather than going straight from high to low. Some of the comments here have the idea, the tangential component of velocity has to be increased as the load climbs the cable but don't seem to be aware that it is a well known part of dynamics. If I cast my mind back 40 years, I think that we covered this in the second year of Mech Eng at Imperial. Is it a fundamental flaw with the concept, or am I missing something?
Tue Nov 10 17:14:39 GMT 2009 by Ted Armitage
Lots of people have discussed the coriolis force without naming it. It is the apparent sideways force you need to overcome when you climb the cable so that your tangential speed increases in proportion to your distance from the centre of rotation.
Some have belittled the force: after all you don't sway sideways as you climb the stairs unless it has been a particularly good party. But, as you say, its cumulative effect over many days has a major effect on weather systems.
Perhaps a rough calculation would help.
Imagine the earth viewed from above the north pole to be a disc with the equator at the rim. The radius is 4000 miles and the rim moves at 1000 mph, thus completing a revolution in 24 hours. Halfway between the pole and the equator the disc would only have a tangential speed of 500 mph.
Air at the equator moves at 1000 mph, so if this air were transported radially halfway to the pole and retained it's tangential speed it would be moving 500 mph faster than the disc. Quite dramatic, but now consider how long that transport would take. (Of course, real winds winds don't follow radial paths.)
If it was transported the 2000 miles as a 50 mph gale it would take 40 hours, giving an apparent tangential acceleration of 500/40 miles per hour per hour: 12.5 mph per hour. Not likely to impress Top Gear at 0 to 60 in 5 hours. That's 12.5*5280/(3600*3600) = 0.005 feet per second per second. To give a feel for this, gravity at the surface is 6400 times as great.
So the sideways acceleration required is tiny (at 50 mph radially), but cannot necessarily be ignored. Perhaps a good comparison is the energy required.
A geostationary orbit is about 6.5 times as far from the centre as the surface of the earth so the tangential speed must increase from 1 to 6.5 thousand mph. This represents an energy increase proportional to (6.5*6.5 -1*1): about 40. The energy required to lift a payload to geostationary orbit is a bit less (15%) than that required for the escape velocity of 25 thousand mph, representing an energy proportional to 25*25 = 625. So the energy to increase the tangential speed is about one fifteenth the energy to lift the payload. This is definitely significant.
Next I should compare the energy required to keep the cable stable and resist wind forces, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re: Space Elevator
Mon Nov 09 17:50:39 GMT 2009 by David Hasselhoff
Its a great idea, but it would be really hard to implement. I mean, gravity would make the bottom want to fall in a certain direction unless the entire thing was flawlessly level. Even then, a gust of wind or the slightest movement would shift the center of gravity. Also what about airplanes. Also what about asteriods and satelites. I think it may be possible and its a really cool idea, but its highly unprobable
Mon Nov 09 19:24:28 GMT 2009 by Mark
What happens if space junk hits it? Yes, I know the odds but ISS is watching debris go by so is is possible given the amount of junk now floating around the planet.
Mon Nov 09 19:27:38 GMT 2009 by james lake
It's high enough. just like the breathable mix of elements falls into place at sea level, where the gravity is higher, and only gets worse from there, the higher you go the better it gets for launching something. Atoms less densley packed, less gravity to overcome, hell Sikorsky has the helicopter type beast that would pull the load right now. Hoist a cable up by helicopters. 4 each, feed them with a fuel line or power them with something better like rocket fuel tech, run that payload up, damn near in orbit anyway, and launch it. Maybe even build up to a space elevator, but the way to get there is specialy designed helicopters. I have more on this subject.
Breakthrough In Industrial-scale Nanotube Processing.
Mon Nov 09 20:55:20 GMT 2009 by Ta
Check this out, one more step there. .
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support. | <urn:uuid:d5b92634-92a9-4833-b7a8-7d5c9bce3dc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse?id=dn18122&page=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94578 | 1,103 | 2.984375 | 3 |
First-time buyers need to save for eight years on average to build up a large enough deposit to buy a home, unless they tap the bank of mum and dad.
The research by Barclays illustrates just how unaffordable the housing market has become in the past 17 years. In 1995, buyers only needed to save for one year to get on the property ladder.
House prices trebled between 1997 and 2010, putting them out of reach for most prospective buyers. At the same time, the average deposit required is now 20pc of the property price compared with 5pc in 1995. As a result, around 60pc of Britons now ask their parents for a financial boost, Barclays found, and only half of them actually get family help.
The figures are more optimistic than at the height of the crisis in 2009, when buyers faced a 10-year average wait, and come amid signs that conditions are finally easing for first time buyers.
The latest Bank of England data shows that the average two-year fixed rate mortgage offer for buyers with a deposit of just 10pc fell sharply in December to its second lowest level in five years. Barclays last week launched a three-year fixed rate deal for buyers with just 5pc deposits.
London is the hardest area to break into, according to Barclays’ survey. Househunters face a wait of over 10 years for a home in the capital, up from 11 months in 1995. Those in the North West and Wales are least affected, with a wait of just four years and 11 months.
Analysts said the lengthy wait is often the result of miscalculated budgeting as most first-time buyers underestimate how much they have to save, especially in London.
In London, the average first-time buyer underestimates by £22,272, believing they £47,728 when in fact they have to raise £70,000. In contrast, the average househunter in the North West and the North East overestimates the amount they need to save by £2,000. | <urn:uuid:b7a2701c-a9cb-4fd9-b11c-74d1e0902442> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/buyers-must-save-eight-years-000145570.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963977 | 410 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Stormwater management can no longer be looked at as simply a utility to manage environmental resources. It’s now also become an important tool in the placemaking process.
For decades, localities have relied on stormwater infrastructure that was costly, utilitarian, and damaging for the natural environment. But recent innovations in the field of sustainable stormwater management have made the old way of doing things obsolete. New techniques can reduce our footprint on the hydrological cycle, and enhance our public spaces simultaneously.
PPS, in partnership with the FHWA website, ContextSensitiveSolutions.org, recently hosted a webinar discussing the field of sustainable stormwater management. One of the presenters, Clark Wilson, with the USEPA Office of Smart Growth, stated that “A green streets strategy not only addresses environmental goals, but just as importantly, creates attractive, safe, and walkable streets that enhance a community’s sense of place.”
The following sequence of slides demonstrates how implementing sustainable SWM infrastructure can completely change the functionality and image of a street. In this photo-simulation, the SWM infrastructure includes chicanes, which slow down cars, making the street safer for all users, and plantings, which serve the SWM purposes. The result is a sustainable, safe, and beautiful public space.
Images courtesy of: WRT, www.wrtdesign.com, Paul Rider Photography, firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:2d40e060-0b25-4f9b-b16b-6a89f3dfadad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pps.org/blog/design-thats-environmental/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910788 | 300 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Producer prices in September 2010
October 18, 2010
On an unadjusted basis, prices for finished goods advanced 4.0 percent for the 12 months ended September 2010, their eleventh straight year-over-year rise.
The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods increased 0.4 percent in September, seasonally adjusted. This advance followed a 0.4-percent rise in August and a 0.2-percent increase in July.
The broad-based increase in the index for finished goods can be traced primarily to higher prices for finished consumer foods, which rose 1.2 percent (seasonally adjusted) in September. The indexes for both finished energy goods and for finished goods less foods and energy also contributed to this increase, moving up 0.5 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.
These data are from the BLS Producer Price Index program. To learn more, see "Producer Price Indexes — September 2010" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-10-1425. All producer price indexes are routinely subject to revision once, 4 months after original publication, to reflect the availability of late reports and corrections by respondents.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Editor's Desk, Producer prices in September 2010 on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2010/ted_20101018.htm (visited May 25, 2013).
Spotlight on Statistics: Productivity
This edition of Spotlight on Statistics examines labor productivity trends from 2000 through 2010 for selected industries and sectors within the nonfarm business sector of the U.S. economy. Read more » | <urn:uuid:6c5b03a7-58f8-4315-936a-604d14e0c519> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stats.bls.gov/opub/ted/2010/ted_20101018.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917875 | 340 | 2 | 2 |
Library of Congress displays Gettysburg Address
WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of five known manuscripts of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is going on display at the Library of Congress.
Beginning Friday, the library will display the John Hay copy of the famous Civil War speech. It will be shown fox six weeks through May 4 in the "Civil War in America" exhibition.
The exhibit commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War through writings and firsthand accounts. It's been extended from its original closing date in June to remain open until January 2014.
Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address began with the words, "Four score and seven years ago."
The Hay copy is believed to be the second draft of the speech. Lincoln gave it to Hay, one of his two secretaries. The library holds two copies of the speech. | <urn:uuid:9952e2c8-62da-4711-872b-a907625e6974> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/politics/10010163718527/library-of-congress-displays-gettysburg-address/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947867 | 168 | 2.25 | 2 |
Dew Point: 25° F
Wind: 8 mph S
Wind: 13 mph SW
Wind: 8 mph WSW
Wind: 6 mph WSW
Wind: 5 mph WSW
Updated May 22, 2013, 1:39 pm Powered by:
National Weather Service
The climate of Aspen, Colorado is typical of areas in high altitudes that have low humidity and intense sunshine.
No matter when you visit the area, it is advisable to wear sunglasses and to use sunscreen.
The warmth of the summer months mixed with the dry atmosphere sometimes prompts temperatures as high as 90 degrees during the day. However, the area also enjoys sudden afternoon rain showers - so be advised to carry a raincoat. Although it may be summer, it is always wise to carry a lightweight coat or a sweater during the evening as the temperatures then may drop to 40-50 degrees.
In the summer months, the temperature hover around 85 degrees for a high and occasionally dip to 45 degrees during the night.
The dry weather usually continues on into the fall, with occasional cold spells, and/or a scattering of snow in the high mountain area. During the last of September and the first part of October, the mountains are ablaze with the beauty of fall colors.
Winter months are typically warm as temperatures range from 20 to 40 degrees.
Best known for the warmth of the winter sun, Aspen is an ideal place to enjoy winter sports. However, when the sun sets, the temperature drops suddenly. It is always a good idea to dress warmly and expect the day to progressively get colder.
During the change of the seasons in the spring, as the mountain climate moves from the extreme of the cold of winter to the heat of the summer, the days can be either cool or hot. There may even be an occasional snowfall.
The best advice is to be prepared for any change in the weather when traveling or visiting Aspen, Colorado. | <urn:uuid:27fcefbe-8024-457b-86fd-851b74941008> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allaspen.com/weather/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918364 | 397 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Early Recovery Services
- Psychoeducation on Expected Post-trauma Symptoms and Experiences
- Emotional Awareness
- Anxiety Management and Coping Skills
- One Girl's Experience in Early Recovery
- List of Guidebooks/Manuals for Early Recovery Services
Information about common thoughts and feelings after a traumatic experience can help to calm distressed students who may otherwise believe that they are the only ones experiencing such symptoms. The knowledge provided can help students, for example, see that their irritability, nightmares, sadness, and inability to concentrate since the traumatic event are not unusual and do not mean they are weak or "going crazy." They can also start to anticipate and plan for painful memories or problematic reactions by learning to identify personal trauma or loss reminders. These reminders may be specific people, places, activities, or situations that somehow remind them of the traumatic event that happened and that can elicit painful memories, post-traumatic symptoms, and problematic coping behaviors.
Training in emotional awareness involves the development of specific skills that can help students monitor and describe what they are feeling. For example, counselors may use simple body charts or drawings to help young students identify where and how they experience different emotions (e.g. "It sounds like Robert tends to experience his worry as a cramping in his stomach while Latasha notices that she is worrying when her breathing gets fast and she feels a little dizzy.")
It is also helpful to use "feeling thermometers" or other visual aids to help students scale the intensity of their emotions ("When I went home and saw that my Mom had been crying, I just got so down, like an 8 or a 9 out of 10,") or "emotion charts" and other approaches to expand the students emotional vocabulary and to learn how to describe gradations of emotions ("OK, so you weren't just upset or angry, you were furious! Can you show us how that felt inside and then show us how it looked to the people around you.")
These basic monitoring and expressive skills help the student identify emotions and reactions, track changes in emotions during the day, and tie these changes to specific situations or evocative reminders. This aids students in discriminating between real threats of danger and environmental reminders of threat.
Training in anxiety management and coping skills can take many different forms and may involve teaching the student basic relaxation skills (for example, abdominal breathing or progressive muscle relaxation,) the use of self-calming phrases, distraction techniques, and positive activity scheduling. Cognitive coping skills can be very effective in giving an anxious student greater control of extreme and distressing emotions. For example, counselors can teach students how to monitor automatic thoughts, discriminate hurtful from helpful thoughts, identify cognitive distortions, and challenge and replace harmful thoughts.
Another important set of coping skills has to do with accessing appropriate support. Traumatized students frequently feel very alone with their problems and, in fact, tend to isolate themselves from available support. Counselors or trained teachers can help students identify the specific types of support that would be helpful during this time, evaluate their current support network, and develop a practical strategy for accessing and asking for the needed types of support.
Traumatized students may also benefit if their parents are provided with education regarding post-traumatic distress and grief symptoms and specific guidelines for how to support their child. | <urn:uuid:a205ed2b-a246-4fc2-8bd3-e76e07e3cc7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nctsn.org/resources/early-recovery-services | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949777 | 669 | 3.546875 | 4 |
When it comes to attracting and maintaining repeat customers, a convenience store is only as strong as its weakest link.
By Jim Callahan.
In Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man he wrote that, “in every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.” Pretty heavy thinking for 1786.
When running a convenience store business we all need to think about how the weakest link can affect another critical chain—the chain of command. There is nothing that exposes a business’s weakest link quicker than ignoring the leadership structure.
The chain of command started in the military, but plays a key role in the success of any business. You simply cannot bypass the leadership structure and expect that you will have a successful operation. While the chain of command does not guarantee success, it does assure order and avoids the disastrous chaos that is sure to follow in its absence.
When you are in a hurry to test new ideas or simply have a personal concern and your boss is not around at the moment, you should resist the urge to go over his head to the next person in command. While you may have good intentions, it could have a disastrous effect. Resist that urge and wait for your own boss to return.
For starters, while your boss may not show outward appreciation for you waiting for his input—which is what employees are expected to do in the first place—he will appreciate it. Conversely, if you bypass the chain of command, you can expect that the boss will be upset. While you may not fully understand the reasoning behind the chain of command, you can bet your boss does, and he will not be happy about having his leadership abilities compromised and his authority removed from the decision-making process.
The chain of command flows both ways. Leaders need to clearly communicate with their employees on a regular basis to ensure they are happy and know that their opinions matter.
There is also nothing more destructive to a supervisor than to have his authority undermined by his own superiors. All communication to employees should go through their direct supervisors.
Years ago, I enjoyed a great eight-year stint as president of an upstate N.Y. convenience store and petroleum company.
On my first day I was informed that I would need to replace the credit and collections manager. The accounts receivables were out of control and bad debts were way too high. When I sat down with this manager he explained that he had tried every trick in the book to collect outstanding debt, but each time the customers, many of them old friends, would go over his head to the owner asking for more time.
He posed the following question to me, “How can I be an effective collection manager when a good share of the delinquents go over my head to the owner?” I checked out the validity of that supposition and quickly knew that if I didn’t get it straightened out during my honeymoon period, this problem would plague me for my entire tenure.
The owner was a bit hesitant, but overall supportive. Over the next year, the incumbent credit manager went from zero to hero. I should add that a few years later we acquired two small fuel oil dealers and I was able to promote the man in question. He successfully ran that division until his retirement.
The lesson here is that employees need the full support of management in order to achieve the measure of success that we expect from them. We owe them that much so that they can reach their full potential and grow to become the leaders of tomorrow. Every chain has a weak link. Don’t let it be you.
Jim Callahan has more than 40 years of experience as a convenience store and petroleum marketer. His Convenience Store Solutions blog appears regularly on CSDecisions.com. He can be reached at (678) 485-4773 or via e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:2b381e2e-23f3-4cf9-bddb-2e47a35851f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csdecisions.com/2012/04/16/strengthening-the-leadership-chain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977497 | 826 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Now: John Blair Smith
Constructed in 1896, this was the first building completed on the east side of Library Lane. Although it was built for James Patterson, Professor of Mathematics, he stayed there only one year before leaving the College. In 1898, Professor Sidney Ashmore, Professor of Latin Language and Literature, moved in. The Ashmores were friends of Mrs. Perkins, and their son Sidney played with little Nathan Hale. Mrs. Perkins sympathized with Mrs. Ashmore when Sigma Phi decided to build their house next to them. “She is distracted to think of herself between two Fraternity Houses; indeed one naturally hates to have any house there. There is such a pretty view” (March 10, 1904). Mrs. Ashmore often entertained students and faculty in her home. Unfortunately, the house was also often uncomfortable: one winter the Ashmores wore shawls and put rugs over their feet to stay warm; another time Mrs. Perkins reported that “the poor Ashmore’s [sic] roof leaks down on the new Dining Room ceiling + the nasty cheap lead pipes have burst + their lawn is dug up again!!!” (undated letter, 1904). The building remained a faculty residence until it was remodeled to house the first women students to arrive on campus in 1970. Previously known by its occupants’ names, the building is now called John Blair Smith House in honor of the first President of Union College. | <urn:uuid:cf3dd16f-af3b-4b5c-9115-c5b20cf36605> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.union.edu/library/perkins/map/ashmore/index.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978951 | 296 | 2.125 | 2 |
Tony, before and after
Tony Pichette was trying to lose weight in 2003, mired in yet another weight loss cycle. He went on a diet and successfully stayed on it for two months, until the blackout struck New York City.
"How do I prepare healthy food during a blackout?" he wondered. He succumbed to his old eating habits, and continued to steadily gain weight for another seven years.
"For so many years, I blamed that blackout," he says now. But it takes more than electricity to power healthy eating and fitness, he's since learned. It takes a mental state of determination and true readiness to lose weight.
At the end of 2009, 349 pounds and beset with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and the possibility of diabetes, Pichette finally took control of his debilitating weight.
“I decided that 2010 was going to be my make-or-break year,” he said. “I just got everything in order.”
A self-professed tech geek and iPhone devotee, Pichette found the Daily Burn app on his iPhone as he began researching health and fitness tools.
He liked the FoodScanner feature -- which scans a food product bar code and automatically pulls up its nutritional information – and immediately began using it to track his daily food intake. There was also a corresponding Internet browser toolbar that synced up with his app, allowing him to easily view and enter his data and track his progress from a computer.
Before long, he was scanning food left and right, pulling up calorie information at restaurants and tap-typing in his own intake.
“You suddenly eat much better when you track your food,” he says, and “as the days went by, I became really kind of comfortable. And I just kept going.”
He started doing yoga, too.
“Once I got past the initial class, it became easier and easier… I loved the community and the people in the classes," he said. "I felt I was getting stronger and more flexible.”
On September 2, he lost his 100th pound.
“I called my dad, and we had a nice conversation on the phone,” says Pichette. “We were both crying.”
Since then, he’s lost another 15 to 20 pounds, and still uses Daily Burn to maintain his weight. He says he’s looking to tone up and lose the remaining fat on his body.
Pichette admits the app is only as valuable as a person makes it. He was prone to appreciate the simple and discreet functions of the app’s food tracker – even how fun it was, scanning bar codes and taking photos and punching in numbers
And he liked how he could go out in a city of endless bars and restaurants and still keep himself accountable simply by whipping out his phone. After all, he points out, everyone takes their phones everywhere.
But when it comes to permanently losing weight, Pichette emphasizes, “I don’t think anything’s going to help them if they’re just not there yet.”
And even after a transformation has started, setbacks are likely. “There are bumps along the road, and you run into old habits,” Pichette says.
He recalls eating too much at his brother's wedding reception, and later feeling "this overwhelming despair, this sense of doom. ‘Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna do it.’”
“The next day, I said, ‘Okay, you’re going to do this,’” he added.
It was when people started approaching him about his weight loss that Pichette reached out to Daily Burn with his story, he says.
Daily Burn began as a social website for performance athletes about three and a half years ago, says company CEO Andy Smith. Since then, food-tracking was added and has become the more popular feature, and the program has become more general-interest fitness and nutrition-oriented, says Smith.
“We see the most success in people who are really detailed about tracking their food,” he adds. “You manage what you measure. We even see results who aren’t meticulous but do track their food.”
New York City nutritionist Bonnie Taub-Dix agrees, saying the patients she's seen who have lost weight have kept food diaries.
"Just the act of writing it down makes a huge difference ... Even knowing you have to write it down could change the way you eat -- it makes it more real," she says
The Daily Burn program is mostly free, though there are extra features for subscribers. Another Daily Burn feature, Meal Snap, was released Tuesday, allowing iPhone users to take a photo of food they intend to eat and upload it to a database that returns calorie range information to the user.
"It's kind of fun talking about it," Pichette says. Now he says he knows it takes "a combination of trial and error, and figuring out why things go wrong before they do."
"Give yourself no excuse," he adds. "Give yourself a backup for everything." | <urn:uuid:14476756-213f-4d70-90a4-239ce6c8278f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnewyork.com/blogs/go-healthy-ny/iPhone-Weight-Loss.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983279 | 1,103 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Atmospheric Sciences & Global Change Division
Continuous Dataset of Water Vapor Measurements Throws Water on Assumptions of Cirrus Cloud Formation
To study the link between water vapor, cirrus cloud formation (homogenous and heterogenous) mechanisms, and their potential climatic impacts, researchers at PNNL analyzed a one-year dataset of water vapor measurements obtained by a Raman lidar for the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program. Signals from the ARM Raman lidar can be used to distinguish ice and water in optically thin clouds (such as cirrus clouds). In addition, this lidar provides continuous, high resolution water vapor profiles with an accuracy of 5%, while simultaneously detecting the presence of clouds. As reported in Geophysical Research Letters in June 2004, the long-term continuous dataset provided by the Raman lidar allowed the researchers to provide the first analysis of reliable upper tropospheric water vapor profiles measured from a single location. Their findings confirmed one aspect of cirrus formation, while raising questions about another.
As the single largest percentage of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, water vapor (or "humidity") is a critical component of climate change research. Because of its ability to absorb energy, water vapor plays an essential role in radiative feedback mechanisms and cloud formation. This is especially true in the upper troposphere—the highest point of weather conditions in Earth's atmosphere, at about 10 km high. At this altitude, small changes in moisture can significantly impact the amount of outgoing radiation, as well as influence the formation of ice-crystals in cirrus clouds. However, accurately measuring water vapor amounts in the upper troposphere (where cirrus clouds occur) is very difficult, particularly on a continuous basis. This is due to the affect of extremely cold temperatures on traditional measurement instrumentation and the irregular schedule of their deployment, as well as the lack of resolution in satellite measurements for studying cirrus nucleation processes.
Using the ARM Raman lidar data, PNNL researchers were able to analyze a significant climate sample (about 300,000 data points, or 9,500 profiles) of continuous upper tropospheric water vapor concentrations from the ARM Program's Southern Great Plains research site in Oklahoma. As quantified by aircraft in situ measurements, typical ice-generating cirrus clouds are structured with an ice-generating region near the top, an ice crystal growth or deposition region in the middle, and a sedimentation or sublimation region near the cloud base. Using this structure in their analysis, the researchers examined the relative humidity with respect to ice (RHI) in the three regions. They found that ice supersaturation (RHI > 100%) occured most frequently in the ice crystal formation region where cloud updraft velocities are typically the strongest, but also occurred frequently in the growth region.
Specifically, their study showed that ice supersaturation occurred about 31% of the time in cirrus clouds, confirming existing assumptions regarding the frequency of homogenous (non-aerosol related) cirrus formation. However, they also found that ice supersaturation often occurred at temperatures warmer than -40C, when heterogeneous (aerosol-related) cirrus formation typically occurs. This type of ice formation results in smaller ice particles, thereby increasing the resulting reflectivity of the cloud. This implies that heterogenous formation may play a larger role in the impact of cirrus clouds on the Earth's radiative energy budget than previously thought. These findings, and the dataset used to reach them, represent an important link between the measurement and modeling communities as they continue to improve scientific understanding of the effect of cirrus clouds on the Earth's global climate.
Reference: Comstock JM, TP Ackerman, and DD Turner. 2004. Evidence of High Ice Supersaturation in Cirrus Clouds using ARM Raman Lidar Measurements. Geophysics Research Letters 31:L11106. DOI:10.1029/2004GL019705. | <urn:uuid:c56e48c2-4046-40ae-b95c-74df890e680f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pnl.gov/science/highlights/highlight.asp?id=244 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908921 | 816 | 3.53125 | 4 |
President Barack Obama is accustomed to receiving awards he does not deserve. In fact, the President received the ultimate prize in November of 2008. He was elected President of the United States despite scant credentials for the world’s most important position. He benefited from very inadequate vetting by the liberal news media, former political watchdogs turned lapdogs in the age of Obama.
Right after his inauguration, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. This ludicrous decision was not based on the President’s few accomplishments, but rather on the hope that he would successfully pursue peace during his term. Of course, no other U.S. President would have ever received such an award without any qualifications.
So, what do you get for the man who has everything? How about an Oscar? It makes sense; for Barack Obama is a glorified actor portraying a President. He is impersonating a leader, without showing leadership. He has never managed any organizations and has no executive experience; yet he is the Chief Executive Officer of our nation. He clearly does not know how to govern; so instead, he continues to engage in his favorite activity: campaigning.
He is not the Commander-in-chief, but the Campaigner-in chief. In the process, he plays the role of President perfectly, fooling more than half of the American people, approximately 51% in the last election and in recent approval ratings.
Barack Obama appears presidential, sounds presidential, lives in the White House, and uses Air Force One. Everyone calls him “Mr. President,” and he even welcomes world leaders to our nation’s capital.
It is clear that he is an excellent actor; he knows enough to look and act the part of President. But, just like in the movies, it is make believe. In reality, behind the facade, Barack Obama is a truly clueless and ineffectual President. For example, his lack of leadership in the sequester debate has been astounding. Instead of cobbling together a sensible deal, he has demonized Republicans and threatened our national security.
While he plays a role, our nation’s problems are only getting worse, our country is becoming further divided, and there is no bipartisan compromise–only bitter confrontation in Washington D.C. This situation is exacerbated because Barack Obama is only acting in a role that he has no idea how to actually embody in the real world.
This persuasive acting performance has certainly convinced one group of supporters, the liberal elite who control the entertainment industry. They know a good actor when they see one.
This community treats the President and his family as virtual monarchs. So, when Queen Michelle wants to appear on television programs, it happens. The First Lady has been on a whirlwind media tour in recent weeks, appearing on practically every television show that will give her air time.
She reached the apex of exposure Sunday night when the top brass of Hollywood gave her the unprecedented and highly inappropriate honor of announcing the Oscar for Best Picture. She appeared via satellite as a reigning monarch, in a glittering dress, surrounded by military personnel. It was a completely shameful misuse of our brave service members and another example of how the First Couple uses people as props to further their agenda.
Last week, President Obama was campaigning against the budget sequester with first-responders behind him. He recently signed executive orders on gun control surrounded by selected children who had written to the Oval Office. Clearly, the First Couple will use anyone they need at any time to accomplish their political goals.
In this latest outrage, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was only too happy to be used by Mrs. Obama. Never before had a First Lady been given such a privilege. Even Nancy Reagan, a former actress, was denied such a distinction. Of course, the Hollywood liberals hated anything associated with Ronald Reagan, although he spent years as an actor and President of the Screen Actors Guild.
The infatuation with the President and First Lady is so extreme that the movie industry may want to take a bold step for 2014. Instead of staging the awards in Hollywood, they might as well do it right in the Rose Garden. They should invite Mrs. Obama to expand her role and become the permanent host and presenter of all awards. In that way, she can award the Oscar for Best Male Actor to the person who really deserves it: her partner in celebrity, Barack Obama.
Just imagine the scene, as the President accepts the award from his wife: the camera pans to the Hollywood sycophants in the audience all rising in unison, paying tribute to their heroes with a standing ovation.
Photo credit: Justin Sloan (Creative Commons)
Please share this post with your friends and comment below. If you haven’t already, take a moment to sign up for our free newsletter above and friend us on Twitter and Facebook to get real time updates. | <urn:uuid:0dad34c3-71bb-44e1-8e7e-14a969170f3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westernjournalism.com/and-the-oscar-goes-to-president-and-mrs-obama/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975853 | 997 | 1.601563 | 2 |
CHILDREN'S fast food meals vastly exceed the amount of energy, salt, sugar and saturated fat children should eat in one meal, according to a damning report from the Cancer Council NSW.
The Fast Food: Exposing the Truth report showed an urgent need to reduce the amount of energy and unhealthy ingredients in fast food meals, the council said.
Its nutrition and program manager, Clare Hughes, said Australians on average spend about a third of their food budget on fast and takeaway food.
"If we are serious about addressing the issue of overweight, obesity and chronic disease in Australia we have to be realistic and say people are eating out of home … so if we can make these unhealthy choices a bit healthier that might make a difference".
But the Australian Food and Grocery Council has criticised the report, saying it relies on out-of-date information and selective benchmarks.
The report analysed 199 different children's meal combinations from six major fast food outlets, finding at worst they contained more than an entire day's salt and saturated fat in the one meal.
"If kids are having a fast food meal they are getting a fair whack of what they should be having in one day, in one meal," Ms Hughes said.
It found 90 per cent of children's meals exceeded the recommended salt levels for four- and eight-year-old children.
About 70 per cent exceeded energy and sugar requirements for four-year-olds, and about 50 per cent for eight-year-olds.
Ms Hughes said the researchers had also recorded more than 1400 meal purchases at 20 fast food outlets, finding that people chose the healthy options on menus less than 1 per cent of the time.
"What that tells us is it is not just about including healthy options," she said. "One of our recommendations is that targets be set for reform of all fast food products."
The report also found about a third of fast food outlets did not have nutritional information available for customers.
In NSW nutrition information is mandatory, but Ms Hughes said a national approach was needed to ensure everyone could access it.
A spokesman for the food and grocery council said the Cancer Council was basing its assessment on a British recommendation that a meal should contain 30 per cent of daily energy and unhealthy nutrients.
"[Our] nutrition criteria is established by accredited practicing dietitians utilising Australian nutrient reference values," he said. "The 30 per cent number being used in this study … has no relevance to Australian dietary guidelines".
He said the majority of the main fast food companies had already completed roll-outs of nutrient information on menu boards, and healthy choices were available. | <urn:uuid:8f6b295e-9fcc-41ab-91c0-830f1820c6d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/1318722/days-worth-of-fat-in-child-fast-food-meal/?cs=24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965002 | 536 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Thomas and Friends Live
Learning Curve is a toy company that manufactures Thomas and Friends-related toys.
Thomas series cartoon has brought joyness to us for many years, at the same time, the related commodities have also emerged. Learning Curve’s Thomas series toys, have their special status. That is giving children a healthy toys space, which is the Wooden Railway toys series, in the process of children’s growth by selecting the safety materials to produce toys. Learning Curve has this idea which is closely related to the R & D history of its brand.
Learning Curve was founded in 1992 by John W. Lee in Chicago. In 2003 the company was acquired by “Racing Champions ERTL”, renamed in the same year to “RC2″. In 2011, RC2 was sold to TOMY. Learning Curve Brands, Inc. was a subsidiary of the RC2 Corporation. They market brands of children’s toys such as American Red Cross, The First Years, Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Lamaze. The RC2 Corporation is a toy design, marketing and distribution company headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, USA.
The company produces the following Thomas and Friends-related toys:
1 Wooden Railway
2 Take-Along (discontinued)
3 Thomas Interactive Railway (discontinued)
They also produce the following non-Thomas toys:
2 Take & Toss
4 Dinosuar Train
5 Take-Along Nick Jr.
6 Take-Along Bob the Builder
7 Sesame Street
8 John Deere
9 The First Years
Brand–The First Years,which I believe is the most important supplier of baby products that accompanied many people from pregnancy to weaning, and made many young parents feel relaxed. For example, the bottle is designed to has many models, and the volume of the bottle varies with the baby’s growth. Parents do not have the trouble to rush to measure the volume of liquid. For another example, the design of the pacifier is also specific. As the infant grows, its biting strength is different, then what material is suitable for infants which is in the different growing period? The First Years brand’s engineers not only have a very good answer to that question but also have a perfect design. As far as brand Lamaze is concerned, it provides educational assisting toys and books etc for infants from the 0 to 24 month old. We know that from the birth to the self-learning process of infants, there is a very important cognitive link. In the period of infancy, the main problem is whether the environmental is credible enough for them. So parents need to give the baby a trust and optimistic attitude through the auxiliary affairs. Lamaze brand products are from a scientific point of view to help parents. Sounds, pictures, objects are interactive to babies. What will the combination of so excellent management team and Thomas bring to us?
Learning Curve’s Thomas products are targeted primarily at infants from 0 to 36 months. Baby in this period have limited ability of identification. Which kind of material is most suitable for them? It is wood, of course! In the long passage of human development, there are many stories between wood and people. Speaking of wooden toys, everyone will think of blocks. Wooden toys have its advantages over other material toys for infants at this age. (1) solidness;(2 ) durability; (3) the extent of injury; (4) security; (5) health. These advantages also contribute to the predominance of Thomas Series of the Learning Curve brand in the market. Let the children grow up in an environment full of fun knowledge.
Tomy acquired RC2 in 2011. Learning Curve was bought by Tomy recently and may have plans to discontinue the Thomas Wooden Railway line.
Battery-Powered Engines: Product Guide
Battery-Powered Sets: Product Guide
Bridges & Tunnels: Product Guide
Destinations: Product Guide
Engines: Product Guide
Engines & Train Cars: Product Guide
Playtime Accessories: Product Guide
Roadway & Off-Road Vehicles: Product Guide
Sets: Product Guide
Sights Lights & Sounds: Product Guide
Track & Accessories: Product Guide
Vehicle Value Packs: Product Guide | <urn:uuid:815b22ff-5a51-474e-89d2-f0e62c813f43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thomasandfriendslive.com/tag/productguide/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952421 | 879 | 1.8125 | 2 |
(Bob has done a great deal of admirable work in computational intelligence, and I don't count him as a personal enemy. In fact, I recently joined with him in recommending an IEEE member for elevation to a higher rank.)
This is from a July 31, 2008, note that went, at his request, to his Yahoo address rather than through the (no doubt archived) Baylor email system:
Dawkins' weasel program implements a (1, λ)-ES, not partitioned search. In each generation, there are λ offspring. All points in the parent string are subject to mutation in all generations. The fittest of the offspring replaces the parent. Fitness is the number of positions containing correct letters. It is possible for fitness of the parent to decrease from one generation to the next. The mutation probability is "low," so offspring are concentrated in the neighborhood (naturally defined in terms of Hamming distance) of the parent, not uniformly distributed on a subspace of the solution space as you indicate.
I think your analysis of partitioned search makes for a good example, but you should not suggest in any way that you're analyzing Dawkins' algorithm. I would like to see you change the target sentence. In any case, the Bard (and Dawkins) wrote "methinks" as one word, not two.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of the active information of the (1, λ)-ES Dawkins used. There are plenty of published analyses of the (1, λ)-ES as a Markov process for λ = 1 [actually 2]. I'm not sure about greater values of λ. What you need is the probability that the process enters the state corresponding to the target string in Q or fewer time steps, expressed as a function of mutation probability and λ. Of course, you could fall back on simulation.
Marks did not respond to this particular note, but "ME*THINKS" turned into "METHINKS" in later drafts, and section III-F-2 of the published article addresses a (1,2)-ES [evolution strategy; sometimes it's instead "EA" for "evolutionary algorithm"] solving a restricted form of the problem solved by the Weasel program. Furthermore, section III-F-3 deals with the closely related (1+1)-ES.
It's not plausible, I think, that Marks ignored my note - he's responded to others since - and that he and Dembski subsequently happened to think of analyzing the evolutionary algorithms. The article neither gives the established names of the algorithms nor cites prior analyses in the literature. You have a good idea now of why I consider this to be academic misconduct. | <urn:uuid:f581f384-9c61-4387-9ec0-3642262d6d25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boundedtheoretics.blogspot.com/2009/10/resolving-difficult-moral-dilemma.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959057 | 559 | 1.570313 | 2 |
healthy fats: the ABC’s of essential fatty acids
Here is another guest post by my sister, Diana. She has nearly completed her nutrition degree. And I’ve asked her to contribute on a regular basis since we had such an overwhelmingly positive response to her first post on water here. In the post below, she’s taken on the sometimes confusing world of fats. Did you know certain fats are essential for life? These fats, known as essential fatty acids (EFAs), must be supplied by our diet because our body is unable to make them on its own. While essential fatty acids provide dozens of amazing health benefits, EFA deficiencies are correlated with a number of degenerative diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis.
What are EFAs?
Two fatty acids are classified as essential – the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid (LA), and the omega-3 fatty acid alpha- linolenic acid (LNA). Their names are derived from their chemical structures and properties.
Essential fatty acids are necessary for every life-sustaining process in our body. EFAs are structural parts of all cell membranes and are involved with producing energy in our body to maintain life. They are also used for the production of prostaglandins, which are important hormone-like substances that regulate various body processes. EFAs are required for proper brain function in adults, and proper brain development in children and fetuses. They even have positive effects on cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, allergies, eczema, psoriasis, candidiasis, and other ailments.
Some other amazing benefits of essential fatty acids include enhanced immune function, shortened muscle recovery time after exercise, increased vitality, faster healing, reduced inflammation, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, fewer PMS symptoms, reduced risk of blood clot formation, silkier hair, and smoother skin.
Are you getting enough EFAs?
Next to water, fats are the most common substances in our bodies. Fats are one of the major components of the foods we eat (along with carbohydrates and protein), and should constitute about 20% of our daily caloric intake. At least one-third of these fats and oils should be essential fatty acids. If either of the EFAs is lacking in the diet, deficiency symptoms will gradually develop.
Signs of an LNA (omega-3) deficiency include:
Neurological and visual problems
Increased susceptibility to infection
Learning impairment and poor recall capacity
Lack of motor coordination
Tingling sensation in arms and legs
*All deficiency symptoms can be reversed by adding LNA (omega-3) to the diet.
Signs of an LA (omega-6) deficiency include:
Kidney and liver disorders
Neurological and visual problems
Increased susceptibility to infection
Poor wound healing
*A prolonged deficiency of LA is fatal. All deficiency symptoms can be reversed by adding LA to the diet.
The following are not “classic” deficiency symptoms but respond very well to omega-3 fatty acid supplements; high blood triglycerides, high blood pressure, edema, and low metabolic rate.
The jury is still out on specific daily requirements for essential fatty acids; there is no government-issued recommended daily allowance (RDA) for EFAs. Daily requirements depend on your state of health, physical activity, stress, diet, and other unique individual needs. Of the two EFAs, LA (omega-6) has a higher daily requirement. That’s because our body’s content of LA (omega-6) is higher than LNA (omega-3). In general, an optimum amount is approximately 3 to 6% of calories, or about 1 tablespoon of LA (omega-6) per day.
The optimum amount of LNA (omega-3) needed for health is approximately 2% of daily calories, or 1 to 2 teaspoons per day. This is between one-fifth and one-half the dosage of LA (omega-6).
For optimum health, essential fatty acids should be consumed in a ratio of 3 parts LA (omega-6) to 1 part LNA (omega-3). This ratio can be created by blending oils rich in EFAs to achieve the proper balance.
Hemp seed oil is a good choice as it naturally contains both essential fatty acids in the 3:1 ratio. Two quality brands of pre-mixed oils (in the proper ratio of EFAs) include Udo’s Oil and Barlean’s. These can both be found in the refrigerated section of your local health food store.
Which foods are the richest sources of EFAs?
safflower and sunflower oils,
borage and black current seed oils,
Safflower oil is the richest source of LA (omega-6 ) acid. Flax oil is the richest source of LNA (omega-3).
LNA (omega-3) consumption has decreased dramatically in this country over the last 150 years, while LA (omega-6) consumption has steadily increased. It has been estimated that 95% of the population gets too little LNA (omega-3). This has no doubt contributed to the declining health of our nation. The over-consumption of LA (omega-6) causes an imbalance of essential fatty acids that leads to degenerative disease.
Essential fatty acids cannot perform their critical work in a malnourished body. Government surveys have shown that over 60% of the population is deficient in one or more essential nutrients. A total of about 20 minerals and 13 vitamins are essential for human health. Nutrients in the body are interdependent – meaning they depend on each other for their ability to function. In this way, EFAs should be part of a healthy diet containing all of the essential vitamins and minerals, protein, fiber, pure water, fresh air, and sunshine. In particular, vitamins A, B3, B6, C, E, and the minerals magnesium and zinc are important for EFA function.
Where do I go from here ?
Remember the old adage “you are what you eat” may help you to remove some of the nutrient-void foods from your diet. Start by lowering overall fat consumption. Cut out high-fat processed and packaged foods containing margarine and shortening, limit intake of butter and refined vegetable oils, and remove visible fats and skin on meats. Eliminate oxidized fats and oils. These oils are often present in fried, aged, processed, and cured foods. Eliminate all hydrogenated fats and trans fats. These are found in many processed foods on the market today. These “fake” fats act like saturated fats in the body. They raise LDL cholesterol and lower HDL cholesterol. Trans fats also increase inflammation and insulin resistance.
Eliminate refined sugar and starch, and products made with them. Refined sugar increases our blood triglyceride levels, inhibits immune function, interferes with vitamin C function (a powerful antioxidant), and robs our body of needed minerals. Eliminate toxins such as environmental chemicals, including pesticides (eat organic foods), drugs, coffee, cola, tobacco smoke, etc.
A good goal could be to eat a balanced diet including a variety of organic, fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains, and quality proteins. Aim to drink at least 8 glasses of pure water each day. Strive for at least 30 minutes of daily exercise. Venture outside to take in plenty of fresh air and sunshine. Balance it out with some fun, relaxation and good quality sleep! | <urn:uuid:ed74d15d-8aef-4ea3-a3c8-5f6ecd47f928> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glutenfreebynature.com/articles-and-recipes/healthy-fats-the-abcs-of-essential-fatty-acids/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929835 | 1,577 | 2.875 | 3 |
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Mon November 5, 2012
The time is now to cram for monster ballot
If you're planning to vote in tomorrow's election and you haven't done your homework, it's time to cram. The ballot questions facing voters are so complicated, some voters might wish they could consult an economist or an attorney to make sense of them. Vince Keenan is with the voter education Web site publius.org. He says many voters also may not know what groups are behind each question, "the sort of back story as to who's behind what is the sort of information that any staffer in the halls of the Legislature would have readily at their disposal, but voters don't." Voters can look at their ballots ahead of time at the publius Web site. There they can also view video clips that analyze ballot questions, along with a few hundred candidate videos from districts scattered across the state. | <urn:uuid:bdc001a6-2be0-41ff-a0e1-67759cfc8230> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michiganradio.org/post/time-now-cram-monster-ballot | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969703 | 191 | 1.546875 | 2 |
In Part I this essay, I considered the fact that we are always connected to digital social technologies, whether we are connecting through them or not. Because many companies collect what I call second-hand data (data about people other than those from whom the data is collected), whether we leave digital traces is not a decision we can make autonomously. The end result is that we cannot escape being connected to digital social technologies anymore than we can escape society itself.
In Part II, I examined two prevailing privacy discourses to show that, although our connections to digital social technology are out of our hands, we still conceptualize privacy as a matter of individual choice and control. Clinging to the myth of individual autonomy, however, leads us to think about privacy in ways that mask both structural inequalities and larger issues of power.
In this third and final installment, I consider one of the many impacts that follow from being inescapably connected in a society that still masks issues of power and inequality through conceptualizations of ‘privacy’ as an individual choice. I argue that the reality of inescapable connection and the impossible demands of prevailing privacy discourses have together resulted in what I term documentary consciousness, or the abstracted and internalized reproduction of others’ documentary vision. Documentary consciousness demands impossible disciplinary projects, and as such brings with it a gnawing disquietude; it is not uniformly distributed, but rests most heavily on those for whom (in the words of Foucault) “visibility is a trap.” I close by calling for new ways of thinking about both privacy and autonomy that more accurately reflect the ways power and identity intersect in augmented societies.
The Impact of Documentary Consciousness
Just before the turn of the 19th century, Jeremy Bentham designed a prison he called the Panopticon. The idea behind the prison’s circular structure was simple: a guard in a central tower could see into any of the prisoners’ cells at any given time, but no prisoner could ever see into the tower. The prisoners would therefore be subordinated by this asymmetrical gaze: because they would always know that they could be watched, but would never know if they were being watched, the prisoners would be forced to act at all times as if they were being watched, whether they were being watched or not. In contemporary parlance, Bentham’s Panopticon basically sought to crowd-source the labor of monitoring prisoners to the prisoners themselves.
Though Bentham’s Panopticon itself was never built, Michel Foucault used Bentham’s design to build his own concept of panopticism. For Foucault, the Panopticon represents not power wielded by particular individuals through brute force, but power abstracted to the subtle and ideal form of a power relation. The Panopticon itself is a mechanism not just of power, but of disciplinary power; this kind of power works in prisons, in other types of institutions, and in modern societies generally because citizens and prisoners alike, aware at all times that they could be under surveillance, internalize the panoptic gaze and reproduce the watcher/watched relation within themselves by closely monitoring and controlling their own conduct. Discipline (and other technologies of power) therefore produce docile bodies, as individuals self-regulate by acting on their own minds, bodies, and conduct through technologies of the self.
Foucault famously held that “visibility is a trap”; were he alive today, it is unlikely Foucault would be on board with radical transparency. Accordingly, it has become well-worn analytic territory to critique social media and digital social technologies by linking to Foucault’s panoptic surveillance. As early as 1990, Mark Poster argued that databases of digitalized information constituted what he termed the “Superpanopticon.” Since then, others have pointed out that “[even] minutiae can create the Superpanopticon”—and it would be difficult to argue that social media websites don’t help to circulate a lot of minutiae.
Facebook itself has been likened to a digital panopticon since at least 2007, though there are issues both with some of these critiques and with responses to them. The “Facebook=Panopticon” theme emerges anew each time the site redesigns its privacy settings—for instance, following the launch of so-called “frictionless sharing”—or, in more recent Facebook-speak, every time the site redesigns its “visibility settings.” Others express skepticism, however, as to whether the social media site is really what I jokingly like to call “the Panoptibook”; they claim that Facebook’s goal is supposedly “not to discipline us,” but to coerce us into reckless sharing (though I would argue that the latter is merely an instance of the former).
Others point to the fact that using Facebook is still “largely voluntary”; therefore, it cannot be the Panopticon. ‘Voluntary,’ however, is predicated on the notion of free choice, and as I argued in Part I, our choices here are constrained; at best, each of us can only choose whether or not to interact with Facebook (or other digital social technologies) directly. Infinitely expanding definitions of ‘disclosure’ notwithstanding, whether we leave digital traces on Facebook depends not just on the choices we make as individuals, but on the choices made by people to whom we are connected in any way. For most of us, this means that leaving traces on Facebook is largely inevitable, whether “voluntary” or not.
What may not be as readily apparent is that whether or not we interact with the site directly, Facebook and other social media sites also leave traces on us. Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) describes “documentary vision” as an augmented version of the photographer’s ‘camera eye,’ one through which the infinite opportunity for self-documentation afforded by social media leads us not only to view the world in terms of its documentary potential, but also to experience our own present “as always a future past.” In this way, “the logic of Facebook” affects us most profoundly not when we are using Facebook, but when we are doing nearly anything else. Away from our screens, the experiences we choose and the ways we experience them are inexorably colored not only by the ways we imagine they could be read by others in artifact form, but by the range of idealized documentary artifacts we imagine we could create from them. We see and shape our moments based on the stories we might tell about them, on the future histories they could become.
I argue here, however, that Facebook’s phenomenological impact is not limited to opportunities for self-documentation. More and more, we are attuned not only to possibilities of documenting, but also to possibilities of being documented. As I explored in Part I of this essay, living in an augmented world means that we are always connected to digital social technologies (whether we are connecting to them or not). As I elaborated in last month’s Part II, the Shame On You paradigm reminds us that virtually any moment can be a future past disclosure; we also know that social media and digital social technologies are structured by the Look At Me paradigm, which insists that “any data that can be shared, WILL be shared.” Consequently, if augmented reality has seen the emergence of a new kind of ‘camera eye’, it has seen as well the emergence of a new kind of camera shyness. Much as Bentham designed the Panopticon to crowd-source the disciplinary work of prison guards, Facebook’s design ends up crowd-sourcing the disciplinary functions of the paparazzi.
Accordingly, I extend Jurgenson’s concept of documentary vision—through which we are simultaneously documenting subjects and documented objects, perpetually aware of each moment’s documentary potential—into what I term documentary consciousness, or the perpetual awareness that, at each moment, we are potentially the documented objects of others. I want to be clear that it is not Facebook itself that is “the Panoptibook”; knowing something about nearly everyone is not nearly the same thing as seeing everything about anyone. Moreover, what Facebook ‘knows’ comes not only from what it ‘sees’ of our actions online, but also from the online and offline actions of our family members, friends, and acquaintances. Our loved ones—and our “liked” ones, and untold scores of strangers—are at least as much the guard in the Panopticon tower as is Facebook itself, if not moreso. As a result, we are now subjected to a second-order asymmetrical gaze: we can never know with certainty whether we are within the field of someone else’s documentary vision, and we can never know when, where, by whom, or to what end any documentary artifacts created of us will be viewed.
As Erving Goffman elaborated more than 50 years ago, we all take on different roles in different social contexts. For Goffman, this represents not “a lack of integrity,” but the work each of us does, and is expected to do, in order to make social interaction function. In fact, it is those individuals who refuse to play appropriate roles, or whose behavior deviates from what others expect based on the situation at hand, who lose face and tarnish their credibility with others. The context collapse designed into most social media therefore complicates profoundly even the purposeful, asynchronous self-presentation that takes place on such websites, which has come to require “laborious practices of protection, maintenance, and care.”
When we internalize the abstracted and compounded documentary gaze, we are left with a Sisyphean disciplinary task: we become obligated to consider not just the situation at hand, and not just the audiences we choose for the documentary artifacts we create, but also every future audience for every documentary artifact created by anyone else. It is no longer enough to play the appropriate social role in the present moment; it is no longer enough to craft and curate images of selves we dream of becoming, selves who will have lived idealized versions of our near and distant pasts. Applying technologies of self starts to bring less pleasure and more resignation, as documentary consciousness stirs a subtle but persistent disquietude; documentary consciousness haunts us with the knowledge that we cannot be all things, at all times, to all of the others that we (or our artifacts) will ever encounter. Documentary consciousness entails the ever-present sense of a looming future failure.
As I discussed in Part II, the impacts of these inevitable failures are not evenly distributed. Those who have the most to lose are not people who are “evil” or who are “doing something they shouldn’t be doing,” but people who live ordinary lives within marginalized groups. Those who have the most to gain, on the other hand, are people who are already among the most privileged, and corporations that already wield a great deal of power. The greatest burdens of documentary consciousness itself are therefore likely to be carried by people who are already carrying other burdens of social inequality.
Recent attention to a website called WeKnowWhatYoureDoing.com showcased much of this yet again. The speaker behind the “we” is a white, 18-year-old British man named Callum Haywood (who’s economically privileged enough to own an array of computer and networking hardware), who built a site that aggregates potentially incriminating Facebook status updates and showcases them with the names and photos of the people who posted them. Because all the data used is “publicly accessible via the Graph API,” Haywood states in a disclaimer on the site that he “cannot be held responsible for any persons [sic] actions” as a result of using what he terms “this experiment”; he has further stated that his site (which is subtitled, “…and we think you should stop”) is intended to be “a learning tool” for those users who have failed to “properly [understand] their privacy options” on Facebook.
Coverage of the site’s rapid rise to popularity (or at least high visibility) was similar to coverage surrounding Girls Around Me: a lot of Shame On You, and the occasional critique that stopped at “creepy.” Tech-savvy white men thought the site was great; a young white woman starting college at Yale this fall explained that her digital cohort—“the youngest millennials, the real Facebook Generation”—has learned from the mistakes of “those who are ten years older than us.” As a result, her generation thinks Facebook’s privacy settings are easy, obvious, and normal; if your mileage has varied, “you have no one to blame but yourself.” In examining the screenshots from WeKnowWhatYoureDoing.com that these articles feature, I have yet to find one featured Facebook user who writes like a Yale-bound preparatory school graduate; unlike the articles’ authors, the majority of featured Facebook users in these screenshots are people of color. It is hard to see WeKnowWhatYoureDoing.com as doing anything other than offering self-satisfied amusement to privileged people, at the acknowledged potential expense of less privileged people’s employment.
In pretending that “information wants to be free” and holding individuals responsible for violations of their own privacy, we neglect to consider the responsibility of other individuals who write code for companies like Facebook, or who use the data available through the Graph API, or who circulate Facebook data more widely, or who help Facebook generate and collect data (yes, even by tagging their friends in photographs). If we cannot control our own privacy, it is because we can so easily impact the privacy of everyone we know—and even of people we don’t know.
We urgently need to rethink ‘privacy’ in ways that expand beyond the level of individual conditions, obligations, or responsibilities, yet also take into account differing intersections of visibility, context, and identity in an unequal but intricately connected society. And we need as well to turn much of our thinking about privacy and individual autonomy on its head. Due justice to questions of who is visible, and to whom, to what end, and to what effect cannot be done so long as we continue to believe that privacy and visibility are simply neutral consequences of individual choices, or that such choices are individual moral responsibilities.
We must reconceptualize privacy as a collective condition, one that entails more than simply ‘lack of visibility’; privacy must be also a collective responsibility, one that individuals and institutions alike honor in ways that go beyond ‘opting out’ of the near-ubiquitous state and corporate surveillance we seem to take for granted. It is time to stop critiquing the visible minutiae of individual lives and choices, and to start asking critical questions about who is looking, and why, and what happens next.
Whitney Erin Boesel (@phenatypical) is a graduate student in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Looming storm photo by Whitney Erin Boesel. Used with permission.
Digital eye image from http://www.indypendent.org/2012/04/28/facebook-lobbies-washington-spying-users
Store surveillance image from http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2010/10/30/facebook-open-minded-panopticon/
Stick figure comic by Luke Simpson, from http://www.stickworldcomics.com/comics/2009/11/
Camera shy photo by M1L4N, from http://m1l4n.com/camerashy/
Impossible task image by Hyeyoung Kim, from http://www.co-mag.net/2008/dark-word-hyeyoung-kim/
Facebook traffic sign photo from http://epicfails.net/2011/10/facebook-fail/
Facebook gunshot image from http://www.buzzingup.com/2010/09/facebook-is-infected-by-the-failwhale/
New look image by Kyle Froman from http://www.artsjournal.com/tobias/2011/10/starting_over.html | <urn:uuid:ad861bbf-4f42-48fa-80ef-02d7e120d5cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/07/19/a-new-privacy-part-3-documentary-consciousness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951744 | 3,466 | 1.921875 | 2 |
See Who Got Arrested
The minimum wage is going up in 10 states this year, nine of them because it's indexed to inflation and rises with the cost of living. Rhode Island passed a law last year raising its minimum wage effective Jan. 1. Here's a look at each state and the changes that were made.
The minimum wage is going up in 10 states this year. Is yours one of them?
The eyes of the country will be upon Texas on Thursday. That's where 1,400 members of the Boy Scouts of America's national council are expected to vote on whether to end the 103-year-old group's outright ban on gay youths. | <urn:uuid:20ca848b-d9f2-4bdb-98c4-7b752a5f604b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.koat.com/news/project-economy/-/9153566/17987724/-/qp59isz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955207 | 135 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Eucalyptus globulus Labill. subsp. globulus
Eucalyptus gigantea Dehnh. Eucalyptus globulus Labill. var. globulus
blue gum, bluegum, southern blue gum, Tasmanian blue gum
Native to south-eastern Australia (i.e. Tasmania, including King Island and islands of the Furneaux group, and the coastal and sub-coastal districts of southern Victoria).
This species has become naturalised in many parts of southern Australia that are beyond its natural distribution. It is recorded as being naturalised in the coastal districts of south-western and southern Western Australia and in south-eastern South Australia. It is possibly also naturalised in the ACT and beyond its native range in Victoria.
Also naturalised overseas in Europe (i.e. France, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal), south-western USA (i.e. California), and Hawaii.
Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus) is one of the most widely cultivated of Australia's native trees. It is cultivated as an ornamental in parks and gardens in many parts of Australia and is also widely grown as a timber tree in forestry plantations in the southern parts of the country. It has escaped cultivation in recent years and is now regarded as an environmental weed in South Australia, the ACT and some parts of Victoria.
In South Australia, Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus) has become naturalised in the Southern Lofty Mountain Ranges, Northern Lofty Mountain Ranges, Kangaroo Island, and South-East regions. There are also reports that it is becoming naturalised on the Lower Eyre Peninsula (i.e. at Koppio Hills). It is currently of some concern in the Adelaide area, and is listed as an invasive plant in bushland in the Adelaide Hills Council district. There is also the risk of intra-specific crossing of nearby cultivated or naturalised Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus) plants with the only native population of southern blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. bicostata) present in South Australia. In theory, this outlying population located at Burra, could become threatened if its genetic pool is contaminated by Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus).
In Victoria, localised populations of Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus) frequently occur adjacent to plantings, particularly in moderately to highly disturbed habitats such as roadsides. Hence, this species is sometimes regarded as an environmental weed in those areas outside its native range (e.g. in the Goulburn Broken Catchment). Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus) has also spread from plantings into native eucalypt woodlands, wetlands and riverine flats in the southern parts of Western Australia.
In California, in south-western USA, Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus subsp. globulus) has invaded coastal grasslands and shrublands, riparian areas and moist slopes. In fact, it is becoming so widespread in the coastal regions of this state, that it is considered to be one of the most invasive pest plants of native vegetation in California. | <urn:uuid:5451e0cb-1b0a-4dec-9677-992cfff67b2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://keyserver.lucidcentral.org/weeds/data/03030800-0b07-490a-8d04-0605030c0f01/media/Html/Eucalyptus_globulus_subsp._globulus.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935367 | 713 | 2.90625 | 3 |
From the Blue Letter Bible
New International Version
|Jhn 1:1||In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.|
|Jhn 1:2||He was with God in the beginning.|
|Jhn 1:3||Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.|
|Jhn 1:4||In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.|
|Jhn 1:5||The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [fn1] it.|
|Jhn 1:6||There was a man sent from God whose name was John.|
|Jhn 1:7||He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.|
|Jhn 1:8||He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.|
|Jhn 1:9||The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.|
|Jhn 1:10||He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.|
|Jhn 1:11||He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.|
|Jhn 1:12||Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—|
|Jhn 1:13||children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.|
|Jhn 1:14||The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.|
|Jhn 1:15||(John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ”)|
|Jhn 1:16||Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.|
|Jhn 1:17||For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.|
|Jhn 1:18||No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and [fn2] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.|
|Jhn 1:19||Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders [fn3] in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was.|
|Jhn 1:20||He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”|
|Jhn 1:21||They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.”|
|Jhn 1:22||Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”|
|Jhn 1:23||John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ” [fn4]|
|Jhn 1:24||Now the Pharisees who had been sent|
|Jhn 1:25||questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”|
|Jhn 1:26||“I baptize with [fn5] water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know.|
|Jhn 1:27||He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”|
|Jhn 1:28||This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.|
|Jhn 1:29||The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!|
|Jhn 1:30||This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’|
|Jhn 1:31||I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”|
|Jhn 1:32||Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.|
|Jhn 1:33||And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’|
|Jhn 1:34||I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.” [fn6]|
|Jhn 1:35||The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.|
|Jhn 1:36||When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”|
|Jhn 1:37||When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.|
|Jhn 1:38||Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”|
|Jhn 1:39||“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.|
|Jhn 1:40||Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.|
|Jhn 1:41||The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ).|
|Jhn 1:42||And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter [fn7] ).|
|Jhn 1:43||The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”|
|Jhn 1:44||Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida.|
|Jhn 1:45||Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”|
|Jhn 1:46||“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip.|
|Jhn 1:47||When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”|
|Jhn 1:48||“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”|
|Jhn 1:49||Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”|
|Jhn 1:50||Jesus said, “You believe [fn8] because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.”|
|Jhn 1:51||He then added, “Very truly I tell you, [fn9] you [fn10] will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ [fn11] the Son of Man.”|
Some manuscripts but the only Son, who
The Greek term traditionally translated the Jews (hoi Ioudaioi) refers here and elsewhere in John’s Gospel to those Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus; also in 5:10, 15, 16; 7:1, 11, 13; 9:22; 18:14, 28, 36; 19:7, 12, 31, 38.
Or in; also in verses 31 and 33 (twice)
See Isaiah?42:1; many manuscripts is the Son of God.
Cephas (Aramaic) and Peter (Greek) both mean rock.
Or Do you believe ???
The Greek is plural.
The Greek is plural.
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Enhanced Integrated Nutrient Management:
Top points from Vinicius Moreira
Topic: Manure Handling and Storage Effects on Nitrogen Losses of Dairy Farms
1. Atmospheric emissions of ammonia have been related to a series of environmental and health hazards such as smog, acidic rain, particulate matter, and reduction in biodiversity.
2. Livestock emissions are amongst the most important sources of ammonia, especially those coming from ruminants. In dairy cattle production systems, nitrogen (N) will be secreted in milk, retained as body proteins, and excreted through urine and feces.
3. In dairy cows, urinary N is the most important source of ammonia volatilization, after urea is broken by the ubiquitous enzyme urease, and is influenced by many meteorological and chemical factors, such as pH, temperature, humidity, NH3 concentration and wind speed.
4. Emissions vary among dairy production systems, and their identification may lead to reduction in N losses. After a review of the literature, it is clear that it is more economic to reduce the risk of N losses by reducing the amounts of crude protein (ultimately, N) fed to dairy cows. The form of manure application to the soil should also be priority over changes in physical facilities such as barns and manure storages.
5. From a national perspective, it is important to take into consideration the density and location of animal populations. It should be stressed that the presence of more concentrated dairy production systems close to densely populated urban areas is likely to cause more serious environmental and health risk than animal production systems located in rural areas. | <urn:uuid:219ae0a4-e69d-4e0a-ac29-b2a664b87921> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dfrc.wisc.edu/powell/moreirapoints.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955401 | 332 | 3.375 | 3 |
Mark McKenna’s useful piece on trademark’s history and development argues that trademark traditionally protected property rights, not consumer confusion, as shown most plainly in the limitation of classic infringement to use on competing goods. Courts would deny relief even if confusion was likely when the plaintiff didn’t lose business. He argues, then, that complaints about present-day expansions of the law can’t refer back to a golden age in which trademark law was dedicated to consumer protection and not producer property rights. Instead of appealing to history, critics of expansion have to rely on the normative merits of limited trademark rights. In fact, he suggests, consumer protection models enabled trademark’s expansion because courts were good at finding consumer interests everywhere, even when a trademark owner wasn’t losing sales. Essentially, courts licensed trademark owners to be private attorneys general, protecting consumers wherever consumers might be in need of protection – and even where they weren’t.
On rereading McKenna’s article, I was struck by how well this older model of trademark infringement explains current Lanham Act false advertising law, specifically with respect to standing. Given that the Lanham Act uses the same language for both false advertising and trademark language, it’s a puzzle why there are special standing requirements for false advertising, and yet every circuit employs them (mostly to avoid allowing citizen suits). See Jean Wegman Burns, Confused. Jurisprudence: False Advertising Under the Lanham Act, 79 B.U. L. Rev. 807 (1999).
In false advertising, public deception doesn’t matter if the plaintiff can’t prove that it’s losing sales, which can happen, for example, in a highly competitive market that isn’t dominated by any one seller. McKenna doesn’t actually address false advertising law, but one application of his work is to suggest that the problem isn’t that false advertising standing is too limited, but that trademark standing is far too broad, in that plaintiffs don’t have to show likely loss of sales to prevail. | <urn:uuid:fcf4ec87-fb68-4d4f-8f99-1c4cc966661d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tushnet.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/lanham-act-puzzles-revisited.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937658 | 426 | 2 | 2 |
If you spend much time in Liberty County you’ll probably hear someone mention that a certain place or person is “over near Sunbury.” Such is the lasting legacy of this long-gone piece of Georgia history on the Midway River that locals still refer to it in the present tense, though the old town itself is no more.
Founded soon after Midway in 1758, by 1761 Sunbury rivaled Savannah as Georgia’s main commercial port, with a thriving trade in lumber, rice, indigo, corn, and, unfortunately, slaves as well. At one time, one writer recalls, seven square-rigged vessels called on the port in a single day. At various times, all three of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence — Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton — had connections to Sunbury.
The beginning of the end came with those heady days of revolution, however, when Sunbury was the scene of much fighting between colonists and the British army in 1776–1779. A British siege in 1778 culminated in this immortal reply from the colonial commander, Colonel John McIntosh, to a redcoat demand for surrender: “Come and take it.”
By the beginning of 1779, however, a separate British assault did indeed “take it,” adding to the increasingly violent pillage of the surrounding area. Though after American independence Sunbury remained the Liberty County seat until 1797, it was never the same, beset by decay, hurricanes, and yellow fever outbreaks. (Fort Morris, however, would defend the area against the British one more time, in the War of 1812 as Fort Defiance.)
By 1848, nothing of the town remained but the old cemetery, which you can find a short drive from the Fort Morris State Historic Site ; ask a park employee for directions. | <urn:uuid:b6c8c8e8-1866-40c8-ad1f-30daa3a537d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moon.com/print/62442 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965581 | 395 | 2.8125 | 3 |
March 15, 2010
The high-speed MH series robots from Motoman Inc. have a flexible design that allows them to be used for applications including coating, dispensing, material cutting, handling, and welding.
The long reach of the MH50 model and the extended reaches of the MH50-35 and MH50-20 make these robots suitable for processing large parts. In many cell layouts, the extended-reach models can eliminate the need for an external track. Cables and hoses are internally routed.
Wide work envelopes with small interference zones allow the robots to be placed close to workpieces and equipment, reducing floor space requirements. The robots have brakes on all axes and can be mounted on the floor, wall, or ceiling.
The robots use the company's DX100 controller, which includes patented, multiple-robot control technology to handle multiple tasks and control up to eight robots (72 axes), I/O devices, and communication protocols. The controller features a PC architecture and uses a Windows® CE programming pendant with color touchscreen. | <urn:uuid:f37f0801-bfbd-4904-8c9f-45b9685ba83a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefabricator.com/article/motoman-inc/long-reach-robots-suitable-for-processing-large-parts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90642 | 214 | 1.835938 | 2 |
for National Geographic News
The report card has arrived from the largest ever scientific Earth analysis, and many of the planet's ecosystems are simply not making the grade.
The UN-backed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report found that nearly two-thirds of Earth's life-supporting ecosystems, including clean water, pure air, and stable climate, are being degraded by unsustainable use.
- Saving South Africa's Floral Heritage
- Global Warming Unstoppable for 100 Years, Study Says
- Jungle Highway Plan Spurs Security, Eco Fears in Panama
- As Arctic Ice Melts, Rush Is on for Shipping Lanes, More
- U.S. Oil, Gas Threatened by Louisiana Wetlands Loss
- Tasmanian Devils Decimated by Mystery Cancer
Humans have caused much of this damage during the past half century. Soaring demand for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel have led to dramatic environmental changes, from deforestation to chemical pollution, the report says.
The already grim situation may worsen dramatically during the first half of the 21st century, the report's authors warn.
Over 1,300 governmental and private-sector contributors from 95 countries collaborated to create the landmark study. For four years they examined the planet's many habitats and species and the systems that bind them together.
The United Nations Environment Programme compiled the report and released the results yesterday in Beijing, China.
"Only by understanding the environment and how it works, can we make the necessary decisions to protect it," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a press statement accompanying the report's release. "Only by valuing all our precious natural and human resources, can we hope to build a sustainable future."
The report paints a rather bleak picture for biodiversity throughout much of the natural world. Perhaps 10 to 30 percent of Earth's mammal, bird, and amphibian species are facing extinction.
The massive ecological survey was begun in response to Annan's Millennium Development Goals, a UN initiative that aims to dramatically reduce socio-economic problems, such as hunger and extreme poverty, by 2015.
"The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment gives us, in some ways for the first time, an insight into the economic importance of ecosystem services and some new and additional arguments for respecting and conserving the Earth's life-support systems," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme.
Current human usage patterns of Earth's environment have increased the global food supply, albeit too slowly to accomplish the UN goal of halving world hunger by 2015.
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | <urn:uuid:1f65f642-01be-4784-a7c0-e40f2b012084> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0331_050330_unenvironment.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924907 | 536 | 3.421875 | 3 |
By Joao Augusto de Castro Neves
When Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff travels to Washington next week, she won't be looking for a free trade deal or military assistance. Her country, the "B" that begins the "BRICS," primarily wants recognition -- specifically U.S. support for a permanent seat on a revamped U.N. Security Council. But this time around, Rousseff won't even be getting a state dinner.
Washington, due mainly to bureaucratic inertia, isn't ready to give Brazil the recognition it wants. Its reluctance may actually encourage other nations to behave in ways contrary to U.S. interests.
Years of macroeconomic stability, sustainable economic growth, and a cluster of successful social policies gave rise not only to a new and thriving Brazilian middle class, but also to Brazilian multinational companies, the so-called national champions. Externally, these changes translated into greater confidence -- inside and outside official circles -- and a wider scope of international ambitions.
Brazil is beginning to display the characteristics of a regional hegemon -- it has attracted more illegal immigrants from surrounding countries, and helped Colombia's government conduct rescue missions for hostages held by the FARC. And since 2004, Brazil has been leading the U.N. stabilization mission in Haiti. But Brazil's "holy grail" remains a seat at the Security Council table. And it won't get recognition (yet) from the most important member of the Permanent Five, whose support it very much covets.
According to many foreign policy specialists in Washington, Brazil does not deserve a place in the top echelons of the U.N. because it is not a nuclear power and is unwilling to share the burden of leadership. Another line of reasoning highlights the fact that the U.S. does not endorse Brazil's bid -- as it did with India -- because South America is not a very relevant region in the U.S. strategic chessboard. The remaining argument point to the fact that a potential endorsement could hurt U.S. interests with other key allies in the region, specifically Mexico and Colombia.
Even if some of these considerations may hold elements of truth, at the end of the day they hamper the deepening of relations between the two largest democracies and economies in the Western hemisphere. Brazil could do a better job explaining to the U.S. -- and the world -- how it would behave as a permanent member of the Security Council; but the U.S. could also rethink some of its arguments against Brazil.
The fact that Brazil is not a nuclear power and that South America is not a relevant strategic hotspot should count in favor of Brazil's aspirations, not against. If the region is relatively calm, it is because of the collective effort of Brazil and Argentina to end their economic and military rivalry in the 1980s. As a matter of fact, the rapprochement also defused the nuclear component of the rivalry, something that India and Pakistan were not able to do. The U.S. decision to endorse India's bid and ignore Brazil's sends a perverse message. It awards a country that snubbed every major nonproliferation regime while punishing a country that willingly adhered to these very same regimes.
Although the repercussion of the endorsement of Brazil's bid over U.S. interests with key allies in the region is likely to be negative, its importance is widely overplayed. Even nuclear Pakistan's outright resistance did not factor in U.S. geopolitical calculus when it endorsed India's bid. In addition, for some time now, the U.S.-Latin American agenda is in fact a collage of increasingly specific bilateral relations. Any dissatisfaction, therefore, could be dealt with bilaterally without any relevant repercussion on the regional agenda.
Next week's visit by Rousseff is likely to pass without the words that Brazil wants to hear from President Barack Obama. Those words will eventually come from Obama or a future U.S. president, but their absence in the short term will keep relations between the Western Hemisphere's two most important democracies from reaching their productive potential.
Joao Augusto de Castro Neves is an analyst in Eurasia Group's Latin America practice.
The Call, from Ian Bremmer, uses cutting-edge political science to predict the political future -- and how it will shape the global economy. | <urn:uuid:6d900dd5-ef18-482b-9e6c-f9c301f906a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/03/brazil_wants_some_security_council_love_but_won_t_get_it_yet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946644 | 879 | 2.15625 | 2 |
By R. C. Baker
By Michael Feingold
By Michael Musto
By Michael Feingold
By R. C. Baker
By Michael Feingold
By Christian Viveros-Faune
By R.C. Baker
"An unhappy family," said Tolstoy, "is unhappy after its own fashion." Was he talking about the art of the stage? Two unhappy families couldn't be less alike in their unhappiness than the contemporary Greek-Americans of Flesh and Blood and the 13th-century Chinese of The Orphan of Zhao. Different not only in their behavior but in their mores, the two plead for different physical worlds, for nearly antithetical modes of performance. Thanks to two inventive directors with a sense of acting values, they get them.
The Orphan of Zhao
Adapted by David Greenspan
Music by Stephin Merritt
La Guardia Drama Theater
That might sound like a normal occurrence in the theater; at one time it would have been. Today, regrettably, the theater is style consciousor more precisely, anti-style consciousto a poisonous degree. Directors are actively encouraged to Þll their productions with irrelevance, drabness, and stasis, while academic assholes (who now educate most of our budding theater artists) speak gravely of cognitive dissonance, deconstruction, the postmodern dilemma, and similar jargon-ridden concepts. From the audience's point of view, what this tendency amounts to is boredom; every production looks the same, or at any rate as outré and arbitrary, as its predecessor. This doesn't help matters in a time when the theater's struggling for recognition against the massively empty blare of the manufactured media. No wonder I'm delighted to salute two directors who saw their task differently, allowing a dramatic narrative to function and aiming their performers to enhance it. And they did so, as I've said, in wildly diverging ways.
In both cases, their source material's unfamiliar to me: I haven't read either Michael Cunningham's novel Flesh and Blood or the 13th-century Chinese play from which The Orphan of Zhao is taken; I'm willing to pay both adaptors the compliment of assuming that their work gives a reasonable representation of the originals. In each case, what you get is something like a bare but Þrm matrix; in each case, the performance makes this skeleton dance. That you may end up feeling slightly disappointed in the dramatic substance of both textsone altogether too schematic, both too cursory in their endingsbarely dampens your sense of having experienced something substantial. The sense of life is in the telling, not in the quality of the story.
Both stories are family sagas with villainous father Þgures. In Flesh and Blood, a Greek immigrant boy, getting to America after World War II, rises to become a wealthy building contractor. Having married, while still poor, a WASP girl whose brother is on the same work gang, he sires three children on her before their fundamental incompatibility takes over. In his struggle to Þll the vacuum of their dead marriage, he abuses his elder daughter sexually and his son physically; the kids grow up, respectively, a repressed Republican housewife and an angry gay. The younger daughter, in her efforts to rouse parental attention, becomes a promiscuous drug user, duly acquiring AIDS and an illegitimate child of color. You recognize the pattern: American novels have been mapping this ganglion of generational conþicts since the days of Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson. The openly gay material is newer but still hardly surprising. Either Cunningham or his adaptor, Peter Gaitens, has structured it all tidily but not granted it very much individuality; the eventsa divorce, a child's death, an unexpected surge of violence at a family occasionunfold predictably, with a pat formality that suggests a short fable rather than a very long novel. The grit of reality, which is what you would expect to Þnd, seems mostly smoothed away, leaving you with the kind of questions that pick naggingly at the story's credibility.
But that's to reckon without Douglas Hughes and his cast. First of all, it's his cast (casting is 90 percent of directing): If you are the kind of person who thinks English actors are better trained (or just better), see this play and Þnd out what a damned fool you are. Here on one stage are Jessica Hecht, Martha Plimpton, Peter Frechette, Jeff Weiss, and Sean Dugan, each giving the kind of performance that could make their colleagues weep with envy. I would call it a wall of wonderful acting, except that walls are barren and monolithic; this powerful lineup is vivid and varied, a mosaic full of glittering bits of great acting. People will talk for years about its peaks: the moment when Weiss, gone blind, slams shut a drawer he can't see, or the eerie vacant look and growling voice that seem to take possession of Hecht in a funeral scene.
And the glittering mosaic itself is like a backdrop for the best performance of the lot: Cherry Jones as the family's unassuming, innocently oblivious matriarch. This is acting. Work so good, so spontaneous and organic, puts critics in a dreadful dilemma: There's not enough space to describe it, and rhapsodizing over it makes you sound foolish. I want to say that Jones's performance is as evanescent as moonlight, and yet as wholesome and straightforward as apple pie. If this sounds like gibberish to you, you had better go see her for yourself and make up your own superlatives.
When so many performers are pitched in unison to tell a story this complex, so that your interest never wavers for a moment, the credit belongs to the director. So, presumably, does some of the praise for Christine Jones's bold and broad set, a wooden deck and staircase backed by a line of trees; for Scott Zielinski's evocative lighting, which shapes inner emotional spaces as easily as it does realistic rooms; for Paul Tazewell's costumes, unobtrusively conveying the family's shifts of income, decade, and attitude. If the blood in Cunningham's vision of American family life runs a little thin, the þesh Hughes and company put on it has a vibrant reality.
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Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:a4a901e6-4207-44e9-988b-1cbc568dbb85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-07-22/theater/family-feud-al-obligations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956521 | 1,368 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Prior to NHL's expansion in 1967, there were many great hockey players toiling in the minors of hockey because there just wasn't enough room in the NHL. So when the NHL doubled in size from 6 to 12 teams, many of these players were given the chance to finally prove themselves at the NHL level. The first superstar to emerge from this group was a red-haired kid from Regina Saskatchewan named Gordon Berenson.
Berenson first turned professional late in the 1961-62 season when he appeared in 4 late season games with the Montreal Canadiens. Nicknamed "The Red Baron" because of his hair and name, Berenson took a very unusual route to the NHL in those days by attending the University of Michigan rather than progressing through the Canadian junior ranks. He was the first Canadian born player to go directly from American college to the NHL.
Berenson played a minor role with the Canadiens. He received very limited ice time in 136 games with the Habs over 5 years. Berenson spent most of his time in the Eastern Professional Hockey League and the American Hockey League where he tore up the score sheets.
In the summer of 1966, Montreal gave up on Berenson and traded him to the New York Rangers for Ted Taylor and Garry Peters. However Berenson had an injury riddle first season with New York and as a result never gained the ice time he needed to thrive. He scored only 5 assists in 30 games in 1966-67.
The following season was the first season of NHL expansion. Berenson actually started the season with Rangers, quietly scoring just 2 goals and 1 assist in 19 games, before he was moved to the expansion St. Louis Blues. That trade turned out to be one of the greatest in St. Louis Blues history. They acquired Berenson and soon to be cult legend Barclay Plager in exchange for Ron Stewart and Ron Attwell.
Berenson almost instantly became a scoring threat once he arrived in the mid-west city. He finished the season with 51 points in 55 games with St. Louis. He was also instrumental in helping the Blues reach the Stanley Cup Finals in their very first year in the league!
By this time Berenson was the talk of St. Louis, and the League. His style of play and scoring success had put St. Louis on the hockey map and fans in the arena. Few St. Louis players were ever as popular as Red.
The next season saw Red score a career high 82 points, but is best remembered for one magical night on November 7, 1968. Red Berenson scored 6 goals against the Philadelphia Flyers to become the first "modern" player to score 6 goals in a single game. Seven players have scored 6 goals in one game. Darryl Sittler is the only other modern player to accomplish this. Names like Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Richard, and Hull never were able to to accomplish this incredible feat. But Berenson is quick to point out that he also hit the post and missed on what he described as two excellent chances in that game as well. That would have tied Joe Malone's 1920 record of 7 goals in one game. Amazingly this feat occurred on the road, making Berenson the record holder for most goals in a game by a visiting player.
For another year and a half Berenson would exploit NHL goalies for the St. Louis Blues, but found himself traded to the Detroit Red Wings in 1971 for political reasons. Berenson at the time was the president of the NHL Players Association, and the move was considered in media circles to be a union busting move.
Berenson would enjoy three and a half seasons with the Red Wings before being traded back to St. Louis in late 1974. He remained a top player with the Wings, as demonstrated by his inclusion on Team Canada for the Soviet showdown in the 1972 Summit Series.
After returning to St. Louis, Berenson would play 3 final seasons with the Blues before retiring at the end of the 1978 season. Berenson, who played in 5 NHL All Star games, retired with 261 goals, 397 assists and 658 points in 987 games.
Berenson turned to coaching after his playing days. Red coached the Blues from 1979 to 1982, winning the Jack Adams Trophy in 1981 after a 45-18-17 season. Berenson also served as an assistant coach under Scotty Bowman in Buffalo from 1982 through 1984. His head coaching all time record is a very impressive 100-72-32 for a .569 winning percentage.
After leaving the NHL in 1984 Berenson went back to the University of Michigan where he served as a long time head coach. His record there is unbelievable. He is the winningest coach in the college scene throughout the 1990s, including two national championships (1996, and 1998). | <urn:uuid:caf460e3-dea2-4b60-b4aa-c4a150ecfed6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greatesthockeylegends.com/2006/06/red-berenson.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982556 | 996 | 1.609375 | 2 |
I ran into an article not long ago in The New York Times, The Americanization of Mental Illness by Ethan Watters, based on his forthcoming book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, discussing how the American way of mental illness being exported along with other American products such as rock n’ roll, Coca Cola, and anorexia.
The classic case of Western media-induced anorexia happened on the Polynesian island of Fiji, where eating disorders were unknown for 3,000 years until television became available in 1995. A 1999 New York Times article describes what Dr. Ann E. Becker, director of research at the Harvard Eating Disorders Center of Harvard Medical School, found when she investigated shifts in body image and eating practices in Fiji over a three-year period.
Before 1995, Dr. Becker said, there was little talk of dieting in Fiji. ”The idea of calories was very foreign to them.” But in the 1998 survey, 69 percent said that at some time they had been on a diet. In fact, preliminary data suggest more teen-age girls in Fiji diet than their American counterparts.
Study Finds TV Alters Fiji Girls’ View of Body By Erica Goode, May 20, 1999
Oddly enough the idea of viral mental illness set me to thinking about some unusual toys I played with as a child. My father was a psychologist who administered psychological tests for schools, government agencies and mental institutions before he gave that up to go into military and aerospace research.
He had a cupboard full of old psychological tests that he never used, and when I got old enough not to mess them up, he would let me take them out and play with them. I think by then his worldview was that these tests were indeed games, so why shouldn’t I play with them.
It’s been nearly 50 years since I last picked these up but I still remember how beautiful the Rorschach ink blots were. They were large, thick cardboard about six by nine inches and not just black and white, but with almost three-dimensional gray shadings, and colorful red, blue, green orange and pink swirls.
Another test was the TAT or Thematic Apperception Test, again pictures on even larger cards. Each drawing showed a little scene that you were supposed to tell a story about–good training for a novelist, although that was hardly anyone’s plan for me at the time.
The creepiest test was the Szondi test–no, not Zombie test, it was named after Hungarian psychiatrist Lipot Szondi (1893-1986). This test consisted of four sheets of mug shots, 48 pictures of mental patients taken in the late 1800s to early 1900s. As my father explained it, if you got on a bus and there was an empty seat next to each of these people, who would you sit next to?
Szondi lived into the 1980s and I don’t know if he ever changed his diagnostic definitions, but the eight diagnoses the Szondi test used were: homosexual, sadistic, epileptic, hysteric, catatonic, paranoiac, schizophrenic, depressive and manic.
Just that list gives you an idea of how ideas about what constitutes mental illness have changed just in America.
The Watters New York Times article that started my whole trip down memory lane talks about mental illnesses that once were common and now are rarely if ever seen, such as hysterical paralysis. He reports a contagious anorexia phenomenon in Hong Kong, and goes into a fascinating digression on how one culture’s treatment of schizophrenia as spirit possession actually leads to fewer relapses than the Western diagnosis and drug treatment
An internet search away from the Watters article was an equally absorbing commentary by Greg Downey at Neuronthropology.net. Downey suggests that export of mental health can also be motivated by:
[P]ure mercenary impulses, as drug companies try to persuade new markets that the individuals need their products, suffering as they do from disorders of which they were previously unaware. Here, the idea that it’s just the beliefs about illness held by therapists and authorities obscures the naked greed that goes into public relations campaigns designed to produce disorder.
He cites the case of GlaxoSmithKline’s fostering of depression in Japan, where the concept of depression (and thus treatment with their product) was unknown until 1999. The manufacturer of Paxil was forbidden by Japanese law to advertise directly to customers, so they embarked on a series of “educational” ads telling consumers: “Depression is a disease that anyone can get. It can be cured by medicine. Early detection is important.”
So, as Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that working for GlaxoSmithKline?”
Pretty well, alas! A 2007 Boston Globe article reports that depression and the drugs to treat it have taken solid root in Japan. | <urn:uuid:2603d9fb-5fa6-4a87-a9b9-8d777d3dc191> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laurietobyedison.com/discuss/?p=2438 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970645 | 1,038 | 1.75 | 2 |
Pitcairn Island is best known as the haven for the mutineers from HMS Bounty over 200 years ago. This group of four small, varied South Pacific islands range from Pitcairn itself (4.5km2) to Henderson Island - a 37km2 raised coral atoll and the largest island - and low-lying coral atolls of Oeno and Ducie. The nearest land masses are over 4,500km away, New Zealand to WSW and South America to the east. Only Pitcairn is inhabited; the small community of less than 50 lives at Adamstown, isolated by more than a days sail from its nearest neighbours in French Polynesia, around 500km NW.
Pitcairn biodiversity and conservation needs have become better known in recent years following a major scientific expedition in 1991-92. The indigenous vegetation of Pitcairn Island is confined to small, isolated patches. Now that a small nursery has been established on Pitcairn, sustained restoration effort is needed to safeguard these remnants and the endemic plants they support.
The other islands support a range of endemic plants and animals. The chicken bird (a jet black, flightless rail confined to Henderson Island - a World Heritage Site) seems to be less vulnerable to predation by rats than are the petrels. Of special concern is the recently described Henderson petrel.
Darwin Initiative and other UK funds have helped develop local conservation skills and support a successful rat eradication programme on Oeno and Ducie in the 1990s. From 2011, a major exercise is attempting to eradicate rats on Henderson.
The Pitcairn Natural Resources Departmentis working to ensure that sustainable development proceeds alongside environmental protection and conservation of local natural resources using the Pitcairn Environment Management Plan as a framework.
about Virtual Tours.... | <urn:uuid:6742c3af-62cb-4f81-a953-8ac8fed213a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ukotcf.org/territories/pitcairn.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931793 | 364 | 3.46875 | 3 |
created 11 months ago | Tagged:
Women preparing for fertility treatment typically get a series of daily, sometimes uncomfortable hormone shots to kick their ovaries into over-drive—but a new review of previous studies suggests one long-acting shot may work just as well. For in vitro fertilization, extra follicle-stimulating hormone, or FSH, is used to trigger the ovaries to grow and release multiple eggs, which are then fertilized outside the body and re-implanted in the uterus. In an analysis of four past studies including over 2,300 women with infertility, researchers found the women were just as likely to get pregnant -- and didn't have any more complications—when they got a single, long-acting dose of FSH rather than daily shots.
"Long-acting FSH (weekly injection) is a good and safe alternative to daily injections in the first week of ovarian stimulation for IVF," Dr. Jan Kremer from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, who worked on the review, told Reuters Health in an email. However, he said there is still limited data on how the weekly hormone shots work in certain groups of women, including older women with less of an ovarian response and those with fertility problems because of polycystic ovary syndrome, whose ovaries might over-respond.
The long-acting shot is used in Europe but not currently available in the United States, because it hasn't been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. | <urn:uuid:27855a24-44f0-4fb5-8489-e9dd6b923af8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://culturewav.es/public_thought/129124 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967568 | 306 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Where to Go to Network with Others
This is a list for parents that have lost infants due to neonatal death, SIDS, still-birth and unexplained causes. We are here to share feelings with others that have endured the same things. So hopefully we can have partners in grief and healing of the soul. No one needs to feal alone. All topics are welcome, this is a list that you can share emotions freely: may they be anger, hurt,or joy. Were here for each other, together we can weather the storm through support.
- Pregnancy After A Loss
This list was created for parents who have experienced a death of a child, and have other children as well.
Here, we can discuss, parenting styles after the death of a child, and anything else on your minds.We are here to support each other, and offer an ear, a shoulder.
A support group for women who have suffered a misscarrage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth or neonatal and infant death.
An all volunteer organization dedicated to helping grandparents through the
trauma, stress and grief after the loss of a grandchild.
- Bereaved Parents of the USA
A nationwide organization designed to aid and support bereaved parents and their
families who are struggling to survive their grief after the death of a child.
Any bereaved parent, sibling or grandparent is eligible to become a member of
BP/USA. Members are free to attend monthly meetings of their chapter, or any
other chapter, as often and as long as necessary to meet their needs.
- Center for Loss in Multiple Births
By and for parents throughout the United States, Canada and beyond who have experienced the death of one or more, both or all their children during a twin, triplet or higher multiple pregnancy, at birth, or in infancy or childhood.
- The Compassionate Friends
The mission of The Compassionate Friends is to assist families in the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child and to provide information to help others be supportive.
- Growth House, Inc.
Has specialized resources for bereaved families, helping children grieve, pregnancy loss and infant death, and suicide.
For families who have experienced loss of pregnancy, newborn, or infant child.
- Isaiah's Promise
Support for Parents Continuing Their Pregnancy After a Poor or Fatal Diagnosis
- MEND - Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death
The purpose of MEND is to reach out to those who have lost a child due to miscarriage, stillbirth or
early infant death.
- The M.I.S.S. Foundation - Mothers in
Sympathy and Support
For families experiencing the death of a
child. The MISS website includes a Cherish Corner with articles and
poetry. The Family Section contains current and back issues of our award-winning
newsletter, MISSing Angels, as well as our online support groups, a place to
find face-to-face support or information on beginning your own MISS Foundation
Support Chapter, and even a downloadable funeral planner. In our professionals
section, there is information on our workshops and speakers available to present
in your facility about many topics relating to child death.
- Missing GRACE
An organization that serves to help families on their journey through pregnancy
and infant loss, infertility and adoption. We provide support and resources to
aid individuals as they Grieve, Restore, Arise, Commemorate and Educate.
Further, we commit to make available educational opportunities that will help
bring about awareness and prevention of stillbirth.
A support group for parents who experience miscarriage, stillbirth
or neonatal death.
- Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC)
SUDC is the sudden and unexpected death of a child over the age of twelve
months, which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation is
conducted. The SUDC Program was created in September 2001 as part of the CJ
Foundation for SIDS. It has been developed to provide a centralized resource for
information, support and advocacy. It serves families and professionals affected
by the tragedy of SUDC, and promotes awareness of SUDC in communities.
- Bereavement Magazine
A magazine of hope and healing, functions as a "support group in print."
Articles, stories and poems are written and submitted by the bereaved for the
bereaved and are professionally edited for publication. Ten professionals
eminent in the field of grief intervention also contribute in each issue.
Published six times a year, this 'friend who arrives in the mailbox' offers
comfort and compassion in the privacy of the home." | <urn:uuid:8a84ec13-f3e9-4a6c-8f31-6c6255bfe06c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.familyvillage.wisc.edu/Lib_bere.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932515 | 970 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Doing Business in Ukraine
When you travel to Ukraine, you enter the country, full of paradoxes. Ukrainians are proud of their roots and reticent about their recent past; the country participates in international space programs and produces the world's largest aircraft, but still lives in the universe of superstitions.
Recently Ukraine has added another paradox to the list. Though the state originated over a thousand years ago in Kyivan, Rus many Ukrainian newspapers declared December 2004 as "the birth of a nation." The Ukrainian 'Orange revolution' burst onto the world's TV screens and newspaper pages. A new civil society was born in the demonstrators' tent camp in freezing winter temperatures and in the overheated rooms of the Supreme Court. The world was having a lightning geography lesson about the country in the south of Europe, sandwiched between Russia and European Union.
The Ukrainian business scene is a blend of the Soviet legacy and Ukrainian adventurous, entrepreneurial spirit, encased in a complex tax and regulatory framework. Despite the challenges, business in Ukraine does go on and in many cases presents unprecedented opportunities.
The country has a well-developed industrial base, rich agricultural resources and proximity to existing and untapped markets in Europe, Russia and Asia. The majority of the Soviet high-tech military plants were in Ukraine, which resulted in a highly skilled engineering workforce and large manufacturing capacities.
Doing business here is not always easy, but guaranteed to be exciting. Socializing and friendliness outside the office will more than compensate for the setbacks.
The process of business negotiation can be quite long-winded. Ukrainians will start the dialogue with a long "warm-up" session about the journey, the family or proposed entertainment for the evening. Don't get impatient: any attempt to rush straight into business is considered rude. For Ukrainians the beginning of the meeting is a time for evaluating the individual with whom one is conducting business. Ukrainians expect friendships to extend to business. Strong family ties and friendships have been a survival mechanism in Ukraine for centuries, be it in farming, when several families were pooling resources, or in times of hardship and crisis. A network of good personal contacts is the most valued asset in getting something done.
While Western negotiators prefer sequential approach and tackle every issue separately, Ukrainians tend to come to an understanding on the global picture first, before getting into the details of a proposition or a contract. Sometimes a Ukrainian host may start negotiations with: "Well, this is how we see it and this is the result we would like to get. And what is your proposal?" The Western counterparts are not always prepared for such an abrupt beginning. Consider your answer carefully, as your initial statement will be perceived as the backbone of your proposal.
The Ukrainian approach to negotiation can be emotional and direct. Ukrainian managers will consider early compromise to be a sign of weakness and will give minimal or no concession. Recent sociological research by the Institute of Sociology in Kyiv showed that Ukrainians say the word "No" in negotiations nine times more often than their Western counterparts! Though used frequently, it does not necessarily put the end to the discussion. Try to approach the matter in a different way. You should continue to talk about the details, deliveries and so on. Save any final price concession for the last meeting, even up to half an hour before you leave for the airport. You will be respected for tenacity and professionalism in your negotiating stance.
If you have discussed the entire plan with your counterparts and agreed upon every possible combination of events that could occur, you will probably be invited to sign "A Protocol of Intent." This is effectively a memorandum of the meeting, which is considered by Ukrainians as the first landmark on the long route to a business relationship and a contract. Often at this stage of the contract signature you will be required to put your "Company stamp" as the official confirmation of your signature, so don't forget to bring a self-inking rubber company seal with you.
Finally, however tiring the day (or, more likely, the week) of negotiations has been, don't refuse an invitation to dinner. As Ukrainians love to entertain, toasting at the dinner table is just as important as the work achieved in the morning negotiations, if not more so. It is a part of building the relationship of trust and loyalty. You can impress your hosts with the shortest and most common Ukrainian toast: "Budmo!"
If you understand and the local customs and are open, direct and professional, you will be respected in Ukraine. And remember: "Budmo!" means "Let us be..."
Anna Shevchenko is Kwintessential's senior Russia and Ukraine cross cultural trainer. The article first appeared in Pharmaceutical Marketing Europe, Vol. 03, Number 01, Spring 2006.
If you need cultural awareness training or consultancy on The Ukraine, please contact us to discuss your needs. | <urn:uuid:ec556243-2aea-4b38-b4bb-c0012f2ad863> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/business-ukraine.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950403 | 984 | 1.867188 | 2 |
EPHRAIM DOWNS, PILLAR AND SCROLL MANTLE CLOCK - For Sale
EPHRAIM DOWNS, PILLAR AND SCROLL MANTLE CLOCK
Not all of the pillar and scroll mantle clocks bore paper labels that identified the clockmaker. This one has never had a label on the old backboard of the case. However, careful research in the archives of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors Wood works movement identification bulletins have positively identified this clock as having been made by EPHRAIM DOWNS in Bristol, Connecticut around 1824. The original dial is in far better condition than most that we see. I'd rate it as excellent...retaining its original paint and gesso on the wooden dial board. The wood works have been professionally serviced and have had the required restoration to assure that they will provide good running quality for the next owner of this clock. The center scene on the lower door glass has been restored by a master reverse-painter in our area and the upper glass is also the old original...with wavy lines to prove it. The right scroll has been professionally and almost impercepibly repaired. This is a GOLDEN opportunity for a buyer who wants a fine pillar and scroll clock at a lower-than-usual price made by one of the old Connecticut clockmakers...around 1824. | <urn:uuid:d4a2670c-3f81-4585-85b6-a5bc541f6b1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antiques.com/classified/Antique-Clocks/Antique-Mantle-Clocks/EPHRAIM-DOWNS--PILLAR-AND-SCROLL-MANTLE-CLOCK | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9581 | 286 | 1.570313 | 2 |
All of our events rely on the time and dedication of volunteers. Volunteering is a great way for spectators to get involved with the sport as well as a way for current team members to give back after graduation. Some of our volunteer opportunities are listed below. If one of these areas interest you or you have other ideas on how you would like to contribute to these events, please contact us.
Observers get the unique experience to travel with the solar car teams, writing down what happens during the American Solar Challenge and proving this information to Race Officials at checkpoints along the route. This is a critical role to provide fairness to the event and document any actions that may result in a penalty or should be considered for our teamwork, sportsmanship, or safety awards. As an Observer, you would ride in the chase vehicle which follows the solar car during the day, impound their batteries in the evening, and stay with the team overnight. Upon arrival at a stage/checkpoint, you would be swapped with an Observer for another team, thus having the opportunity to ride with several teams during the week. Observers are given orange event t-shirts to wear and provided with a route book and training for their role the day before the event begins. Teams are responsible for treating the Observer as a member of their team, providing meals, snacks, and lodging accommodations, which may include camping.
Hosts welcome teams to their location and invite the public and media to a one-of-a-kind public relations opportunity. At a minimum, hosts of the stage/checkpoints along the American Solar Challenge provide access to parking lots and restrooms for the teams. Many hosts choose to go beyond this by having community events in conjunction with the rare opportunity to have solar cars on display at their location. Previous hosts have held energy fairs, stadium tours, people’s choice awards, team meals, and hospitality lounges with giveaways. Depending on your location and the route, we have both checkpoints and stage points. Checkpoints operate for a single day, usually for 4-6 hours. Stage points are checkpoints which include an overnight stop and a re-start the following morning.
Corner Workers get to experience the action of the track race up close. These volunteers are assigned a spot along the track and provided radio communication with race control to report flat tires and other problems as they arise. Corner Workers use racing flags to warn other solar car drivers of the issues on the track. When there are no issues, Corner Workers are free to take pictures and enjoy the race day.
If you have skills with a camera, video camera, and editing software, this may be the right fit for you. Photographers/Videographers provide coverage of the event during inspections, at the track, and on the road. Content is updated daily on the website and provided to media inquiries. (Portfolio required upon request.)
EMT (Emergency Medical Technician)
EMTs travel along with the roaming inspectors during the cross-country American Solar Challenge event to assist teams and staff in the event of a medical emergency. (Credentials required.)
Commonly referred to as the staff, race officials are those volunteers who help with the operations of the event, usually on a year-round basis. Activities may include reviewing vehicle design reports, performing route drives, working out event logistics, and collecting paperwork from the teams. At the events, these people perform inspections, handle timing, and serve as the coordinators for all parts of the event. The vast majority of the staff is made up of former competitors who desire to see these events continue for the next generation. | <urn:uuid:8d7e8eb0-e0f9-4043-bb55-52d6c66b9042> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americansolarchallenge.org/get-involved/volunteering/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969539 | 734 | 1.609375 | 2 |
1. Pets die with their eyes open. It takes active muscle control to close the eyes. (The same is true of humans.)
2. Many pets "hide" when they are sick. This is a defensive mechanism to prevent predators from spotting them in a vulnerable state.
3. Many pet owners think that when a pet goes off to "die" it is a peaceful death but many times (most times) it is not. Many pets will suffer for hours or even days before they die.
4. When humans die, the sense of sight is the first to go and hearing is the last. The same is thought to be true for dogs and cats.
5. Many pets will continue to breathe and have muscle movements after their heart has stopped.
6. The oldest living dog documented was an Australian Cattle-dog named Bluey who was owned by Les Hall of Rochester, Victoria, Australia. Bluey was obtained as a puppy
in 1910 and worked among cattle and sheep for nearly 20 years. He was put to sleep on November 14, 1939 at the age of 29 years, 5 months.
7. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the oldest cat on record was a domestic longhair by the name of Spike. Until 2001 when he passed away at the ripe old age of 31 (that's 140 in human years, but who's counting?), Spike was still happily chasing spiders and enjoying life. Spike lived in Dorset, England with his owner, an aromatherapist named Mo Elkington. (Another British cat was recorded to be 34 years old when it died in 1957, but it was not documented by Guinness.)
8. Dogs do not suffer from myocardial infarction (heart attack) as people do. In dogs, the term is typically used to either define a collapsing episode (more accurately termed as syncope or loss of consciousness) or to describe sudden death of an animal in terms that people can understand.
9. Humans are not the only species to bury their dead. Both chimpanzees and elephants have been observed covering the bodies of deceased members of their groups. Scientists have observed elephants gently touching the skulls and tusks of other elephants long after the bodies have decomposed.
10. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt believed that animals and people shared the afterlife so they wanted to be buried with the animals that shared their lives. Beloved pets were frequently mummified and placed into tombs with their owners.
11. Pets get almost every disease that humans get including diabetes, heart disease, lung disease and cancer.
12. When our beloved pets die many people choose to bury them nearby, in the backyard or garden. While this may bring us great comfort it may also be against the law. In many areas, government regulations prohibit this practice. So find out what is permitted in your area before you bury your pet. | <urn:uuid:5b3a6cdd-e971-4fe1-bfe2-cd16c4657c2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.petplace.com/dogs/12-things-you-may-not-know-about-pet-death/page1.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975322 | 587 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Panning on the Tarantula Nebula
The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is situated 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the Southern sky and is clearly visible to the naked eye as a large milky patch. Astronomers believe that this smallish, irregular galaxy is currently going through a violent period in its life cycle. It is orbiting the Milky Way and has had several close encounters with it. It is believed that the interaction with the Milky Way has caused an episode of energetic star formation ? part of which is visible as the Tarantula Nebula. The Tarantula is the largest stellar nursery we know in the local Universe. In fact if this enormous complex of stars, gas and dust were at the distance of the Orion Nebula it would be visible during the day and cover a quarter of the sky.
Over the years the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has returned again and again to observe this interesting region of the sky and in this way Hubble has built up an archival treasure of more than a thousand images and spectra of the Tarantula. A few weeks ago 23 year old amateur astronomer Danny LaCrue sifted through the data and found that 15 of the exposures made with Hubble?s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 could be combined to create a beautiful mosaic of the central parts of the unique Tarantula.
About the Video
|Release date:||15 December 2004, 10:00|
About the Object
|Type:||• Hubble Images Videos|
• Nebulae Images/Videos | <urn:uuid:9228d826-32f4-49f3-90b5-299ad19c6abc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spacetelescope.org/videos/heic0416a/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941817 | 322 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Don't trip over unwanted toys - find a new home for them
Can I recycle toys?
No, your curbside collection scheme will not collect unwanted toys, and neither will your local recycling centre. However on some toys that are unrepairable there are plastic and metal parts on them that can be recycled.
Donating toys to charity and good causes.
- Local playgroups may be happy to use toys still in working condition.
- Donate toys to charity shops or hospitals.
- ‘Tric’ is a toy-recycling group encouraging parents to recycle unbroken toys.
What Can Be Recycled?
Latest Recycling News
Many of us do our bit for the environment at home by putting garden waste on the compost heap and bottles in the bottle bank. But what about when we’re at work? Here are some tips on how to be eco-friendly in the workplace...
Yes, you heard correct, number plates! Did you know that number plates on cars, motorbikes and other vehicles are one of the most lucrative items that you can recycle from a vehicle before it gets scrapped? | <urn:uuid:4eea9105-8dfb-4d94-ad69-cb133eceaf92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recycling.co.uk/toys | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928226 | 235 | 2.3125 | 2 |
'Beowulf' Begs the Question: What is animation, anyway?
The debate is already starting as to whether Robert Zemeckis' 'Beowulf' (coming in November) will be eligible for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, since it uses live actors and performance capture as a foundation. The Oscar rules require animated movies to have been created "using a frame-by-frame technique."
(Aside: is there anyone else who wishes Zemeckis would just go back to using actual non-animated actors in his movies? Let's start a petition...) | <urn:uuid:9dd7bc33-7523-4465-8151-8dc6c081abca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cinematech.blogspot.com/2007/08/beowulf-begs-question-what-is-animation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94275 | 119 | 1.5 | 2 |
The current status of Myspace is this: The pioneering social media once-giant just might get the last laugh when all is said and done.
You're laughing, aren't you?
Admit it -- you were one of the countless people ready to witness Myspace die a slow death. After hitting its peak in 2008 with more than 75.9 million unique visitors a month, Myspace experienced a rather fast descent into the back of the minds of most -- thanks to a new kid on the block by the name of Facebook. Just a little more than a year ago, Myspace found itself in the middle of a complete free-fall and was poised to find itself forced completely off the social media map.
But just as it was about to hit the devastatingly hard concrete of social media obscurity, it started to breathe again. Young investors Tim and Chris Vanderhook decided it was time to give Myspace a second chance. Buying the fledgling site for a mere $35 million, the two savvy entrepreneurs quickly partnered with entertainment mogul Justin Timberlake -- and people started to listen. And as with everything else he touches, Timberlake started to make MySpace sound good.
"There's a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff, and just connect," Timberlake said at a news conference. "Myspace has the potential to be that place. Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there's a natural social component to entertainment. I'm excited to help revitalize Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community."
Earlier this year, the Myspace team proudly announced that it had signed up 1 million new users in the span of a month. Monthly traffic was rising -- and it still is. "For the past few years, it's always been 'My-who?' when anyone mentions the former social networking giant," says Steve Knapp, director of brand activation at Carmichael Lynch. As an advertising executive, Knapp has pioneered programs in social media for companies such as Nike, General Mills, and Northwestern Mutual.
"Marketers tend to forget over 29 million people visited Myspace last month," Knapp says. "That's more than Pinterest, Tumblr, or Spotify. What's more, most people already know the brand. Myspace was likely was the first social experience where you connected with friends, discovered new bands, or maybe even 'friended' brands. Now armed with a massive catalog of free music, people and marketers alike need to understand the reasons to come back. I'm not sure what it is yet, but there is scale and focus. Maybe if Justin Timberlake starts making sales calls, more brands will take notice."
So while the general public continues to laugh and make snide comments about MySpace, more and more media and advertising executives are beginning to take notice. Now more than ever before, there seems to be rather strong evidence that it's time to get serious about Myspace yet again -- and here's why. | <urn:uuid:2080777a-9b96-43ab-84eb-aa8c8578c143> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/32367.asp?imcid=topnavcontent | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969419 | 641 | 1.539063 | 2 |
How Britain has failed cycling
Bike lane illustration
We've been fooled. In the 40 years I have reported on the tortuous business of cycle campaigning, no British town - with perhaps the exception of the London Cycle Network, and that's mostly on back streets - has yet managed to build a half-decent cycle network worthy of the name.
Over this same period the Dutch have revolutionised cycling, reversing a decline in the 1960s with a nationwide strategy that has resulted in 28 per cent of trips being made by bike today, compared to less than two per cent in Britain. But Britain has shunned Dutch expertise.
The Dutch authorities spend between £10 and £20 per head of population on cycling. Less than £1 per head of population is spent on cycling in England, with only the Cycling Demonstration Towns and London bucking the trend.
So much for all the government talk about backing cycling to make the nation fitter, addressing the serious obesity problem and reducing congestion.
"There are none!" Roger Geffen, campaigns and policy director of the CTC, the national cyclists' organisation, told me when I asked him to name six towns which have built cycle networks linking places people need to go.
It was my hope he would reveal the first stirrings of the creation of a cycle network along the lines of the quality networks they have in Holland or Scandinavia. How naive could I be?
Geffen told me he is not aware of any one town where they are getting it right. Bits and pieces are OK, but that's it, he said.
The London-wide network, several hundred kilometres in the making and a work in progress for nigh on 30 years, struggled for a long time to get decent funding.
It has painstakingly been developed with cross-borough cooperation under the auspices of the London Cycling Campaign. But as it's mostly on back roads, the main roads still form a barrier in places.
Transport for London's Superhighways are meant to address this.
They are a step in right direction. But don't let all the PR hyperbole about them lure you into a false sense of security. "Super"! Not really; there are no traffic lights with cycling phases at any of the major junctions.
Could do better
"London is at least putting significant investment into cycling," says Geffen.
He describes their bike hire scheme as "phenomenally successful".
"Its pro-cycling advertising campaigns are models of best practice, and it does pretty well on other promotional activities too, such as cycle maps and cycle training. TfL is now also beginning to take the issue of lorry safety very seriously - and not before time."
He says, however, there are still some serious political constraints which will need to be overcome if London is to make the fundamental transformation into
a genuinely cycle-friendly city.
Geffen picked out other cities doing good things: "Leicester, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bristol and Sheffield are all cities which are making serious efforts to boost cycle use, and are beginning to show positive results.
"Cambridge of course is way ahead in terms of actual levels of cycle use, thanks to a long tradition of cycling there, together with a network of narrow streets and historic buildings which meant it never opened itself up to mass car use in the 1960s.
"Yet Cambridge is still a long way short of the levels of cycle use in comparable Dutch cities, [such as Groningen]. As for the others, they have even bigger challenges.
"In short, even in Britain 's most pro-cycling cities, we still have a long way to go."
Fear of traffic
Although more and more people are taking up leisure cycling in the UK, the numbers commuting instead of using the car or other modes has hardly changed in 10 years, according to national statistics. And won't unless the roads are made safer.
In 2010, only 1.5 per cent of all trips were made by bike... bad winter weather responsible for a slight drop on 2009.
And of this 1.5 per cent, three or four per cent represent commuter or utility trips made by bike.
Not much different since 2001. Yes, London has seen big increases, but the capital is bucking the trend as people seek to avoid paying stupendously high public transport fares.
The problem, says CTC, is that putting in decent cycle lanes is seen as expensive at £800,000 per kilometre. The money available doesn't come close.
"There are cheaper options," says Chris Peck of the CTC. "For instance, speed reduction of traffic, traffic management, reduction in parking" - a highly controversial measure.
"Even so, cycling is growing, trade is booming, and the attitude towards cyclists has improved in the last few years," he adds.
But Peck agrees there is no getting away from the fact that the overall standard of build of cycle facilities falls well short.
It is a fact that the pre-war cycle lanes of the 1930s and 1940s are often better than those built today, and even these early lanes had their faults, such as no right of way at junctions. It's the same today.
He says one of the big problems has been, and still is, the lack of political will.
I recall Philip Darnton, chair of the excellent Cycling England - the government body staffed by cycling experts that was killed off in the cuts this year - telling me he had encountered "institutionalised discrimination" against cyclists in his dealings with local authorities.
I recall transport minister Steven Norris was very fond of saying that MPs suffer from "big project-itis", as he called it. In other words, cycling issues were seen as too small to be associated with, compared to dreaming up, say, headline projects like a satellite system to monitor your car's mileage, or a new rail route.
And because cycling was seen as too small, the funding to make every town cycling friendly, though less than one per cent of the multi-billion pound transport budget and very good value indeed, was seen as too expensive.
I can think of only one of the many transport ministers I have interviewed - and all of them spoke eloquently of how important it was to create the right conditions for cycling - who ever personally got involved. This is Lord Adonis, who saw to it that Network Rail put cycle parking hubs in a few major stations. Even so, 300 parking spaces at, say, London Waterloo and Leeds, pales into insignificance alongside the 14,000 bike spaces provided at Utrecht station in Holland - and this is to be increased to 20,000 for a small town a fraction the size of London.
The idea that a cycling strategy properly applied could help deliver the balanced and sustainable transport MPs witter on about has been lost in the fog of government.
When over a decade ago John Prescott proposed radical changes to introduce a sustainable transport policy it upset the motoring lobby so much that he was moved off transport and his proposals binned.
Chris Peck says that transport minister Norman Baker, like Adonis, is a good guy, doing his best amid a raft of financial constraints.
So, it seems fairly certain that the persistent low level of utility trips made by bike can be put down to a combination of fear of traffic and a lack of decent comprehensive cycle networks in the towns.
Fools at the helm
What has brought us to this place? Could it be that transport decisions are made by people still hard-wired to the post-war image of the bike as working class, only to be begrudgingly accommodated with crap facilities as befits its station? Is it written in the Department for Transport Old Testament of the 1960s, when cyclists and pedestrians were designed out of road schemes, "Thou shall not provide for cyclists"?
Former transport minister and petrolhead Philip Hammond joined the ranks of the stupid when he recently suggested raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph. He must know that will influence drivers to push it that bit faster off the motorway, too.
I mean, what's all that about? I have it on good authority that Hammond did a deal with the Lib Dems. He'd lower the limit to 20mph on residential roads if they wouldn't oppose him increasing motorway limit to 80 - to placate the motoring lobby!
And we wonder why so many people are still deterred from cycling. The recent - zillionth - cycling report on the matter, by a Prof Colin Pooley, attempts to answer this question yet again. He made quite a stir by suggesting planners ignore established cyclists when seeking views! It was this report which prompted me to review the issues.
Apparently, the report should have said, don't only talk to enthusiasts.
But the report was clear: the main reason deterring a great many people from cycling is fear of traffic. So, nothing new there. The report calls for segregated cycle lanes, which will be far more difficult to deliver given that the authorities have made a pig's ear of far simpler facilities.
Sadly, on the evidence of the great many other reports the government has paid only lip service to the prof and his fellow academics, who might as well be pissing in the wind. What we need is a report that examines why, in 40 years, government transport specialists - local and central and every single one of the host of transport secretaries of state - have managed to fail cycling so miserably.
Their legacy: on-pavement cycle lanes with lamp posts blocking them; telephone boxes, bus shelters, even trees in them!
As for cycle lanes on the roads, where they ought to be - with few notable exceptions - they end abruptly, or run into parking bays, and generally don't go anywhere useful.
Some 20 years ago, the Dutch, in the English version of their wonderful Bicycle Master Plan, wrote in the foreword: "First of all let it be said that the Dutch don't have a problem with bicycles."
It was a clear jibe, for the Dutch clearly knew that the Brits do have a problem with bicycles.
Whereas the Dutch would rip out junctions and build from scratch to incorporate cycling facilities, in Britain we get crap add-on facilities if we're lucky.
The recent demonstrations over lack of planning for cyclists and walkers in the new road layout planned for Blackfriars Bridge in London is proof that prejudice is alive and well among those dinosaurs, the transport engineers.
It seems to me that this problem is deeply rooted in the British psyche, and this is the major reason why it has proven to be so difficult to establish rights for cyclists.
It ought to be quite simple.
Cut out frantic driving, cut the speed of traffic and we won't need any special cycling facilities!
OK, that's never going to happen, not with the mentality of most drivers who consider the road their own.
We need cycle lanes down every major road in towns and cities, not the few sprinkled here and there, which end suddenly. London Cycling Campaign are to call for this in their ‘Go Dutch' campaign in 2012.
But as things stand, advance stop zones are often as good as it gets, but even these often have no cycling lane leading into them.
This lack of recognition of cyclists' rights led John Grimshaw MBE, a civil engineer, to form Sustrans (Sustainable Transport) and start building traffic-free paths for cycling and walking on disused railway lines.
He'd hoped that his 1,000-mile plus National Cycle Network, now well established across the country, would be a catalyst for the creation of quality cycle networks within the towns the NCN passed through.
Surrey, he told me, proved to be one of the most difficult authorities to reach agreement with. Even now, the NCN 22 through Headley near Box Hill includes a blind junction exposing cyclists to fast-moving traffic.
Britain has proved incapable of rising to the challenge.
The other network of merit is the National Byway, a signed route along quiet country lanes which when finished will be some 3,000 miles long, linking sites of historical interest.
Cycling England's demise
If we take a look back over the past 15 years we can see how cycling policy has endured fits and starts.
The creation of the government body Cycling England in 2005, chaired by Philip Darnton, the ex Raleigh chief, and with the impressively forthright Grimshaw, gave us hope.
But it was poorly funded. Nevertheless, Cycling England launched its ‘Cycling Development Towns', which encouraged small projects and generated impressive increases in cycling use.
This was the proof of the pudding, but government failed to seize the initiative and substantially increase the budget. Instead, transport minister Ruth Kelly served up £140m over three years. Although the most generous funding yet, it was still about a third less than the Dutch, who are currently investing €100m in new cycle highways over the next two years. And then of course, Cycling England fell victim to government cuts and the bonfire of the quangos.
And yet cycling is booming in recession-hit UK. According to a British Cycling and Sky-commissioned report, it's worth £3bn a year to the UK economy.
The pastime has never had it so good, with city-centre mass rides on closed roads attracting upwards of 60,000 people of all ages - but they have to brave hostile roads to get there - and charity rides aplenty.
As for the sport, the huge success of the track riders at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was followed this year with Britain topping the medal table at the road World Championships in Copenhagen - crowned by Mark Cavendish's historic victory in the elite road race.
Yet, despite all of this, despite an impressive increase in cycling use in London - up 91 per cent in 2007, compared with 2000 - cycle use remains low compared to rest of the Europe.
London proudly declared that 500,000 journeys a day are made by bike in the capital, yet it is still only two per cent of all journeys. Amsterdam racks up 37 per cent; Groningen a massive 57 per cent.
What is it with the British government? With civil servants? What is it that they just don't get? When we look back even further, to the mid-1990s, we recall how the CTC declared the battle for minds won. The government at last agreed to take account of cyclists' needs, to encourage people to take up cycling, to save the nation's health, to cut congestion and therefore pollution. Campaigners thought that at last, cycling was to have its day. But no.
It never happened, not even when the National Cycling Strategy was created under the Conservatives in 1996, and launched with a huge press conference in London. This was the first ever transport strategy, a historic moment.
A breakthrough, at last. But there was a catch. There was no money for it!
I recall transport journalist Christian Wolmar demanding Sir George Young, the secretary of state for transport, to tell us where the money was.
"Well, where is it?" said Wolmar.
"Where's what?" replied Sir George, a lifelong cyclist, by the way.
"The money, there's no money," countered Wolmar.
Sir George told us it didn't need any money as such, because transport planners would be required to include cycling within the budget already provided for general transport development.
It never happened, not on a realistic scale.
In fact, when, to induce local authorities to apply for grants to build ‘integrated' transport facilities, such as for cycling, many of the local authorities siphoned the money off into ordinary road building schemes.
The government raised hopes yet again by endorsing a brilliant design guide, setting out how to build a cycling infrastructure into the road system. Turns out this is as close as it would get to emulating the best of what we see abroad.
So what happened next? Nothing. Local transport engineers took no notice of the guidelines.
And because the Department for Transport's jurisdiction extends only to trunk routes, they have no say what happens with over 90 per cent of the rest of the road infrastructure which remains the legal responsibility of each local authority. Government can only advise and recommend, but not even they can tell local authorities what to do with their own roads.
How the Dutch got it right
Ironically, Holland was once governed in much the same way. But I learned they changed the law to give government control over local authorities to implement the cycling infrastructure which ever since has been the benchmark.
The wonderful design guide, when made available to the local authorities, went onto the shelf, never to be seen again.
When the CTC and other campaigners realised they had ridden up a blind alley, they had to start all over again, and work on local mandarins to heed government advice on cycling.
Now, some were easier to persuade than others and they had a genuine interest in making the roads safer for cycling. But they have been thwarted by bureaucracy, lack of joined-up thinking between transport, health and education, and by bloody-mindedness. By institutionalised discrimination against cycling.
Years went by before a greater enlightenment spread to the local authorities. Then came another twist in the story. For the cycling movement had reckoned without each area's transport chiefs, a breed of dingbat largely against giving up any part of their highway for bikes! Still are in most areas.
Local transport chiefs prefer not to follow official guidelines on how to build cycling infrastructure, saying they know best. Result: an ad hoc load of mostly substandard facilities, which in some areas present more of a danger to cyclists than he or she faces on the road.
Remember the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, formed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control?
This spawned the idea that much could be achieved at local level by local people getting involved, with ideas on how to reduce pollution.
Cycling and walking groups were among those created.
The local authorities said they welcomed their input, and would encourage them. But if my excellent local group is a typical example, their suggestions are ignored and like, hamsters in a wheel, they are going round and round in bureaucratic circles, getting nowhere fast.
I've met councillors, MPs, who believe they are doing what's right for cycling.
I recall a local councillor, nice bloke, declaring how proud he was of what his council had achieved - cycle lanes on pavements with lamp posts stuck in them, and horribly surfaced.
Most cycling networks are pinched, narrow, squeezed into the existing road infrastructure, unlike those in Holland, where at the design stage of a major road junction they will ask, "How will the cyclist and moped rider cope?" In Holland they have ripped out junctions and built from scratch to put cycling facilities in place.
Infuriatingly, much of the UK's hopeless cycle lanes have ended up where they were never intended to be, on the pavements, as so-called shared paths, as local authorities have done what comes easiest to them.
Today, the much-admired Danish and Dutch models remain an elusive dream.
Will the UK ever develop anything remotely similar?
No chance. Others may hold hope but, in my view, this is as good as it gets.
London Assembly backs cycle safety proposals
Father of dead cyclist calls London Assembly 'disgraceful'
Pressure on London mayor after 16th cyclist killed in capital this year
Reduce road speed to increase cycle safety, finds government report
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By Aseem R. Shukla, MD
A nearly hourlong address in Cairo just two weeks ago transfixed a global audience that finally had a chance to hear a new American President speak his piece and listen for the words that could begin to assuage deep wounds of generational angst. The President peppered his speech with Koranic verses and experiences of his own with Muslims that ranged from Indonesia to Kenya to America’s own Muslim community, and showed a familiarity and empathy rarely evinced by a POTUS.
Reflecting on the speech and the breathless hype that preceded it, an unshakeable disquiet arises beginning with the playbill itself. Obama addresses the “Muslim world” the White House announced; a meditation on the “relationship between the West and Islam.” New ground would be broken and the path to reconciliation laid out.
Indeed the President did address his perceptions of the sense of injustice, betrayal, alleged victimization and manipulation endured by many who happen to be Muslim in parts of the world. He did also call out the Muslim extremists that have exploited these perceptions in the most heinous terror attacks that our world has recently witnessed.
But what, exactly, is the “Muslim world”? Is there truly a monolithic reality of mutual aspirations, ideology and narrative of victimhood? Would a Muslim in Indonesia, where the President spent much of his youth, share the same sense of place and community with a Muslim in America?
As M.J. Akbar, one of India’s foremost columnists asked in the aftermath of the speech:
“As an Indian Muslim I belong to the second largest Muslim community in the world. I also live, proudly, as an equal, in India, a nation that contains the largest Hindu community in the world. Do you think I have the same political views as my fellow Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Nepal?”
In his address to a Muslim world, President Obama decried violent extremism–utterly not related to the peaceful Muslims that comprise nearly four million in the United States; he spoke of the Israel-Palestinian conflict–not really central to the sufferings of Muslims killed yesterday by other Muslims in another deadly bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan; he addressed the lack of democracy and religious freedom in the Muslim world–Muslims in Indonesia, Bangladesh and India who enjoy the benefits of both would look around and wonder in which Muslim world they belonged!
Yes, global Muslims answer the call for prayer and aspire for a pilgrimage to Mecca, just as Hindus dream of a dip in the Ganges river or Jews and Christians a journey to the Holy Land. There is a fellowship among believers that cannot be denied–a community that spans continents.
It would seem, though, that the idea of a transnational Muslim world would have ended with the Ottoman Caliphate, doomed when Ataturk appropriated political authority in 1924. There is no pope speaking for all Muslims today, and most certainly, the Ayatollahs of Iran do not give voice or supplant the authority of a Sunni preacher in Iraq.
Indeed, the concept of a global Ummah or a Dar al-Islam–a world under Islam–is alive today only in the tenets and gospel of Islamism. From India’s state of Jammu and Kashmir to a few mosques in London, and a no-man’s land only nominally within the borders of either Afghanistan or Pakistan, bin Laden and his ilk have appealed to like-minded demons in a jihad to re-establish a Muslim world–a caliphate that could supplant in glory any that came before. The promise of an Islamic world, the call for a world of Muslims, is heard only from the pulpits of the most extreme and fill the hearts of too many with unshakeable dread.
And so we repeatedly heard from a United States President, plaintively calling out that America is not at “war with Islam”, and earnestly calling on the Muslim world to engage America in a reciprocal relationship built on trust and goodwill. But no American today claims, and no neutral observer could possibly indict this country for having launched such a war. As Akbar further wrote, “America would have to be a theocracy, with Inquisition as its preferred domestic policy, and conversion as the principal instrument of foreign affairs, to declare war on Islam.”
But there was President Obama breathing life into a concept of a headless Muslim world–one with no leader, no capital and no constitution. A world so very diverse that its citizens do not share language, culture, history, ethos or even, for that matter, religious beliefs–witness the clashes between Sunnis, Shiites, Sufis and others. And a concept only given life by the greatest enemies that the United States and much of the world has ever known.
One could argue further as to the exclusions in a speech if it were to truly address a Muslim world. President Obama became the greatest of interfaith proponents as he celebrated the commonalities of Abrahamic faiths and quoted from the Koran, Bible and Talmud. That Hindus in India, who have a tumultuous history with extremist Islam in India, must be a part of a broader dialogue, or that Buddhist heritage in Afghanistan was the most spectacular of cultural victims to the Taliban escaped mention to the disappointment of many. A dialogue to remedy historical prejudice, real and imagined, must be inclusive in the end.
President Obama addressed critical issues that affect a part of the world that spans the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan that day in Cairo. Those concerns are real and the United States has an integral role to play. President Obama spoke to a part of the world where Muslims live in majority, but his audience could not be the world of Muslims who are as diverse as the world which all people and faiths inhabit. To use the appellation of a “Muslim world” was facile and lacking in the intellectual rigor citizens should expect.
Aseem R Shukla is Co-Founder and Member, Board of Directors of Hindu American Foundation | <urn:uuid:366ffe4f-79f6-406c-b59b-dcd8fb4df992> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://southasiamail.com/blog/obmas-muslim-world | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95885 | 1,246 | 2.09375 | 2 |
An online store dedicated to inspiring Buddha statues, art, jewelry, malas and more.
The "ancient seat of Buddhist learning" may be your ergonomic chair.
In the Fifth Century C.E., Buddhist scholars from around the world trekked vast distances to attend Nalanda University, where they studied logic, medicine, astronomy, and classical texts. Today, that journey can be accomplished with the swish of a wrist across a mousepad. Thanks to the efforts of Stuart Carduner, a dharma practitioner and computer-based learning consultant, today’s aspiring scholars can be electronically transported to www.ashokaedu.net, where they may “attend” courses such as “Liberating the Heart: The Brahma-Viharas,” “Taming the Mind,” or “The Practice of Everyday Life: Dogen’s Genjo Koan”—all from the comfort of their own zafu.
Carduner intends Ashoka’s curriculum to serve as a bridge between reading about Buddhism and putting its teachings into practice. Guided meditations, an integral part of most courses, will be offered via online audio files so students can meditate without having to read from the computer screen. The mission of integrating theory and practice—and the opportunities afforded by the Internet in facilitating an “interactive learning environment”—is, indeed, the founding vision of Ashoka University.
In the spirit of the site’s namesake, the third-century emperor Ashoka, who instigated a dharma-centered education system throughout the Indian empire, Carduner aspires to make the 2,500-year-old Buddhist curriculum accessible to all. He explains his inspiration as follows: “I was living in a place where there were no teachers, no dharma centers, and I was looking for a way to learn more. One of the problems with the dharma in America right now is you have to know where you want to go in order to find what there is to find. So there may be wonderful teachings by So-and-So Roshi, but if you don’t know where they are—or even what a roshi is—you need a place where you can get the basic lay of the land.”
In fact, Carduner initially debated whether or not to associate the word “Buddhism” with Ashoka at all, concerned that it would discourage students hesitant to identify themselves as Buddhists. So Buddhism at Ashoka is presented as “a transformational educational system” rather than a religion. “The dharma is not just for people who become Buddhists,” he insists.
Although one of its primary goals is to connect students with teachers, Ashoka is not intended exclusively for those new to the dharma. Carduner plans to offer courses aimed at students of all levels of experience and interest. Therefore, a beginning practitioner interested in establishing a daily sitting practice might select a “basics” course such as “On Zen Practice: Body, Breath and Mind”; a more scholarly student might opt for “Prajnaparamita: Reflecting on the Heart Sutra”; someone with a literary bent might explore “The Poetry of Zen”; and an aspiring social reformer might try “Peacemaker Institute Training.” Ashoka’s diverse consortium of teachers currently includes Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts; Traleg Rinpoche, of the E-Vam Buddhist Institute in New York; and Michael Wenger, of San Francisco Zen Center.
The online university opened its virtual doors in April of this year, and the students are just beginning to surf in, spurred by Google searches and word-of-mouth publicity. And what does the Ashoka classroom look like? Courses fall into two categories: “self-paced” and “teacher-led.” Teacher-led courses, to be offered in the near future, are distinguished by ongoing interaction with a teacher, and accept about fifteen students and run eight to ten weeks, the length of a typical academic semester. Self-paced courses do not provide teacher feedback, but they can be pursued according to the student’s schedule and interest level—from a few days to a few months. All courses incorporate threaded discussion boards, chat rooms, audio and video footage, guided reflections and meditations, and an online journal, in which students are encouraged to record their thoughts on the teachings and respond to assignments. The fees charged for courses will depend on the success of fund-raising efforts, but put off by the prohibitive expense of many online universities, Carduner is committed to “removing the obstacle of cost” from access to the dharma.
What would the Buddha make of an “eDharma University”? “You know what they say about the Buddha: he taught different people in different ways,” Carduner replies. “I hope he would consider it upaya—skillful means.” Indeed, in the information age, the path to liberation may be across the Himalayas, or across the desktop—whatever works for you.
For more information, please visit www.ashokaedu.net.
Caitlin Van Dusen is the senior editor at Tricycle. | <urn:uuid:1d0db932-9a50-4400-8f8f-7e90edc12984> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tricycle.com/sangha-services/nalanda-information-age | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945913 | 1,129 | 2.5 | 2 |
The mission of the Chastain Arts Center, one of Atlanta's oldest community arts centers, is to provide a nurturing place where artists of all ages and skill levels are encouraged to create, learn, and enjoy. Classes and workshops are offered in a variety of fine arts and crafts. Exhibits in the adjacent gallery and throughout the Center showcase both the work of outside artists and artwork created by instructors and students. Art a la Carte Summer Camp starts in the beginning of June and runs through the beginning of August; registration begins in April. Campers are Tater Tots (ages two to three, with an adult), Small Fries (ages four to five, potty trained), and Spuds (ages six to 12). Class schedules and fees vary; contact the center for more specific information. | <urn:uuid:28fb6ecb-5a4d-4016-a1a3-58552834f92f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/attraction/chastain-arts-center-135-west-wieuca-road-nw-atlanta-ga-30342-us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956976 | 162 | 1.515625 | 2 |
DETROIT (AP) - Ford is recalling about 19,000 brand-new Fusion midsize cars to fix defective headlights.
Reflectors in the low-beam lights on the 2013 Fusions can become hazy over time and reduce the brightness.
It's the second recall in a week for the Fusion and the sixth recall of a new Ford vehicle in the past five months.
Ford will replace the headlights for free to fix the latest problem. The company will notify owners by mail later this month.
Last week Ford recalled new Fusions and Escape SUVs with 1.6-liter engines because they can overheat, leak fluids and catch fire.
The new Escape small SUV has been recalled three other times since July.
Ford says the recalls show the company moves quickly to take care of safety problems. | <urn:uuid:7843096a-c67e-48ad-be22-090f2e3cc2d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wusa9.com/recalls/article/232622/240/Ford-Recalls-Fusion-To-Fix-Faulty-Headlights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93329 | 168 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The fairy tale of Tom Thumb, a mischievous boy no bigger than the size of a thumb. His tiny size and playful character get him into all sorts of trouble like almost being swallowed by a cow, being mixed up into a pie and getting picked up by a giant eagle and flown to a big castle. This leads him to meet King Arthur who honors Tom Thumb by making him a knight.
art & literature, education, entertainment
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Alleluia Christ is Risen!
This is the season of resurrection. Here in Christ Chapel we have listened to the stories from scripture that tell of the appearances of the risen Christ to his friends. We have heard preachers David and Jana and John speak of the risk of resurrection, experiencing the unexpected Jesus, and knowing Christ through table and story and through the body. For even after all these years have passed from the first Easter week, we still know the resurrection through our senses: the faculties of the body: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.
Here in our second reading is another resurrection appearance in the key of Apocalypse. From John of Patmos, exiled because of the testimony of Jesus. The Book of Revelation is a treasure - although it was not popular with Luther - it is a treasure if you can read it like a poet or a mystic, but not like a poet of privilege but a desperate poet in times of trouble. Revelation is a Magical Mystery Tour of sight, but also of sound -- of hearing, singing, chanting, praying. In our text this morning, I not only see, but I hear.
Lucy Winkett, Canon Precentor at St. Paul's Cathedral, is a musician, a close reader of scripture and a preacher. In her book, Our Sound is our Wound, she writes about sound as a metaphor for our life with God. She observes the sounds of scripture and the sounds of our culture and invites us to notice what they say about us and about God.
What is the sound of resurrection? How do you know resurrection or convey it?
"I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying..."
John is in an ecstatic trance, in the zone on the Lord's Day. He probably is not boxed into a pew, but he is in community and in prayer. He hears a loud voice like a trumpet.
Was it a voice like a trumpet, or was it a trumpet? What is a trumpet but a brass instrument with air forced through it? A magnified, metalicized voice, exulting like the trumpeters who play at Good Shepherd at Easter, or who played at my friend's wedding? The sound of the resurrection is a voice like a trumpet or a trumpet like a voice - Isn't Louis Armstrong's singing voice and jazz trumpet the same voice? The sound of the resurrection is Louis Armstrong. And for me this last spring of high school for my son, Henry, the sound of resurrection is the Austin High School marching band. Henry plays the trombone.... Trombones rock. Trombones rule!
"Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea."
¶ Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,
and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest.
His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire,
his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters.
Water has color. Water has properties: taste, feeling, clarity, but also water has sound.
... and his voice was like the sound of many waters."
What is the sound of resurrection? It is the voice of the storm who thunders. It is the waves crashing on the rocks at Singing Beach or Swallowtail Light or whatever beach or whatever rocks you hear the water crashing. It is the mountain stream swelled by snowmelt in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It is the fountain that runs and sings outside my bedroom and porch window at home every day. When the rains pour and drive as they do here in the Hill Country, filling Shoal Creek and flooding, rushing, drawing - that's the sound. The voice is a big sound, a gentle sound, a resonant, endless sound - it's a chorus, it's a choir. It is the voice of creation.
In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.
¶ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,
and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.
Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this.
"Do not be afraid." That's one thing the risen Christ says. It's what the living Jesus said too... and that is the voice you recognize when it calls your name, just as the woman knew in the garden that the stranger was her friend: "Mary."
And the one Christ who speaks after he tells you not to be afraid, then tells you to do something-- to go, to tell, to meet him in Galilee, Do not hold on to me but go tell. Here, the command is to write. Write.
What happens when we hear the resurrection? The voice like a trumpet? Like the sound of mighty waters?
I have a friend who teaches preaching, Ruthanna Hooke, and she teaches about the preacher's voice and the way it speaks truth ... God's Word. She teaches with a book called "Freeing the Natural Voice." Working with her is about learning to hear and learning to speak from the inside out from the depths not from the shallows. It is a practice that is physical, psychological, and spiritual and all at once.
When we hear the resurrection... through water, trickling or thundering, or jazz trumpet or singing, the resurrection sets us free. It releases us from prison and fear, exile. The resurrection make us a new creation. The resurrection frees the natural voice.
We can go tell, we can go write, we can go tell it on the mountain, we can publish glad tidings...
Let me tell about one other friend, Barbara Rossing, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. She writes about the book of Revelation - against all the violent, divisive, frightening Left Behind theology.
This is what she says: in Revelation, people are not raptured up to heaven, but God is raptured down to earth - to be with us, to dwell with us, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Heaven is raptured down to earth.
So let us hear the sound of the resurrection, and then may we speak, sing, preach and pray from the very depths of God. | <urn:uuid:bd77f175-6d95-451b-aa6e-535f38c320e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ssw.edu/revelation-19-18?phpMyAdmin=d82de654bdb95466ba2ba5d15ad452a5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971853 | 1,456 | 2.390625 | 2 |
No TARP in Iceland
Posted on Nov 26, 2010
Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson, surveying the global financial mess, including the pending $112 billion bailout of Ireland’s shaky banking sector, can gloat a bit. His country, he says, is in better shape because it let private banks fail two years ago. —JCL
“The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail,” Grimsson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Mark Barton [Thursday]. “These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks.”
Ireland’s Prime Minister Brian Cowen said this week his government has discussed an 85 billion-euro ($112 billion) bailout with the European Union and International Monetary Fund after the country’s banks threatened to bring the euro member to the brink of bankruptcy. Iceland’s banks, which still owe creditors about $85 billion, were split to create domestic units needed to keep the financial system running, while foreign liabilities remained within the failed lenders.
As a consequence, “Iceland is faring much better than anybody expected,” Grimsson said.
Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson sums it up: “How far can we ask ordinary people—farmers and fishermen and teachers and doctors and nurses—to shoulder the responsibility of failed private banks?” | <urn:uuid:57022e30-df05-4b96-bba0-5fe3e363a110> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/print/too_cold_to_bail_20101126/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958179 | 314 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Choosing Future Path Walking with C++[Need Helpful Guide]
Greeting Codeguru world!
I posted my thread in this section because i thought it might be related to (Non Visual C++ Issues). I would like to apologize if this is wrong section.
I had been learning C++ since last 4-5 months. Learning programming language(C++) was my aim to become a successful System Designer from childhood. Due to my poor family background, i wasn't able to join the academic career life of Computer Science. I had been self studying Computer Science from various internet sources and when i got to know that C++ is a powerful programming language, i started reading it. I had gained all basic knowledge as well as knowledge of Object Oriented Programming using Standard Template Library of C++ after reading the Book of Author Robert Lafore.
Suppose, i just caught a bus of (C++) and from inside i saw many paths where i can drive. My destination is to reach towards my Aim (System Designer), but, i am getting pretty much confused which path to choose to reach successful destination. I googled it and it viewed many sites resulting some of the types of programming like Template Meta-programming, Core Programming, Console Programming, Database Programming, Microsoft Visual C++ etc. As i already mentioned, whatever i am studying, its only depends on Ebook and other internet sources. So, i don't have much idea which to choose for what reason.
So, my question is,
-> Which path i must choose, riding the Bus of (C++) towards my Aim (System Designer)?
-> What should I learn in basic ?
-> Which Ebook are in recommendation?
-> Am i learning right Language ? (C++)
-> Am i using term "System Designer" really means what it supposed to be ? Or, Does it got other name ? | <urn:uuid:6dda5108-fd1e-49a7-ab0e-cbac35238b93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.codeguru.com/showthread.php?529833-Choosing-Future-Path-Walking-with-C-Need-Helpful-Guide&p=2093623&mode=threaded | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953355 | 385 | 2.25 | 2 |
A Norwegian art gallery has lost a Rembrandt etching in the post after trying to save money on a courier and insurance.
The Soli Brug Gallery in Greaaker bought a copy of the Dutch painter's Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol, Writing-Master from a British dealer.
The etching, made around 1658, is said to be worth £5,400 ($8,500), but is now lost in the Norwegian postal system, BBC News reports.
"Using a courier or special insurance is quite expensive so we have used regular mail until now," Ole Derje, the gallery's chairman said.
"It is worth around 40,000 to 50,000 crowns (£4,300-£5,400) and the postal service is offering us compensation of 500-1,000 crowns."
Derje said he received a notice to pick up the package, but when he went to collect it, it couldn't be located.
Hilde Ebeltoft-Skaugrud, a spokeswoman for the postal service, added: "We are sorry that this has happened; we have advised him to use a more appropriate form of mail when sending items that are worth as much as this with the appropriate insurance connected."
> Stunning ballpoint pen drawings by artist Samuel Silva - pictures
> Jesus Christ fresco painting ruined by botched restoration attempt | <urn:uuid:9bd1fd59-6680-4b5c-8871-a6dd133127e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digitalspy.com/odd/news/a401838/rembrandt-etching-lost-in-the-post.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954731 | 287 | 1.695313 | 2 |
“Are you impressed with Rebecca at the well? Would you bring her home to meet your parents?”
The question hung in the air, and with it the familiar sense of excitement and uncertainty of a class taught by Leon Kass. It almost always began like this: a pointed question, and then silence. We students knew to expect it, yet somehow were always caught off guard. The question would come at the text from what seemed at first an odd angle, but then slowly chart a path to the very core of a large human problem underneath.
Eventually, some brave soul would venture an answer, and somehow Kass, with an approving smile, would find in it exactly the seed of conversation he had sought—as though it were just perfect. Soon we were trekking through the text and on to some essential and powerfully relevant problem: What is marriage for? How do families and communities contend with human failings and encourage human greatness? Do the arts and sciences corrupt our morals? What can man really know about nature?
Such questions advanced our search for the nature of the human being and for ways we might flourish, and Kass would lead us through them by beginning with two exceptionally optimistic assumptions: that we, like him, were in earnest search of the answers; and that the books we were reading were as well. Thus has Kass always set the stage for an intense and searching conversation, at the end of which his students, or his readers, invariably find themselves astonished at how far they have come.
Assuming the best and expecting the best in search of human beings at their best has been the mark of four decades of his teaching and writing. It was a crucial source of his earliest dissatisfactions as an up-and-coming biomedical researcher, finding the reductionism of modern biology—for all of the immense benefits it carries—inadequate to the task of describing and understanding the human animal. There was a yawning gap, Kass would later write, “between all the activities of life as lived and those activities as understood scientifically.”
It was a gap with grave consequences for both knowledge and action. The phenomena of life as experienced every day, outside the lab, offer crucial insights into the nature of living things, and a natural science that ignores them is grossly incomplete. Yet science keeps growing more powerful, even as it grows less and less clear about the proper uses of its power. Distinguishing between better and worse uses for science demands a sense of man’s nature and his proper purposes, in Kass’s words, “a richer understanding and deeper appreciation of our humanity . . . necessary for facing the challenges confronting us in a biotechnological age.” This worry about science as action has driven Kass to concern himself with public bioethics. But the greater concern for him has always been the potential of science’s reductionism to close us off from knowledge of ourselves.
His first inclination was to close the gap by making biology itself better aware of the limits of its methods. By looking at the raw material of life, but looking away from its fullest forms and expressions, modern science denied itself a truly scientific—truly knowledgeable—picture of the human animal. Kass therefore argued for a revitalized natural science, reconnected with its classical philosophical purposes and oriented “to encourage and nurture the disposition of thoughtfulness about who we are and ought to be,” as he put it in his first book, Toward a More Natural Science. He worked both to demonstrate what the modern turn away from the meaningful phenomena of life had wrought, and how the insights left behind might be recovered without abandoning the benefits that modern science had made possible.
But already in those early efforts, Kass seemed clearly aware that recovering the kind of anthropology he sought required more than reminding science of the price it has paid for its Cartesian turn. A more natural science almost certainly could not be recovered directly, and the fuller picture of man and his nature had to be looked for simultaneously in other ways.
In his ambitious sequel, The Hungry Soul, Kass sought to reinforce the effort by examining our cultural practices and traditions, some of which, he argued, showed clear evidence of having been custom-designed for precisely the kind of human being modern science now denies we are: a being with profoundly meaningful attachments and transcendent longings. It is, as he readily tells the reader, a peculiar book—a book about eating and the practices built up around it. But in the context of Kass’s larger trajectory, we see clearly that it is a book that points to the links between nature and culture, between a more natural science and more human humanities.
The Hungry Soul sought wisdom in the cultural and intellectual inheritances of our civilization, on the assumption that these were forged by students of human nature confronted with the same basic questions human beings have always confronted and that their work has survived because it has continued to offer profound and, in important ways, true answers to these questions. It was a turn to the humanities, seeking man at his best by looking to the best of our cultural artifacts and assuming the best about them. When we consider the rituals, practices, stories, and traditions that mean the most to us and shape our lives, Kass argued, we find that we are not just matter in motion. “Our souls still crave the drama of what Tolstoy called ‘real life’: immediately meaningful work, genuine love and intimacy, true ties to place and persons, kinship with nature, family, and community, dignity, understanding, and an openness to the divine. But real life has become nearly impossible as we have ceased to know and honor its forms.”
The emphasis on forms is no coincidence. As in his earlier writings on science, so in his thinking about culture and the humanities, Kass drew meaning from the forms of human being and doing. The ways we do what we do, even when we are not explicitly alert to their sources or meanings, tell us an enormous amount about who and what we human beings are. And the best and highest artifacts of our cultural traditions are those that speak to these deepest questions of meaning, and that offer us some hints of how we may conform to the highest possibilities implicit in our nature.
The search after that nature and its highest possibilities has in this way taken Kass from the study of the human animal to the study of the cultural habitat that animal has constructed for itself. And always he has proceeded with an eye to the true and fullest nature of the human being himself. In describing the structure of the argument of The Hungry Soul—which traces the meaning of eating from its biological character through the limits and constraints human beings have placed upon it, to the ways we have beautified it and turned feeding into dining, through the roles it has played in our highest religious rituals—Kass put things this way: “The argument is thus an ascent—from nature to human nature to human nature culturally clothed by the just, then the noble, then the holy—but an ascent that remains in touch with its beginnings.”
That, in a nutshell, is the arc of Kass’s interests over more than four decades and counting. In search of wisdom about how human beings may flourish, he has studied nature and man’s nature. And in pursuit of man’s nature he has delved deeply and broadly into our cultural wisdom about justice and ethics, nobility and excellence, and then sanctity and holiness. Because he has explored these various terrains in pursuit of large questions, he has tended to avoid the worst inclinations of each, and so pursued the sciences without reductionism, the humanities without esotericism, and the divinities without dogmatism.
In his ongoing study of biology and bioethics, in his teaching of great works of literature and philosophy, and in his inquiry into the depths of the Bible, Kass seeks the nature of man through his ways of being and acting. In the forms of human life—the arc of the individual lifespan and the ever-repeating intergenerational shape of family life, the rituals of birth and love and marriage and mourning, the rules of courtship and worship—is the outline of the human flourishing that our modern natural science leaves out of view, but that we modern human beings desperately desire, even when we do not quite know it.
“Cultural memory still holds gingerly a tattered script” for such flourishing, Kass writes, “but many of its pages are missing and the guidance it provides us is barely audible and, even then, delivered in what appears to us to be a foreign tongue.” He has worked to learn and to teach that foreign tongue, the language of human flourishing in which the great cultural achievements of Western civilization are written.
For his students and readers, Kass has laid out a path of inquiry showing that those questions that bedevil us most today have been with us for countless generations, and have to do not with the latest modern excess, but with man’s unchanging nature, wants, needs, and potential. It is a path he pursues by expecting the best of those who travel it with him and those who have traveled it before, and so drawing the best out of both. And it is a path that opens with a question: How does man thrive?
In his very pursuit of that question, Leon Kass has also offered us an answer by example. | <urn:uuid:d2a70b22-34d8-4057-b0ca-9e7b33ef7f3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/mayjune/feature/great-expectations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976656 | 1,924 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Governments and regulators are second only to customers in their ability to affect companies’ economic value, according to the results of a recent McKinsey survey, though respondents are divided on whether that effect will be positive or negative. Most executives in developed economies expect external-affairs issues to decrease operating income; those in the developing world are more likely to expect a boost. Compared with our last survey on these topics, just over a year ago, greater shares of respondents report that their companies are willing to engage with governments and see the value of collaborating with them. Yet whether they hope to mitigate risk or create value, only some 10 percent of all respondents say their companies are frequently able to influence governments or regulators or that those groups seek out and value the companies’ opinions.
This survey asked executives a series of questions about the overall impact of governments and regulators, the ways companies manage those relationships and external affairs in general, and their effectiveness at doing so. Notably, since our last survey on these topics, a time that has included economic recovery in much of the world and elections that produced significant change in several countries, executives report that these issues are as important as ever: close to half of all respondents say managing external affairs ranks as one of the top-three priorities on their CEOs’ agendas.
Where government matters most
Just over half of respondents say governments and regulators will be among the stakeholders with the biggest economic impact on their companies over the next three to five years, and even larger shares expect governments’ and regulators’ involvement in their industries to increase in the same period (Exhibit 1). These results are consistent with those in the previous survey, in which 52 percent of respondents said governments would have the greatest effect on their companies’ value, and 63 percent expected increased government involvement. This consistency surfaced in spite of recent events—such as the 2010 electoral success of the Republican Party in the United States and the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom—that might have caused business leaders to expect less government activity. Executives in developing markets are the likeliest to say governments will have an effect on economic value, with two-thirds of them saying so.
When we asked about the impact of governmental and regulatory actions and other external-affairs issues on operating income, we saw responses that were similar to, but more pronounced than, responses to our last survey, which asked about government actions alone. Forty-seven percent of respondents to this survey say their companies’ operating incomes are likely to decrease because of external-affairs issues (Exhibit 2), while 34 percent said the same about government activity in 2009. This year, about a quarter of respondents say these issues are likely to boost their companies’ operating incomes, compared with 38 percent who previously said the same. As in the prior survey, executives in developing economies such as China and India are more optimistic.
Consistent with past results (and with the overall conditions in these industries), executives in energy, financial services, and health care are the only ones to rank governments and regulators as the stakeholders most critical to their companies’ economic value, even more significant than customers. Most respondents from these three industries also say operating income is likely to decrease as a result of external-affairs issues (Exhibit 3). Around three-quarters of respondents in each of these industries expect greater government involvement, and it’s also worth noting that more than 80 percent of financial-services and health care executives expect greater regulatory involvement—a signal that these industries recognize that government is here to stay.
How companies interact with governments
Two-thirds of executives say companies in their industries should engage with governments and regulators proactively and regularly, regardless of immediate interest, but less than half say their companies actually do (Exhibit 4). This contrast is almost identical to the one we uncovered in our prior survey, when 71 percent of executives said their companies should engage proactively and regularly, but only 43 percent reported doing so. We would have expected to see an increase in proactive, regular engagement since last year, given this year’s expectations for growing external involvement.
Digging deeper, we looked at executives’ attitudes toward government—whether companies benefit from being as transparent as possible with government, and whether greater government involvement is bad for business. Based on those measures, we defined five groups of respondents, which we call opportunists, avoiders, partners, reluctant engagers, and adversaries. Two of these groups are likelier than others to see more opportunities than difficulties in engaging with government: opportunists believe policy and regulation generate new business opportunities, while partners see those specific opportunities along with broader business benefits from transparency and involvement in shaping policy. A quarter of respondents to this survey fall into the opportunist group, and 23 percent are partners—slightly higher than their 20 and 21 percent shares in our earlier survey. Still, this leaves us with more than half of respondents who are more negative than positive about government’s role in their businesses.
Not surprising, respondents classified as either partners or opportunists say their companies are more successful at influencing government policies and regulatory decisions to create value or mitigate risk than those in other groups—though overall, the shares of total respondents who say their companies have the most collaborative relationships with stakeholders remain low (Exhibit 5).
Given the regional differences in executives’ views on the impact of governmental and regulatory action on operating income, it’s not surprising that there are some parallel divergences in which executives are in which group, based on where they work. Respondents in China, India, and the developing markets are likelier to be opportunists, while those in Europe and North America are likelier than their counterparts to be reluctant engagers, who see some benefits from engaging with government but also think government is unfair to businesses. Among industries, high-tech and telecom executives are likelier to be opportunists, financial-services executives are likelier to be adversaries, and those in health care, reluctant engagers.
Building better relationships
We have seen companies use several practices to manage their external affairs successfully, and asked respondents which of these their companies implement effectively. However, the survey results indicate that companies aren’t particularly good at implementing any of them. For each of the 15 practices we asked about, no more than 40 percent of respondents say their companies are extremely or very effective at employing the practice. And for four of the practices, no more than one-quarter of respondents say their companies implement it effectively. There are several practices that respondents report their companies use particularly well; these include identifying external risks or opportunities, and prioritizing the stakeholders that are most important for their companies.
However, we identified a small group of respondents to this survey who say their companies frequently succeed at influencing government policy and regulatory decisions, as well as manage their corporate reputations very effectively so their reputation is a source of competitive advantage. (The 109 respondents in this “success” group are more likely to work in China or Latin America, in the energy or financial-services industries, and at companies earning revenues of more than $1 billion.) Compared with other respondents, these executives are more likely to say their companies employ each of the practices effectively, and by wide margins (Exhibit 6). This finding in and of itself isn’t surprising, given the well-known halo effect in which survey respondents who report their companies are strong in one area also report that they’re good in others.
What’s notable, however, are the practices this group says their companies implement particularly effectively—potential guidelines for the companies who struggle to do so—compared with those they indicate they’re not very good at. The practices at which the biggest majorities of these respondents excel include aligning the external-affairs agenda with overall company strategy, making trade-offs across external issues, and coordinating external-affairs activities across the company. Tactics where companies in the successful group outperform others but all respondents report particularly low effectiveness include dedicating sufficient talent and resources to external-affairs activities and quantifying and measuring the financial impact of those activities.
Our two surveys have uncovered persistent opportunities for improvement in the management of external affairs, as more executives highly regard the potential impact of governments and regulators than report strong, collaborative relationships with these groups. All companies will likely benefit from taking steps now to build the capabilities they need to engage successfully with governments and regulators in the future.
Companies might benefit most from adopting the same practices used by those that already have good relationships with government. Even the successful companies can improve their overall performance by developing proficiency in many other activities.
Executives in energy, financial services, and health care indicate that their companies are most at risk from governmental and regulatory action. And though these executives say their companies aren’t consistently more engaged with government and regulators than others, they are the likeliest to believe they should be. If companies in energy, finance, and health care can translate awareness into action, then future actions by these companies may serve as guides for other industries at risk of losing value through external-affairs mismanagement. | <urn:uuid:2673c790-172b-4eea-b34a-eff5300b908d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/public_sector/managing_government_relations_for_the_future_mckinsey_global_survey_results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966072 | 1,856 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The Canadian exploration company believes the prospects are good that the old gold mine in Fairfield County, which was closed in 1999, can be productive.
Published Sept. 28, 2012
Two new “high priority drill targets” have been identified at the old Ridgeway gold mine in Fairfield County owned by Vancouver, B.C.-based Strongbow Exploration Inc.
Recent surveys yielded 167 geochemical and prospecting from the target areas, Strongbow said.
One target area – measuring 760 yards by 440 yards – has been identified about 380 yards east of the Ridgeway gold mine's North Pit. A second area – 650 yards wide by 1,110 yards long – was found 1,500 yards east of the North Pit.
Two soil samples from the southern portion of the larger area yielded 400 parts per billion of gold, a indication that mining might be feasible.
Also, soil samples of both new target areas found evidence of arsenic, molybdenum and tellurium – key elements that usually point to the presence of gold.
Strongbow’s Ridgeway project comprises 18 properties covering about 1,300 acres located along Rio Tinto’s past producing Ridgeway gold mine.
The Ridgeway mine became one of the top producing mines in the United States, yielding 1.5 million ounces of gold between 1988 and 1998. It was closed in 1999.
Another gold project is under way in Lancaster County where Romarco Minerals Inc., is exploring the Haile gold mine near Kershaw.
Romarco is now seeking necessary permits so it can begin commercial production at the Haile site. Romarco, which expects to have its first gold pour in 2014, said that total gold resources on the 4,000-acre site stand at 4 million ounces — both measured and indicated — plus another 800,000 ounces of inferred resources.
Romarco projects that the mine could produce an average 150,000 ounces of gold annually for 13 years.
New mining technology and surging gold prices have made it economically feasible for companies to resume exploring the S.C. mines. | <urn:uuid:6b728332-f2b3-4238-a1d5-081d657cdd5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbiabusinessreport.com/news/45370/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94686 | 434 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Air ambulance requirement cut
Services can deny transport to uninsured patients as the state drops its regulation
WAILUKU » Because of a change in state policies, air ambulances are no longer required to transport uninsured patients in need of emergency medical care.
That raises the possibility of patients on the neighbor islands being denied transportation to hospitals in Honolulu if they can't afford it, said Dr. David Sakamoto, administrator for the State Heath Planning and Development Agency.
"We're concerned about access," Sakamoto said. "We don't want ability to pay to be the determining factor if someone is transferred from a neighbor island to an Oahu facility."
But one air ambulance company said uninsured patients won't lose service.
"It's a red herring," said Greg Kahlstorf, president of Pacific Wings.
He said air ambulance services do not need to worry about losing money from uninsured patients because the companies can recover some of their expenses through Medicaid claims.
The reason for the policy change is an opinion issued last week by Attorney General Mark Bennett, which says the state does not have the authority to regulate air travel, even when it involves specialized services.
That power rests solely with the Federal Aviation Administration, according to an advisory sent from the U.S. government to the state.
"As I understand it, where there is regulation of air traffic, the federal government pre-empts the state from asserting control over air traffic," said Dr. Linda Rosen, deputy director for health resources with the state. "Federal law trumps state law as far as air services are concerned."
Previously, air ambulances were only allowed to operate if they had received a certificate of need from the state. A certificate of need requires the business to provide access to everyone and demonstrate a need for the service.
"I'm told by legal counsel that they don't see a way where we could reinstate certificates of need for the air ambulance situation," Sakamoto said.
Two companies, Hawaii Air Ambulance and AirMed Hawaii, currently are providing medical airlift services under state-issued certificates. Five other providers, including Pacific Wings, have shown an interest in entering the air ambulance market.
"If we find a refusal to move a patient based on insurance, we would certainly take a hard look at it," Rosen said. | <urn:uuid:42d4f77e-f58c-407b-9f3b-e310504e244c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.starbulletin.com/2006/06/04/news/story10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967304 | 474 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Internationalisation takes many different forms in the context of UK higher education. Over the next year we are focussing on: teaching international students; transnational education; internationalisation of the curriculum; and students’ academic mobility with a view to improving their employability.
Higher education in the UK benefits from a diverse staff and student population and international students are an important part of the picture. This brings particular challenges and opportunities for pedagogic practice – developing the way we teach and support those students. We know that teaching practice and learner support that works for international students also works for the benefit of all students.
An internationalised student experience is a key aspiration for many UK universities and colleges. We recognise that this must include a curriculum that is robustly informed by a broader world view and is taught in a range of ways. Another key element is students’ uptake of opportunities to study and work in different environments and countries, learning about themselves, their disciplines and their future professions in a global context.
We are committed to the development of these practices and the understandings and evidence that underpins them. To achieve this we:
- Provide for two Special Interest Groups (transnational education and internationalisation of the curriculum) to facilitate collaborative working in the sector;
- Develop guidance and information on how to meet the diverse learning needs of international students, for example, through the international student lifecycle resources bank;
- Delivered Connections: pilot projects supporting internationalisation and final reports in partnership with the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA);
- Provide an Internationalisation change programme;
- Provide an Internationalisation seminar series until July 2013;
- Share general and discipline-specific resources relating to internationalised curricula;
- Fund teaching development grants dedicated to the theme of Internationalisation;
Provide internatonal support and services. See our international opportunities page.
News and events
New! - The next meeting of the Transnational Education Group will be held in Nottingham on 19 May 2013. If you wish to attend this meeting, email the SIG-TNE convenor firstname.lastname@example.org. See the Transnational Education page for more information.
Engaging home and internatonal students: a guide for new lectureres (Rachel Scudamore, Feb 2013)
Engaging home and international students: a guide for new lecturers, written by Dr Rachel Scudamore, Head of Teaching Enhancement at the University of Nottingham, features techniques for engaging international and home students in a range of contexts.
The guide's approach values the diversity that mixed groups of students can bring to HE and promotes participation and effective learning. It addresses commonly experienced situations where cultural differences and expectations can give rise to misunderstandings and offers steps to promote intercultural understanding and effective learning for all students.
Going Mobile: Internationalisation, mobility and the European Higher Education Area (Simon Sweeney, Nov 2012)
This booklet is designed to identify challenges to and opportunities for UK higher education institutions (HEIs) in the Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
Available as a hard copy on request to the HEA and also in e format as a PDF by clicking on the link above
Going Mobile seminar, Bristol 6 June 2013 (facilitated by Simon Sweeney)
In response to the recent publication of Going mobile: Internationalisation, mobility and the European Higher Education Area, the HEA is pleased to announce a 1 day seminar to be led by the author, Simon Sweeney.
Click on the Going Mobile seminar link above for an agenda, further information and details of how to book a place. | <urn:uuid:d5b5c391-ce09-49e8-a5e6-c7f828aef9c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/internationalisation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904232 | 746 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Lincoln Occupation Period
Thomas Lincoln made his first journey to Indiana to inspect lands available for purchase in the autumn of 1816. He settled upon a quarter-section of land in what was then Hurricane Township, Perry County. It comprised the southwest quarter of Section 32, Township 4 S, Range 5 W, and was located along the east-west trace separating Congressional townships 4 and 5. After the organization of Spencer County in 1818, the Lincoln farm was part of Section 32 in Carter Township, and was bounded on the south by Sections 5 and 6 of Clay Township. This area was among the territory originally surveyed by Federal surveyors in 1805. At that date, the surveyors described the terrain as level, with some stands of oak and hickory trees, and dense brush. Much of the timber had been burned, but second growth forests were becoming established when Lincoln first visited. The territory in nearby Section 31 of Carter Township was noted as level barrens with poor drainage, while Section 33 was chiefly bottomland prone to flooding from a nearby creek. These descriptions indicate that Thomas Lincoln adhered to the tendency of southern Indiana's early settlers to choose upland areas with close proximity to springs and forests for settlement. He further followed custom by piling brush at the four corners of the tract he intended to claim and building a makeshift shelter. These measures provided temporary shelter for his family when they arrived at the new homestead and satisfied the frontier custom of establishing a legitimate claim to land before a formal entry was made at a Federal land office.
THE LINCOLNS IN KENTUCKY
Thomas's claim on the quarter-section in Section 32 marked his fourth attempt to secure ownership of a farm. A native of Virginia, Thomas was born in 1778, the fourth of Bathsheba and Abraham Lincoln's five children. During the early 1780s, the family relocated to Washington County, Kentucky. Around 1797, Thomas worked as a hired hand in Tennessee for one of his uncles, but otherwise he spent his formative years in Kentucky. In 1803, at the age of 25, he purchased his first farm, a 238-acre tract at Mill Creek in Hardin County. This was the first of three farms the Lincolns occupied over the course of the next decade; all were within a fifteen-mile radius of one another. Census and tax records indicate Thomas engaged in farming as well as carpentry for his livelihood. In 1806, he sold 2400 pounds of pork and 494 pounds of beef to a merchant in Elizabethtown. The same year, he was contracted by the merchant to construct a flatboat and served on the crew that shipped the boat to New Orleans.
Thomas lost title to 38 acres of the Mill Creek farm as a result of conflicting land claims; a common occurrence in frontier Kentucky. When he sold the remainder of the farm, he took an additional loss due to a faulty survey. As previously noted, the haphazard system of land surveys in Kentucky often led to competing legal claims for the same tract. Not long thereafter, Thomas married Nancy Hanks, with whom he had been acquainted since they were children. Thomas retained ownership of his farm at Mill Creek, but the couple established their first home in Elizabethtown. Their first child, Sarah, was born here. In 1808, the family moved to a farm on Nolin Creek, about three miles from Hodgenville. The following year, their second child, Abraham, was born.
The Lincolns' rightful claim to the new farm soon was litigated; however, and Thomas ultimately lost title to the property, as well as all rights to his $200 down payment and the improvements he had made to the land. In 1811, the Lincolns moved again, this time to a 230-acre farm on Knob Creek in Larue County. Within four years, litigation again caused the family to lose their claim to the farmstead. During this time, they also had a third child, Thomas, who died as an infant.
Frustrated by their inability to establish a clear title to land holdings in Kentucky, the Lincolns turned to new territory when they established their fourth farm. Their choice to move to the Indiana Territory has engendered much speculation, for as a part of the Northwest Territory, the institution of slavery legally was forbidden here. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, the presence of slavery in Kentucky generated controversy and hostility among different factions. Many small landowners, such as Thomas Lincoln, feared the threat that bonded labor could pose to the ability of freemen to provide for their families, and further found the institution morally repugnant. Such was the case for the members of the Little Mount Separate Baptist Church, of which Thomas and Nancy Lincoln were members. Church records from 1808 and 1811 established the church's antislavery sentiments. Consequently, it may be assumed that the Lincolns preferred Indiana to other territories where settlement would have been possible, because slavery was forbidden here and because Federal land surveys guaranteed establishment of a clear title.
THE INDIANA HOMESTEAD
The Lincoln family set out for their new homestead in late 1816. They crossed the Ohio River and entered Indiana at the small river town of Troy. This community had been platted only a year earlier by Francis Posey, but already had become an important shipping point for the newly arrived settlers in the area. As many as twenty lots had been built on by 1818, and James McDaniel operated a tavern there. The Lincolns probably did not linger in Troy, but instead pressed on with the last leg of their journey. As previously noted, the final sixteen miles of the trip ranked among the most difficult for the family. Southern Indiana at that date was covered with hardwood forests, with trees as much as three to four feet in diameter and sixty feet in height. Gum, sycamore, hackberry, cherry, persimmon, and apple were abundant, as well as enormous wild grape vines. Such dense growth was present even in the previously burned over area where the Lincoln farm was located. The landscape also teemed with wildlife. The Little Pigeon Creek was a nesting ground for thousands of passenger pigeons, while deer, antelope, bear, wolves, groundhogs, rabbits, mink, weasels, wild turkeys, opossums, and wildcats remained plentiful in the woods.
By the time the Lincolns reached their new home, a small community was on its way to being established around the Little Pigeon Creek (Figure 18). The Carter, Grigsby, Gentry, Wright, and Gordon families were among those already in residence in the vicinity. John Jones and David Casebier each owned tracts in Section 31, west of the Lincolns, while Thomas Barrett owned property in Section 32, and Thomas Carter and Noah Gordon had farms in sections 33 and 34, respectively. Each of these extended families owned at least a quarter-section of land, and some, such as the Grigsbys, held several tracts totaling hundreds of acres. The Pigeon Baptist Church was organized in 1816 and a frame meeting house constructed within four years in Section 7 of Clay Township, almost due south of the Lincoln farm. Among the earliest congregation members were the families of James Gentry, Thomas Lincoln, David Turnham, Noah Gordon, William Barker.
Troy was the nearest trading center and a gristmill also was located there. George Huffman operated a mill on Anderson River, about ten miles north of Troy and sixteen miles west of the Lincoln farm. In 1818, Noah Gordon built a grist mill less than two miles from the Lincolns that the family used as well. That same year, a schoolhouse was established on the Gordon farm. The schoolhouse clearly was needed; since within a four-mile radius there were 90 children under the age of 7 and another 48 between the ages of 7 and 17. By 1820, at least 40 families had settled within five miles of the Lincolns, with an average of three families per section. Most of these settlers were from Kentucky, and a few, such as the Carters and Gordons, even hailed from Hardin County, where the Lincolns had last resided. Nancy Lincoln's aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, moved to the area shortly after the Lincolns arrived, and stayed with them for a brief time.
The makeshift shelter Thomas had erected the previous year probably proved sufficient for the family's needs upon their arrival, or they may have stayed with a nearby neighbor. One of the first tasks Thomas completed, however, was erection of a single-room log house that measured around 18 feet by 20 feet. Thomas probably was assisted by several of his neighbors, who would have had time to help with the chore since the harvest season had passed. According to Warren, approximately forty logs would have been used to construct the house. A large stone was placed at each corner to serve as a foundation and the notched logs were placed directly atop these. After the walls were raised, a loft area was built using smaller logs, and the joists and ridge pole set in position. The joists were sheathed with half-inch thick clapboards to make a watertight covering. Door, window, and fireplace openings were cut in the walls and a stick chimney was built on the outside of the cabin. All this construction could be accomplished in about four days. Chinking the openings between the logs and adding a floor made of puncheons followed soon after.
The following spring, the Lincolns planted their first crop, which probably included corn and smaller amounts of wheat, flax, and cotton. Corn was both a food source and a cash crop, while wheat, flax, and cotton could be used to provide needed materials for the pioneer household. A kitchen garden with vegetables such as melons, squash, pumpkins, and potatoes also probably was planted to provide variety to the family diet. After that year's harvest had been completed, Thomas undertook the 60-mile journey to the Federal land office at Vincennes to secure title to this land. William Whitman and Noah Gordon, Thomas's nearest neighbors, accompanied him on the trip. All three made official land entries on 15 October 1817. Thomas's were for two tracts of 80 acres apiece, located in the southwest quarter of Section 32. He made an initial payment of sixteen dollars to secure his right to the land. Two months later, he paid sixty-four dollars, thus meeting the required one-fourth of the total purchase price, which amounted to three hundred twenty dollars, as required under the Land Act of 1804. Thomas Lincoln thereby achieved his goal of obtaining a clear and undisputed title to the land he tilled.
Just under a year later, however, Nancy Lincoln died of milk sickness. This malady was caused by the poisonous snakeroot, which was consumed by foraging cows. The poison contained in the plant's fibrous roots was transferred to milk and rendered ill anyone who drank it. Milk sickness was not a rare occurrence on the frontier. Its name indicates that pioneers were aware that the disease was somehow transmitted by cow's milk, but they did not know by what process the milk became tainted. Entire families and sometimes communities could be ravaged by the illness. Such was the case at the Lincoln farmstead. Nancy's uncle, Thomas Sparrow, was the first to fall ill and die. Within a matter of days, he was followed by his wife, Elizabeth, a neighbor, Mrs. Peter Brooner, and finally Nancy Lincoln, who died on 5 October 1818. Thomas built coffins for all four of the deceased. All were taken to the crest of a hill located approximately fifteen hundred feet south of the cabin site and interred. The graves are believed to have been marked with fieldstones at the head and foot, and Thomas may have carved Nancy's initials in her headstone. Such simple markers were the only ones available to families on Indiana's frontier.
At the time of their mother's death, Sarah Lincoln was eleven years of age, while Abraham was nine. Thomas Lincoln soon married again., choosing for his wife Sarah (Sally) Bush Johnston, a widow, whom he and Nancy had known when they lived in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. They were wed in December 1819, in Hardin County. Sally had three children by her first husband, Elizabeth, John D., and Matilda, all of whom accompanied her and Thomas back to Indiana. They arrived at the farm in early 1820. The household at this date consisted of Thomas (aged 42), Sally (32), Dennis Hanks (21), who had been a ward of the Sparrows, Sarah (13), Elizabeth Johnston (13), Abraham (11), John D. Johnston (10), and Matilda Johnston (9). Dennis and Elizabeth married the following year and set up their own household nearby, while the rest of the family members remained at Thomas's farm.
Last Updated: 19-Jan-2003 | <urn:uuid:72f49eef-2a65-4334-9474-33a0080a6e02> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/libo/hrs/hrs7.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985483 | 2,690 | 3.640625 | 4 |
"English servants are fiends. They seem to plot among themselves…. I should like to hang a few and burn the rest at the stake."—American heiress Mary Leiter (Lady Curzon), in a letter to her mother.To Marry an English Lord, which gives the skinny on the real-life counterparts of Cora, the Countess of Grantham. For many of them, life was no bed of roses and was decidedly inferior as regards comfort (e.g., atrocious plumbing, rigid mealtimes, and hordes of servants to supervise):
"The heiress soon trained herself not to speak to the footman; she was supposed to ask the butler to ask the footman to bring in more coal for the fire. She could not pop down to the kitchen to ask Cook for a sandwich or request that the tea tray be brought up at two in the afternoon instead of four; at two, the serving girls were helping with dinner preparations or down in the laundry room or upstairs putting clean linen on the beds. The staff had its schedule, its list of tasks to be done at certain times on certain days, and were not to be blithely interrupted by impertinent Americans."I've seen photos of the Downton cast during filming swathed in puffy coats and boots in between shots of dinner parties, at which evening gowns must be worn despite the brisk temperatures in the dining room—even in summer. The book reports that "Newport heiress Mildred Sherman, as Lady Camoys, simply gave up going to dinner in other people's houses because she couldn't withstand the arctic temperatures in evening dress; at least at home she could huddle near the fir swathed in fur." (She was also introduced to the awful phenomenon of chilblains.) And then there were the relatives to contend with. Lady Curzon's nemesis was far more potty and viper-tongued than Violet; she called her father-in-law, Lord Scarsdale, "a despot from the 13th century." He hated to hear his name aloud (turning his back on anyone who pronounced it) and was fond of examining his tongue in mirrors. He ridiculed his daughters for not finding husbands, yet refused to allow any eligible men to visit the estate. Makes Violet sound like a pussycat! | <urn:uuid:a33e8f7d-7931-4f9d-92e4-f96d268ed05b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailyglean.salebooks.com/2013/01/downton-season-3-kicks-off-amidst-purrs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981479 | 484 | 1.5 | 2 |
The poison ivy plant contains an oil called urushiol.
This oil "bonds" to skin when it comes in contact with it. If you are allergic
to urushiol and you get it on your skin, you'll develop an itchy, red rash.
poison ivy rash will usually begin to appear in one to two days. The affected
area will get red and swollen. A day or so later, small blisters will begin to form
and the rash will become very itchy. During this time, it's important to try to
keep from scratching the blisters.
If you think that you've come in contact
with poison ivy, you need to wash the area with plain cool water as soon as
possible. This may help to get some of the oil off your skin. Products that
contain solvents such as mineral oil (brand names: Technu, Zanfel) also may
help to remove urushiol from your skin. Because urushiol can remain active for
a long time, be sure to wash your clothes, shoes, tools or anything else that
may have touched the plant (like camping, sporting, fishing or hunting gear).
a rash starts to develop, there are several over-the-counter medications you
can use, including hydrocortisone creams (brand name: Cortizone-10), calamine
lotion, antihistamine tablets (one brand name: Benadryl) and oatmeal baths. You
should call your doctor if you have fever more than 100 degrees or the rash covers
large areas of your body.
Information provided Dr. Doug
Layton, D.O., Family Physicians at Prairie Trail.
Article courtesy of Ankeny Living. | <urn:uuid:037eaac7-6930-464d-b2c8-5cb60044411c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iowahealth.org/article.aspx?id=746&How+do+I+treat+poison+ivy%3F | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925619 | 369 | 2.578125 | 3 |
With the help of NeighborSpace, a few of my neighbors and I turned a vacant city lot into a small community garden.
There have been several stops and starts in the lengthy planning process; we finally got our donated topsoil at the end of May. Then the work began: Soil testing, water issues, fertilizer, dodging "free" compost, mulch, and finally, planting.
From a pile of old 2x12 Douglas Fir joists donated from a building renovation project, we marked out the plots and turned them over to our enthusiastic gardeners.
|[Click on any of the images for a larger view]|
|I built a couple A-frame tomato trellises out of a few of the old Douglas Fir joists.|
|The community garden, as seen from my rooftop garden, the first week in June, 2010.|
|We built a short fence around the backside of the garden with some of the Douglas Fir joists and rolls of donated willow screening. In the background you can see my rooftop garden.|
|From the old joists, Art and I are holding pieces, I also made a picnic table and two benches that will go under the tree at the north end of the garden.|
|This is the first of a series of rain barrels that will collect, then distribute, rooftop water for the garden.|
[As usual, all photos, as well as the conversion of the plot plan image from a pdf to a jpg file, done by H2. Thanks!] | <urn:uuid:e4c25009-aa6f-49ce-9272-eb2572806cdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greenroofgrowers.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948429 | 319 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The Group of Seven (G7) top industrialized nations have committed themselves to free-floating foreign currency exchange rates. They've called for monetary policies not to be directed at devaluing national currencies.
The G7 powers reaffirmed their commitment to market determined exchange rates and pledged to consult closely with regard to actions in foreign exchange markets, a statement released on Tuesday said.
The group - which includes leading industrialized nations Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Italy - expressed concern that excessive volatility in foreign exchange markets could have adverse implications for economic and financial stability.
The statement comes amid global fears of a rise in so-called competitive currency devaluations, frequently described as "currency war." Some countries have started to print money under attempts to drive down the value of their currency, thus gaining a competitive advantage for their exports in global markets.
Notably, Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was recently criticized for pressing his country's central bank to aggressively expand monetary policy, which has seen the yen weaken sharply against other global currencies.
However, Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said the G7 recognized that Tokyo's policy was not aimed at affecting foreign exchange markets but rather seen as an attempt to beat deflation.
At their meeting in London, the G7 called on the larger Group of 20 (G20) nations, which also includes emerging economies, to ensure that growth strategies in the world's main economies are compatible. The G20 is to meet in Moscow on Friday, with currency policy set to be one of the main issues on the agenda.
uhe/pfd (AFP, Reuters, dpa) | <urn:uuid:ee578fc9-bfa8-442e-8e08-6362bf031408> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dw.de/g7-seeks-to-banish-currency-wars/a-16593608?maca=en-rss-en-bus-2091-rdf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969505 | 335 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Chemtura Corporation (NYSE: CEM) sells chemicals that are ultimately used in a wide variety of contexts, from purifying pool water to protecting electronics from fire to killing insects. The company's chemicals are usually purchased as additives or ingredients by industrial manufacturers who make the final product. Since Chemtura is a diversified chemicals company, the price of inventories - raw materials is a key determinant of its profitability. The increase in commodities prices that gained momentum in 2007 has made raw materials increasingly expensive. For example, tin, an important chemical used in flame retardants, doubled in prices in FY2007. In the same time period, gross margin decreased by 5%. On the other hand, Chemtura has developed products that allow it to take advantage of rising "green issues" standards, such as clean-emission vehicle engines. Its chemicals are used in clean-emission vehicles as well as non-toxic flame retardant products. Since 2005, the company has focused on expanding in high-growth, low capital intensity market segments.
Chemtura sells chemicals and polymers used in agriculture, construction, consumer products, electronics, transportation, and industrial production. Polymers refers to a group of natural and synthetic materials that includes plastic. The company's products are divided into five business segments: polymer additives, performance specialties, consumer products, crop protection and other.
Polymer additives (FY07 $1,806M, 49% net revenue): sells chemical additives to the plastics, agricultural, fine chemical and oilfield industries. The company's chemical additives have roles such as limiting light degradation, improving resistance to flames, and protecting against insect infestations.
Performance specialties (FY07 $911M, 24%): sells specially-designed chemicals to manufacturers. These chemicals include petroleum additives, lubricants for refrigerators, and coatings for floor finishes.
Consumer products (FY07 $567M, 15%): sells chemicals directly to consumers for in-home and outdoor uses. These include water purification chemicals for pools and bathroom cleaners. These products are sold under many different brands.
Chemtura's customers are in the agriculture, construction, consumer, electronics, and transportation industries. Not one single customer represents more than 10% of the company's annual revenue.
While more than half of the company's total revenue comes from the United States and Canada, the company's management intends to expand in high-growth markets such as the former Soviet Republic, Eastern Europe and China.
|Year||US and Canada||Europe and Africa||Asia/Pacific||Latin America|
|% net revenue||53%||29%||14%||4%|
Since 2005, the company has acquired and divested various business segments in order to create a product line characterized by high growth, low capital intensity, and low costs. In 2007, the company divested its Organic Peroxides and Optical Monomers and Rubber Chemicals product lines, which explains the stagnation of the company's revenue growth in 2007. Combined with low gross margins, the series of corporate actions have resulted in charges that have caused the Chemtura to suffer net losses. Nevertheless, the realignment of the company's product line improved the company's gross margin.
Gross margin and the operating cash flow ratio are two key metrics used by the company's management to measure the company's financial health. Gross margin is an important metric in the diversified chemicals industry, especially in light of the [commodity boom], because it measures the volatility of the input costs. The operating cash flow ratio is obtained by dividing the company's current assets by its outflow of cash from operations. Since 2005, the company has gone through a series of mergers, acquisitions and divestures in order to cut down its core product line and to achieve profitability. The operating cash flow ratio measures the amount of cash expended on these corporate actions as well as the company's progress towards achieving profitability.
|Operating cash flow ratio||19%||16%||8%||-4%||-3%|
The commodity boom that began in 2007 has elevated Chemtura's raw material costs, sinking the company's gross margin by 5% (a 24% decrease from FY2005 to FY2007). The price of tin, a key raw material used to produce heat stabilizers, increased by 100% in FY2007. The price of natural fats and oils, used to manufacture surfacants (such as cosmetics), has also increased as a result of heightened demand for ethanol. The 57% increase in the average price of oil from 2007 to 2008 has squeezed margins on petroleum derivatives. Other increasingly expensive raw materials include phosphorus and alkyl metals. The company has attempted to pass on these high input costs to its customers. For example, in the summer of 2008, it raised the price of flame retardants by $0.30 per pound (a 9% increase). Nevertheless, an extended commodity boom makes raising product prices detrimental to sales growth, in addition to decreasing the gross margin. Net revenue decreased by 1.5% year over year in 2Q08 and gross margin decreased by 0.4%.
Chemtura's Polymer Additives business segment produces antioxidants that protect electronics, among products of other industries, from oxidation, flames and sunlight. For example, printed circuit boards used in the information technology industry and connectors used in the telecommunications industry benefit from Chemtura's flame retardant additives. In 2007, the segment accounted for 49% of net revenue. A weakness in the demand for electronics causes sellers in the industry to scale back their inventory, reducing the need for Chemtura's products. Therefore, the company's net revenue is affected by the health of the electronics industry. The electronics industry is high-growth but cyclical. For example, the industry collapsed during the Asian financial crisis in 1999, grew rapidly until 2001, and once again collapsed in the 2001-2002 recession. While the industry expanded rapidly following the 2001-2002 recession (the semiconductor market was worth $250B in 2006, compared to $200 in 2001), electronics makers are expecting lower sales beginning in the second half of 2008 as a result of the US-led economic downturn.
"Green" (environmentally conscious) standards such as requirements for cleaner engine emissions and improved flame retardancy provide organic growth opportunities for Chemtura. The company's Performance Specialties (24% of FY07 net revenue) and Consumer Products (15% of FY07 net revenue) sell lubricant/additives used for clean-emissions motor engines and flame retardancy additives in household goods. The number of registered green vehicles (hybrid cars) grew by 38% in 2007, and remain the fastest growing segment of the automotive industry, driven by rising gas prices. Green flame retardants comprise of products that have not yet been found to be toxic to human beings. Many companies in the industry use chemicals such as bromide, which was found to be accumulating in breast milk. In 2008, the EU banned several types of brominated flame retardants. Chemtura offers a broad range of flame retardants based on varied chemicals, enabling the company's business segment to minimize the risk of being shut down by scientific/health-related discoveries. Other green consumer expectations include lowered greenhouse gas emissions. The company's additives decrease the amount of carbon dioxide released by idling engines, and makes pesticides cleaner to use.
The breadth of the company's products decreases the company's dependence on any one competitive market. However, Chemtura faces stiffer competition as its rivals expand globally and consolidate. Its three largest direct rivals are NewMarket Corporation, Solutia, Inc., and OMNOVA Solutions (OMN). Two important metrics in the industry are gross margin (measuring a company's profitability) and total current assets (measuring a company's ability to expand).
NewMarket (NEU) - NewMarket sells lubricants and fuel additives, and is Chemtura's largest competitor in this space. In FY2007, it was the only one company among the three that had a positive net income.
Solutia Inc. - Solutia sells performance chemicals, nylons, as well as chemicals to be used in thin-film solar cells.
|Current assets (MM USD)||$1,381||$495.04||$1,231||$148.50|
|YoY change in raw material costs (MM USD)||$73M||---||$182M||$20.3M| | <urn:uuid:26368010-695b-47b4-aa41-68469a03b212> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Chemtura_Corporation_(OTC:CEMJQ) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926671 | 1,740 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Our mission is to leverage the methods of machine learning and game theory for addressing relevant applications both in recreational games and in abstract decision games played in the real world.
The TrueSkill ranking system is a skill based ranking system for Xbox Live developed at Microsoft Research. The purpose of a ranking system is to both identify and track the skills of gamers in a game (mode) in order to be able to match them into competitive matches. The TrueSkill ranking system only uses the final standings of all teams in a game in order to update the skill estimates (ranks) of all gamers playing in this game. Ranking systems have been proposed for many sports but possibly the most prominent ranking system in use today is ELO.
A novel form of learning Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed for Forza Motorsport. The AI driving entity called “Drivatar” is learned by monitoring the driving of the player in the game itself. The Drivatar observes the player's road positioning and choice of racing line, the speeds achieved along the course, and the utilisation of the brake and accelerator. This information is then processed and absorbed into an AI Drivatar model which is representative of the driving "style" of that player. This model may be subsequently used to dynamically generate a plausible variety of racing lines and behaviours in race. Importantly too, this model is probabilistic, and will therefore not produce the same output every time; it is not just a simple recording of the player's driving.
We are working on applying machine learning to revolutionize computer Go.
- Pierre Dangauthier, Ralf Herbrich, Tom Minka, and Thore Graepel, TrueSkill Through Time: Revisiting the History of Chess, in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 20, MIT Press, 2008
- Thore Graepel, Ralf Herbrich, and Julian Gold, Learning to Fight, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Games: Artificial Intelligence, Design and Education, January 2004
- David Stern, Ralf Herbrich, and Thore Graepel, Learning To Solve Game Trees, in Proceedings of the International Conference of Machine Learning, January 2007
- Thore Graepel and Ralf Herbrich, Ranking and Matchmaking, in Game Developer Magazine, October 2006
- David Stern, Ralf Herbrich, and Thore Graepel, Bayesian Pattern Ranking for Move Prediction in the Game of Go, in Proceedings of the International Conference of Machine Learning, January 2006
- Ralf Herbrich, Tom Minka, and Thore Graepel, TrueSkill(TM): A Bayesian Skill Rating System, in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 20, MIT Press, January 2007
Joaquin Quiñonero Candela | <urn:uuid:f610a577-3a53-4ae4-834e-e4ad5341c015> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/osa/gaming.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90247 | 569 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Being Trusted Advisors in a Turbulent World
By Anders Kempe, President, MSLGROUP EMEA
Crises are resolved by listening to people, responding and acting in a positive way that solves the problem.
It Happened on Twitter: The Case of an Insurance Company
I’d like to talk about a recent case, several aspects of which demonstrate how we can help our clients when we live up to our vision of being trusted advisors-especially in crisis situations when things get pretty rough.
Imagine a venerable, refined, honorable insurance and finance company. A company that does what it’s supposed to do and does it really well, that delivers high-quality service with good terms and returns for its clients. A company that is based on a solid, well thought-out value system, that does not pay huge bonuses to its managers and that always puts its customers first. A company that is an industry leader in customer satisfaction and is distinguished by its strong brand.
Naturally, rapid on-line communication with clients is part of the company’s service offering. But one day this happened a bit too quickly, and a poorly formulated tweet made the company appear ignorant and arrogant. A matter that was, in concrete terms, handled correctly was communicated in the wrong way.
There was a risk that the ensuing debate-both online and offline-could go seriously wrong (not to go into details, but adjectives like “greed” and “homophobia” were rife). The Twitter message exposed the client’s ignorance and lack of routines in terms of dealing with its homosexual clients.
Fortunately, the situation was cleared up thanks to the company’s swift, professional action (supported by a crisis communications and social media team at MSLGROUP EMEA). Our client quickly made a decision to compensate its client for damages and to implement an ambitious drive to increase LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) awareness within the company, to improve neutrality in treating gender and family constellation issues. Company officials provided open, ongoing communication about their realization that they had more to learn, and they were clear about their explicit defense of human rights.
Instead of a full-blown crisis, our client attracted much attention for taking prompt, forceful and prudent action. The client has learned important lessons for the future and has decided to further enhance its offering and communication. The two things are connected-a company can never communicate away its flaws without changing its behavior.
I believe that the company’s brand will be strengthened over the long term thanks to the firm manner in which their representatives handled this specific case. And I’m convinced that we will have an improved relationship with this client. We successfully demonstrated that we are a friend and trusted advisor to turn to when times get tough.
The Changing World of Crisis
The case also reinforced for me several trends that are changing how we plan for and respond to crisis situations. We live in a time of globalization that is obvious to everyone. Crises can happen any day, anywhere and be spread around the world in a matter of seconds. The media monitors activity on social networks to determine what is news worthy, which is why we often see stories start on social networks and then become the day’s headlines. Corporate decision-makers need to understand this dynamic. Once your company’s crisis is on the front page of a paper, on the home page of a website or on cable news throughout the day, you know it’s serious.
Ergo, companies are beginning to prepare more seriously for crises, using simulation training and other strategies. Another consequence of the rise in social media is that companies need to engage with all their stakeholders—in good times and in bad.
Companies need to have solid relationships in place with the people in the communities in which they do business and all the other organizations in their ecosystem. So, when a crisis does happen, it is easier to reach these people, listen to their concerns and respond.
Today, crises are not solved on a technical basis with four guys locked in a boardroom. Crises are resolved by listening to people, responding and acting in a positive way that solves the problem.
The Trusted Advisor’s Role in a Crisis
Finally, I want to share some of the lessons that were reinforced during this experience:
- Communications agencies (advisors) must understand the client’s business and competitive environment-mastering all types of communication is not enough.
- Advisors must also understand their clients’ clients and the way they think, and must be able to guide clients in an environment that takes into account the explosive force of politics and the media.
- No issues are local issues in the fast-moving world of social media-advisors must never be overly alarmist, but no issue is too small to be taken seriously.
- Any deficiencies in the client’s business must be corrected. Advisors need to dare to give uncomfortable advice when the situation so demands, and this requires a solid relationship with the client.
Originally posted on Crisis.MSLGROUP.com, our global network of 50+ MSLGROUP crisis experts, with deep vertical expertise across industries and geographies, connected to each other by our proprietary crowdsourcing platform.
In a world where every crisis is global, social and viral, you need a road map to think about the interconnections between trust, power, risk and crisis, from our experts at the MSLGROUP Crisis Network.
To know more about the MSLGROUP Crisis Network, or to subscribe to receive similar insights and foresights in the form of a quarterly newsletter, please visit Crisis.mslgroup.com. | <urn:uuid:8125026c-c4fb-4575-8766-a47e09bb6c55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mslgroup.com/being-trusted-advisors-in-a-turbulent-world/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960539 | 1,171 | 1.53125 | 2 |
With unemployment back up to 9.2 percent, as reported last week, the hunt is on for an explanation of why job creation has been so slow since the financial crisis of 2008. Some House Republicans think they have found a specific culprit: bank examiners.
In the view of Representative Bill Posey of Florida and some colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee, bank examiners are clamping down on otherwise perfectly healthy banks – and forcing them, inappropriately, to classify some loans as “non-accrual” (meaning less likely to be paid back).
Mr. Posey has therefore introduced a bill that would direct examiners to regard all loans as “accrual,” as long as payments are still being made – and a hearing was held on July 8 to discuss the merits of the matter.
Perspectives from expert contributors.
Perspectives from expert contributors.
George French, on behalf of the F.D.I.C., said in written testimony, “This proposed legislation would result in an understatement of problem loans on banks’ balance sheets and an overstatement of regulatory capital.”
The big issue is “regulatory forbearance” – whether regulators should look the other way when banks get into trouble, allowing them to be nicer to their borrowers and, in the optimists’ view, manage their way to recovery.
The problem with such forbearance is that it has a long history of leading to much bigger problems. The savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s began as a relatively small problem at some Texas mortgage lenders.
Congress responded to the complaints of these institutions, which asserted that they had been poorly treated by various changes in rules, and the result was legislation that gave these savings and loans enough additional rope (and forbearance) to hang themselves.
In the end, a significant number of people went to jail and taxpayers had to pay nearly $150 billion to clean up the mess. (Recommended summer reading for all members of Congress and everyone else: “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry,” by William K. Black.)
The core problem today is that while community banks were not the main driving force behind the financial boom and bust, in some states they made some very bad decisions. Among the members of Congress who spoke on Friday, I heard strong voices from Florida, as well as from New Mexico and Georgia. In all of these places, thinly capitalized community banks made very bad bets on real estate, often commercial real estate.
The regulators made it very clear in their testimony that the rules have not changed, and they continue to apply the same accounting principles as before. The principles are straightforward and reasonable: a loan cannot be classified as accrual if you do not expect it to be repaid in full.
Allowing banks to classify failing loans as accrual will overstate their financial results and make it look as though they have more capital — that is, greater shareholder equity — than they do. The problem is that some community banks do not have big enough loss-absorbing buffers — the role that bank equity plays.
If we had any kind of free market in banking, you would expect banks to have equity funding of at least 30 percent of total assets. But since the advent of deposit insurance in the 1930s, retail banks have been happy to have much less equity relative to debt, because the government is, in effect, providing a subsidy to debt.
Bankers are paid based on their return on equity, unadjusted for risk. As Prof. Anat Admati of Stanford University has been asserting, this is a big part of all our banking problems (see her critique of return on equity-based pay).
The small banks have a legitimate gripe, but it was not the focus of Friday’s hearing. The country’s mega-banks — for example, the six largest bank-holding companies — received a great deal of regulatory forbearance, as well as much more government support. In contrast, the smaller banks have received very little. The Troubled Asset Relief Program did make capital available to them on potentially advantageous terms, but taking that capital might have signaled that management thought there was a deeper problem.
The right approach to strengthening small-business lending in communities across the country is to encourage community banks to raise more equity (i.e., more capital). If they are unable or unwilling to do this, for example because of the so-called debt-overhang problem — that their debts to existing creditors weigh too much on new investors — we should allow and encourage new entrants.
Banking licenses could be made more readily available to well-capitalized entities with strong management teams and a proven commitment to serving local business. Existing community banks, as well as the politically powerful Independent Community Bankers of America, are unlikely to welcome such moves. But they would help small businesses and job growth. | <urn:uuid:8de535a9-c33b-46e7-b62e-05ca308bf405> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/are-bank-examiners-to-blame-for-slow-job-growth/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975239 | 1,030 | 2.0625 | 2 |
An Italian prose-writer, b. at Casatico, near Mantua, 6 December, 1478; died at Toledo, Spain, 7 February, 1529. After receiving a classical education at Milan, he went to the court of Ludovico il Moro. Soon, however, owing to his father's death in 1499, he left the Sforza and became a retainer of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. In September, 1504, Urbino became his new residence, and here, in the service of Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, he spent the best years of his life. The splendour of the Montefeltro court was such as to attract thither the most distinguished writers and artists of the time, and in their midst Castiglione, though engrossed in momentous affairs of state, drank at the fountain-head of art and literature. In 1513 Francesco Maria della Rovere, Guidobaldo's successor, made him a count and later his ambassador to the Holy See. In 1524 Pope Clement VII sent him as a special envoy to Charles V, but, in spite of his good offices on behalf of the pontiff Rome was sacked on the 6th of May, 1527, and Clement made a captive. This melancholy event broke Castiglione in health and spirits and hastened his death. Great honours were paid to his memory, and Charles the Fifth was said to have called him "one of the best knights in the world". His fame, however, mainly rests on his "Cortegiano" (Courtier), a work in four books, describing the accomplishments and moral character of the ideal courtier. He began writing it in 1514 and finished it four years later, but polished its style so elaborately as to delay its publication until 1528, one year before his death. A truly representative son of the Renaissance, he exhibited in his "Courtier" brilliant classical scholarship and exquisite taste, combined with a keen spirit of observation and noble conceptions. As a result, "Il Cortegiano" gradually acquired a world-wide reputation, and was translated into a dozen languages, including Japanese. The latest edition is that of Opdyke (New York, 1902). His many letters, in part unpublished, are of considerable importance.
CIAN, Il Cortegiano del Conte B.C. annotato e illustrato (Florence, 1894); MARTINATI, Notizie storico-bibliografiche intorno al Conte B.C. (Florence, 1890).
APA citation. (1908). Baldassare Castiglione. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03409c.htm
MLA citation. "Baldassare Castiglione." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03409c.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Gerald Rossi.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads. | <urn:uuid:30ed0396-33ff-4981-8123-69a30dcde1ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newadvent.org/cathen/03409c.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954163 | 769 | 2.453125 | 2 |
In John Grisham's new novel, Mississippi judges are bought, marketed and sold.
Grisham opens his thriller, The Appeal, with a bang: In a crowded courtroom, a jury delivers a multi-million-dollar verdict against a chemical company accused of tainting a town's water supply with waste.
The chemical company retaliates with an appeal, but in order to win, it attempts to rig the state Supreme Court. As judicial elections loom, the company hand picks an unsuspecting judge and manipulates him for the job.
In The Appeal, Grisham — who practiced law and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives before his literary career — provides a cautionary tale about judicial elections and political campaigns in general. Like the so-called "swift-boating" of political candidates in the last presidential election, Grisham's characters resort to harsh smear tactics to defeat their opponents.
Jacki Lyden spoke with Grisham about his novel, judicial politics and his personal political engagement. | <urn:uuid:dc595305-3d67-4d48-843c-97de9f90fe9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/18402286/grisham-s-appeal-tackles-down-and-dirty-politics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969344 | 208 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Mark Twain’s first, and bestselling, book serves a dual purpose as both humor and travel writing—an example of both subversive satire and the tradition of respectable travel correspondence from the European world of high culture and privilege.
For this reason, “it would be a great mistake to suppose the book is just a big package of Mark Twain’s jokes… It is the panorama of Europe and the Holy Land as they were seen by one who went abroad with no illusions; who carried about with him a shrewd pair of American eyes” (Stowe 147).
Though brash and uncultured to both the reputable pilgrims he travels with and the European aristocrats he travels to, these shrewd American eyes of Twain’s provide him with the perspective to see through the hypocrisies of the superficially pious and the low moral standards of the Old World’s supposedly high culture. If “until very late in the [nineteenth] century the United States was widely believed to lack … traditions, glamour, polish, and culture” (Stowe 5), then the westerner Twain embodied this assumption writ small—essentially in The Innocents Abroad Mark Twain paints both himself and Americans in general as subversives.
But in his later “travel writings,” Twain expands his scope; his Letters from the Earth, written nearly half a century later, turn the entire human race into a subversive class, and reveal the hypocrisies of a supposedly reputable God.
Unpublished until well after his death, the Letters from the Earth explore the very darkest rooms in the religious edifice.
Casting himself as the archangel Satan, Twain writes as if a shocked observer of the insignificant little planet of Earth, which thinks itself so great. “The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity” (Letters 7), Satan writes back home to his friends in Heaven, St. Gabriel and St. Michael:
Moreover—if I may put another strain upon you—he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believe the Creator loves him; had a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea? … He prays for help, and favor, and protection every day; and does so with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer has ever been answered. (Letters 7)
Again, Twain’s answer—or rather, Satan’s—is to look to man and his own achievements, not superstition.
“The poor’s only real friend is their fellow man” (Letters 32), Satan asserts, echoing Twain’s comparison of the Doctor to Christ, supposed friend of the poor.
And yet, “if science exterminates a disease which has been working for God”—God being the omniscient, omnipotent creator of germs and microbes—“it is God that gets the credit, and all the pulpits break into grateful advertising raptures … He has been thinking about it for six thousand years, and making up his mind. The idea of exterminating the hookworm was his. He came very near doing it before Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles did. But he is in time to get the credit of it. He always is” (Letters 34).
By this point in his writing, Twain does not even give glancing credit to the teachings of Jesus Christ. “It was as Jesus Christ,” in fact, that God “devised hell and proclaimed it”—torment for mortals even beyond Life’s “fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasures poisoned by pain” (Letters 44). God has for Twain become nothing less than the “Great Criminal” (Letters 36)—“it is wonderful,” Satan remarks drolly, “the thorough and comprehensive study which the Creator devoted to the great work of making man miserable” (Letters 32).
Perhaps Christ healed the sick, Twain allowed in The Innocents Abroad, but, writing in the last years of his career and life, the satirist considers who created sickness and torment—temporal or eternal—to begin with. But this seems to make sense as Satan interprets the Bible—“I the Lord thy God am a jealous God” means to him, “I the Lord thy God am a small God, a small God, and fretful about small things” (Letters 27).
In Letters from the Earth, God represents the greatest hypocrite of all: a being who receives praise and reputable status while working the most widespread immorality Twain can imagine. “If he has a motto,” Satan suggests of God, “it would have read, ‘Let no innocent person escape’” (Letters 49).
Human beings, after all—Satan argues—came into being through no act of their own, have no control over their temperament or circumstances, and attempt to live under religious strictures that are “as I have said: every statute in the Bible and in the lawbooks is an attempt to defeat a law of God—in other words an unalterable and indestructible law of nature” (Letters 39). In this grim set of letters, Satan’s comment here segues into one of the more humorous examples of religious absurdity: rules regarding sexual conduct.
“During twenty-three days in every month,” Satan explains to his friends back home, “from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent … but man is only briefly competent, from the age of sixteen or seventeen thenceforward for thirty-five years” (Letters 40).
By Satan’s logic, these biological facts reflect the Law of Nature, which he and all the archangels had previously agreed, was interchangeable with the Law of God (Letters 4). Thus, if anything, a woman ought to control a harem of men, as “no woman ever sees the day that she can’t overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her” (Letters 41). Astonishingly, human religion has subverted this law of nature, and restricted woman to one man. Satan, for his part, is outraged.
Readers can fairly safely impute this outrage to the man behind the persona, Mark Twain—or even deeper down, Samuel Clemens.
Satan reflects a number of attributes characteristic of the irreverent Twain: Satan’s visit to Earth was less a pleasure trip than a forced exile as punishment for the archangel’s impudence—“Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator’s sparkling industries—remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms” (Letters 6). Satan, in effect, is a satirist. Of course, the exiled angel’s footnote that he plans to publish his correspondence on this little parochial planet Earth only bears out the interpretation.
Thus as dark as his tone may grow and as viciously as he writes—exploring human nature’s cruelty as second only to God’s—the narrator remains the same man as the writer of The Innocents Abroad. And all of these religious writings reflect an influence dating back to his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri—
Raised in “a community where many people revered the Bible as the Word of God, as virtually a letter direct from the hand of the Almighty” (Enson), Twain countered with his own letters. Though employing an increasingly dismal tone, the letters from Twain and Satan remain those of an optimist—attacking the superstition and hypocrisy he saw as a major cause of human suffering. And while Twain never separated himself from the “rest of the damned human race … no doubt he honestly believed, as he said countless times in public and private, that he was a moral coward” (Smith xvii), his own works make Twain himself a hypocrite.
Rather than cowardice, Mark Twain’s fearless irreverence merits the virtues he imputes to his alter ego Satan: “There was some aimless and halting conversation about matters of no consequence,” Twain writes of the archangels, “until at last the archangel Satan gathered his courage together—of which he had a very good supply—and broke ground” (Letters 3).
Ensor, Allison. Mark Twain & The Bible. Lexington, KY: University Of Kentucky Press, 1969. Print.
Morgan, H. Wayne. American Writers in Rebellion, from Mark Twain to Dreiser. Berlin: Hill & Wang Pub, 1965. Print.
Smith, Janet (ED). Mark Twain on the Damned Human Race. New York: Hill And Wang, 1962. Print.
Stowe, William W.. Going Abroad: European Travel in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Print.
Twain, Mark. Letters from the Earth. Bernard DeVoto ed. New York, Evanston, and London : Harper & Row, 1962. Print.
Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003. Print. | <urn:uuid:422f054c-9670-4571-ae67-3b811c31f7ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thescattering.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/letters-from-hell-mark-twain-and-satan-part-3-of-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950477 | 2,020 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world's largest academic and social science survey and research organization. We are a leader in developing and applying new social science methods, and we are committed to educating the next generation of social scientists. After a rich sixty-year history, we continue to broaden our scientific reach through international ventured and new collaborations with federal agencies, foundations, corporations, and private individuals.
ISR serves as a telescope on society, bringing the attitudes and behavior of people into clearer focus. Our annual budget of more than $80 million supports the research of more than 200 scientists from 20 disciplines, including psychology, business, economics, public health, demography, statistics, and engineering.
Our large survey studies include the Surveys of Consumers, the Health Retirement Study, the National Survey of American Life, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and the World Values Study. These studies -- providing data on voting behavior, teen drug and alcohol use, consumer confidence, the health and economic status of Black Americans, and other topics -- are among our most visible work. But we also develop and test survey methodologies; conduct experimental studies; maintain and distribute the world's largest archive of computerized social science data; and train and educate researchers and students from around the world in survey methodology and survey research.
Within the ISR are five separate but interdependent centers, each with particular focuses and capabilities: the Survey Research Center, the Research Center for Group Dynamics, the Population Studies Center, the Center for Political Studies, and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Our research scientists are entrepreneurs, collaborating with colleagues to compete for public and private research funding. The core disciplinary strengths within the centers provide the intellectual foundation for the multi- and interdisciplinary research that distinguishes our work. | <urn:uuid:d48a076a-c82e-4f73-a8de-89f27dc14766> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://press.sca.isr.umich.edu/press/about_us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90397 | 372 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Many readers and viewers wonder if John Osborn Jr. had someone special in mind when he created the imperious professor in his 1971 hit novel “The Paper Chase,” based on his Harvard Law School (HLS) years.
The book centers on “Hart,” an eager young law student, and his tumultuous relationship with an austere contracts professor named “Kingsfield” (played to perfection in the 1973 film by actor John Houseman, who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor).
With a careful reply, the author told HLS Dean Martha Minow and a crowd gathered at Austin Hall Thursday for a discussion about his book that the character was actually a composite of several people. But, he added, “It wasn’t like it was hard to find role models.”
According to Osborn, a 1967 Harvard College and 1970 HLS graduate, 40 years ago the Law School had professors with stern classroom styles and zero tolerance for poorly prepared pupils. Based on that experience, Osborn crafted his curmudgeonly composite, one that has proved popular to generations of readers and moviegoers. The hit movie version, released in 1973, was soon followed by a popular TV series that aired for four seasons in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Minow, it turns out, is one of those many groupies. “I am a ‘Paper Chase’ fan. It influenced my life, my career — here I am,” said the HLS dean, who asked Osborn a series of questions, including why he wrote a novel while balancing the strenuous workload of a third-year law student.
The decision was threefold, explained the author. At Harvard College, Osborn said he had wanted to pursue writing but was discouraged after being rejected from a poetry seminar by a teaching assistant who told him his poetry was terrible. He returned to writing at HLS in part as a “reaction against the status quo” — his feeling, he explained, that the School “glorified their teachers” over the students.
I was learning “reciprocity in the contract class, and yet there was no reciprocity in the classroom,” said Osborn.
In addition, the author said he chose to write as a way to “find another narrative” for himself, one that didn’t involve a large Wall Street firm after graduation. Later in the discussion, Osborn laughed while recalling how his fear of being sued over his book’s grim depictions of big-firm lawyers turned to utter surprise when they instead began to thank him for being included in his work.
Osborn said Harvard’s William Alfred, a professor of English literature, helped him work on the narrative and suggested a number of publishers.
In discussing the film, which he called an “almost literal transcription of the book,” Osborn said he worked closely with the movie’s noted cameraman, Gordon Willis of “The Godfather” fame, to help establish the imperious role of Kingsfield by including close-up shots of the gruff professor throughout the first part of the film. In addition, camera tricks and a movable set heightened the sense of distance between teacher and student. As the film progressed, Hart came increasingly into the foreground of the camera’s lens and was finally “right in the frame with Kingsfield,” on a par literally and figuratively with the stern professor, said Osborn.
Reflecting on the choice of Houseman to portray the professor in the film, Osborn said the actor was the perfect fit. “He could be that way; it wasn’t a big stretch for him. He was used to being in control.”
But when it came to the TV series, they had to modify the Kingsfield role to entice a weekly audience to keep watching. “You can’t have a guy who is just nasty through and through,” said Osborn. Instead, Houseman, who reprised the role for the series, offered viewers “a watered-down version” of Kingsfield for the small screen.
Osborn also discussed his work teaching at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law. Instead of relying on the intimidating “cold call” process where a professor simply points to a student and waits for the response to a question, he has his pupils raise their hands, he said, as a way to get them to engage. “Students,” he said, “are not scared in my class.”
Constitutional scholar and Osborn’s former professor Laurence Tribe said he thoroughly enjoyed the 40th anniversary event. “I loved this,” said Tribe, Harvard’s Carl M. Loeb University Professor. “He was a wonderful student in my seminar.”
First-year HLS student John Wiest heard about “The Paper Chase” only after he was accepted to the School, and his parents made him watch the film. “I was pretty terrified,” said Wiest of his reaction to the movie. “But I had been here to visit, so I was assured that was not reality.” | <urn:uuid:a772946a-23fa-40dc-8a68-b58d2d97d08c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/10/the-paper-chase-at-40/ | 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 | 0.986486 | 1,105 | 1.671875 | 2 |
I know of no way to measure suffering, no mechanism to quantify pain. All I know is that we Palestinians are not children of a lesser God.
Had I been a Jew or a Gypsy, I would consider the Holocaust to be the most atrocious event in history. Had I been a Native American, it would be the arrival of the European settlers and the subsequent near-total extermination of the indigenous population. Had I been an African American, it would be slavery in previous centuries and apartheid in the last. Had I been an Armenian, it would be the Turkish massacre.
I happen to be a Palestinian, and for Palestinians the most atrocious event in history is what we call the Nakba, the catastrophe. Humanity should consider all the above as morally unacceptable, all as politically inadmissible. Lest I be misunderstood, I am not comparing the Nakba to the Holocaust. Each catastrophe stands on its own, and I do not like to indulge in comparative martyrology or a hierarchy of tragedies. I only mention our respective traumas in order to illustrate that we each bring to the table our own particular history.
The fact that the accords reached last week in Mecca between Hamas and Fatah were met with a variety of reactions, ranging from warm to cautious to skeptical, makes it imperative to revisit and learn the lessons of the diplomatic history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Time and again the three “no’s” of the Khartoum summit in 1967 — no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations with Israel — are invoked as proof conclusive of Arab intransigence toward Israel. Such a claim, however, conveniently forgets that Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and Jordan accepted United Nations Security Council resolution 242 just months after the Khartoum meeting.
Also forgotten is that Syria, after the October War in 1973 — the purpose of which, it should be remembered, was to reactivate a dormant diplomatic process and to capture the attention of American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — accepted U.N. resolution 338, which incorporated resolution 242. Ignored, too, is that the entire Arab world endorsed a peace plan put forth by the then-Saudi crown prince Fahd at a 1982 summit in Fez, Morocco, as well as unanimously backed the initiative put forth by then-Saudi crown prince Abdallah in Beirut in 2002.
For the Palestinian national movement, the October War in 1973 was a demarcation line in strategic thinking. It is then that we concluded that there was no military solution to the conflict. Until then we had advocated a unitary, democratic, bicultural, multiethnic and pluri-confessional state in Mandatory Palestine.
After 1973, a pragmatic coalition within the Palestine Liberation Organization emerged. Composed of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, Nayef Hawatmeh’s Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and As Sa’iqa, the Palestinian branch of the Syrian Ba’ath Party, the coalition demanded not absolute justice but rather possible justice within the framework of a two-state solution. The fact that As Sa’iqa belonged to that school of thought, it is worth noting, is proof that Damascus can be a constructive player in the region if properly engaged and its concerns addressed. Syria is not necessarily the eternal spoiler that needs to use the Lebanese theater or the Palestinian scene in order to remind everyone of its presence.
Led by this pragmatic coalition, the PLO was ready for a historical compromise as far back as 1974. It was not the rejectionist player, as many have labeled it, but rather the rejected party until the Oslo peace talks in 1993. Throughout its presence in Lebanon, the PLO aimed to remain a military factor so as to be accepted as a diplomatic actor.
I have told my many Israeli interlocutors that I believe that the Israeli posture in peace negotiations was to expect a diplomatic outcome that would reflect Israeli power and intransigence, American alignment toward Israeli preferences, declining Russian influence, European abdication, Arab impotence and what they hoped to be Palestinian resignation.
It is this attitude that has resulted in having a durable peace process instead of a lasting and permanent peace. Peace and security will stem not from territorial aggrandizement but from regional acceptance — and make no mistake about it, we Palestinians are the key to regional acceptance of Israel. For years now, the Arab world from Morocco to Muscat has been ready to recognize the existence of Israel if it withdraws back from its expanded 1967 borders. The perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is due not to the Arab rejection of Israeli existence, but to the Israeli rejection of Arab acceptance.
The absence of a credible diplomatic avenue has allowed for the emergence and the strengthening of radical movements. The electoral defeat of Fatah in January 2006 was caused by a plurality of factors, not least of them the fact that Fatah became identified with negotiations and a peace process that was non-existent for the last six years and totally unconvincing during the years preceding. To the Palestinians, the last 15 years of “peacemaking” were years during which we witnessed the expansion of the occupation — with the number of settlers doubling — not a withdrawal from the occupation.
Now, however, there is a chance to move beyond this history. As a result of the agreement reached last week in Mecca, the Palestinian government will be more representative than at any period before. The new foreign minister, Ziad Abu Amr, both enjoys the confidence of Hamas and is a political friend of Mahmoud Abbas — who as PLO chairman is charged with negotiating on behalf of the Palestinian people and as P.A. president has prerogative over the conduct of foreign affairs.
Both Fatah and Hamas are in favor of a cease-fire, for which they can now ensure disciplined Palestinian adherence — especially if it is reciprocated by the Israeli side and extended to the West Bank, where alas we have recently witnessed an escalation in assassinations and arrests. And in Mecca, Hamas and Fatah agreed that the Palestinian government will honor all agreements signed by the PLO, will abide by all the resolutions of previous Arab summits and will base its activity on international law.
The term “honor,” rest assured, has as much a ring of nobility to it in Arabic — if not more — as it does in any other language.
A territory that was occupied in 1967 in less than six days can also be evacuated in six days — so that Israelis can rest on the seventh, and we can all finally engage in the fascinating journey of nation-building and economic recovery.
Afif Safieh is head of the Palestine Liberation Organization Mission to the United States. | <urn:uuid:c3af7b0d-c348-4138-a387-ab249e708df4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forward.com/articles/10104/we-palestinians-will-honor-our-word/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958888 | 1,385 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Florida voters are no different than their counterparts across the U.S. when it comes to what worries them most: the economy.
While the national unemployment rate tops 9 percent, things are even tougher in the Sunshine State. Florida's unemployment rate now stands at 10.7 percent, and shows no sign of budging.
Justin Sayfie, a well-known Florida political consultant and author of the Sayfie Review, says it's simple: "It's jobs, economic growth and unemployment."
Floridians are also near the top of the foreclosure list with only California having more foreclosure filings in August. Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida, say's it's a place Floridians aren't used to being.
"Floridians are used to an economy that rebounds in bad times, but this time it hasn't happened," she said.
She added that they are open to bold proposals, and warns candidates not to show up without a detailed plan of action. "It can't be generic, 'I'm gonna do it'; it has to be specific."
F.J. Cotter and his wife Christy are clearly concerned about the economy and say they now owe more on their house than it's worth. At Thursday's Fox News/Google presidential debate, they'll be listening for leadership. "I want to hear how they are going to spur growth back into the private sector," F.J. said.
Another topic candidates will have to navigate carefully is Social Security. Older voters are voicing concerns about whether their benefits will continue, and don't take criticism of the program's solvency lightly.
"Calling it a Ponzi scheme implies that it is a criminal enterprise, but Social Security is not criminal," said South Florida voter, Jeff Niefeld, 62, responding to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s comparison of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme.
Sayfie says Florida's younger voters (those under 50 now make up nearly 50 percent of the electorate here) are open to having those tough conversations about entitlements.
"If you're a voter between the ages of 18 and 30 you're paying into the system and you don't have a reasonable belief that you're going to be paid, the words Ponzi scheme probably sound about right," Sayfie said.
With 29 electoral votes at stake, candidates know that winning over Florida's voters may be necessary for getting to the White House.
"There is an old saying that is very true,” MacManus said. “'As Florida goes, so does the nation.'" | <urn:uuid:cfa6b948-3608-433c-94a3-0c9ca546c7ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/20/as-floridas-political-hot-spots-go-so-goes-nations/?test=latestnews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965329 | 541 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Reform falters in Europe after 53 deaths from E. coli O104 in sprouts
Posted: June 3rd, 2012 - 12:24pm
In May, 2011, the delayed reporting of cases between agencies due to a decentralized government and its agencies was a contributing factor in the Germany-based E. coli O104 outbreak that led to 53 deaths and over 4,000 sick people. The E. coli strain responsible for the outbreak was unusually virulent, with high mortality and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) rates observed in healthy adults.
A year later, Marian Turner writes in Nature that governments have made little progress towards improving the monitoring and reporting systems that allowed the crisis to drag on for weeks.
Although the panic has sparked some proposed policy changes, these have become mired in political debate at both German and European levels.
Under Germany’s current system, it can take up to 18 days for local and state health departments to relay case reports to the Berlin-based Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German federal agency for disease surveillance. Legislators have proposed a law to bring the country’s disease-reporting schedule into line with the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations. The law would require local health authorities to report cases of notifiable diseases to state authorities on the next working day; the states would then have another day to relay the information to the RKI. “We’ve been waiting almost a decade for this,” says Alexander Kekulé, a microbiologist at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Halle, Germany.
The draft law has been passed by Germany’s federal parliament but is stuck in negotiations at the legislative council that represents Germany’s 16 states. For scientists, though, this change would still not be enough. “What really delayed the detection of this outbreak was the irregularity with which patients were referred for microbiological follow-up,” says Gérard Krause, an epidemiologist at the RKI. Like many European countries, Germany does not require that a patient with bloody diarrhoea or haemolytic uraemic syndrome (a life-threatening complication of some E. coli infections) be tested for the causative bacterial strain. The same is true of the United States.
After the outbreak, German diagnostic laboratories were provided with kits to test samples for genes belonging to certain pathogenic strains of bacteria, such as those expressing particular toxins, or proteins involved in adhesion or invasion.
But physicians are responsible for requesting the tests, and the cost is not covered by German health-insurance companies. “The problem is mostly getting the money to use these kits,” says Angelika Fruth, a microbiologist at the RKI, “and that situation is just the same as before the outbreak.”
In the wake of the outbreak, the European Food Safety Authority concluded that sprouted seeds pose a particular food-safety concern, and recommended that a standardized test for sprouts be developed and adopted across the European Union (EU). But EU member countries are still discussing the proposal, and scientists have yet to develop reliable methods to isolate pathogenic bacteria from seeds or sprouts. | <urn:uuid:845fcddf-f9b6-4966-ae00-c58f1543f569> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bites.ksu.edu/news/155181/12/06/03/reform-falters-europe-after-53-deaths-e-coli-o104-sprouts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958162 | 666 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Applications to be a part of the Healthy U Class of 2013 are due in about three weeks. click to hear KMZU’s Sarah Scott speak with Pettis County Healthy Living Action Group Chairperson Sarah Nail:
The year-long program teaches its 12 members to live a healthier lifestyle. Nail said the twelve students who are accepted should be prepared to share the experience publicly. Those interested need to have their application turned into the Bothwell Education Center by 5:00 p.m. on October 31st.
Press Release from Bothwell Regional Health Center
SEDALIA, MO – The Pettis County Healthy Living Action Group is seeking applicants for the Healthy U Class of 2013. The community wellness project is about changing the lives of 12 Pettis County residents, and through them, inspiring the entire community to make healthier choices.
The 12 Healthy U students, who will be selected through an application process, will be paired with fitness and nutrition coaches for a year. The program will begin in January 2013.
“Our Class of 2012 has experienced great success and we are hoping to replicate that with another group next year. An added benefit to the Class of 2013 will be having students from this year serve as their mentors,” said Sarah Nail, chairwoman of HLAG and community outreach coordinator at Bothwell Regional Health Center. “We are looking for individuals who are ready to make the necessary lifestyle changes to lose weight and become healthier.”
The idea is that the 12 participants will inspire others in the community — family, friends, co-workers, neighbors — by publicly sharing their journey through media, Facebook and community events. Other program components will give the community tools and support they need to be successful.
A prize package will be awarded to the Healthy U winner with the highest percentage of weight loss.
Selected Healthy U students will meet weekly as a group in addition to meeting one-on-one with their coaches throughout the year. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, a resident of Pettis County and willing to publicly share their stories. Completed applications should be returned to the Bothwell Education Center by 5 p.m., Oct. 31.
Applications are available at HLAG agencies: Bothwell Regional Health Center, Katy Trail Community Health, Pettis County Health Center, Pettis County Community Partnership and University of Missouri Extension. The application can also be found online at brhc.org or on Facebook at facebook.com/HUPettisCounty.
For more information contact Sarah Nail at 827-9138 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
Healthy U sponsors for 2012 include HLAG agencies and Total Fitness Gym, Backbone of Health, Woods Supermarket, Bodyworks Day Spa, Blue Ribbon Steering Committee, Fig Leaf, Third National Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, ProVelo, Champion Bicycles and the United Way. | <urn:uuid:d065ee28-9f73-43df-8121-660f4b21f0bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kmzu.com/healthy-u-accepting-applications/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947524 | 598 | 1.539063 | 2 |
ELECTRONICS: The BMA220 digital sensor from Bosch Sensortec is the smallest digital acceleration sensor in LGA housing in the world ‒ it measures only 2 x 2 x 0.98 mm, including LGA housing. For the second time, Bosch Sensortec, the Bosch subsidiary specializing in sensors for consumer electronics, has emerged as the pace setter for technological innovation: In 2007, Bosch Sensortec was the first to successfully pack sensors in LGA housings measuring only three millimeters ‒ until then, the standard had been four millimeters. However, the unbroken trend towards miniaturization in mobile consumer electronics demands an even greater reduction in surface area: The new generation of 2 x 2 LGA housings occupies 79 percent less surface area on a circuit board than that required for the 6 x 6 sensor that marked Bosch Sensortec’s market debut in 2005.
The reduced dimensions are not linked to a loss in functionality or quality: The BMA220, which has already been delivered in large quantities to OEM customers, is a fully fledged, triaxial g-sensor with digital data output, four programmable measuring ranges from ±2 to ±16 g, and integrated evaluation electronics for recognizing specific motion patterns. For use in pedometers (step counters), Bosch Sensortec wrote specific evaluation algorithms tailored to the BMA220, a service that substantially shortened development time for the end device. Other applications include 3-D spatial orientation in mobile telephones, PDAs and game controllers, as well as targeted reactions to movements, such as the ability to mute a ring tone by tapping twice on the mobile phone.
The evaluation electronics integrated in the sensor obsoletes the need for intensive signal evaluation by the host application’s microcontroller. This greatly reduces energy use in the mobile device, which significantly extends battery life.
In the BMA220, the algorithms for motion recognition run internally on an ASIC; therefore, the sensor can autonomously and automatically distinguish between a random movement, a change in its spatial position, a single tap, double taps, and between slow and fast changes in movement.
The motion recognition parameters can be programmed by the customer. The sensor signals the availability of new data at the interrupt output; at the same time, the sensor also outputs them in conditioned form to the digital interface. This means that end product developers no longer have to grapple with complex raw three axis acceleration data from the internal micromechanical readings recorder.
- Edited by Liz Taurasi | <urn:uuid:ab2104e1-8d6a-4761-9537-6e81e8e7be65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=210994&piddl_msgorder=thrd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927187 | 520 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Photograph titled "Mr. Thomas Coleman's Anniversary" by Scurlock Studio, 1951
The Modern Lovers may be the quintessential "We Love the Velvet Underground" band, as the band's existence derives from and overlaps with the Velvet Underground in a variety of ways. Frontman Jonathan Richman moved to New York in 1969 in part because of his fascination with the Velvets, and he stayed with their manager for a while when he arrived in the city. John Cale produced the band's first demos. And then there's the undeniable influence of Lou Reed's singing style on Richman's vocals. But there's a subtler VU influence that can be found in other aspects of the Lovers' music, like Richman's willingness to blend ultra-cool subject matter with the totally uncool in his lyrics.
Where Reed's songwriting had songs about filth and drug addiction sitting next to twee-pop nursery rhymes like "After Hours" and "I'm Sticking With You", Richman mixed dark "relationship" material with decidedly un-punk material about "growing up" and "the good old days". Take a song like "Dignified & Old", for instance - Richman confronts this contradiction head-on in a song about the comfort of anticipating old age when being young and in love just sucks. He admits that his friends accuse him of contradicting himself, but this doesn't stop him from saying, "Hey kids! Someday we'll be dignified and old!"
"Dignified & Old" by the Modern Lovers | <urn:uuid:5a8c2d55-f864-449c-9c98-d0521c39cb5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiresandwaves.com/2010/09/we-love-velvet-underground-dignified.html | 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 | 0.961366 | 323 | 1.59375 | 2 |
way of understanding the culinary genius of various ethnic cuisines is by cooking their
rice. Rice Gourmet.com brings to you delectable rice recipes from countries all over the
Rice is a simple grain yet throughout history it has been on royal menus of various
cultures as the main dish. From the pilav of Turkey, polou of Persia, pilafs of the
Steppes, the isotos and paellas of the Mediterranean, to the pilau of India it has been
served to great sultans, maharajahs, shahs and emperors. Spices, nuts, dried fruits,
vegetables and herbs transform rice into extraordinary meals. | <urn:uuid:c0649699-428d-4589-89e9-a3489df6eb92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ricegourmet.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923427 | 144 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Michigan's school board elections will be held in November of even-numbered years through legislation signed by Gov. Rick Snyder.
The legislation that the Republican governor signed today will require school board and intermediate school district elections to be held at the same time as November general elections.
Supporters of the legislation say it will ensure that school board elections are held when voter turnout is highest. Supporters say it also should help consolidate elections and savein some locations.
Opponents say it would cost schools and local jurisdictions more money if they must switch election dates. | <urn:uuid:2ae6bf62-02cf-4d69-ba52-576b9d101614> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://districtadministration.com/news/michigan-education-elections-coincide-november-general-elections | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97991 | 109 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Friday, September 26, 2008
Posted by Beth Revis at 10:49 AM
A continuation of the opening speech on Saturday at the SCBWI-C conference by Anita Silvey on the stories behind some of the greatest children stories of America.
Here are some more of the highlights from the speech. Click for parts 1 and 2.
- My Father's Dragon is a picture book I'd never personally heard of, but a story I envy. The author wrote the story in two weeks during college break, her mother-in-law illustrated it, and her future husband, a book designer, helped the book get published. Literally an overnight success, the book is still in print. What I loved about the story was Silvey's commentary. She said, "there's always one book that's a gift" for an author—there's one book that just flows and is perfect and easy and brilliant to write.
- Charlotte's Web was written after the author had done an article for Atlantic Monthly on the death of a pig. He wished he could write a story where the pig could live, and knew that it would have to be a children's story. When he walked passed the barn and saw a spider's web, he had his story. The editor said he only changed one thing about the manuscript: the chapter title called "The Death of Charlotte" was retitled to "The Final Days" as the word "death" was considered too harsh for children. Reviewers hated the book—perhaps because of the powerful message about death—and influenced the Newbery Awards to give Charlotte's Web the runner-up slot. Of course, the winner is now in obscurity and Charlotte's Web is one of the best selling paperbacks in America...
- And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street was rejected over 20 times before Dr. Seuss almost gave up. He was on his way to his apartment to burn the manuscript when he ran into an old college friend...who'd just been promoted to children's book editors. He took the book sight unseen. When Seuss asked if he even wanted to read the book, the new editor said "I wouldn't know a children's book if it bit me on the ankle" and he just needed something, anything. Before this time, picture books tended to be message-laden and serious, but this was different—and a success. Seuss helped revolutionize the entire children's book world...and to think it all started with Mulberry Street.
- Scott O'Dell was in his fifties when he finished Island of the Blue Dolphins, but the story was one that "he always had to tell." He had not intended it to be a kids' book, but his publisher relabeled it as such after submission. Silvey said of O'Dell's writing of the book: "This was a gift to Scott, and he then wrote it and made it a gift to all of us." When O'Dell died in his nineties, a group of friends sailed into the Pacific to scatter his ashes. On the voyage home, 18 blue dolphins escorted the boat back home.
- An interesting note about O'Dell, by Silvey: He loved librarians. "He married one, and that was the problem: he could only marry one."
- A Wrinkle in Time was written by L'Engle after she'd published before, but her publisher wouldn't touch this new manuscript: it was too different. L'Engle's mother had a tea party for her, invited the editor Farrar (of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux fame), and basically forced the manuscript on him. They had a small print run (which could have been bought up by L'Engle's mother and friends if it flopped). Everyone was shocked when they discovered what a huge success the book became. As Silvey said, "Great books eventually find their way; you just have to give them time."
Coming tomorrow (are you sick of the subject yet?): Wild Things! Terrible Days! Raw Turtle Eggs! | <urn:uuid:e6da388e-e020-4bd3-8551-649b08088141> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bethrevis.blogspot.com/2008/09/conference-notes-ouhttpwwwbloggercomimg.html?m=0 | 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 | 0.988042 | 842 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Opinion: Ban high-capacity ammunition clips
IN RECENT DAYS I’ve repeatedly asked myself: When will we wake up? How many of our sons and daughters must die — how many lives must be taken — before we act to slow the bloodshed in America?
For the last several days, I’ve joined Americans in mourning the 12 innocent people murdered in Aurora, Colo. And my thoughts and prayers have been with the dozens more still recovering from their wounds.
But while Congress mourns, we must remember that tears alone will not prevent future tragedies. Rather, we have an obligation to turn our grief into change, for this is the type of massacre our nation has grown to know all too well.
It’s time we sound the alarm on gun violence in America and begin a real national conversation on common-sense solutions. We need to acknowledge that our lax gun laws make it far too easy for murderers to commit acts of violence. We owe the victims and their families more than our solidarity and condolences; we owe them our action.
When the gunman arrived at the movie theater in Aurora, he showed up with an assault rifle with a 100-round magazine, a shotgun and two handguns. And although police responded in 90 seconds, his arsenal gave him more than enough time to kill 12 people and injure 58 more.
Mother, fathers, children
Among those who lost their lives were mothers and fathers, servicemen and a veteran, a recent high school graduate and college student. And of course, 24-year-old New Jersey native Alex Teves and 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, whose tragic death reminds us all too well of 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green’s in Tucson.
As we consider what we can do to prevent future massacres, one similarity between the shootings in Colorado and Arizona stands out: Both killers were armed with magazines capable of shooting dozens of rounds without having to reload — and they bought them legally.
The Colorado shooter carried a firearm loaded with a magazine capable of shooting 100 rounds in less than two minutes, and the Arizona shooter had one that shot 30 rounds. If they didn’t have those magazines, maybe more husbands, wives and children would be alive today. Maybe fewer people would be suffering from bullet wounds. If they’d had to stop sooner, maybe more precious lives could have been saved.
These magazines are the tools of mass murderers. No matter what the gun lobby might have us believe, nobody needs one to go duck hunting. | <urn:uuid:fe6de5a5-05c8-413f-83ff-f2a2bc75ea15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/lautenberg_073112.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966063 | 519 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Five highlights from this month’s Florida jobs report
- The unemployment rate held steady, at 10.6 percent, a reminder that the economic recovery remains fragile and slow. The numbers released today show 982,000 Floridians are still out of work, though the state has gained 85,500 jobs since the beginning of the year.
- This was the first time in five years that the state saw a monthly gain in manufacturing jobs, adding 800 in June (seasonally adjusted).
- The biggest source of job growth continues to be leisure and hospitality, followed by private education and health services. Government and construction continue to be among the sectors losing the most jobs.
- The Space Coast continues to suffer the most regional job losses, shedding another 5,500 over the year last month.
- The Agency for Workforce Innovation is touting changes to the state’s unemployment compensation system, which will shorten the benefits period and make it easier for employees to be denied benefits based on misconduct. According to today’s jobs report, the changes will also “save the state money, reduce taxes on employers and help get Floridians back to work.”
The full test of the report is below:
TALLAHASSEE – Florida’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June 2011 is 10.6 percent. This represents 982,000 jobless out of a labor force of 9,234,000. The state’s unemployment rate is unchanged from May 2011 but is 0.8 percentage point lower than the June 2010 rate of 11.4 percent. The U.S. unemployment rate is 9.2 percent in June.
Florida’s seasonally adjusted total nonagricultural employment in June 2011 is 7,247,000, an increase of 4,300 jobs (+0.1 percent) from May 2011. Florida has gained 85,500 jobs from January through June 2011.
“While Florida’s continued pattern of job growth is good news, we still have much work to do to restore our state’s economy to pre-recession levels, and that effort remains our highest priority,” said Agency for Workforce Innovation Director Cynthia R. Lorenzo. “Under Governor Scott’s leadership and through Florida’s nationally recognized workforce services, we are committed to ensuring our employers and potential employers have the support they need to succeed and create the jobs that will continue Florida’s forward momentum.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month recognized Florida as the top state in the nation for workforce training programs in its Enterprising States report, up from No. 2 the previous year. The rankings are based on measures including job placement, the affordability and efficiency of a state’s higher education system and the number of high school students enrolled in advanced placement courses. The report also touted Florida’s Quick Response Training (QRT) program, which advances job creation and retention by supporting customized skills upgrade training for new or expanding businesses.
The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey for the third quarter of 2011 finds Florida employers are becoming more confident about their staffing plans. The survey found 17 percent of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees from July to September, while another 70 percent expect to maintain their current staff levels.
Unemployment Compensation Changes
Legislation signed into law last month enacts several changes that will save the state money, reduce taxes on employers and help get Floridians back to work. Changes taking effect August 1, 2011 include:
Internet Filing and Certification of Weeks – Initial and continued claims must be filed over the Internet. The change will improve government efficiency and provide a projected $4.7 million savings annually in administrative costs.
Work Search – Claimants are required on a weekly basis to contact five potential employers and provide this information over the Internet during their bi-weekly certification for benefits. A quick, efficient way to contact employers is by using the Employ Florida Marketplace at employflorida.com, the state’s online job matching system where you can search thousands of job postings and apply for jobs.
If a claimant is not able to make at least five employer contacts in a week, meeting with a representative at a local One-Stop Career Center for reemployment services may satisfy this requirement for that week.
Skills Review – In order to receive benefits, claimants filing new claims must complete an initial skills review over the Internet. The results of the review will be used by local One-Stop Career Centers to assist claimants with job searches.
For more information, please visit floridajobs.org.
Florida’s Nonagricultural Employment by Industry (Seasonally Adjusted)
- · The number of jobs in Florida is 7,247,000 in June 2011, up 53,000 jobs compared to a year ago. June is the ninth consecutive month with positive annual job growth since the state started losing jobs in July 2007. The industry gaining the most jobs is leisure and hospitality (+46,700 jobs, +5.1 percent).
- · Other industries gaining jobs include private education and health services (+21,500 jobs, +2.0 percent); professional and business services (+7,500 jobs, +0.7 percent); trade, transportation, and utilities (+4,400 jobs, +0.3 percent); other services (+2,300 jobs, +0.7 percent); and manufacturing (+800 jobs, +0.3 percent).
- · The June increase in manufacturing employment is the first annual gain in manufacturing since June 2006.
- · These industry job gains are partially due to increases in food services and drinking places; hospitals; legal services and management/technical consulting services; motor vehicle and parts dealers; repair and maintenance; and fabricated metal product manufacturing.
- · Industries losing jobs over the year include: total government (-16,000 jobs, -1.4 percent); construction (-9,400 jobs, -2.7 percent); information (-3,600 jobs, -2.7 percent); and financial activities (-1,300 jobs, -0.3 percent).
- · These industry job losses are partially due to losses in federal government which employed temporary census workers last year; construction of buildings; telecommunications; and insurance carriers and related activities.
Local Area Unemployment Statistics (Not Seasonally Adjusted)
- · In June 2011, Monroe County has the state’s lowest unemployment rate (6.6 percent), followed by Walton County (6.9 percent); Liberty County (7.0 percent); Okaloosa County (7.4 percent); and Lafayette County (7.7 percent). Most of the counties with the lowest unemployment rates are those with relatively high proportions of government employment. Others had seasonal increases in tourism-related employment.
- · Hendry County has the highest unemployment rate (16.2 percent) in Florida in June 2011, followed by Flagler County (14.6 percent); Miami-Dade County (13.9 percent); Hernando County (13.8 percent); and Indian River County (13.5 percent). Seasonal declines in agriculture and related industries contributed to Hendry County’s high unemployment rate. There were 38 Florida counties with double-digit unemployment rates in June.
Area Nonagricultural Employment (Not Seasonally Adjusted)
- · Twelve metro areas of the 22 in the state have over-the-year job gains in June 2011. The areas with the largest gains are Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall (+12,700 jobs, +1.3 percent), Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford (+8,000 jobs, +0.8 percent), and Jacksonville (+5,400 jobs, +0.9 percent). Of the metro areas with job declines, the largest losses are in Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville
(-5,500 jobs, -2.8 percent), Cape Coral-Ft. Myers (-3,000 jobs, -1.5 percent), and Naples-Marco Island (-2,500 jobs, -2.3 percent). | <urn:uuid:5b480537-6b6c-4efc-bb14-f80cad169607> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://floridaindependent.com/40394/five-highlights-from-this-months-florida-jobs-report | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939035 | 1,660 | 1.71875 | 2 |
On Apr 7, 8:19, Daniel Stenberg wrote:
>We're now down to only 2 remaining warnings with the "regular" (non-pedantic)
>icc 8.0 compiler. (and 252 warnings with the pedantic one!)
>Both of these are "warning #269: invalid format string conversion" and they
>both (AFAICS) complain on the use of 'z' as modifier to printf() a size_t
>POSIX 1003.1 says 'z' is the modifier to use:
>... and our internal printf() code supports it.
>It makes me wonder what icc considers is the right choice here? I suspect we
>will have to live with these 2 warnings.
[A rather late reply, I finally got some time to look into some of this.]
AFAIK the 'z' modifier is an OSI C99 feature, and icc is apparently meant to
be a c99 compiler.. it has flags to switch c99 mode on and off etc. (c99 is
default). I haven't found anything in the documented list of incompatibilities.
I have asked on the Intel support forum list if this should be regarded as a
bug in icc. No replies yet, will report later if I get any.
>With my commit yesterday regarding the new auth code, it seems one or two
>tests have started to fail on Tru64. I'm puzzled to why this test fails on one
>particular platform, but I'll try to look over my source code to see if I've
>made any apparent mistakes. Anyone with any suspicitions or clues?
When I tried to reproduce this yesterday, it came out all clear.. so it looked
like whatever was done the last day had fixed the problem. Looking at last
night's builds however, it seems that the 154 test case error is gone, and the
88 one happened on only one of the Tru64 builds. Oh, and on one of the IRIX
I also read today's posting <Pine.LNX.4.58.0404160922050.3576_at_linux3.contactor.se>
which indicates that 88 is actually case 91 all over again.. and it is not
What about that 154 error? It looked fairly consistent (happened on all the
Tru64 builds since before Easter I think), is it fixed? Or just randomly
Anyway, I'll run my autobuild script a bunch of times to see what happens
(in mail-off mode ;-)
Received on 2004-04-16 | <urn:uuid:cb1387df-5495-4e50-adf2-912452d5c252> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2004-04/0180.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928732 | 554 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Scans of lines drawings, submitted by Jack Hudock. Use the "slide show" view to get an idea of what the images show. Use the Attachments links to download large versions.
- These are scans of microfilm copies in the National Archives collection (quality is not ideal).
- The notes below the Table of Offsets read:
- Offsets are in feet, inches, and eights, to outside of planking.
- Heights of sheer at side are taken to underside of deck planking. (Which is 1.5 inches square.)
- Heights to top of upper guard same as sheer at side. | <urn:uuid:b4c5999b-ea11-4767-b5c7-79ccab3c9807> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.subchaser.org/chaser-lines | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925775 | 132 | 2.046875 | 2 |
|Sponsor||Rep. Moran, James P.|
|Date||June 3, 2009 (111th Congress, 1st Session)|
|Staff Contact||Andy Koenig|
The House is scheduled to begin consideration of H.R. 1385, the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act on Wednesday, June 3, 2009, under a structured rule (H.Res. 490). The rule provides for one hour of debate and makes the following two amendments in order. Each amendment is debatable for ten minutes.
H.R. 1385 was introduced on March 9, 2009, by Rep. James Moran (D-VA) and referred to the Natural Resources Committee. On April 22, 2009, the bill was marked-up and reported, as amended, by voice vote.
1) Goodlatte (R-VA): Prohibits the use of eminent domain to acquire lands put into trust for any of the six Indian Tribes that would receive federal recognition under the legislation.
2) Goodlatte (R-VA): Prohibits the Secretary of Interior from taking land into trust from Albemarle County, Alleghany County, Amherst County, Augusta County, Campbell County, Nelson County, and Rockbridge County, Virginia, for the Monacan Indians. The Secretary would only be authorized to take land into trust for the tribe from Amherst County, Virginia. All past legislative efforts to recognize this tribe have only included lands in Amherst County and, according to the sponsor's office, the additional counties were added to the legislation without the local government's knowledge. | <urn:uuid:adecff7d-b3f0-4c3d-863a-cc21837dfe6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gop.gov/bill/111/1/hr1385amendments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950124 | 337 | 1.828125 | 2 |
For Immediate Release: September 8, 2012
Contact: CARLA DAVIS, firstname.lastname@example.org or (240) 482-3887; FRANCIE ISRAELI, email@example.com or (202) 207-1134
ALLEY CAT ALLIES TO 20/20: GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT ON CATS
ABC’s 20/20 hypes myths about wildlife predation while ignoring the real threat: humans
BETHESDA, MD— Alley Cat Allies, the only national advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and humane treatment of cats, today derided ABC’s 20/20 after the program aired a sensational segment about outdoor cats and wildlife predation, but ignored the species with the greatest impact on wildlife: people.
“20/20 aired this segment without first checking the facts,” said Becky Robinson, president and co-founder of Alley Cat Allies. “The program did not bother to turn to cat experts for fairness, balance or truth. It also ignored the massive scientific evidence pointing to people as the true cause of wildlife decline, with the greatest impacts caused by habitat loss, pollution, and urban sprawl.”
Ironically, the program was titled, “The Camera Doesn’t Lie,” but 20/20’s segment on cats was full of half-truths and misleading information.
The 20/20 segment misused unpublished data by the University of Georgia in which researchers used “kitty cams” attached to collars to follow a small group of pet cats in suburban Athens, Georgia. In one week, the 55 cats caught five birds. While erroneous headlines have trumped the cats’ natural instincts, the researchers actually found that the majority of cats studied were not hunters, and that birds were by far not a major target.
Alley Cat Allies also called out 20/20 for turning to the American Bird Conservancy for comment, even though this group’s propaganda and distortions have been roundly criticized.
“The American Bird Conservancy is known for spreading fictions about outdoor cats and making wild extrapolations about their imagined impact on other species,” said Robinson. “They’ve used unpublished data to fuel their extremist agenda of killing cats. There just isn’t evidence that shows cats have any negative impact on bird populations.”
About Alley Cat Allies
Alley Cat Allies is the only national advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and humane treatment of cats. Founded in 1990, today Alley Cat Allies has more than 260,000 supporters and helps tens of thousands of individuals, communities, and organizations save and improve the lives of millions of cats and kittens nationwide. Their web site is www.alleycat.org. | <urn:uuid:409cad5e-ecfb-4302-9055-41d4837883fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alleycat.org/page.aspx?pid=1307 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9218 | 582 | 2.21875 | 2 |