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"There probably will be some bank failures," he said, though they are likely to be among smaller regional banks that are particularly exposed to falling property markets.So, Bernanke expects smaller banks to fail? Aren't some of the largest investment banks heavily exposed to mortgage bond losses? I think he is suggesting some consolidation will be happening. What might occur is larger banks preying on smaller banks in cannibalistic fashion. If all banks are finding it hard to make any money and can't borrow, the larger ones, especially those with access to the Fed's "discount window" and "term auction facility", could take over pretty much any bank they want. They will of course choose the most solvent ones, which have capital on deposit. They will use that money to pay off their bad loans! Any bad loans on the consumed bank's books will not be absorbed, rather it will be disposed of by being passed off to "garbage can" banks. Jim Willie has written extensively about how JP Morgan functions as the Fed's depository of debt that must never see the light of day
Continuing in this extrapolating manner, of positing free ranging thought experiments, I'll point out another thing. This process might continue up the food chain. The big New York banks and investment houses have always assumed that the Fed has their back and wouldn't let anything truly bad happen to them. Such assumptions are true to a point. The Fed is just one more bank, albeit the biggest. The Fed is having problems of it's own. It has blown almost its whole stash of capital trying to stabilize the credit crisis, and it has failed. It can neither raise nor lower interest rates. It can only create more "dollars", of uncertain worth, but they hemorrhage out of the financial system faster than the Fed can create them. I don't think Wall Street can be too confident that the Fed has their back for ever. At some point, after much bank-failing and insolvencies have come to light, and when the Citibanks and Goldman Sachs are still struggling to survive, they might realize that the Fed is now looking at them with a hungry eye, and inventorying their balance sheets for morsels.
OK, one more thing, on banks. Suppose you are a bank with a lot of unsalvageable mortgage debt. You have no morsels of good loans, and little capital to attract predators (i.e. investors). There is no market for your shit, and you know, deep in your heart, that there never will be, and you can't raise capital from any friendly Saudi Princes. Bankruptcy is inevitable. About the only thing you can do is control the timing. Maybe you can choose a favorable moment to go out? A good time might be when a lot of other banks go down. Or when there is an international crisis. Perhaps a currency crisis! Then you will be less exposed to liability. You might even get to claim a force majeure. Corporations always think of their liability first. Will they consider their depositors in this calculus? No way. Only liability. | <urn:uuid:5f920049-8387-4674-b7ec-25d652218a1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://neontetra.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969259 | 637 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Dangerous and mentally ill, a 'blind-spot' in Texas law
Texas law says that a defendant being held for competency restoration can be hospitalized no longer than he would be if convicted and sentenced to the maximum penalty. Therefore a defendant charged with a second-degree felony and deemed incompetent to stand trial can only be held in a psychiatric hospital for 20 years, the maximum penalty for a second degree felony.
A patient reaching the maximum period of hospitalization could be committed by a civil judge if he is to be held in a state hospital against his wishes.
Civil commitments are performed when people with mental illness are determined to be a serious danger to themselves or others or when their condition has so deteriorated that they can't care for themselves.
A judge decides the continued commitment based on a psychiatric evaluations and recent behavior. A well behaved, appropriately medicated patient will seldom be civilly committed.
According to the Austin American-Statesman, the recent court-ordered release of potentially violent, mentally ill Brad Reinke, after he spent 20 years in a state mental hospital, has officials scrambling to figure out how to protect his family and the community in a situation prosecutors say points to a blind spot in Texas's mental health laws.
The Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas' highest criminal court, in June ordered a 1990 attempted murder case against Brad Reinke dismissed. Reinke was accused of attacking his father with a knife at the family's Northwest Austin home while his mother fought her son off with a baseball bat.
Reinke has spent the maximum time allowable based on the charges against him. Few dispute that Reinke belongs confined. However, the likelihood that he will remain confined is not good.
To read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/local/mentally-ill-defendant-up-for-release-despite-fears-2411828.html
Kelly Soo Park Trial: Verdict Watch
2 hours ago | <urn:uuid:a3f30f9f-bcf7-40cd-9baf-7ec4dac8e5ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mattmangino.com/2012/07/cant-try-them-cant-keep-them-cant-stop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966702 | 401 | 1.515625 | 2 |
High-leaping Atlantic sails gather at the northern end of Sailfish Alley in early winter.
A walk down Fort Pierce docks reads like a Who’s Who list of sailfish chasers. You’ll see boats, and crews, from all over the state—Jax, St. Augustine, St. Pete, Tampa, Daytona Beach, Panama City—plus a few from other locales that voyaged long distances to berth here.
What’s more, every tale you’ve read in our pages in previous issues comes true when cool northerly winds push the main body of fish past the Cape and into town. Best yet, it’s all available for Florida trailer boaters within short striking distance daily—if you time it right, say November through early January.
Timing involves playing the cold fronts to your advantage. Rough seas and high winds mean little when you’re dragging baits behind a 50- or 60-footer. Head out in the average mid-20-foot center console and winter conditions take on new meaning. Not many of us care to rock and roll in chilly seas for fun. Planning your trips for calm days between fronts is the way to go. Chances are you’ll release plenty of sails without enduring any hardships.
Billfish top the chart, on land and sea.
Finding hot sailfish waters takes a keen eye and attention to details. A series of reefs shadows the coastline in about 65 feet of water southeast of Fort Pierce Inlet. The coral heads attract bait and predators, particularly sailfish. Frequently, though, by late November water temps at the 65-foot depths run too chilly for sailfish comfort—once repeated fronts roll into town. When the temperature gauge dips into the low 70s, head out a little farther to the reefline between 120 and 150 feet of water. That’s where you’ll find the largest concentration of sails and bait.
Many days, an edge forms near the 120-foot reef (locals call it the 8-Mile), due to its proximity to the Gulf Stream. In winter, warm spinoffs from the Stream bring bait pods and sails closer to shore, so it pays to really watch the bottom machine for pods suspended in the water column. After locating these bait balls, stick close to them—especially if you mark larger, boomerang-shaped fish above, below or patrolling the outskirts of the bait pod. There’s a good probability that the fish you’re marking are sails, and in case you’re not familiar with spindlebeak ways, sails rarely travel alone. They’re more of a “pack” fish that hunt prey in small groups.
Natural bottom structures attract sailfish and so do the not-so-natural ones, such as artificial reefs and wrecks. Wrecks, by the way, can be very productive for sailfishers. The best seem to be smaller ones such as sunken boats or culverts with pronounced vertical relief resting on bottom in 100 to 200 feet of water. Florida Sportsman Fishing Chart No. 6, Fort Pierce/Stuart shows several excellent sailfish wrecks and reefs along with the layout of the land and reef contours off the coastline. As a general rule, good sailfish waters are about a 10- to 15-mile run from the inlet.
Sails sometimes reveal their whereabouts by surface activity. A north swell with northwest winds often prods sails to “tail” or surf downsea. Many times this occurs just shoreward of the western edge of the northerly flowing Gulf Stream, out of the hard-running current. It takes a trained eye to spot a sickle tail slicing down the face of a swell, but once you get dialed in, seeing tailers increases your chances of hookups significantly. Proven approaches for intercepting tailers include dragging a bait spread in front of a fish’s bill or tossing a pitchbait to fish.
Tricks of the Trade
Fort Pierce anglers traditionally troll rigged ballyhoo for sails. Some have elevated the practice to almost an art form, with intricate details for tournament fishing.
Jumping a few fish doesn’t have to be hard or involve hours of professional bait and teaser rigging. Family fishers can employ similar strategies that provoke hookups without the extra toil. You will need to master the basics, however, such as rigging ballyhoo and deploying a dredge teaser, an umbrella-shaped frame with multiple natural or plastic baits in tow that resembles a bait pod.
We’ve covered suitable ballyhoo rigs and dredges in past issues, but here’s a quick refresher. Small ballyhoo, often referred to as “dinks” by veteran sailfishers, are by far the best size for hooking an Atlantic sail, due to the fish’s relatively small mouth and the species’ tendency to bat baits before swallowing. Dredge teasers draw sails, period. Nothing raises a sail into a ballyhoo spread like a dredge. No need to spend all night rigging silver mullet and ballyhoo to string on the dredge, not with all the pre-rigged plastic ballyhoo and shad-tail models on the market. Shop around and purchase a dredge that’s compatible with your boat’s setup. (I keep a double-tier model manufactured by Calcutta Baits rigged and ready with plastic shad for deployment off a stern cleat; it seems to draw fish without fail.)
On the Map
Fort Pierce is located in Southeast Florida, about 30 miles as the crow flies below Sebastian and 20 miles north of Stuart. The town is rebuilding since hurricanes Frances and Jeanne almost whipped it into submission last fall. Hotels and motels are adding rooms daily, but the best news is that all boat ramps are up and running.
Billfishermen traveling to or trailering boats to Fort Pierce can take Interstate 95 to one of the several well-marked exits that lead straight into town. Gulf Coast anglers shoot across the state on S.R. 70, which runs between Sarasota and Fort Pierce or S.R. 60, that intersects Tampa with Vero Beach (a short hop north of Fort Pierce.
Click www.visitstluciefla.com or enter Fort Pierce into any Web search machine for a list of available accommodations, other recreational opportunities and upcoming events.
Standard gear for sailfishing here is 20-pound tackle, either conventional or spin. Conventional reels, such as a Shimano TLD 20, Penn Graphite-Lite 20, Okuma Titus Gold 20 or Pflueger 20GL, that holds 400 yards or more of line gets the lion’s share of duties. If you prefer to battle sails with spin tackle, choose a reel with the Bait Runner, Live-Liner or Freeliner feature. You’ll need it for dropping back baits (more on this later) to fish. Reels in this class include the Tidewater 60FLX, Shimano BTR 6500B and Penn Slammer/Live Liner 560.
Hooking a sail on trolled baits is different than livebait fishing. Reel control is key in this release game. Atlantic sailfish seldom charge a trolled ballyhoo and inhale it on the first go-round. They bat it first, the same way they do with wild prey. This slashing bill attack usually pops the flatline and outrigger clips, alerting anglers there’s a fish in the spread.
Hooking that fish is up to you. Savvy trollers and tournament fishers throw the reel into freespool, dumping yards of line to the fish so it won’t “feel” the hook or any pressure from the line. How long to drop back is a matter of personal preference, but don’t do it for too long—the sail will spit the hook. Most sailfishers stick with a 5-count dropback, then shove the reel into gear. If the fish feels the hook, you’ll see the results immediately as the fish goes ballistic with tailwalks, jumps and drag-burning runs.
Natural dredge teasers summon sails to trolling spreads.
Fort Pierce fish are calling. Are you ready for some fun? FS
Originally Published Florida Sportsman November 2005
By Frank Bolin | <urn:uuid:cbcc00ae-8513-4036-84ab-8ef4f4b76ef9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.floridasportsman.com/2012/11/14/fort_pierce_sailfish_fishing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918053 | 1,778 | 1.648438 | 2 |
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From the Wires
LA County Smokers Fall Below One Million for the First Time
Disparities in Smoking Rates Highlight Need for Focused Prevention Efforts
By: Marketwire .
Nov. 14, 2012 09:40 PM
LOS ANGELES, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/14/12 -- In honor of the 37th Annual Great American Smokeout, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released a new report showing the number of adult smokers in LA County fell below one million for the first time since the Los Angeles County Health Survey was initiated in 1997. The report, Adult Smoking on the Decline, But Disparities Remain, highlights the smoking prevalence in 2011 among adults in LA County. Overall, 13.1 percent of adults (18 years and older) were current smokers in 2011, down from 14.3 percent in 2002 and 2007.
"While it is encouraging to see the decline in smoking among adults over the past several years, tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in LA County," said Jonathan E. Fielding, MD, MPH, Director of Public Health and Health Officer. "In addition, exposure to secondhand smoke is an important cause of illness among non-smokers, contributing to asthma and other respiratory diseases, heart disease, and sudden infant death syndrome."
In LA County, cigarette smoking is directly linked to one out of every seven deaths each year, or nearly 8,600 deaths annually. In addition, smoking is estimated to cost LA County $4.3 billion in medical care and lost productivity costs each year. The report also shows stark disparities in smoking rates, with higher smoking rates among African Americans; those living in or near poverty; the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered populations; and those with mental health or substance use conditions. In addition, the smoking prevalence varies greatly across age groups, with a disproportionately high rate of smoking among 25 to 29 year olds.
"The good news is that we have proven interventions to deter young people from starting to smoke and services to assist those who do smoke to quit, including nicotine replacement therapy, other medications, and counseling support. The marked disparities we see in smoking prevalence highlights the need for focused interventions in communities with the highest rates of smoking," said Dr. Fielding.
Additional key finding from the report include:
LA County offers resources to residents who are currently addicted to tobacco, have already quit, or want to help a friend or relative kick this deadly addiction as well. Residents can visit LAQuits.com for information and resources about quitting smoking, or call the California Smokers' Helpline, 1-800-NO-BUTTS. The Helpline offers free and confidential telephone counseling that has proven to double a smoker's chances of successfully quitting than if the smoker tried to do it alone.
Right now, LA County residents can receive free nicotine patches when calling the Helpline to seek support in quitting. The Helpline also assists those trying to quit chewing tobacco and has experts to help teens quit. Additional information and smoking cessation tips can be found on the LA Quits website, www.laquits.com, Facebook page, and Twitter @LAQuits.
For a full copy of the report, Adult Smoking on the Decline, But Disparities Remain, visit: http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha. For more information on quit smoking resources and smoke-free policy recommendations, visit the Department of Public Health's Tobacco Control website at http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/tob/index.htm.
The Department of Public Health is committed to protecting and improving the health of the nearly 10 million residents of Los Angeles County. Through a variety of programs, community partnerships and services, Public Health oversees environmental health, disease control, and community and family health. Public Health comprises nearly 4,000 employees and has an annual budget exceeding $750 million. To learn more about Public Health and the work we do please visit http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov, visit our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/lapublichealth, find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lapublichealth, or follow us on Twitter: LAPublicHealth.
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Read the original article in Global Envision here.
International aid organizations are finding out if and how people are using their products, thanks to tiny sensors developed by Portland State University’s SWEETLab.
A lack of reliable data makes it hard for aid organizations to know whether technologies actually improve the lives, health and prosperity of people in communities around the world. But SWEETLab (Sustainable Water, Energy and Environmental Technologies Laboratory) is looking to change that.
The lab has developed remote sensing technology to monitor the use of development infrastructure, such as latrines, cook stoves and water filters. The sensors send information about the frequency of use and behavior patterns back to partner organizations, such as Mercy Corps, The Gates Foundation, DelAgua and Vestergaard Frandsen, said lab director Evan Thomas.
The goal, Thomas says, is to “have better information about what’s going on in the field, because monitoring projects is usually based on somewhat unreliable [paper] surveys.” And, according to Thomas, "the sensors help us answer two questions: Does the product work, and do people use it?"
Thomas, a professor of engineering and faculty fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University, is also the Program Director for DelAgua Health and Development Programs, a partner organization using the sensors on a large program in Rwanda. He sees the sensors as a way to better evaluate the effectiveness of aid projects and, by extension, donor dollars.
The project in Rwanda "demonstrates the potential to deploy and monitor international health programs like this on a very large scale," Thomas predicts.
The $50 million Rwanda project will distribute water filters and cook stoves to 600,000 homes throughout the country’s western province over the next year to improve clean water access and reduce the demand for wood fuel for cooking, according to Thomas. SWEETLab’s sensors will be installed on about 500 of the stoves and filters to monitor their use and tell DelAgua whether the products are being embraced by local residents.
The efforts in Rwanda are also unique because they use an innovative carbon credit financing scheme to generate revenue and fund the scaling-up of future projects. Information about the use of the technologies can now be accurately recorded and sent back to DelAgua.
SWEETLab’s sensors are being used well beyond Rwanda, too. In Indonesia, SWEETLab's first partner, Mercy Corps, had been using spot surveys to determine whether people were using new latrines and hand-washing stations, Thomas told SmartPlanet. But only with remote data collection did Mercy Corps find that fewer people were using the hand-washing stations at night, and some people were just using them before prayer time.
"When the sensors are transmitting data, we’re getting what we hoped for: frequent data on the use of water and sanitation infrastructure in our target communities," Laura Bruno, Mercy Corps’ senior program officer for Southeast Asia, told Fast Company. Mercy Corps can use this information to adjust sanitation education programs.
Other SWEETLab partnerships include a project with the Gates Foundation that installed 60 sensors on sanitation stations in India, designed to assist in a study evaluating behavior change around open defecation, according to Thomas. Another partnership with Mercy Corps will put sensors on cookstoves in Haiti.
Data collected by the sensors is compiled by partner organizations, which use the information to understand behavior patterns of people they serve and to assess and improve the effectiveness of their projects.
Each sensor is powered by five AA batteries, and “cell phone networks send data to a web-based platform, where the results directly inform any adjustments to the technology or educational efforts on the ground,” according to Portland State.
That’s much faster and more reliable than relying on costly surveys and spot-checks, which can provide valuable qualitative information, but often fail to fully identify challenges to the success of projects.
Thomas is hopeful that outcomes of current projects will allow SWEETLab to continue to expand its partnerships and monitor the effectiveness of more aid project through remote access data.
And more accurate information about how well aid projects are working will let organizations tweak their approach to better meet local needs. | <urn:uuid:25f01806-27f9-4796-b17d-d46582ddfabb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pdx.edu/news/global-envision-how-portland-lab-uses-remote-sensors-measure-how-aid-projects-work | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943474 | 876 | 2.859375 | 3 |
April 1992 | Volume 43, Issue 2
This month’s historical reflections are inspired by the presidential candidacy of David Duke, a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, whose elevation to at least marginal respectability reminds me uncomfortably of a time when the Klan was functioning openly and aboveground and was a very palpable force in American politics.
The “original” Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the “invisible empire” of hooded nightriders immortalized in The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind , got its start in 1866 in the defeated former Confederacy. Whatever its exact origins, its purpose soon became to drive freed blacks and their Northern allies away from the polling places and back into a state of economic and political subservience. It “persuaded” by fires, floggings, and lynchings. Forget the romantic mush; it was an outlawed terrorist organization, designed to undo Reconstruction. And with its help, Reconstruction was undone. But so, by 1872, was the Klan. However, in 1915 it underwent a second ten- to fifteenyear incarnation, of which more in a moment. That is the main story here.
During the 1950s a third, “new” Klan —or perhaps several successive new Klans—emerged, in reaction to the legal dismantling of Jim Crow, sometimes called the Second Reconstruction. Like the original KKK, the groups functioned in the South, and they were responsible for bombings and the gunshot murders of at least five civil rights workers. Post-1970 Klans have had a large, changing, Cold War-influenced list of enemies, allies, and strategies. All have led a furtive existence under legal surveillance and almost universal repudiation.
But it wasn’t so with that “middle” Klan that lived in the atmosphere of World War I and the 1920s. That one targeted Catholics, Jews, and foreigners as well as blacks. In so doing, it expanded its base beyond Dixie and had more national influence than is pleasant to think about.
The evidence? How about a parade of forty thousand robed and proud-ofit Klansmen down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.? Or a state—Indiana—whose KKK “Grand Dragon” held a political IOU—one of many—from the mayor of Indianapolis promising to appoint no person to the Board of Public Works without his endorsement? Or a Democratic National Convention of 1924 that split down the middle of a vote to condemn the Klan by name, with just over half the delegates refusing?
This new Klan was the creation of Alabama-born “Colonel” William J. Simmons, who resuscitated fading memories of the original Knights in a Thanksgiving Day cross-burning ceremony atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, in 1915. Its credo not only pledged members to be “true to the faithful maintenance of White Supremacy” but restricted the membership to “native born American citizens who believe in the tenets of the Christian religion and owe no allegiance … to any foreign Government, nation, political institution, sect, people or person.” The “person” was the Pope, and the new KKK tapped into a long-standing tradition of nativism that went back at least as far as the American or Know-Nothing party of the 185Os, which flared transiently in the cloudy political skies just before the Civil War.
Simmons kept and improved on the primal Klan’s ritual mumbo jumbo, including secret initiations and an array of officeholders with titles like Imperial Wizard, Exalted Cyclopes, and Grand Goblin. He struck an alliance with a publicist named Edward Clarke who helped devise a deft recruiting scheme. Recruiters called Kleagles signed up members for local chapters (Klaverns) at ten dollars a head. The Kleagle kept four dollars; one dollar went to the state’s King Kleagle, fifty cents to the Grand Goblin, and so on up the chain of command, with two dollars to Simmons himself.
For many native-born, white, Gentile Americans, joiners by nature, the new Klan became a special lodge, like the Elks, the Rotarians, or Woodmen of the World, for which Simmons had been a field organizer. There were four million Klansmen by 1924, according to some estimates, in a population that turned out only about thirty million voters in that year’s presidential election. So it became prudent for some politicians, President Harding included, to join the KKK or at least seek its support. According to Wyn C. Wade, author of The Fiery Cross , one of the latest books on the Klan, the number of municipal officials elected nationwide by Klan votes has yet to be counted. The organization likewise had input in the choice of more than a dozen senators and eleven governors.
The Klan’s greatest victories were in Indiana, whose Grand Dragon, purple-robed David C. Stephenson, was a gifted publicist who organized a women’s auxiliary and staged barbecues and picnics, which he visited by dropping from the sky in an airplane with gilded wings. He made enough on the regalia and literature concessions to live in princely style, with lots of clandestine booze and women available. And he endorsed a slate of state candidates that swept Indiana’s Republican Convention in 1924 and followed Calvin Coolidge to victory in the fall. Stephenson’s dreams of the future for himself included a Senate seat and perhaps even the White House.
What made these astonishing successes possible? Was the whole country gripped by a fever of hatred? Yes and no. Racism and xenophobia actually were enjoying a favorable climate. The KKK’s rebirth in 1915 coincided with the success of The Birth of a Nation , which depicted the original Klan as a necessity to save Southern civilization from barbaric blacks egged on by Radical Republican plunderers. This was not much of an exaggeration of the “official” version of Reconstruction then embalmed in scholarly histories, but D. W. Griffith’s cinematic skills burned it into the popular mind.
At the same time, a wave of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe troubled “old stock” Americans. In 1924 the immigration laws were rewritten specifically to keep out such indigestible Catholic and Jewish hordes, as they were considered.
Then there was the experience of World War I, in which "100 percent Americanism” was enforced by vigilante groups and by the government, armed with Espionage and Sedition acts. Following that, the Bolshevik Revolution inaugurated a Red scare that brought a frantic search for “agitators” to arrest or deport.
All these forces predisposed potential Klan members to accept its exclusionary message without much analysis—and to overlook incidents of violence. But there was more. Thousands of fundamentalist Christians, beleaguered and bewildered by the Progressive Era victories of evolution and the social gospel—not to mention jazz, gin, and short skirts—saw the Klan as the savior of old-time religion. The KKK played to their anxiety by supporting Prohibition and the teaching of religion in the schools. Had the Moral Majority then been in existence, it might have absorbed some who instead became Klan followers.
It was the onrush of change, the shakeups brought by radio and film and the auto, that spooked so many Americans. My friend David Chalmers, author of Hooded Americanism , put it neatly to me by phone. “They couldn’t blame Henry Ford or Charles Steinmetz [the socialist engineering genius of the General Electric Company], but happily they found ‘the dago on the Tiber” instead.
But change could not be held back for long. In the mid-twenties the Klan’s strength dropped off dramatically, to forty-five thousand by 1930. There were many reasons. One was internal feuding among Klan leaders over control of the organization’s assets. Another was the exposure of Klan-led bombings, beatings, threats, and atrocities by courageous newspapers like the Indianapolis Times , the Memphis Commercial Appeal , and the Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer-Sun . They resisted boycotts and other forms of pressure in the heart of the enemy’s country and told the truth. So did many courageous politicians who repudiated the votes of bigotry. Revelations that some Klan officials were given to liquor, loot, and lechery also defaced the “knightly” image. The biggest scandal of all sent Grand Dragon Stephenson to jail for the brutal rape of Madge Oberholtzer, a young state employee, who afterward committed suicide. Stephenson, outraged that the Indiana authorities did not set him above the law, avenged himself by squealing on his political puppets and ruining their subsequent careers.
And over time the second Klan was repudiated because it collided with the fundamental American values of inclusiveness and pluralism. The trouble is that it also expressed equally durable American attitudes: the ongoing quest for an unalloyed “Americanism,” the perverse pressure to conform to a single majority standard, and the tendency to substitute mob “justice” for the unsatisfying ambiguities of legal verdicts.
It seems that current historians, unencumbered by having lived through the period’s hostilities, are more inclined to explain than to condemn the Klan of the twenties. Most of its members, they suggest, were traditionbound outsiders to the emerging new urban money culture, more frightened than vicious. I am unpersuaded, even while acknowledging that “good” people can join “bad” associations out of understandable frustrations. But the Klan could not be separated from its hateful implications then, and the Klan spirit cannot be so separated now, however prettified, sanitized, and shorn of wacky costumes and titles. Scapegoating of “the other,” assurances that “we” must safeguard our system, our heritage, and our values from “them—these notions inevitably carry implications of violence and repression.
Yet under certain conditions they can become widespread, unless watched and guarded against. As the evidence presented shows, it has happened. Here. And not so long ago. | <urn:uuid:4fd0337a-43b7-477d-bff6-3a9aabc9dc60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanheritage.com/print/57528 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962444 | 2,120 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Instead of the using lectures (in which students are passive recipients of information), we make extensive use of newer and research-supported active teaching methods, including Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) done in groups.
This pedagogy reflects modern theories of student learning. Our guided inquiry method uses team problem-solving to build an understanding of material. The approach teaches individuals to consider problems from a number of different perspectives and to collaborate effectively -- skills that are considered valuable in the workplace.
Here is a summary of why we chose these new pedagogies. The links below show the importance of moving away from the traditional lecture format method for teaching college courses.
- Twilight of the Lecture: The trend toward "Active Learning" may overthrow the style of teaching that has ruled universities for 600 years. Harvard Magazine. March - April, 2013. A must read for students and parents!
- When will we learn? Fareed Zakaria. Time Magazine, 11/14/11 pg 42-44
- The Khan Academy: CBS's 60 Minutes
- Don't lecture me: Rethinking the Way College Students Learn. American Radio Works, September, 2011
- Five reasons getting students to talk is worth the effort. The Teaching Professor Blog
- Reboot the School: Time Magazine, 7/9/12
- A guided inquiry classroom - YouTube
Parents of first year students will also be interested in the pedagogy as well. We hope this letter helps! | <urn:uuid:335860f0-68e6-4947-845f-7653273cc7a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csbsju.edu/Chemistry/Our-Curriculum/Problem-Based-Pedagogy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908945 | 313 | 3.421875 | 3 |
before the tears began to flow. Why did he keep doing
this to her?
It was at moments like this, after partings like
this, that she came close to despair. Why couldn't he
understand? She didn't care about crowns or kingdoms
or safety or peace. She knew what a Ranger's life was
like and had prepared herself to share it. She could
use sword and bow, heal the wounds and sicknesses of
Men and animals, tend garden and dairy and do all the
other duties that fell to the mistress of a holding.
They could have been married years ago. Father
would have been unhappy, yes, but the matter would
have been settled. He'd have had no choice but to
accept it. As it was he kept hoping, kept arguing. Oh
this was his doing, she knew it was! She'd overheard
him before, telling Aragorn he would only bring her
to misery and death, making him believe it.
The brief spurt of anger died. She knew only too
well how much it would hurt Elrond to lose her, how
could she blame him for putting up a fight? Wouldn't
she do the same in his place.
Besides, it wasn't Father who'd made Aragorn give
her back her ring all those years ago in Lorien and
tell her he had nothing to offer her to match what she
would have to give up, that they must forget each
other. That had been his own idea, his own belief. And
she'd never, for all her efforts, been able to change
She'd lain awake all that long, miserable night
listening to the golden leaves rustling around her
chamber and remembering Aragorn's father and
grandfather and all those other Heirs of Isildur who'd
loved her so passionately as boys and forgotten her so
completely once they were Men. And it was in the dark
watches of that endless night that a terrible fear
entered her heart, fear that Aragorn had tired of her,
like all his fathers before him, but was too kind to
tell her so.
By daylight she'd known the thought for the
nonsense it was. Had seen the love and the pain in his
eyes and known that he truly believed she would be
better off without him. Aimlessly idling the long
years away in the peace and beauty of Rivendell and
But it was to late for that. She knew it, even if
he didn't. Neither Aragorn nor her father seemed to
understand she'd changed. She was no longer the blythe
Elf child she'd once been, and never could be again.
The Mortal side of her nature had become very strong
over fifty years of loving a Man and fitting herself
to live among his people. She was more Woman than Elf
now and she knew in her heart Aman was not for her.
Even if Aragorn died, or truly tired of her and
never wanted to see her again she would stay in Middle
Earth and grow old and die alone if she must. Like her
brothers before her she had found her true self and
there was no going back. Even though she knew it would
break her father's heart, and her mother's, and her
She wiped her eyes. If Aragorn returned she would
tell him that, and he'd finally stop being so blasted
noble and self sacrificing and let them get on with
making a life together. If he didn't return, she'd
find him again beyond the Circles of the World, as
Luthien their ancestress had found Beren. Either way,
they'd be together - and that was all that mattered.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author. | <urn:uuid:6778e683-fa3d-4d84-8ce8-3c5c48751775> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henneth-annun.net/stories/chapter_view.cfm?stid=1691&spordinal=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986148 | 936 | 1.546875 | 2 |
One of us
Philippine Daily Inquirer
His name was Wilhelmus JJ Lutz Geertman. A native of Holland, he left his country 46 years ago and settled in the Philippines—not in any of its cities, but in its poor, desperate corners, where, for the rest of his life until his murder on July 7, he worked tirelessly for the betterment of the marginalized communities around him. As executive director of the nongovernmental group Alay Bayan-Luson Inc., he held office in a middle-class subdivision in Aurora province whose main road, oddly called the Rue de Paree, was perhaps the closest reminder he had of his European roots.
But it’s a safe bet Geertman never gave the street name a wistful glance, as he had cast his eyes somewhere else. “His coworkers tell me he was more Filipino than Dutch,” said his brother Antonius, who flew in from the Netherlands with sister Maria Elisabeth for the grim task of burying Geertman in the province and country he had long called his own. The siblings were joined by some 1,000 mourners, many of them the poorest of the poor and recipients of Geertman’s generosity and compassion through the years, in giving their brother a final, grateful send-off.
They were thankful for the fact that Geertman was, to be blunt about it, not only more Filipino than Dutch but also more Filipino than many citizens of this country. Much of his 67 years was spent trying to make a difference in ordinary Filipinos’ lives—specifically, to empower them, fight for their welfare, and give them a decent place in the social order.
In the 1980s, he taught Dumagat, Alta, Cordilleran and Ilongot elders to write and count to allow them to manage their own affairs without being exploited by traders and mining interests. He also taught them how to farm their ancestral lands efficiently. Before that, he organized stevedores and workers in Luzon shipyards into unions, then spearheaded agriculture and literacy programs in Baler and other towns. He raised money for the scholarship of students, trained people on disaster preparedness, and joined the fight for human rights, agrarian reform and responsible mining. The small pension he received from the Dutch government he even shared with farmers and the poor.
“Wim was a foreigner but he lived like one of us,” said Marietta Corpuz, chair of Samahan ng mga Katutubo sa Sierra Madre. “He ate what we ate. He did not make us feel that he was different from us or he was better than us. He crossed rivers so he could reach remote villages.”
Was his death at the hands of still unidentified gunmen a case of plain robbery, or a result of his tenacious, committed work on such causes? The police think a premeditated heist is the simpler explanation, because Geertman was reportedly carrying some P1.2 million he had earlier withdrawn from a bank, to be used for his scholarships. After shooting him in the back, his killers fled with the money.
But the prominence of Geertman’s social work—his opposition to mining, logging and the commercialization of agricultural land in Aurora, for instance—lends plausibility to the suspicion, immediately voiced by those closest to him, that he was killed chiefly because his activities were increasingly becoming a bane to powerful, shadowy interests. His reported ties with Hacienda Luisita farmers have been cited as a possible reason for the “politically motivated” killing, though Alay Bayan-Luson spokesperson Loren Villareal has said it was unlikely he was killed for this reason: “We tend to link Wim’s death to his anticorporate mining and logging stance, and to his being a staunch environmentalist.”
Whatever the motivation behind it, Geertman’s death is a tragedy. More than that, it is an outrage—the latest blood-soaked evidence of the government’s sheer inability to stop the extrajudicial killings that have continued to define the country as a land of lawlessness and impunity. Geertman’s death is the 13th such killing to occur under the two-year-old Aquino administration, which people had hoped would be able to stem the tide of assassinations (about 305) that marked the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. But no respite is in sight.
Geertman could have stayed in his native land and lived a comfortable life, but “home is the Philippines, particularly Aurora,” he had told those around him. With his death, the Philippines has lost an outstanding citizen, whatever citizenship is stated in his passport. If this country knows how to be grateful, it should demand that the government act, at last, to make Geertman’s death the last of its kind.
More from this Column:
Short URL: http://opinion.inquirer.net/?p=32362 | <urn:uuid:2afd2a03-655f-492e-be06-d015c16b5b78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://opinion.inquirer.net/32362/one-of-us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984684 | 1,063 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Notorious B.O.A.L.T. is a UC-Berkeley law school student who enjoys setting law school lessons to music. He appeared on our pages before, rapping his way through CivPro.
Now he’s back. Notorious has gone acoustic, but this song embraces the rebellious roots of rock & roll. Notorious writes, “As a protest against the lunacy of the Socratic Method and the staggering lack of imagination on the part of the Boalt Hall administration in clinging to a cobwebbed curriculum, I will not be taking any final examinations this semester.”
We think rapping lends itself more easily to talkin’ ’bout the law, but this is a worthy effort. The question is: is it a sub-standard pass level effort?
A lyrical excerpt, and speculation about the future of Notorious B.O.A.L.T., after the jump.
Lyrically, we’re impressed. Singing about the standard of care test established in U.S. v. Carroll Towing Co., he incorporates a shout-out to famed judge Learned Hand:
Now Learned Hand, he’ll mangle and maim you
And pay out 3 million bucks
If it would cost 4 million to save you
He’s strictly liable, but you’re strictly f*****
We’re not planning to buy the Notorious B.O.A.L.T. compilation anytime soon, but we look forward to more videos next semester, if Notorious hasn’t failed out by then. Corporate Governance is ripe for a musical interpretation. | <urn:uuid:11763da3-1a7e-43d6-b228-bcc8e1de149e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abovethelaw.com/2008/12/notorious-b-o-a-l-t-is-born-again-but-will-he-pass/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91073 | 346 | 1.523438 | 2 |
FORT WAYNE – Eight-year-old Peace Soe of Fort Wayne was wondering whether the bird she was pasting onto a bright-red scrap of rectangular cloth was a peacock or a phoenix.
Sitting next to her, her older brother, Kaing, 10, was pretty sure it was a peacock.
I think its a phoenix, she says. Its like burning!
The little girl was wrong – the bird indeed represents a peacock – the fighting peacock on the flag of the democracy movement in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
But a phoenix, the mythical bird known for rising from its own ashes, would be a fitting symbol, too. Thats according to parents of the more than 40 children who spent part of Saturday morning at IPFW making the bird-bearing flags to prepare for the Sept. 25 visit of Aung San Suu Kyi to Fort Wayne.
That the famed pro-democracy leader, who spent 15 years under house arrest for her political activity, is now able to travel freely to the United States means her homeland is emerging from decades of oppression and taking a new place in the world, says Myo Oak, 34, of Fort Wayne.
Speaking through a translator, Kyaw Joe Soe Oak, a father of two sons, said Burma is a small country, and its struggles might not seem important to the rest of the world.
But Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has earned such respect that she is listened to wherever she goes, Oak said.
When she comes here, to a big country, she talks to the leaders and they cooperate with her. That is something I am very proud of, he said, adding he hopes the flags will encourage her.
Not only people from Burma love her. People here love her, he said
Mariam Aung, 32, of Fort Wayne, a mother of three children, says its important for her children to understand the history of their parents homeland.
I am very happy. Excited, she said. I want my kids to learn who she is. Its very important. I explain to my kids, but I want them to see her.
Me too, she adds. I never see her.
Soe says the children who made the flags of the National League for Democracy, Suu Kyis political organization, attend IPFWs New Immigrant Literacy Program.
The 10-year-old program, which Soe founded and directs, sponsors Saturday morning classes designed to improve refugee childrens English fluency and school performance.
Children were assisted by volunteers, many of whom were students in IPFWls education department.
Soe said he met Suu Kyi 24 years ago at her home in what was then called Rangoon when he was a student leader in the democracy movement.
Since I met her, I admire her. I do many things for her. I organized rallies, protests, candlelight vigils. I wrote letters (to American officials). I went to New York to the U.N. to demonstrate for her release.
Soe said easily 10,000 people will attend her appearance. Census and community estimates place the refugee population in the Fort Wayne area between 4,000 and 6,000, but he said he expects many American admirers will also attend.
This is a history-making event, he said. | <urn:uuid:5a7396d8-86a6-4eef-9a1e-21843063b28d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120916/LOCAL/309169934/1179 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980315 | 699 | 2.171875 | 2 |
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Classes of Malocclusion The technical term for orthodontic dental and facial irregularities is malocclusion, which literally means ‘bad bite.’ Malocclusion involves the misalignment of the teeth and jaws and/or an incorrect relationship between the upper and lower dental arches. Malocclusion can be dental, where the teeth aren’t lined up properly, and skeletal, which occurs when [...]
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Choosing the Best Toothpaste Thanks to better care and technological advances, more people than ever before are keeping their teeth throughout their lives. The most important thing you can do to make sure you’re one of those who keep their natural teeth is to brush and floss regularly. Most dental decay is caused by plaque, [...]
Fluoride and Tooth Decay Fluoride is a compound of the element fluorine, the 13th most abundant element, which is naturally present in water, soil, and air, as well as in most foods. Fluoride is absorbed easily into tooth enamel, helping to strengthen it, and is also effective in preventing cavities from forming. Fluoride was first [...] | <urn:uuid:cd674442-6299-4d70-ba64-51a4e2461fcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frostortho.com/blog/?cat=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954288 | 658 | 1.890625 | 2 |
The concept of robots having a personality and awareness is deeply disturbing, primarily for noe reason. A robot without a processor and a whole lot of software is just a remote control servo device. So, as we have seen, robots consist to a very large extent as a lot of software with some mechaniccal I/O. More and more of the robot is software, we can all see that, and that is where the problem is. Most of that code is written by programmers, who are people who, aside from having that skill set needed to write code, are mostly quite different from normal people. Stop and consider that, and you will certainly agree that it is true. Programmers are not normal people. I am not asserting that they are bad or devious, but the fact is that they think in an entirely different way than the majority of folks think. Every time i deal with almost anything containing a processor I am reminded that programmers think differently than I do.
I am asserting that we really would be poorly advised to give any mechanical realization to the way programmers think. Just consider how our country would be if it were controlled by the likes of Bill Gates and the Microsoft hordes. If the concept of an existance like that is not disturbing, probably you have not adequately considered it.
NOTE: This is not to be considered a slam at Microsoft, but I don't wish to have them any more involved with my life.
While there are no immediate plans to introduce FRIDA as a commercial product, it does demonstrate a commitment to the technology and specifically developing strategies and solutions that would allow robots to work closely with humans rather than in isolated robotic cells.
Design News did a story a couple years ago about GM's partnership with NASA on upper torso, humanoid robots. The long term vision was to use them in automotive and aerospace applications to take over simple, repetitive, or especially dangerous tasks on places such as the International Space Station. Maybe we need to do a follow-up story
Here is a link to the NASA site for more information:
Naperlou makes a good point about (not) seeing the need for humanoid robots, but I would point to the iPad as an example of how marketing can create a need where none might be there. (Convertible laptops and tablets failed prior to the iPad. One can argue that they weren't fully baked when they first appeared in 2002. My personal take is that Microsoft paved a path, which Steve Jobs later exploited.) I think it will be the same thing with robots.
HBJimmy says that the market drives these things. I think that's part of the dynamic in Japan. It can't just be that the engineers who design the robots want that, er, unusual look. It must be that they think there will be customers for those things.
My guess is that there will eventually be 'all the above' so far as robots are concerned.
The best use I can imagine for humanoid models will be as health care providers. Although I hope that humans will still control the process, and that family members will actually visit their sick and aging relatives... it might be a great relief for some to have a robot that looks like and is programmed to interact like a family member.
24 hr a day health care provided by a well loved and patient surrogate-bot could be in the future... Heck, it could even be that one bot can don many faces, providing a range of personas to be interacted with...
Although there are many problems with this kind of blurring of the lines between human and robot I think that we are eventually going to cross pretty much every line we can think of, and some that we can't yet imagine.
I guess it depends on the function. Google "korean prison robot". The thing looks like a friendly child's toy (but bigger) . May be if TSA agents looked like the prison guards in Korea people would just be amused by being groped by a cute toy instead of th thugs we have now. Seems to me that a "prison" robot should look threatening. If I ever go to jail I hope it's in Korea. They must be really nice places to live if the guards look like cartoon characters.
I assumed we were talking about a more advanced "robot" than a gorified cash register (ATM).
Let's replace the teller in general with a robot. I would like to talk to a face when I discuss and establish my accounts and make loans. Plus I have a hearing problem and I need to speech read. Save the face!
I'm not so sure a humanoid appearance is necessary for automated services. Again, I used the analogy of the automated teller machine. This device has been magnificently successful, replacing countless human tellers. Many people prefer it to a human teller. And it has no human attributes. I think arbitrary human attributes are creepy.
Humanoid robots that could potentially be used in the future for applications such as automotive assembly are being developed by a joint GM/NASA partnership, and ABB has a concept humanoid robot called FRIDA. Interesting stuff working through the complexities of robots that could implement safety systems that would enable them to work closely with human workers.
I am not sure I agree that having a humanoid robot drive the car or the tractor is useful. We really are not short of humans. Actually, the trend in farm machinery (tractors and combine) is that they can be set on autopilot and basically drive themselves once they are programmed. I think we will see the machines have more of an ability to do things themselves with or without a human. Another example would be aircraft with an autopilot.
I, personally, do not see much of a need for human-like robots. I guess I have read too many science fiction books on the topic (including the I, Robot series). It really reminds me of computers. For as long as we have had them people have been predicting that they will "think". Computer Scientists like to point to artifical intelligence as an end point. They point out that humans do some things better than computers (like vision processing). On the other hand, computers do many things much better than humans. These also tend to be things humans (on the whole) do not like to do. The synergy between humans and computers is very powerful. We complement each other.
We looked at a number of sources to determine this year's greenest cars, from KBB to automotive trade magazines to environmental organizations. These 14 cars emerged as being great at either stretching fuel or reducing carbon footprint.
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is | <urn:uuid:63ee2f81-85c7-4675-95cc-6af8c4c0c1c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=245471&piddl_msgid=554418 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972088 | 1,473 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Nature Park Interpretive Center
Native Plant Garden
Watch it grow! Visit our native plant demonstration garden and learn about native plants, the ways they benefit wildlife and water conservation, and how you can plant a native garden at your home too.
Adopt a native plant garden
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Groups are also welcome to adopt a plot and share duties. Please call Melissa Marcum at (503) 629-6305, ext. 2720 or firstname.lastname@example.org for more information. | <urn:uuid:820e0f5c-a8cf-416a-ab99-582a6d3853e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thprd.org/nature/programs/nativeplantgarden.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914438 | 158 | 2.34375 | 2 |
As you can imagine many wedding rituals have changed over the years but some, like the Charivari or Shivaree haven't changed much in hundreds of years. In Lincoln, Mo. a description of a charivari was reported in the newspaper in 1897.
Sedalia Evening Democrat, Lincoln Mo. section; 24 June 1897, page 3.
Joe Hunt, who recently married, was given a good old-fashioned charivari by the boys last Monday nigh. The Lincoln "Hornet" band was called out, the pieces consisting of tin horns, cow-bells, angles and triangles, rosin cans, etc., which made a hideous noise. Joe promised to treat next Saturday night, so the boys dispersed quietly and said Joe must keep his word or the dose would be repeated.
The "treat" may have been candy and cigars as mentioned in a Bittersweet magazine article "Getting hitched". In this article shot guns are used as noise makers and sometimes men were rode on a rail. In a White River Valley Historical quarterly the "treat" was "coffee, cookies, candy, and other good things."
Apparently, Springfield law makers thought the "chivarees" were getting out of hand and passed a city ordinance fining the noisemakers.
Springfield Ordinances 1887
Chapter 29 –On Misdemeanors
Section 9. ...and whoever shall, in this city, charivari any person or persons, by blowing horns, beating drums, kettles or pans, jingling bells, or by any such means as are used at what is commonly called a "chivaree," shall be fined not less than three nor more than ten dollars.
Find this article at | <urn:uuid:eee9fb50-5bd3-4cac-86a5-a02108f2c663> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thelibrary.org/blogs/article.cfm?aid=413&lid=25 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971527 | 358 | 2.0625 | 2 |
What is UTRIP?
UTRIP stands for the "University of Tokyo Research Internship Program." This program was launched by the Graduate School of Science (GSS) of the University of Tokyo (one of the world's leading research-education universities) as part of its campaign begun in June 2010 for promoting the internationalization of the GSS by inviting talented young students from abroad. UTRIP is an intensive summer research program targeted at undergraduates who have a keen interest in pursuing an M.S. or Ph.D. degree in the future. During the program, the participants receive intensive instruction and guidance on conducting research from renowned faculty members belonging to the GSS's six departments of physics, astronomy, chemistry, earth & planetary science, biophysics & biochemistry, and biological sciences. The program is open to students who are currently enrolled in their junior or senior years at an accredited college or university outside of Japan, and who are majoring in a natural science or related field. Students participating in the program who are highly evaluated by the faculty members will be given priority for receiving scholarships when applying for admission to the GSS the following year. The program also includes an excursion outside of Tokyo as well as a short course on the Japanese language and culture.
UTRIP is a gateway to pursuing an advance degree and experiencing academic life at Todai. Take this opportunity to get a head-start for challenging the rigors of graduate study in the natural sciences.
Voices from UTRIP 2012 participating students
- The program gave me a wonderful research experience. I want other students to get such an experience. (Participating student from an institute in India.)
- I think UTRIP is the best internship in the world. (Student from a university in England)
- I never thought research could be as challenging, exciting, and rewarding as my experience at UTRIP. (Student from U.S.A.)
- UTRIP is a very good international program that provides students an international environment. The program gave me a chance to experience the life of graduate student and I found it was much better and more interesting than I had expected. (Student from China) | <urn:uuid:80d66c50-3a6e-444c-a4cd-2b265257668a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/education/programs.html | 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 | 0.96256 | 445 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Redirected from Madonna Ciccone
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone was born in 1958 in Bay City, Michigan, USA. Raised in a strict Catholic family, her mother died from cancer when Madonna was just a child. She took classes in piano and ballet and at school was an active participant in artistic activities. She attended the University of Michigan for two years but quit and went to New York in 1978, where she pursued dance and acting professionally. She appeared in a short film called A Certain Sacrifice and joined up with several punk-pop bands such as Breakfast Club. She eventually penned several songs that brought her local fame in gay dance clubs such as Danceteria.
Madonna scored her first recording deal while sitting on the corner of the bed of an ailing music executive. Her first single "Everybody" was released without her photo on the jacket. This led many listeners to believe that Madonna was, in fact, black. Thankfully, because of the advent of MTV, her label was able to aggressively market Madonna's image. A playful and sexy combination of punk and pop culture, Madonna became a quick fixture on the network. Her bleached blonde hair (with black roots,) sexy lace gloves, lingerie on the outside and "boy toy" belt buckle were soon all the rage in popular fashion.
In 1983 her debut album, self-titled, was released and the first hit "Holiday" topped the charts across the world. Other hit singles included "Borderline", "Burning Up", "Lucky Star", and "Everybody". The album was a smashing success, and catapulted Madonna into instant stardom.
In 1984 she followed her hit debut with Like a Virgin. The album's provocative subject matter (especially the title track) received praise from reviewers and fans, but put Madonna in the direct fire of the religious right. She began what would become a reputation for controversy when she appeared at the MTV Music Video Awards[?] singing "Like a Virgin" in a wedding dress/bustier combination, writhing on the floor and showing her panties. The album spawned other number one hits with "Angel", "Dress You Up", and "Material Girl". (The moniker of "Material Girl" would stay with her for ages.)
Because of her instantly recognizable appearance it seemed logical that Madonna would make the transition to film. In 1985 she had a small appearance in the film Vision Quest[?] playing a club singer. (The role seemed mostly just to serve to introduce two more top ten hits, "Crazy For You" and "Gambler".) She also played supporting lead to Rosanna Arquette[?] in the hit film Desperately Seeking Susan[?], for which she received good reviews. It would be seven years before another kind word was said about her acting.
In 1985 she also married actor Sean Penn. She appeared with him in the 1986 flop Shanghai Surprise[?], which was unanimously panned by critics. They gathered a reputation for being anti-media, as Sean was repeatedly violent towards paparazzi[?] and photographers. That year she also released her third hit album, True Blue[?]. The album had hits with "Open Your Heart" (accompanied by a video in which Madonna played a stripper who befriends a young boy,) "True Blue", "Live to Tell", "Where's the Party", "La Isla Bonita" (accompanied by a video where Madonna played a Spanish woman, the first introduction to the public of her seeming fetish for Latino culture) and "Papa Don't Preach", an anthem about keeping a baby conceived out of wedlock.
Around this time in her career tasteful black and white nude photos of Madonna surfaced. They were published in both Penthouse and Playboy magazines. These photos were taken of Madonna during the very early 1980s when she posed for art photographers as a way to make money. Potentially devastating to her career, she shrugged them off and they only served to fuel her popularity.
At this point Madonna transitioned her entire image, something that would become a trademark for years to come. She chopped off her bleached blonde hair in favour of a butch, platinum blonde look. She began to pale her face and highlight her beauty mark, adapting a very modernized Marilyn Monroe look. This seemed to coincide with her performance in the film Who's That Girl[?], which was also a flop. The soundtrack did spawn hits with the title track and "Causing a Commotion".
In 1987 she released an album of dance remixes of previous material called You Can Dance[?]. It did not sell as well as her previous efforts. She also appeared as Hortense in a Broadway production of Bloodhounds of Broadway[?], which was dismissed as tripe. Critics began to peg Madonna as a thing of the past; her career seemed to be fading fast.
Then, in 1989, Madonna once again changed her image. She traded in her closely shorn platinum coif for long, curly black hair and an almost wholesome look for her album Like a Prayer[?]. Once again using religious imagery to stir up controversy, the title track compared the experience of lovemaking to praying. The video for the song featured Madonna as a streetwalker who witnesses a violent rape and murder. She goes into a church where, inside, a black Jesus statue turns to life and makes love to her. The video, which also featured burning crosses[?], sparked such controversy that Pepsi cola, who had paid Madonna millions of dollars for a commercial endorsement, pulled out of their contract. As the single soared to number one, Madonna thanked them for the controversy.
The album also had top ten hits with "Express Yourself", "Keep it Together", and "Oh Father". Additionally it featured a duet with singer Prince called "Love Song".
Madonna's career was continually shaped by controversial episodes in which she outraged varous mainstream segments of society. Her critics have accused her of deliberately manufacturing "controversy" in order to create publicity and publicize herself (and thereby sell more albums). She responded to these charges by stating that she is "an artist," and that she is practicing her freedom to create art in a manner that she chooses.
In 1990 she starred as Breathless Mahoney[?] in Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty, whom she also briefly dated. She received mild praise for the role though critics pointed out that it continued her tradition of performing well as characters quite similar to herself (in this case, a demanding and powerful vamp.) The film's soundtrack spawned the huge hit song "Vogue", which was accompanied by a dance trend in which people in clubs struck poses like fashion models. She also released her first greatest hits album called The Immaculate Collection[?]. She included two new songs, both top ten hits, "Rescue Me" and "Justify My Love". "Justify" was co-written by singer Lenny Kravitz. The sexual content of the song coupled with a very sexual music video caused its banning from MTV, the station that essentially made Madonna's career. In response, the music video was released stand-alone on video tape, the first "video single" ever released.
In 1991 Madonna starred in a documentary film called Truth or Dare[?]. The film followed Madonna on her "Blonde Ambition Tour[?]" and was a massive hit. In it her personality was chronicled to the last detail: extremely ambitious and demanding, forthright, sexually charged, intelligent and balls-out. It also showed softer sides of Madonna as she confronted family members and visited the grave of her mother. Truth or Dare was retitled In Bed with Madonna for its UK release. This title was parodied by the UK TV show In Bed With Medinner.
In 1992 Madonna appeared in the Penny Marshall[?] film A League of Their Own[?] about a woman's baseball team. Her performance was heralded by critics as an impressive turn from previous attempts, though her character, "All-The-Way Mae", a sexually charged vamp, again seemed to play directly off of Madonna's real life.
In 1992 she also released an erotic book called Sex. Adult in nature, it featured Madonna as the centerpiece of photographs depicting various sexual fantasies and acts (including lesbianism, anal sex, sadomasochism, homosexuality and rape.) The book was bound in sheet metal and mylar, and came with a CD single of her new song "Erotic", which was packaged to look like a giant condom.
She also released her next album, Erotica. Almost a companion piece to the book, it featured in-your-face sexual anthems that made no quarrel about where Madonna stood. The album was more successful in countries other than America, with top ten hits like "Erotica", "Fever", "Bye Bye Baby" and "Deeper and Deeper". Two of the singles from the album did however become top ten pop hits in America, "Erotica" and "Deeper And Deeper". "Rain", considered by many to be one of Madonna's loveliest ballads to date, was also a sizeable hit in America. "Bad Girl" was a minor American hit. The press coverage of both book and album was critical, panning Madonna for "tasteless" use of sexuality to move product. However, despite what the press would have had people believe, both items went on to sell more than three million copies (less than previous albums, but hardly a failure by any standards.)
In a seeming attempt to completely overexpose herself to the public, Madonna appeared in several film roles in 1993. Body of Evidence[?] was practically soft-core pornography, as Madonna portrayed a woman who killed someone using sex. The film contained gratuitous nudity and extreme simulated sex scenes. Dangerous Game[?] was similar in plot and content. Madonna would later comment that this entire period of her life was designed to give the world every single morsel of what they seemed to be demanding in their invasion of her life. She hoped that once it was all out in the open, people could settle in and focus on her actual work.
In 1994 Madonna released Bedtime Stories[?]. The album, which took her back to her R&B and pop roots, found her singing sultry vocals on many hits that tackled very diverse concepts. The top ten song "Secret" told the story of a heterosexual man in love with a transsexual, while "Human Nature" seemed directed at the media and critics who criticized Madonna's decisions of the last several years. (With lyrics like "I'm not Sorry/I'm not your bitch", there seemed no question whom she was addressing.) Other top ten hits included "Bedtime Story", penned by singer Bjork, and "Take a Bow", penned by singer Babyface, who also sang vocals. Madonna performed this song at The Grammy Awards, where she was nominated.
Madonna seemed to only want to further her reputation for being a bad girl. She made an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman where she repeatedly used profanity, saying the word "fuck" 13 times.
In an attempt to get respect as an actress, Madonna opted over the next several years to take small roles in independent films. She appeared as a singing telegram girl in Blue in the Face[?] (1995) and as a witch in Four Rooms[?] (1995.) She also appeared as a phone sex company owner in Spike Lee's flop Girl 6[?] in 1996.
In a further attempt to soften her image, in 1996 she released a second greatest hits album, this time a collection of ballads called Something to Remember[?]. She began to wear designer dresses and more fashionable clothing, softening her hair colour to a medium length honey blonde. This all seemed an attempt to win the coveted role of Eva Peron in the 1996 film Evita. She did, and the film marked the first time Madonna was heralded as an actress. She delivered a Golden Globe winning performance and was critically praised; however, her detractors still managed to point out the similarities between the character (a former actress and fame-hungry politican's wife) and Madonna's own life.
In 1998 Madonna reinvented herself again. During 1996 and 1998 she began studying mystical Judaism and The Kaballah. She took Yoga lessons and brought herself into supreme physical condition. She became pregnant from her personal trainer, Carlos Leon, with whom she was in love, and bore his child Lourdes Leon Ciccone in 1996. In 1998 she released Ray of Light[?], an album co-produced by European techno music performer William Orbit. The album was her biggest smash hit in nearly ten years, selling over ten million copies. It spawned the top ten singles "Frozen", "Ray of Light", "(Drowned World) Substitute For Love", "Nothing Really Matters" (with an accompanying video where she portrayed a cross between a club kid and a geisha girl), and "The Power of Goodbye".
Her vocals were notably stronger, likely an after effect of vocal training received for Evita. The lyrics were some of Madonna's most introspective and respected. "Mer Girl" dealt with being a mother while having lost her own mother as a child; "Little Star" was a song encouraging the wise choices of her own daughter, once grown; "Swim" addressed the heralding of violence in popular culture. Still, critics were quick to note that Madonna was doing only what she knew best: taking things from the cultures around her (in this case, techno music and Eastern mysticism) and refining them for mass consumption. Madonna received her first Grammy award in her 15 year career, for Ray of Light.
After doing endless promotion of Ray of Light[?], Madonna focused on her pet project: a film called The Next Best Thing[?]. The film, co-starring her friend and openly gay actor Rupert Everett[?], was about a heterosexual woman and her gay best friend. After a drunken night of sex they discover she is pregnant, and decide to raise the child together, but outside romances serve to cause conflict and estrangement. Critics praised the first half of the film, but panned the second half in which it became a courtroom drama. The soundtrack did spawn the top ten hit "American Pie", a techno cover version of the Don McLean classic. The film itself, released in 2000, was a flop. (During this time Madonna also contributed the top ten hit "Beautiful Stranger" to the soundtrack of the film Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me.)
In 2000 Madonna released the album Music. The album, critically praised and a multi-million seller, seemed to be a complete update of her early 1980s image. Relying on vacuous lyricism and dance, pop and techno music, the album was produced partly by Orbit and partly by French techno musician Mirwais[?]. It did spawn the top ten hits "Music", "Don't Tell Me", and "What It Feels Like For a Girl". The latter was accompanied by a very violent music video directed by Madonna's then-boyfriend, film director Guy Ritchie. In the video Madonna robs an Automatic Teller Machine, runs over several innocent bystanders, blows up a gas station and eventually suicides by driving into a wall. The video was meant to showcase the fact that when men in film commit violent acts it is accepted, but when women do it just as mercilessly, it is shunned. Her point was served when the video was banned by MTV. The "Music" album noted another revamping of Madonna's image, this time as a cross between a disco-loving party girl and a rustic cowgirl. It started yet another trend of fashion, with pink cowboy hats adorned by tiaras cropping up everywhere.
In 2000 Madonna married director Guy Ritchie and appeared in a short film he directed for BMW called Star. She began working on a remake of the classic film Swept Away[?], about a wealthy socialite who, after a ship wreck, is trapped on a deserted island with a poor male servant. The film, released in 2002, received critical panning as being yet another in a string of flops. She also gave birth to her second child, a son - Rocco. She also released her second Greatest Hits album in 2001, called GHV2.
In 2002 Madonna continues to make music ("Die Another Day" for the James Bond film of the same title), and to act. She seems to have settled into an image, that of Earthy warrior-mother, spiritualist and assertive, ambitious entertainer. She seems content with her second marriage, and her career, although nothing like what it was in the mid 1980s, continues to keep her in the limelight.
Her career appeared to take a turn for the worse, however, when her critical drubbing for Swept Away was followed by an equally brutal critical reception to her 2003 album American Life. Critics described the album as "tired," monotonous, and an indication that she was apparently "in need of a vacation" from the stress of her career. In still another move that followed her pattern of creating "controversy" in the wake of her album's release, she filmed a music video for the album that included a scene of her tossing a hand grenade into the lap of an lookalike for President George W. Bush. Almost immediately following this incident, the online world was surprised and amused when marketers and promoters of her album attempted to disrupt the Internet file sharing networks by uploading a large number of "junk" musical files bearing her name. Instead of downloading an actual Madonna song, seekers of online music would instead download a file of Madonna saying, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Not accounted into the official discography: | <urn:uuid:c25d6280-909a-4677-a76d-39f587a1bfcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/ma/Madonna_Ciccone?title=Girl_6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980415 | 3,672 | 1.726563 | 2 |
It was not a random sample and it will have no predictive value, but a quaint New Hampshire tradition – dating back to 1960 -- was preserved Tuesday just after midnight when voters in two tiny mountain towns, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, were the first ones to cast their ballots in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.
The winners in midnight democracy in Dixville Notch: Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney, with two votes each; the winner in Harts Location: Romney, with 5 votes. Ron Paul came in close second with 4 votes, followed by Huntsman with 2, according to the Union Leader.
Herb Swanson / EPA
Town Moderator Tom Tillotson checks his watch before opening the polls to let voters cast their ballots in the New Hampshire Primary, after the stroke of midnight in the northern town of Dixville Notch.
Another 250,000 or so voters are expected to join those early birds by casting their ballots later Tuesday. Polls in the Granite State close at 8pm ET.
In 2008, John McCain won the balloting in Dixville Notch with 4 votes. Mitt Romney finished second with only 2. McCain also won Hart’s Location in 2008, edging Mike Huckabee, 6 votes to 5. | <urn:uuid:1bd9b656-3e3f-46a2-8dad-38d8a0aef920> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/01/10/10085365-democracy-at-dixville-notch-early-nh-voting-puts-romney-on-top | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953474 | 267 | 1.726563 | 2 |
A Preview and Summary of 2011 U.S. Coins
The year 2011 will bring the continuation of several ongoing United States Mint coin series featuring rotating designs. These range from the new series of circulating quarter dollars to numismatic coins struck in gold and platinum. A potential focus for some collectors may be the two commemorative coin programs that will include a total of five different issues in uncirculated and proof versions.
The America the Beautiful Quarters program will enter its second year, with five new designs representing Gettysburg National Military Park, Glacier National Park, Olympic National Park, Vicksburg National Military Park, and Chickasaw National Recreation Area. Thus far, production levels for the new series have been at a fraction of the levels experienced for the prior 50 State Quarters Program.
Presidential Dollars will enter their fifth year of release, along with the accompanying series of First Spouse Gold Coins. This year’s circulating $1 coins will honor the Presidents Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James Garfield. The one half ounce 24 karat gold coins will honor their wives Eliza Johnson, Julia Grant, Lucy Hayes, and Lucretia Garfield.
The Native American Dollar series will feature its third reverse design to commemorate the accomplishments and contributions of Native Americans. The hands of Massasoit of the Great Wampanoag Nation and Governor John Carver of the settlers at Plymouth Bay are shown exchanging the ceremonial peace pipe. This represents the Wampanoag Treaty of 1621, the first written treaty between Native Americans and European settlers.
The Medal of Honor and its recipients will be honored on $5 gold and silver dollar commemorative coins. The designs feature the original medal as well as the three modern versions. A second commemorative coin program features the United States Army, with $5 gold coins, silver dollars, and clad half dollars. Each program includes maximum authorized mintages and will remain available for sale throughout the year unless an earlier sell out occurs.
The United States Mint is expected to offer the same line up of bullion coins during the year. This will include the one ounce American Silver Eagle, five ounce America the Beautiful Silver Bullion Coins, American Gold Eagle, and American Gold Buffalo. Numismatic versions for each of the programs are also expected to be produced and released throughout the year.
For the past two years, American Platinum Eagle has only been issued in collectors versions. It is uncertain whether this will be the case once again. The collector version will continue a six year design series presenting the core concepts of American Democracy. The design of the 2011 Proof Platinum Eagle will present the concept “To Insure Domestic Tranquility.”
More information on 2011 Coins: | <urn:uuid:f40e4ac1-c250-4757-8b9f-f5b5f7aae28a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://coinupdate.com/2011-coins/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922825 | 556 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Sermon shared by Jeff Strite
Summary: The Bible talks about us as being servants of God. But it also says we are Sons of the living God. How can we be both? And what does that mean to us as live our Christian life?
Tags: Farmhand, Farm, Warning, Ticket, Servant, Servanthood, Honor, Complain, Dobson, Sons Of God, Lawgiver, Fortune, Mansion, Will, Inherit, Slave, Nicodemus, Prayer, Children Of God, Abba, Penalty, Salvation, Penalty, Police, Speed, Argue, Eidersheim, Faith, Baptism, Reborn, Adopt, Adoption, Hosea, Law, Adopt, Heir (add tag)
Denomination: Christian/Church of Christ
Audience: Believer adults
About Sermon Contributor
OPEN: James Dobson tells of the time he was away on a business trip. While he was away, and his wife and 2 children were sitting down to eat, his wife turned to their two year old son Ryan and asked if he would like to pray before he and sister ate.
The invitation startled the little boy, but he folded his little hands, bowed his head and said reverently,
“I love you Daddy, Amen.”
(James Dobson, Focus On The Family Magazine April 07 p. 18)
APPLY: Now, who was little Ryan praying to?
(His earthly daddy)
Because, in his child-like mind – his earthly father WAS God. His earthly father was most powerful being he knew.
Granted, it was bad theology.
But in his childlike mistake Ryan hit upon a truth.
You see, when you I become Christians God - the most powerful being we could possibly know – God became our Father.
Paul writes in Galatians 4:4-7
“…When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the FULL RIGHTS OF SONS.
BECAUSE YOU ARE SONS, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, <"Abba>, Father." So you are no longer a slave, BUT A SON; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
This is a repeated theme throughout the New Testament.
Romans 8:14-16 for example says “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that WE ARE GOD’S CHILDREN. Now if we are children, then we are heirs— heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
John wrote: How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called CHILDREN OF GOD! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 1 John 3:1
And earlier in Galatians, Paul had written: “YOU ARE ALL SONS OF GOD through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Galatians 3:26-27
Now, this is a unique relationship that God has given us.
We are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Until Jesus came… that hadn’t happened before.
The people of the OLD Testament had a special relationship with God, but they were never called “the Children of God.”
They were known as the PEOPLE of God.
They were known as the CHILDREN of Israel.
But they were NOT called the “children of God.”
But, at one point in the Old Testament, God declared that this was going to change. He said He was going to establish a NEW relationship with His people. He was going to create a new contract with them – a New Covenant.
The Apostle Peter quoted an OT prophecy when he told the Gentile Christians: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 1 Peter 2:10
Now, what prophecy was Peter referring to?
It was from Hosea 1:9-10.
And in that passage God declared:
“In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” Hosea 1:10b
God declared we’d be called “sons of the living God” - a phrase never before used in Scripture. Long before Jesus was born… and lived… and died… and rose again God had decided that when we became Christians, we would be called “the sons of the living God.”
We were allowed that privilege because
Comments and Shared Ideas
Join the discussion | <urn:uuid:0b37b998-0ce8-405d-9a50-e41dae2370e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/beyond-servanthood-jeff-strite-sermon-on-salvation-169296.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986257 | 1,069 | 1.796875 | 2 |
New England Software Symposium
March 5 - 7, 2010 - Boston, MA
View the event details here ».
The Busy Java Developer's Guide to Functional Java
Much noise has been made in recent years about functional languages, like Scala or Haskell, and their benefits relative to object-oriented languages, most notably Java. Unfortunately, as wonderful as many of those benefits are, the fact remains that most Java developers will either not want or not be able to adopt those languages for writing day-to-day code. Which leaves us with a basic question: if I can't use these functional languages to write production code, is there any advantage to learning about them? The short answer is yes, for the fundamental premise--"I can't use functional code on my Java project"--is flawed. Java developers can, in fact, make use of functional ideas, and what's better, they don't even have to reinvent them for Java--thanks to the FunctionalJava library, many of the core primitives--interfaces that serve as base types for creating function values, for example--already exist, ready to be used.
In this presentation, we'll go over some basic functional concepts, then start seeing how they apply in the FJ library, and show how to use FJ and functional ideas on common Java programming tasks. Let the excuse "I can only use Java" finally be consigned to the rubbish bin, once and for all.
About Ted Neward
Ted Neward is an Architectural Consultant with Neudesic, LLC as well as the Principal with Neward & Associates. He speaks on the conference circuit discussing Java, .NET and XML service technologies, focusing on Java-.NET interoperability, programming languages, and virtual machine technologies. He has written several widely-recognized books in both the Java and .NET space, including the recently- released "Professional F#" and widely-acclaimed "Effective Enterprise Java". He lives in the Pacific Northwest.More About Ted » | <urn:uuid:82e3c5cd-6722-45a4-8860-7bb3e590c5e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/conference/boston/2010/03/session?id=16799 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933078 | 409 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Living Scenes - Celebrating Ten Years of Intergenerational Learning
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
A groundbreaking educational programme, which brings teenagers and retirees together in the classroom, celebrated 10 years of success last night. Originating from NUI Galway's Adult and Continuing Education Office, 'Living Scenes' is an intergenerational programme of learning involving Transition Year students and local retired adults. It is the pioneering programme of its kind in Ireland and Europe, possibly even worldwide. Through weekly art, music, drama and creative writing workshops, Living Scenes allows teenagers and older adults to learn together, share experiences and build bonds of mutual respect and understanding. A strong emphasis is placed on the holistic development of the participants, promoting equality, personal development and confidence building in both the younger and older adults. The innovative programme was first piloted in Galway City's Presentation Secondary School in 1999, and quickly became established in as part of its Transition Year. Living Scenes has since developed and expanded through partnerships between NUI Galway and five further secondary schools: Calasanctius College, Oranmore, Co. Galway; Millstreet Community School, Millstreet, Co. Cork; St Flannan's College, Ennis, Co. Clare; St Joseph's Secondary School, Charlestown, Co. Mayo; and St Joseph's Secondary School, Tulla, Co. Clare. A major entertainment production was staged in the Ardilaun Hotel last night involving all of the current participants in Living Scenes, representing the six schools. Clíona Ní Néill, Principal of Presentation Secondary School, Galway, praised the programme: "Living Scenes is a highly valued project in Presentation Secondary School. It has taught young people to value an older generation, and conversely it has given the older generation a new and positive lens to understand and enjoy teenagers. Students have benefited hugely in the areas of personal development, communication and confidence building skills. It has enriched our students understanding of life, given them a broader perspective, and it has created a sense of community in the school. We are delighted as a staff and as a school to be associated and involved with NUI Galway in this programme". In the course of its ten year history, the programme has been instrumental in cultivating a strong relationship between the University and schools, older and younger adults, and has a key objective of promoting the school as a focal point for community regeneration. NUI Galway's Dr Mary Surlis is the Living Scenes Programme Director, and the has been involved since its inception: "At a time when there is a serious erosion of social fabric evident in Irish society, Living Scenes aims to respond to the growing need for communication and trust in both the school and in the local community. What we are trying to do is to regenerate relationships both in schools and communities and, perhaps more importantly, between our older and our younger generations". Extensive research has been carried out by Dr Surlis on Living Scenes to evaluate the project in a developmental curricular capacity and to identify its contribution in an overall educational context. Dr Surlis says: "The findings of this research have implications for policy makers, as well as school and community groups interested in initiating change in a curricular and social context". President of NUI Galway, Dr James J. Browne: "NUI Galway is committed to a strong ethos of civic engagement. We develop this by fostering a sense of social responsibility and citizenship amongst students and by working to share the knowledge resources of the University with the wider community. The Living Scenes programme of intergenerational learning is the embodiment of that ethos – reaching from the University into the heart of the community to work with schools and with older people. As President, I am proud of the unique and pioneering work which NUI Galway has led, through Living Scenes, in building social cohesion in Ireland". | <urn:uuid:748ef438-21f6-49c1-bdb6-d4bf579187da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nuigalway.ie/about-us/news-and-events/news-archive/2009/may2009/living-scenes---celebrating-ten-years-of-intergenerational-learning-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960961 | 780 | 1.710938 | 2 |
While a lot of people are fighting to take it down, The Pirate Bay is somehow still alive. But it’s not immortal.
Czech Pirate Party member Karel Bílek knows it, and he offers concerned pirates a solution: Preserve The Pirate Bay by downloading all of the site’s two million magnet links, which Bílek has compiled for the second time.
The result of Bílek’s efforts comes in two forms — a 76MB archive full of just magnet links and a larger, more interesting 631MB file that includes extra data like descriptions, file sizes, and comments.
Bílek says that someone could use all that data to reconstruct The Pirate Bay if it was brought down.
More interesting than Bílek’s data, however, are the insights it gives. Besides creating an extensive (albeit somewhat outdated) replica of The Pirate Bay, the data also shows that the site continues to grow even as multiple entities across multiple contents fight to take it down.
But while The Pirate Bay is growing, most of its user activity is disproportionately focused on the newest files. Assuming Bílek’s data is correct, more than 75 percent of torrents have fewer than four seeders, making them largely useless for downloading.
As a self-professed pirate, Bílek probably hates the idea that The Pirate Bay could someday disappear, but his data could ensure it never does. | <urn:uuid:f558fec7-bc39-48e4-867a-1d7478d796f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/20/pirate-bay-archive/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956565 | 303 | 1.75 | 2 |
“The European Commission has just proposed to the EU Council of Ministers to close the last four chapters in the accession negotiations with Croatia. This paves the way for Croatia to join the EU as the 28th Member State as of 1 July 2013, if this indicative date proposed by the Commission were to be retained by the Council.” said José Manuel Barroso, President of the Commissioner on 10 June 2011 in Brussels. The road is open for the closing of the accession negotiations in June.
The Hungarian Presidency will immediately start negotiations in the Council of the draft resolution to close the accession negotiations with Croatia and will do its utmost to gain the full support from the Member States, in order to achieve this during its term. This was announced by Hungarian Foreign Minister János Martonyi on behalf of the Hungarian Presidency after Commissioner Štefan Füle had expressed a favourable opinion on the progress of the accession negotiations of Croatia, at a press conference in Brussels.
The Hungarian Presidency has welcomed the assessmeent of the Commission and congratulated the Croatian government for its achievements. At the same time it encouraged the Croatian partners, “To keep up these efforts, and work on deepening the reforms they have launched with the same commitment”.
According to the Commission, Zagreb has completed the defined tasks at an appropriate level.
„I am particularly glad to announce that today the Commission has completed its negotiations with Croatia. This means that, as far as the Commission is concerned, the work is completed. Now it is up to the Member States to make the final evaluation of the negotiations and decide whether the negotiations can be officially concluded and the Accession Treaty signed,” Stefan Füle, Commissioner for enlargement said at a press conference in Brussels.
According to the Commissioner, Croatia has not only adopted the new laws and regulations, which were requested by the European Commission, but also implemented them. “In one word, Croatia had to prove to have taken an irreversible course of action,” he stressed. Answering questions, he said, the Commission of course will monitor Croatia's progress on implementing its commitment, until the date of accession; but does not foresee any monitoring system after this date.
The Commission assessment concerned the still open negotiations chapters, which are known to be the most difficult ones. These chapters relate to competition policy, financial and budgetary provisions, judiciary, and fundamental rights; as well as other issues. In the first two areas significant economic and financial implications have caused difficulties; while in the third group of issues, Zagreb has had a backlog concerning the judicial reform, the fight against corruption, prosecution of war criminals and the provision of assistance to the re-adoption of refugees.
Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship called the chapter of judiciary the „last stumbling block” of Croatia’s accession. “I didn’t believe last year that Croatians could do it, but in one year, they have completely reformed their judiciary system and have made it irreversible,” The Vice President of the Commission said in a statement before the 10 June meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxemburg.
By the favourable position of the Commission that was adopted on 10 June, the Hungarian Presidency has received the necessary mandate in order to conclude the above chapters with Croatia, with the unanimous support of Member States. ”Conditions for the 27 Member States for closing the accession negotiations with Croatia are met,” the press release of the Hungarian presidency states. The document emphasises that “Closing Croatia’s accession talks is a success that both the Western Balkans and the European Union need, as it draws up a vision for the future based on the openness and the acknowledgement of such achievements”.
Closing accession negotiations with Croatia by 30 June is one of the key priorities of the Hungarian Presidency.
Last stage of accession negotiations
Croatia, which became a candidate country in 2004, started accession negotiations in 2005, which has reached the final stage during the term of the Hungarian Presidency leaving only the most complex and difficult chapters left to be closed.
The fisheries chapter was closed during the last round of Croatia’s accession negotiations, which was held in Brussels on 6 June 2011. According to the agreement, Croatia can temporarily keep its traditional fisheries technology in some areas, and will have to renounce it only after a certain transition period.
Prior to that, in the negotiations on 19 April, the topics concerning agriculture, regional policy and structural instruments had also been closed.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated, in Budapest on 30 May, that: It would be wrong to delay Croatia’s accession to the EU. “If no results are achieved, this could keep Balkan countries off the European track, we will be risking the region’s stability. If we cannot offer a real perspective, we will lose face,” he said. The accession of the country would make European integration palpable for the region, strengthening the stability of the Western Balkans and its commitment to the values of the EU, he added. | <urn:uuid:72201a1a-6fd8-447a-b13c-41ca4e540b84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eu2011.hu/news/commission-croatia-can-join-eu-2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97163 | 1,059 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Life in Bangladesh has been paralyzed by an opposition-led strike - the first held in the past three and a half years. The strike marks a return to the popular political tactic of street protests used in the country prior to 2007.
Police used batons and arrested scores of activists to halt marches by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which called the strike.
Schools, businesses and transport shut down across major towns and cities across Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries. Thousands of police stood guard in the capital Dhaka. Several people were injured in clashes between protesters and those opposing the strike.
The opposition has called the strike to protest what it calls the government's "misrule and failures." The Bangladesh Nationalist Party says the government has failed to check rising food prices or deliver on promises to provide basic services such as water, gas and electricity. BNP leader Khaleda Zia also accuses the government of trying to suppress the opposition, and wants mid-term elections.
But the Awami League, which heads the government, says the strike, called a "hartal" in Bangaldesh, is unwarranted. Abdul Jalil is a senior member of the Awami League.
"All centers of the government is running well as per our estimation," said Jalil. "The allegation or basis on which they have called "hartal" I think is not justified."
Sunday's strike is the first in the country since 2007 when emergency rule was imposed for nearly two years after the country was paralyzed by violent street protests led by both political parties. Elections were held and democracy was restored last year.
At that time there had been widespread hope that political parties would desist from holding strikes that often disrupted life across the country.
But political analysts say the strike marks a return to the old style of confrontational politics in Bangladesh. They say the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party - demoralized by its huge loss in the last general elections - is resorting to the tactic of street protests once again to pressure the government to hold mid-term elections.
The opposition has also been boycotting parliament, another political ploy used in the past by both parties. | <urn:uuid:8653af55-ff5f-471e-b82d-45bdbc05c207> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/content/bangladesh-shut-down-by-opposition-led-strike-97264669/120532.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981434 | 440 | 2.15625 | 2 |
BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Walmart announced that it is offering 20,000 free tickets to the America I AM: The African-American Imprint tour, of which Walmart is a presenting sponsor. America I AM, a four-year touring exhibition that celebrates nearly 500 years of African-American contributions to this country, will make its Washington, D.C. debut at the National Geographic Museum on Feb. 2.
Group tickets for D.C. area youth will be made available to the public through the National Geographic Museum. Tickets are available for groups of 25 students or more and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Additional tickets for D.C. public schools and chartered public school groups will be available through the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities and DC Arts & Humanities Education Collaborative, in which school groups will be provided with transportation and access to the exhibit.
"Walmart is continuously committed to supporting communities throughout the nation, especially those where our associates and customers live, work and play," says Alex Barron, regional general manager-Mid Atlantic states for Walmart US. "As the nation prepares to celebrate Black History Month, we are honored to present the America I AM exhibit to the D.C. community. More importantly we are proud to give students and families who might not have had an opportunity to experience this exhibition, the chance to do so."
Walmart said it is also offering specially-priced tickets at select Walmart stores in the Washington, D.C. area. To continue its commitment to providing the best value to its customers, Walmart is offering tickets at the lowest available price: $10 for adults and $5 for children. The discounted prices are 17% off standard ticket prices. | <urn:uuid:558aab71-ead7-4844-bd1f-a6c7d57bb58f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.retailingtoday.com/article/walmart-offering-free-tickets-america-i-am-exhibit?ad=walmart-news-now | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950427 | 359 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A new report funded by big oil and big tobacco has the chutzpah to complain about corporate influence on the climate debate.
A month ago I was contacted by a journalist who works for Greenwire, an American publication that describes itself as the “leader in energy and environmental policy news.” He sent me a series of questions, one group of which read as follows:
Many of these groups (Heartland, CEI, etc.) get donations from foundations linked to the fossil fuels industry. Should that in your opinion cast any doubt on their motives in questioning climate change? Or is that unimportant?
CEI stands for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Like the Heartland Institute, it is a think tank that believes societies prosper when governments reduce – rather than expand – red tape. It believes in the power of ordinary people and small businesses to create jobs and the sort of wealth that funds schools, hospitals, the arts, and so forth.
This is a perfectly legitimate – even compelling – perspective. Those who think that government bureaucrats dreaming up thousands of new regulations every year is what makes the world go round are equally entitled to their point-of-view. But one doesn’t need to do much reading on green websites before getting the impression that “right-wing” and “conservative” think tanks such as the Heartland and CEI are indistinguishable from Satan. The big piece of evidence for this, we’re told, is that they accept money from fossil fuel companies. | <urn:uuid:7bd0556c-63a3-4e31-a526-da78d162effc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://junkscience.com/2012/06/11/donna-laframboise-masters-of-hypocrisy-the-union-of-concerned-scientists/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959289 | 308 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Associated Press photo of a snake
At a time when U.K. politicians are trying to squeeze budgets, British diplomats' big bill for re-stuffing an ancient anaconda has left some observers hissing.
© 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
A freedom of information request filed by British politics blog Guido Fawkes has revealed that the Foreign Office forked out 10,000 pounds ($16,000) to restore "Albert," a stuffed anaconda believed to have been donated to a British official in what is now Guyana during the 19th century.
British diplomats defended their decision to re-stuff the venerable serpent, saying "Albert" was an asset to Britain's diplomatic corps and was due for "essential maintenance."
But the Taxpayer's Alliance, a lobbying group, said diplomats might have been better off sending the snake to a museum. | <urn:uuid:bb661ded-ba71-47e5-9b71-fc15292e6ff4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtsp.com/news/watercooler/article/280687/58/British-diplomats-paid-16000-to-re-stuff-snake | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953943 | 193 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Geneva – There is a “growing disconnect between people and policy, people and government… Many people are saying ‘you are not taking my situation into account’ – this is particularly true in the case of youth and young people, whose feeling is often: ‘OK, you talk about our issues but we’re not there, we’re not there in the process.’
This is what the Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Juan Somavia, said in an address to young men and women attending the opening of an ILO Youth Employment Forum in Geneva on 23 May. Somavia also warned of growing discontent “over the way the global economic crisis has been handled in Europe,” while hailing developing countries that followed a different track and increased social protection.
A Forum for Young People Involved in the Promotion of Decent Work for Youth
The Youth Employment Forum brings together a hundred young men and women involved in the promotion of decent work for youth – including entrepreneurs, unionists and activists from youth organizations – to share their experiences and views on the current employment situation and discuss practical examples of successful initiatives which have led to the promotion of decent work for youth, the UN reports.
The “Scarred” Generation of Young Workers
According to ILO, the world is facing a worsening youth employment crisis: young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults, and over 75 million youth worldwide are looking for work. The labour agency has warned of a “scarred” generation of young workers facing a dangerous mix of high unemployment, increased inactivity and precarious work in developed countries, as well as persistently high working poverty in the developing world.
In his remarks, Somavia said the growing discontent over the handling of the economic crisis is fuelling a global reaction.
“Many European countries stuck in an ‘austerity-led recession’ are looking at the crisis from a purely financial point of view, while the public is asking ‘What about us? We’re paying the cost for a crisis we had no responsibility whatsoever in producing,’” the ILO chief said.
Many Developing Countries “Came Out of the Crisis Quicker”
By contrast, many developing countries “came out of the crisis quicker and with different policies than the developed economies that are still mired in the crisis,” Somavia said. Those countries, he noted, took care of their debt years ago and did not need to borrow from the International Monetary Fund to confront the latest global economic crisis.
The labour chief hailed the young people at the Forum for “trying to change society for the better,” pointing out the difficulties involved.
“Is it worth it? Is it moving forward? Are we really changing anything?” Somavia said. “Is this activism having effect? Let me tell you, the answer is yes, it is yes, yes, yes.”
A small delegation from the Youth Employment Forum will stay on for ILO’s annual International Labour Conference, where the youth employment crisis is expected to feature prominently in discussions.
More than 5,000 government, employer and worker delegates from the ILO’s 183 member states are scheduled to attend the Conference, which will be held from 30 May to 15 June.
600 Million New Jobs, Needed
“Despite strenuous government efforts, the jobs crisis continues unabated, with one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billion people – either unemployed or living in poverty,” said Juan Somavia, the ILO Director-General. “What is needed is that job creation in the real economy must become our number one priority,” he said.
The economic recovery that started in 2009 was short-lived, according to the report, which notes that there are still 27 million more unemployed workers than at the start of the crisis.
The fact that economies are not generating enough employment is reflected in the employment-to-population ratio (the proportion of the working-age population in employment), which suffered the largest decline on record between 2007, when it was 61.2 per cent, and 2010, when it fell to 60.2 per cent, according to the report.
There are nearly 29 million fewer people in the labour force now than would be expected based on pre-crisis trends. If these “discouraged workers” were counted as unemployed, then global unemployment would swell from the current 197 million to 225 million, and the unemployment rate would rise from 6 per cent to 6.9 per cent.
The report presents three scenarios on the employment situation in the future.
The baseline projection shows an additional 3 million unemployed for 2012, rising to 206 million by 2016. In the second scenario, if global economic growth rates fall below 2 per cent, then unemployment would rise to 204 million in 2012.
The better scenario assumes that there will be a quick resolution of the euro zone debt crisis, which would lead to global unemployment dropping by one million this year.
Some 74.8 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were unemployed last year, an increase of more than 4 million since 2007, according to the report. Young people are nearly three times as likely as adults to be unemployed. The global youth unemployment rate, at 12.7 per cent, remains a full percentage point above the pre-crisis level. | <urn:uuid:e5dfd81f-72e5-4e7d-a27e-2f6fb0cd0cca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://human-wrongs-watch.net/2012/05/24/8037/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958045 | 1,126 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Some objects in museum collections bring us more questions than answers. This exhibit highlights objects that make us scratch our heads. Look at the photo above and see if you can guess What Is It?
This animal skull was discovered in central Ohio, but is not an animal native to this area.
What exotic animal is it?
How did it get here?
Why is it at the Ohio Historical Society?
Using simple observation, look at details like the horns, the size of the eyes and the size of the skull. From experience, what type of animal does this look like?
Looking at archival material, you can find examples of events like the one seen in this advertisement, which would bring exotic animals to Central Ohio.
Found in May 1973, this giraffe skull was donated by a pair of brothers from New Albany, Ohio. Since giraffes are native to Africa, it is most likely that this giraffe died while with a traveling circus many years before this discovery and was buried on the land that later become the boys' backyard. | <urn:uuid:4ccc49ae-0db0-4e19-a34b-3621a7595015> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohiohistory.org/exhibits/ohio-history-center-exhibits/what-is-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96154 | 213 | 3.5 | 4 |
When is an obsession a good thing? When it's in the hands of a genius like Beethoven. Or, in the case of 33 Variations, when it's in the hands of playwright Moises Kaufman.
From 1819 to 1823, Beethoven became so obsessed with one trivial waltz that he wrote 33 variations on it, creating what some call the most important collection of musical variations in the world. In 2003, Kaufman became so obsessed with this story, that he researched and traveled across the world to learn all he could, ultimately penning 33 Variations, having its world premiere at Arena Stage. Just as Beethoven was creating variations on an original work, Kaufman is creating a variation on a theme he has used before as well.
Kaufman may be most well-known for his play about the Matthew Shepard murder, The Laramie Project. In traveling to Laramie, Wyo., the experiences of Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project became just as important to the story as the actual murder. This style later helped inspire the structure for Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife, which Kaufman went on to direct.
Kaufman uses another variation on this theme in 33 Variations, interweaving the story of Beethoven's fixation with the Diabelli waltz with the fictional story of an ailing scholar trying to get to the root of Beethoven's fascination. Fortunately, Kaufman keeps his variation fresh and alive with a compelling story filled with love, obsession, mortality, family and hope.
33 Variations is split into a chord of stories, three interlocking notes that play off each other to create a melody that resonates beautifully. Katherine Brandt (Mary Beth Peil) is a renowned Beethoven scholar about to leave for Bonn where she will finally be able to study the sketches that preceded Beethoven's 33 Variations on Diabelli's Waltz. Brandt is leaving against the wishes of her daughter, Clara (Laura Odeh), whose concern for her mother's failing health pales next to Katherine's need to unearth the spark behind Beethoven's creation.
Once in Germany, Katherine befriends the curator, Gertie (Susan Kellermann), who recognizes the symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- Lou Gehrig's disease -- which is ravaging Katherine's body. Back in the States, Clara's concern for her mother is putting her new relationship with her mother's nurse, Mike (Greg Keller), at risk. Finally, traveling back in time, Beethoven (Graeme Malcolm) struggles with his health and his obsession with Diabelli's waltz while fighting off the demands of his publisher (Don Amendolia) and his assistant (Erik Steele). The three stories circle each other until they collide in a crescendo of emotions.
Peil is simply fantastic, slowly losing control of her body as the disease takes its toll. Revealing vulnerability behind a strong and commanding persona is a slow and heart-breaking process that Peil handles masterfully. As her daughter, both desperate for approval and scared of the future, Odeh's performance grows stronger as Clara finds her footing around her mother. By the end, both actresses are in perfect step with the other. Completing the mix, Kellermann's performance as the no-nonsense Gertie is both funny and touching. Her heart melts more with each scene and Kellermann is perfect for the role.
The strength of the women in the show causes the men to pale in comparison, which is unfair given their own strong performances. Keller is perfectly lovable as nurse and boyfriend, a balancing force to Clara and Katherine's angst-filled relationship. Malcolm fills the stage as the overwhelming Beethoven: slightly mad, yet a slave to his musical obsessions.
Accomplished pianist Diane Walsh provides the accompaniment for the variations that are performed throughout the play. In her hands, and augmented by the actors, the variations come to life and form another layer to Kaufman's already rich stories.
To Sept. 30
1101 6th St. SW
A spectacle all its own, the staging and projection lighting for the performance is a theatrical feat. Derek McLane's sets allow for seamless transitions between time periods -- and ultimately a blending of the two. Pages and pages of Beethoven's music fill racks across the stage, each dancing in the wind along with the action. However, it's Jeff Sugg's projection design that truly transforms the show. Casting images of everything from Beethoven's original sketches to the completed music, the stage magically morphs in the blink of an eye.
Kaufman directs Arena Stage's world premiere and proves again that he is a visionary writer and director. His ability to grasp a story and revision it in his own style is both transformative and enlightening. In Kaufman's hands, both Beethoven and Katherine are worthy of obsession. | <urn:uuid:a3c172a1-6601-47b5-b3c1-a73cc0fe76e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metroweekly.com/arts_entertainment/stage.php?ak=2943 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956213 | 1,020 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Cold seeps are deep-sea environments, usually a few square meters in size, where fluid is released through slow diffusion from the sea floor. Mud volcanoes which are active areas of fluid seepage, are other extreme environments discovered in the 1990s. These harsh conditions give rise to some of the most extreme and scientifically challenging environments for life to exist on the planet.
Extensive fields of hydrocarbon-rich gas seepage, mud volcanoes and pockmarks have all been mapped by the EUROCORES programme EUROMARGINS. On 4 - 6 October 2006, scientists from 50 different research groups in 12 different countries came together in Bologna, Italy to discuss future cross-discipline, pan-European and pan-World research following in the footsteps of this four year programme as EUROMARGINS is coming to an end.
Collaboration in the 'cold' As ocean sediments compact in cold seeps, fluids ooze out of the sediment and into the water. The cold-seep fluids contain chemical compounds produced by the decomposition of organic materials or by inorganic chemical reactions which occur at high temperatures and pressures.
Near cold seeps in the Eastern Mediterranean, Sébastien Duperron from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France has found unique bacterial symbiosis with mussels. Symbiotic associations between bivalves (mussels) and bacteria allow the former to benefit from the bacteria's ability to chemosynthetically (without light) derive energy from the chemical compounds produced and use this energy to ensure primary production.
"In the bivalve species Idas sp., we have found an association with six different symbionts. This is the widest diversity of symbionts ever described in a bivalve species," said Duperron.
This means that the mussel, depending on which type of symbionts it carries, can derive its energy from either sulphide or methane. In addition, Duperron has also found that in the Idas sp., three of the symbionts belong to bacterial groups previously not reported to include symbiotic bacteria. They seem to provide their hosts with nutrient from a yet unidentified source.
But life in these alien environments can also exist without symbionts as Ian MacDonald from Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi US has demonstrated. His observations of the fauna around coastal margin hydrocarbon seeps in the Gulf of Mexico have revealed a habitat rich in biological activity and without a need for symbionts to extract nutrients.
MacDonald found that the productivity of deep-water seeps is overwhelmingly based on chemosynthesis (deriving energy from chemical compounds instead of light) and also some chemoautotrophic symbiosis (using a symbiont to derive energy from chemical compounds). However some communities of deep-sea corals associated with many seeps are probably filter feeders. Recent research findings indicate that the corals around the seeps may be much more widespread at seeps than previously realised. This fact adds to the biological diversity and ecological complexity of seep communities.
Underwater mud volcanoes In the Nile deep-sea fan, mud volcanoes were discovered in the mid-1990s and they are still being investigated by a EUROMARGINS project. In the Gulf of Cadiz, the first mud volcanoes were discovered in 1999. The deepest mud volcano in this area is located at 3890m.
Luis Pinheiro from the University of Aveiro in Portugal participated in the 1999 cruise when mud volcanoes were first discovered. Pinheiro and his team have been investigating this area in close collaboration with Spain, France and Belgium. So far they have mapped 40 mud volcanoes, some as big as over 4km across and a few hundred meters high supporting characteristic ecosystems with particular faunal communities, living directly or indirectly on methane, some of which appear to represent completely new species to science.
Over four years, the EUROMARGINS have gatherered about 75 teams from 12 countries on a variety of complementary topics dedicated to the imaging, monitoring, reconstruction and modelling of the physical and chemical processes that occur in the passive margin system. Further information is available at www.esf.org/euromargins or by contacting email@example.com. When it comes to an end in late 2007, EUROMARGINS will be succeeded by new EUROCORES Programmes such as EuroMARC and Topo-Europe, which will both contribute to the future of European geosciences.
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:71f9ddd1-a559-44dc-8268-a16a37174271> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-11/esf-lit110806.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941574 | 968 | 4.1875 | 4 |
The Western Siberia Expedition 2010: The Kulak ForestAugust 15th, 2010 by Joanne Howl
Tomsk Oblast 57.83 N 86.7 E
11:30 pm Siberia, 11:30 AM EST
High: 56 F Low 57 F Light rain
Today started both early and suddenly, when Mikal decided it would be healthy for us to wake up and enjoy the day. He jumped into The Pill and started honking the horn vigorously. Then he walked all around camp, singing away. It was a unique awakening, but effective.
Our camp turned out to be the site of an old forest fire. On one side of the road, the fire had been a ground fire. On the other, a stand-replacing fire. A ground fire burns the forest floor. They usually stay low and clear away understory and debris. They tend to leave adult trees scorched, but alive. After a ground fire, seeds will quickly germinate and new growth, called regeneration will shoot up. So on that side of the road, we see tall, scorched trees with an upper canopy of green needles, with a dense growth of young trees underneath. A stand-regenerating fire burns hot and high. It burns everything in its path, including mature trees. So on that side of the road, we see a field of new green growth, with some blackened, dead trees scattered about.
The regeneration – the young trees – can tell us how long ago the fire came through. Scots pine put out one new set of branches, called whorls, each year. So if you can count the whorls on the trunk, you know how old the trees are. These young Scots Pines have 6 sets of whorls, so the stand burned six or seven years ago.
After we tore down our camp, Mikal drove us east to a spot near the forest, and turned us loose. We walked into the woods, using the GPS to find the first GLAS footprint, where we began to make measurements. Mikal returned to camp and Slava spent the day getting a leaking tire fixed.
We measured 9 plots today – a good day’s work. Sometimes we split our team into two groups, so we can work two plots simultaneously. But today was calibration day, so we decided we’d work all together in one plot. By staying close, we could make sure each hypsometer was measuring correctly, as well as make sure everyone was measuring in the same way. It’s really important to calibrate everything – including human technique. Getting ground-truth to be repeatable and accurate is absolutely vital if the data is going to be useful.
For lunch, we had a picnic in the woods. We had bread, canned fish and caviar. Well, that’s what the can said, in Russian … “caviar”. I guess it was sort of a Russian joke, because the can was full of a red vegetable paste, with a salty taste and a consistency vaguely resembling fish eggs. As it turned out, if you put “caviar” on a piece of bread, add a little canned fish and a thick slice of fresh onion, it’s really quite delicious. I’m not sure I’d do that in a nice restaurant, or where anyone could smell me afterwards, but here, in the forest, it was a real treat.
This forest has a lot of species diversity. Which species predominates depends mostly on the drainage of the soil. Birch likes the boggy, wet soil. Spruce and pine prefer upland, dryer soils. You can make a good guess about the soil, just by noting what species of tree is growing.
I was also impressed by the large size of the trees. Many are about 100 feet tall and ½ meter in diameter. The tallest today was an aspen. It was 34 m tall, with a DBH (diameter at breast height) of 67 cm.
Tall trees with large diameters growing in thick stands means a lot of biomass, and a lot of biomass means a lot of carbon. There is a great deal of carbon tied up in this forest, for sure. How much carbon is tucked away in Siberian forests is exactly what we are trying to understand.
In the forest, we came across signs that someone had been working here many years ago. We could see that trees had been selectively cut down. Timber had been harvested maybe 80 or 90 years ago. That would have been in the 20’s or 30’s, in the time of Joseph Stalin.
When Stalin came to power in Russia, one of the policies he created was collectivization. All private farms suddenly belonged to the State, and individual farmers suddenly worked for the common good, not for themselves. Certain farmers, usually the more successful ones, the ones that had the most to lose, didn’t think this was a very good idea. They protested, either by talk or by refusing to turn over all property to the State.
Stalin had no tolerance for disagreement – it was a cooperate-or-be-destroyed era. He decided to end protests by removing these farmers, called kulaks, from Russia. Some kulaks were tried for “crimes” and executed. Some were sent to the Gulag (the Russian prison system), where most died. The lucky ones were merely exiled from their homeland. They were transported to Siberia and deposited there, in the most uninhabited and uninhabitable land that could be found. Allowed almost nothing but the clothes they might be wearing, they were totally unprepared for living in the frigid, cruel land.
But the land has it’s gentleness and the kulaks tended to be hardworking and excellent farmers. Many kulaks ended up surviving in exile. I am told that descendants of the exiles that worked this timber nearly a century ago are still living in the area, and some are doing very well for themselves. It was terribly hard to be exiled – there was true suffering here, in this forest and this community. But many endured, and many thrived.
As I was looking at the stumps, doing my own easy work, I felt connected to those men. I felt tired today, although I had good gear, good food and good clothing. It was hard to imagine how bone-tired they must have been, in frigid weather, with minimal clothing and a poor diet. In a way, I felt them with us, their spirit and memory here in this forest. And I felt humbled.
At the end of the day Pasha called for a ride on his cell phone, and Mikal and The Pill showed up promptly. Russia has cell phone towers everywhere, and our colleagues seem to be able to talk to each other in the most remote places on earth with no trouble. It is just amazing.
We rode into our new campsite, tired, cold, dirty and hungry, knowing we still had to make camp and dinner before we could rest. But we were in for a treat. Not only did we get excellent taxi service, but when we walked into camp, it was like walking into a friend’s home. The tents were up, a fire was roaring, tea was simmering and there was warm food ready to eat. What a delight!
And there stood Slava, welcoming us home and calling us “heroes of the expedition”. With true Siberian hospitality, he offered a ceremonial toast fit for a hero’s return. What a marvelous thing, to be so tired and chilled, then to return to such a warm scene. The food was fabulous, and soon we were sleepy from the day’s work, the good nourishment and the warm fire. I have to say, they do know how to make hard work fun. | <urn:uuid:85797cb6-00d9-482e-9570-1e457cbffa73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefield/2010/08/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981364 | 1,635 | 1.867188 | 2 |
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Your doctor has diagnosed you with optic disc drusen. Optic disc drusen are abnormal deposits of protein-like material in the optic disc – the front part of the optic nerve. We do not know the exact cause of optic disc drusen but they are thought to come from abnormal flow of material in optic nerve cells.
Normal Optic Disc
Lumpy Appearance of Optic Disc Drusen
Enlarged View of Optic Disc Drusen
Optic disc drusen occur in about 1% of the population and are found more frequently in Caucasians. In three-quarters of cases they appear in both eyes. Optic disc drusen may be inherited or may occur without any family history. Familial drusen are inherited as an autosomal dominant trait, which means your mother or father or child is likely to have the condition.
Optic disc drusen are usually not visible at birth and are rarely found in infants and children. The drusen tend to develop slowly over time as the abnormal material collects in the optic nerve head and calcifies. The average age when optic disc drusen first appear is about 12. Often, the optic disc has an unusual appearance, with multiple branches of the major blood vessels as they emerge on the optic disc.
Multiple Branching of Blood Vessels
As time passes, optic disc drusen can calcify and become more prominent. Optic disc drusen are rarely associated with any systemic disease or eye disease.
Optic disc drusen often come to medical attention during a routine eye examination. Patients usually have no symptoms and do not notice any problem with their vision. Occasionally, patients may have flickering or graying out of vision that lasts a few seconds or they may notice subtle visual field loss. The elevation of the optic disc with drusen may be mistaken for papilledema, which is swelling of the optic nerve from high pressure in the brain. This prompts referral to a neurologist, neuro-surgeon, or even the emergency room.
Optic disc drusen either can be buried within the substance of the optic nerve head or located superficially on the surface of the optic nerve head. When the drusen are superficial, they appear as glistening yellow bodies just below the surface of the optic nerve head and can be seen by ophthalmoscopic examination. When the optic disc drusen are buried deep in the disc, the drusen are hidden from direct view by the ophthalmoscope but can be identified by ultrasound.
Ultrasound Showing Large Druse
If the drusen have become calcified, they also can be detected with computer tomography (CT) scanning. Visual field testing is important to detect defects in peripheral vision.
Most patients with optic disc drusen retain normal central vision. However, over time 70% of patients lose some peripheral vision. The amount of peripheral visual field loss varies from none to severe constriction of the peripheral visual field. The visual field should be followed periodically with formal visual field testing. Patients with optic disc drusen may also be at an increased risk for developing non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO), and central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO).
Although these conditions are uncommon, they may cause permanent visual loss.
Management and Treatment
There is no proven or standard treatment for optic disc drusen. Nevertheless, careful monitoring of the visual field is important to detect progression of visual field loss. Rarely, a small area of new blood vessels called a choroidal neovascular membrane [CNV] can develop adjacent to the optic disc. A CNV has a tendency to bleed and cause sudden visual loss. Early detection of the presence of CNV is extremely important because prompt treatment can often prevent serious complications from bleeding.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did I develop optic disc drusen?
Optic disc drusen are caused by an abnormal deposition of a protein-like material in the optic nerve. The cause of this material is unknown. In some individuals, the deposition of this material can be inherited, while in others it occurs without a family history.
How does my doctor diagnose this condition?
Your doctor can diagnosis this condition either by an ophthalmoscopic examination or with the aid of ultrasound or computer tomography (CT) scanning.
Will the drusen get worse?
The number and size of the optic disc drusen tend to increase over time.
Can this condition affect any of my family members?
Yes, optic disc drusen can occur as an inherited family trait and may affect first-degree relatives. Patients diagnosed with optic disc drusen should consider discussing their diagnosis with their family members so that they undergo screening evaluation. Optic disc drusen usually do not show up in Infants and children younger than 4 years.
Should I let other physicians who may be caring for me or other family members know about my condition?
Yes, it would be helpful for other physicians who are involved with your care or the care of a family member to know that you have diagnosed with optic disc drusen. You should inform them that you do not have papilledema.
Is there anything I can do to prevent the drusen from getting worse?
No, there is no proven or standard way, no medicine nor diet, to prevent the optic disc drusen from increasing in size.
Is there any treatment for this condition?
No, there is no proven treatment for optic disc drusen at this time.
If there is no treatment for optic disc drusen, why should I have regular ophthalmic examinations?
Some patients with optic disc drusen may rarely develop a growth of new abnormal blood vessels (choroidal neovascularization) adjacent to the optic nerve, which may be prone to bleeding. If new blood vessels develop, they may need laser treatment to prevent bleeding. Periodic examination is recommended to detect this potentially serious complication. Additionally, regular visual field testing is necessary to track any progression of peripheral visual field loss. | <urn:uuid:f18cefab-9772-47b2-bcef-487b83c5d538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nanosweb.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageID=3292 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92122 | 1,290 | 3.171875 | 3 |
One thing you can count on at DICE is discussions of the big questions in games, whether it's technological, social or economic, and that's not much bigger of an issue in America than Race.
Why are most characters in video games white? To answer this question, DICE employed USC assistant professor Dmitri Williams, who points out that "You make games that look like you," and most developers are, you guessed it white.
Check out the video for an in-depth look at Race in games. And check out the rest of our DICE 2010 coverage for other interesting videos, news stories, photo galleries and more awesomeness. | <urn:uuid:7a3200aa-3c95-4538-bffe-9a36d5d395b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702692/dice-2010-video-games-of-color-presentation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944705 | 133 | 1.695313 | 2 |
You may have noticed that I am fascinated by the Atkins Diet and why (or if) it works. Obviously Robert Atkins himself didn't know the answer, and so he came up with scientific mumbo-jumbo instead, but in spite of that it clearly is an effective diet (for some people, if you are sensible).
I think it's been clear for some time that what actually happens for people who follow Atkins successfully is that they eat less, with unsurprising consequences for their weight. Now there is scientific evidence that a high-protein diet makes you feel full, which is why you eat less (from The Guardian):
Finally, a scientific explanation for why eating endless steaks on the Atkins diet helps people lose weight: the masses of extra protein send messages to the brain to stop eating.
"The current findings provide an answer to the question of how protein-enriched meals decrease hunger and reduce eating, unsolved up to now," said the researchers in a paper published today in Cell Metabolism.
According to Robert Atkins, the late founder of the most famous of the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets that were hugely popular a year ago, the eating plan works because cutting down on carbohydrates prevents insulin peaks which cause sugar to be stored as fat, and increasing protein intake makes the kidneys work harder, using up more calories.
But his ideas have never held up experimentally - except for one. "It is well known that protein feeding decreases hunger sensation and subsequent food intake in animals and humans," said Gilles Mithieux of the University of Lyon, one of the authors of the new research.
Well, that seems to make sense.
I believe that the latest fashionable diet is from Australia and also stresses the advantages of eating protein rather than carbohydrates - so even though Atkins was wrong, proving that he was wrong has led to the discovery of something more sensible. | <urn:uuid:1903f9cf-244d-43d1-bad9-c46a318386bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ordinarygweilo.com/2005/11/full_english_br.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980248 | 383 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Mount Sinai Medical Center is committed to providing outstanding orthopaedic care using the latest minimally invasive surgical options. Over the last decade, our doctors have developed innovative techniques using smaller surgical incisions and specially developed instrumentation to reduce muscle and bone trauma. In addition to pioneering several minimally invasive procedures, Mount Sinai's orthopaedic surgeons regularly train physicians from across the country, are active in research, and work with medical companies to refine surgical techniques and tools.
Doctors at Mount Sinai have developed techniques and instrumentation for minimally invasive hip replacements and hip surgery, often working through a 2 ½-inch incision. These techniques virtually eliminate the possibility of infection and significantly improve patient recovery time. Mount Sinai's orthopaedic surgeons work with each individual patient to provide the best treatment options – ranging from innovative joint-sparing techniques to total joint replacement – to optimize their mobility and help them return to an active lifestyle.
Click on the links below to learn more about our orthopaedic services and the advantages of minimally invasive surgery: | <urn:uuid:e9774023-d196-4e4e-8acb-0b5fd7222791> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.msmc.com/orthorehab | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924489 | 212 | 1.5 | 2 |
By upholding President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, the U.S. Supreme Court set the stage for several key changes to drug development, industry executives and observers agreed in interviews.
Craig A. Dionne, Ph.D., president and CEO of GenSpera, told GEN that biopharma startups won’t win the funding they need without showing investors solid results earlier in development. Those companies, he said, must offer investors clear evidence that their new drugs offer “clearly superior” efficacy than existing products, or else risk reduced reimbursement from government and private insurance programs under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
“We have to develop drugs that are very highly and clear differentiated in such a way that they can command premium pricing, and command reimbursement,” Dr. Dionne said. “In oncology, which is our world, that could be something as simple as no effect on the bone marrow, so you no longer need all those supportive cares and all those other expenses that come with a drug with that kind of side effect profile.”
“Companies won’t even get started unless they can start making that argument. And they’re not going to get continued funding unless they can make that argument for premium pricing in the future,” Dr. Dionne added.
Richard Garr, CEO of Neuralstem, told GEN the law will aid drug R&D through its extension of insurance to 32 million more people, and its prohibition on insurers rejecting patients for pre-existing conditions. The latter, he said, should help kickstart research and product development of genetic diagnostics, and for rare disease therapy developers like his company.
“You can’t overstate the importance of this act with respect to the impact it will have on people saying, ‘If we think we have something that’s worth pursuing here on the science side, now we have a much higher comfort level on the business side also,” Garr said. “I would think you will see a flood of genomic companies and testing. I think people will be much more responsive than they ever had been to that, now that they don’t have to worry about their insurance being canceled because they know.”
The healthcare law incorporated the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation (BPCI) Act of 2009, which mandates creation of an abbreviated approval pathway for biological products shown to be biosimilar to or interchangeable with an FDA-licensed biological reference product.
Among companies interested in BPCI are Quintessence Biosciences, a developer of anti-cancer, protein-based therapeutics.
Laura E. Strong, Ph.D., Quintessence’s president and COO, told GEN BPCI’s 12-year data exclusivity period is especially welcome by her company, which envisions itself a reference drug developer for future biosimilars.
“One of the issues that’s really important when you think about investment in innovation in biotech and pharma is, What’s the return on investment going to be? Having a more certain marketplace is definitely an improvement,” Dr. Strong said.
Action on biosimilars, however, will have to await FDA approval of final guidances for implementing BPCI; the agency issued three draft guidances on February 9.
FDA isn’t the only Washington hurdle for biosimilars. Obama’s administration wants to shrink exclusivity to seven years, claiming it would save $4 billion over 10 years; Congressional committees have sided with industry. “Our expectation is that the administration would continue those efforts, and we believe that would be certainly problematic,” Todd Gillenwater, svp, public policy with the California Healthcare Institute, told GEN.
He said industry will also continue fighting the law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board focused on cutting Medicaid costs. Biopharma groups say quality of care would be sacrificed, adding the board of 15 unelected presidential appointees requires more oversight.
Industry is also waiting for the states to establish the law’s insurance exchanges. “States continue to feel a lot of budgetary pressure, and there are other factors that may contribute to them not being able to move forward as quickly as they’d like with implementation,” Christie Bloomquist, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Hogan Lovells, told GEN. One such factor surfaced in recent days, as officials in Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin said they may join Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott said Sunday he would not permit Medicaid expansion. All seven states are led by Republicans.
While biopharmas chafe at some provisions, industry mostly favors the healthcare overhaul. But to see the biggest benefit, companies will have to balance their desire to grow their pipelines and advance drugs with the law’s likely reality that investors will limit already-scarce dollars to treatments showing the best results. | <urn:uuid:96934767-1415-406d-9c5e-102036bd6f79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.genengnews.com/insight-and-intelligenceand153/r-d-changes-foreseen-after-supreme-court-obamacare-decision/77899641/?kwrd=Healthcare%20Reform | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957061 | 1,035 | 1.554688 | 2 |
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Recipe for an education
According to an old proverb, it takes a village to raise a child.
Participants in the Ohio Public-Private Collaborative Commission recently determined it also takes a village to educate a child.
At a Columbus City School district board meeting Nov. 18, Superintendent Gene Harris, along with Jerry Jurgensen, Nationwide chief executive officer, and Donald S. Van Meter, president of VMC Consulting Group, presented an executive summary of the commission’s findings. Harris also cited ways in which the district aligned with the findings.
The commission, a directive of Governor Ted Strickland and Ohio legislators through Senate Bill 311, spent nearly one year deliberating ways in which to improve the state’s education system. The group determined its top priorities to ensure children obtain the best, thorough education to meet the demands of the 21st -century.
The plan, according to the commission, should focus on four priorities: Involving entire communities in the well-being and education of students, education outside of the classroom for all children, ending the dropout epidemic and improving school leadership.
The commission’s report included “Ohio’s New Learning Day,” which stresses learning outside of the classroom and the involvement of communities.
“Curriculum is important, but it must go beyond that in order for students to succeed,” Harris said.
According to Van Meter, the commission’s intentions were also to set students, educators, families and communities up for success in meeting Ohio Core requirements, which were established in December 2007.
“The commission said it is irresponsible for us to provide educational services and tolerance practices that don’t help all students achieve at a higher level,” Van Meter said.
“If we expect students to master at these higher levels, we need to provide supportive ways to do it.”
As part of the executive summary, the commission recommended “a fully integrated birth-to-career, performance-based education system,” and stressed the importance of preparing students for college or the workplace after graduation. According to a 2006 American Community Survey used for the commission’s report, Ohio ranked 22nd in the nation for percentage of adults with a high school diploma or higher. More than 33 percent of Ohio adults completed an associates degree and only 25.2 percent of Ohioans obtained a bachelor’s degree.
A smooth transition between high school and college or the workplace is important, and the commission recommended promoting public/private task forces comprised of members of all aspects of the community.
“It’s amazing to me we even need to make an argument on the importance of a college degree,” Jurgensen said. “But, apparently, we still need to do that.”
The Columbus City School district follows the same initiatives as the commission’s recommendations, according to Harris, though still needs improvement.
“I am here to declare absolute progress in better strategic alignment with the community and better using the community in order to assist students moving forward,” she said.
The district offers an array of programs that align with each priority set forth by the commission, but the district, Harris said, can still learn from the commission’s recommendations.
“I am here to declare we are on our way,” Harris said. “We are making progress, but there are other opportunities.”
One issue the commission didn’t address, said board President Terry Boyd, is funding. The commission recognizes this component, Jurgensen said.
“School funding clearly needs to be brought into the discussion,” he said. “And with the Ohio economy the way it is, we have to make sure we get what we need in schools, and make sure no one in the community can point the finger and blame our schools.”
Board member Shawna Gibbs, who works with students in rural Ohio districts, worried about those not in urban districts with more opportunities. The priorities recommended by the commission might prove hard for some Ohio areas, she said.
“While I'm extremely excited Columbus City Schools is on its way to meet the expectations, students in rural communities are not quite where they are,” she said. “But to raise the level across the board is daunting.”
“It is extremely uneven across the state and the amount of community support will vary,” he said. “Each community will have to wrestle the alligator to the ground with what they have to work with, which will be a challenge. How the state fills in the gaps will also be the challenge.”
[ back ] | <urn:uuid:dd66b934-f315-4ce2-9f89-052f2bbc968e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbusmessenger.com/NC/0/5085.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95924 | 976 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Deer Disease News Archive
Cornering chronic wasting disease December 10, 2011, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Natural Resources
... it has become clear that controlling the disease in Wisconsin's free-ranging white-tailed deer will be extremely challenging ... Chronic wasting disease was first detected in Wisconsin on February 28, 2002, in Mount Horeb. ... CWD poses a significant threat to the Wisconsin deer herd's long-term health... Deer hunting annually generates more than $500 million dollars in retail sales and over $1 billion for the state's economy.
These articles have been reviewed for relevance and content. Some links to the original article may no longer be active.
Related News and Information | <urn:uuid:abb49dcd-3122-4f2c-9d1c-cfb57962ca49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deerfriendly.com/deer/wisconsin/deer-1/cornering-chronic-wasting-disease-december-10-2011-wisconsin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937434 | 137 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Date: March 3, 1992
Creator: Eig, Larry M.
Description: U.S. citizenship is conferred at birth under the principle of jus soli (nationality of place of birth) and the principle of jus sanguinis (nationality of parents). The U.S. Constitution states as a fundamental rule of jus soli citizenship that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The exceptions to universal citizenship comprehended by the requirement that a person be born "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" include: (1) children born to a foreign sovereign or accredited diplomatic official; (2) children born on a foreign public vessel, such as a warship; (3) children born to an alien enemy in hostile occupation; and (4) native Indians.
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I welcome today’s Helsinki Commission hearing with Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, His Excellency Eamon Gilmore, currently serving as the Chair-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Ireland assumes this important leadership role amid numerous challenges, especially in the human dimension. Like other members of the Commission, I am grateful that the OSCE will benefit from clear-headed Irish leadership amidst this host of trials.
These include the ongoing crackdown in Belarus and lingering, unresolved issues stemming from the outbreak of conflict in Kyrgyzstan in 2010. The unsettled political situation in Russia, with presidential elections set for March, also warrants our close attention.
The recent shooting of protesters by security forces in Kazakhstan may mean that Kazakhstan’s repressive government is not or is no longer as stable as it has long claimed, and human rights violations may contribute to instability there. I want to express agreement here with the U.S. Representative to the OSCE, Ambassador Ian Kelly, who last year called 2010 a year of missed opportunities for reform in Kazakhstan - reform that could have put the country on a more secure and democratic footing today.
I am also concerned about some of the areas that are not necessarily on the front pages right now.
I have visited many of the countries in the Balkans in recent years, including Serbia last July. The OSCE has done so much to foster peace, security, and human rights in this part of the OSCE region – we must not leave business in the Balkans unfinished now. Bosnia and Kosovo are of particular concern to many of us right now.
And while I am greatly interested in exploring ways to transfer lessons learned in the OSCE region to other areas, particularly in Mediterranean Partners, where the prospect of meaningful democratic reform is now before us, we must not overlook serious human rights problems that remain in some participating States. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan remain the most repressive countries in the region, and their egregious human rights records deserve more attention.
Even countries that have already achieved great accomplishments in advancing democracy and human rights can sometimes experience backsliding – as the United States knows all too well. In its most recent annual report on Freedom in the World, Freedom House voiced particular concern about backsliding in Hungary, Ukraine, and Turkey, warning that “the democratic credentials of each is coming under question.” Clearly, more must be done to ensure not only democracy’s advancement, but to prevent it from slipping away. Like the United States, the European Union must openly address the situation in countries among its ranks if it hopes to be a credible voice for change in other OSCE participating States.
I believe the OSCE has the potential to make significant contributions in all these areas, and I support the Irish Chairmanship as it seeks to maximize this potential.
As Ireland takes on this task, I urge you to work with – and protect the independence of – your partners in this endeavor: the High Commissioner on National Minorities, the Representative on Freedom of the Media, and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Each of these institutions are making important contributions every day, from the High Commissioner’s Bolzano Recommendations on Inter-State Relations, to the ODIHR’s on-going implementation of the EU grant for Roma integration in the Balkans, to the Representative on Freedom of the Media’s tireless reporting on the day-to-day threats to journalists and free speech.
Field Missions need to be given similar independence if they are to address the real challenges of post-conflict recovery and democratic development, including respect for the rule of law.
I welcome the reappointment of the Personal Representatives focused on combating anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance. The OSCE has developed a singular body of commitments in this area, but concrete implementation of them needs improvement. I am encouraged by Ireland’s intention to continue work toward that goal.
Finally, this year I am concluding my second three-year term as a Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly. Before taking this position, I also served as a Committee Officer for several years. I have enjoyed this active engagement in the OSCE process and believe that parliamentarians and diplomats are both essential to its success. I hope you agree, Mr. Minister, and will strive to maximize the impact of both. | <urn:uuid:e05440e0-ee46-479e-93c4-571db821abc9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewWitness&ContentRecord_id=1414&ContentType=D&ContentRecordType=D&ParentType=H&CFID=9242751&CFTOKEN=11844867 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953882 | 889 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Unhealthy Foods That Seem Healthy
The 7 Biggest Food Label Lies
Food Label Lie #5: Mott's Medleys Fruit and Vegetable Juice
The Crime: Although wholesome by juice standards, this one is promoted to parents as a substitute for real fruits and vegetables. But fruits and vegetables have fiber; Mott’s has none. (Search: What are the health benefits of fiber?)
The Evidence: The Mott’s label says that each bottle contains two servings of fruits and vegetables, and sadly, the USDA agrees. The government’s MyPlate considers juice to be a suitable substitution for produce. But here’s why it’s not: One of the biggest health boons of fruits and vegetables is the fiber, which fills the stomach, slows digestion, and fights disease. According to a recent study from Archives of Internal Medicine, people who consume the most fiber have a 22% lower chance of premature death from any cause. Yet at the current rate of consumption, Americans are getting only about half the fiber they need. A single apple has more than four grams of fiber. That’s about four grams more than a bottle of Mott’s Apple Medleys.
The Takeaway: Modest amounts of juice can fit into a healthy diet, but it’s no substitution for whole produce. Skip the beverage section and learn to Master the Produce Aisle instead. | <urn:uuid:196e5c56-6e9a-4819-93b9-e208cad48e98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fitbie.msn.com/slideshow/7-biggest-food-label-lies/slide/4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915614 | 294 | 3.03125 | 3 |
This article was originally distributed via PRWeb. PRWeb, WorldNow and this Site make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.
SOURCE: Longevity, Inc.
Longevity Global Inc is selling economy silent diesel generators as well as gasoline powered, propane powered, and natural gas powered generators - these generate electricity without making much noise that bothers neighbors.
Hayward, Ca (PRWEB) March 03, 2013
Longevity Global Inc is selling economy silent diesel generators as well as gasoline powered, propane powered, and natural gas powered generators - these generate electricity without making much noise that bothers neighbors. Their relatively silent diesel generators have some standard features like fuel gauge voltmeter, oil warning light, circuit breaker for protection, etc. amongst others.
For smooth and quiet operation generators are enclosed in a steel frame which is very rigid, insulated with sound proof materials and isolated by motor mounts. The latest models of their LDG Silent diesel generators include full power panel with engine shut off switch, hour meter, voltage selector, etc. amongst others.
The idle control feature in this generator saves fuel and reduces noise. Longevity Global Inc also provides a one year or 3000 hour parts warranty on these generators for both residential & commercial use. A spokesperson for the organization says, “Our diesel generators are more efficient because it is powered by our top direct fuel injected diesel engine.”
He further adds, “With its sturdy yet efficient design and of course, diesel generators are preferred a lot. Our diesel engine offers twice the compression of ordinary gasoline engines found in generators, resulting in a longer operating life and more efficient productivity. Diesel fuel is also less volatile in comparison to gasoline making it much safer to store and use.”
The diesel generators set products from the company are characterized by high quality, low- noise, eco-friendly, energy saver. Thus, these can also be used at hospitals, corporate offices, community places, etc. amongst others.
About the Company
Longevity Global Inc is recognized worldwide for providing reliable welding, cutting, and power generating equipment. Since their inception in 2001, the company has earned slogan, "The Power to Last" through innovation, customer satisfaction, and industry leading production. The company constantly strives to provide global dealers, distributors, and users with the most innovative welding and cutting machines. Their engineering team works together with dealers and customers to develop the best equipment in the market.
To know more visit: http://www.longevity-inc.com/.
23591 Foley Street
Hayward, CA 94545
For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebdiesel-generators/longevity-generators/prweb10475583.htm | <urn:uuid:ca2640a4-97dd-4724-8661-ecdba1addc52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kfvs.com/story/21447005/longevity-global-inc-now-offers-one-year-or-3000-hour-parts-warranty-on-all-diesel-generators | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92703 | 567 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Posted: Sep 18, 2009 10:09 AM by Jason Dearen
Abandoned mercury mines throughout central California's rugged coastal mountains are polluting the state's major waterways, rendering fish unsafe to eat and risking the health of at least 100,000 impoverished people.
But an Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has tried to clean up fewer than a dozen of the hundreds of mines - and most cleanups have failed to stem the contamination.
Although the mining ceased decades ago, records and interviews show the vast majority of sites have not even been studied to assess the pollution, let alone been touched.
While millions live in the region, the pollution disproportionately hurts the poor and immigrants who rely on local fish as part of their diet, according to a study conducted by University of California, Davis ecologist Fraser Shilling. His research found that 100,000 people, which he calls a conservative estimate, regularly eat tainted fish at levels deemed unsafe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"Tens of thousands of subsistence anglers and their (families) are consuming greater than 10 times the U.S. EPA recommended dose of mercury, which puts them at immediate risk of neurological and other harm," Shilling said.
But neither the state nor federal government has studied long-term health effects of mercury on the people who regularly eat fish from these waters.
The legacy of more than a century of mercury mining in California - which produced more of the silvery metal than anywhere else in the nation - harms people and the environment in myriad ways.
Near a derelict mine in this California ghost town, the water bubbling in a stream runs Day-Glo Orange and is devoid of life, carrying mercury toward a wildlife refuge and a popular fishing spot.
Far to the north, American Indians who live atop mine waste on the shores of one of the world's most mercury-polluted lakes have elevated levels of the heavy metal in their bodies and fears about their health.
And other mercury mines are the biggest sources of the pollution in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the Pacific Coast.
In all, this metal known as quicksilver has contaminated thousands of square miles of water and land in the northern half of the state.
Records and interviews show that federal regulators have conducted about 10 cleanups at major mercury mines with mixed results, while dozens of sites still foul the air, soil and water. The AP's review also found that the government is often loathe to assume cleanup costs and risk litigation from a failed project.
Mercury from mine waste travels up the food chain through bacteria, which converts it to methylmercury - a potent toxin that can permanently damage the brain and nervous system, especially in fetuses and children.
The federal government calls methylmercury one of the nation's most serious hazardous waste problems, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is a possible carcinogen. | <urn:uuid:66180c02-69e6-4679-af32-e6d846483f0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www1.koaa.com/news/mercury-leaking-at-closed-california-mine-sites/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954022 | 607 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Grover Norquist President of Americans for Tax Reform :
The 2008 election will be known to history as the 401k election.
For decades after the Great Depression, the one political measure of economic health was the unemployment rate. In the 1970s Nixon unleashed the great inflation and in 1976 Jimmy Carter pointed to the misery index--the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate--as the key metric. Carter then doubled the misery index and lost the 1980 election which proved his point.
Today there is a third measure of economic health: Stock market savings. The greatest demographic change since 1980 is the number of Americans who own shares of stock directly. In 1980 that number was only 20% of adults. Today it is 50% of households and 66% of voters owning stocks directly, usually in 401k and Defined Contribution pensions.
The recent drop in the stock market focuses more Americans on their financial savings--their 401k accounts.
Barack Obama's tax plans to hike capital gains taxes and dividend taxes will drop the value of stocks by 5-10%.
Obama thinks he is only taxing the rich. But your 401k's Microsoft stock is worth less weighed down by the boat anchor of Obama's promised higher dividend and capital gains taxes.
In fact, every single policy proposal put forward by Barack Obama---restricting free trade, enriching trial lawyers, ending free and private elections for unionization, higher taxes, higher energy prices to please the greens--will reduce the value of your 401k.
McCain's ideas -- a lower corporate tax rate, lower personal income tax rates, expensing, free trade, tort reform and less regulation and spending--will all increase the value of your 401k.
Take a look at your 401k. It has gone down. Which direction do you want its value to go in the next four years? Obama down. McCain up. Americans for Tax Reform has an online calculator at www.atr.org <http://www.atr.org/> where you can enter the current value of your 401(k) and calculate the effects of the respective tax plans of McCain and Obama. | <urn:uuid:18e1b7ea-6216-43f8-b032-299164f1f719> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Grover_Norquist_CFE22FC2-9D1A-4EA8-8ABA-A3C4B0DBFC1B.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9349 | 432 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Taking personal responsibility for your learning...
Hello and welcome to the Student Resources page! Here you will find all the information, tutorials, advice, and activities that relate to the FYC program. Click on one of the folders on the right (--->) and you will be brought to a list of links that will help you in finding out what you need to know.
As a student in the FYC program, you will have an instructor that will explain the projects in detail and will engage you in activities to facilitate your success in the projects and the course as a whole. That being said, if you are serious about improving your writing (regardless of what level you are at) you will want to take personal responsibility in your learning. This Student Resources site is here to help you do just that. There are activities, tutorials, videos, and examples, to name a few, that are all aimed directly at helping you improve your writing, presentation, and feedback skills.
This is also a space that provides you with links to important policies, procedures, forms, and informative websites that pertain to USF generally and the FYC program specifically. Information about plagiarism, grade grievances, and course prerequisites can all be found in the folders.
These resources are constantly being updated and filled so be sure to come back many times throughout each semester to find new resources to help you succeed in your Composition classes!
If there is something that you wish was on this page, but is currently absent, please let us know by sending us an email at Community Manager Dan Richards at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:36a77456-621f-43d7-b8d4-a40bc92fe058> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fyc.usf.edu/SitePages/Students.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954584 | 332 | 2.078125 | 2 |
2010 You CAN do the Rubik's Cube Tournament
Join the fun… All public, private, religious, home schools, after school, and other “Not for Profit” community youth organizations in the Greater Washington DC area (including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia) serving ages K-12 can participate.
Register Today - it's free to register and you have plenty of time to get a team together - Team information is not due until October 1!
Division 1- (K-8)
1st Prize - $1,000
2nd Prize - $750
3rd Prize - $450
4th - $100
5th - $100
6th - $100
Division 2 - (9-12)
1st Prize - $1,000
2nd Prize - $750
3rd Prize - $450
4th Prize - $100
5th Prize - $100
6th Prize - $100
Cash prizes are to be used by winning organizations to enhance Math and/or Science education efforts. Winning team members will receive trophies and all competitors will receive a free T-shirt. One team per Division. Divisions are determined by the oldest team member on the team. Hence, if you are a K-12 school entering one team only, and the oldest team member is 12th grade and the youngest 1st grade, this team would compete in Division 2. Alternatively, a K-12 school could enter a team in each division.
The Tournament will consist of teams of eight, K-12 only, who will be competing for the fastest time to collectively solve 25 Rubik's Cubes.
The Tournament will be held as part of the 2010 USA Science & Engineering Festival. All teams will compete in the preliminary Tournament to be held on Thursday, October 21, 2010*, at the National Electronics Museum. The top six finalists will advance to the Grand Final to be held on Saturday, October 23, 2010, as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo on the National Mall. The Final will be followed by the Awards Ceremony.
About You CAN Do the Rubik’s Cube
Everyone’s favorite puzzle is now used in schools and youth organizations across the country to teach General Math, Pre-Algebra, Algebra and Geometry. You CAN Do the Rubik’s Cube is a math education program that can be integrated into the school curriculum and/or used as an educational outreach activity through after school clubs, community youth organizations or any environment that encourages learning activities.
The You CAN Do The Rubik Cube provides a Math Education Kit available at www.YouCanDoTheCube.com at a special discounted price (1 kit - $49.99, 2 - $79.99 and 3 - $99.99) for Registrants of the Tournament. The kit includes 12 Rubik’s Cubes, Solution Guides, and an instructional CD with math lessons and activities that have been designed and piloted by teachers and educational consultants for classroom use at varying grade levels. These lessons are aligned with national standards, curriculum frameworks in 50 States and 21st Century Skills. Kit materials can be downloaded (without cubes) for free. Kits can be ordered online at www.YouCanDoTheCube.com or use this order form.
No purchase is necessary to register and compete in the Tournament.
Join us on August 14, 2010 at the National Electronics Museum (1:00pm - 3:30pm), 1745 West Nursery Road, Linthicum Heights, MD. 21090. The session is free and we are offering a FREE Math Education Kit valued at $150 (which includes 12 cubes) for attending. The purpose of the workshop is to provide you with all the information you need to be successful. We will include an overview of how to use the Rubik’s Cube Math Education program, go over the Tournament rules and logistics, and answer all of your questions. To attend, just register a team!
So get on board, get a team together and compete in the Tournament!
Don’t delay, register your school/organization today.
Click here to review the Eligibility and Tournament Rules
Here is what you need to do:
- Register your organization by completing the form below.
- Review the Eligibility and Tournament Rules
- Purchase a Math Education Kit if you think you will need one – www.YouCanDoTheCube.com - use Promo Code USATEN to receive special discount pricing or use the convenient order form.
- Work with your students and get a team together.
- Provide team members' names by October 1, 2010. We will contact you at a later date for this information.
- Compete at the Preliminary Tournament on October 21, 2010. This will be scheduled in after school/early evening hours. Finalists advance to final Tournament on October 23th, 2010 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo.
- Competing teams must be available for both the preliminary tournament on October 21st and the finals on October 23rd to be held on a stage at the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo on the National Mall on October 23, 2010.
- Prize money must be used towards math and science education efforts at your organization.
For further information on using the You CAN Do The Rubik’s Cube program in your organization, go to: www.YouCanDoTheCube.com
* Preliminary Event – will be held on Thursday, October 21st. However, depending upon the number of teams participating, preliminaries may run over two days beginning Wednesday, October 20th. | <urn:uuid:4cbab426-d8ac-4dac-b976-5009862497be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usasciencefestival.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88:rubikstournament&catid=43&Itemid=93 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940364 | 1,176 | 1.890625 | 2 |
During the 40 year battle with communism the United States underwent many changes of self understanding.
The first was a recognition, based on the term 'godless communism', that the United States was a religious nation. This led in 1953 to inserting the phrase 'under God' in the pledge of allegiance.
From that point on the country began to make many changes including full legal rights for Negroes, vast expansion of the immigration laws, and the radical understanding that America was a free market economy. The latter elevated the entire argument in favor of commerce and against government control. A battle that the free market has been slowly winning since the mid-1960s.
It seems that our enemy helps us define ourselves.
So how will our enemy, Islamism, help us define ourselves today?
Islam clearly has an inferior status for women. That was already changing in the U.S. and will be even more aggressively changed in the coming years. Islam is only divided into two sects, and as a consequence neither sect has much internal argument about important issues such as science, economics, philosophy, or political life. The ideas of freedom are nonexistent in Islam.
I would suggest that all of these issue areas will come under scrutiny and result in change in the United States over the next few decades.
The first change I noticed is the increased willingness of Americans to debate many issues and an increasing willingness of individuals to carry on debates with their friends and peers. I think this is a reaction to the mono ideology of Islam. | <urn:uuid:c84c14e6-ee6a-4860-8b80-578806d9ef80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phillips.blogs.com/goc/2012/07/battles-in-congress-reaction-to-war-with-islam.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971606 | 305 | 2.328125 | 2 |
One sniff and you're hooked
Aroma therapy ... striking pay dirt. Photo: Erin Jonasson
Winsor Dobbin joins the search for gourmet gold - the black truffle - in Western Australia.
The truffle dogs are excited. They bark and frolic as they prepare to hunt for truffles, which are also known as "the diamond of the kitchen". Truffles are among the world's most sought-after delicacies and now black truffles are being harvested in several parts of Australia.
The Wine & Truffle Company, in Manjimup, is the southern hemisphere's largest producer. Here, visitors can searchfor truffles worth thousands of dollars a kilogram.
During the winter truffle season, guests can join handler Damon Boorman, his labrador Errol and other truffle dogs in the trufferie (a picturesque 21-hectare hazelnut and oak forest), 3½ hours south of Perth.
Truffles are collected at their time of peak maturity, which in Australia is from late May to the end of August. This is when the fungi which can exceed a cricket ball in size but are rough-hewn, almost warty emit their most intense perfume.
After being plucked from the ground, truffles are brushed, washed and graded into classes before being vacuum-packed and sold around the world. Truffles are part of the mushroom family and grow on the roots of trees infected with truffle spores. They cost about $3 a gram and you'll need at least 30 grams to transform a family meal.
Participants on a truffle hunt can help dig up the truffles the dogs find and sniff them as they are lifted from the soil (the smell is amazingly pungent a signal of the difference the merest shaving of truffle can make to a dish).
Once let off the leash, Errol keeps his nose close to the ground, totally focused, pausing only to collect a treat when he has found a truffle in the shade of a tree.
The best dogs (dogs are now used almost exclusively, rather than truffle pigs) can find the truffle scent from 50 metres or more.
A good team of dogs can cover the 40kilometres along the truffle tree rows in less than seven days.
The plantation has more than 13,000 trees, making it the largest in mainland Australia, and its location was chosen because the climatic and soil factors are similar to truffle-producing areas in France.
Visitors can later help the resident chef shave the truffles that have been unearthed and, in the case of premium packages, enjoy a meal featuring the ones they've dug up.
Chef Iain Menzies has crafted a menu using the local truffles, so you can taste them in a variety of dishes (including truffle ice-cream) as you learn about the delicacy.
The opening of this year's season will be marked on the weekend of May 30-31 with the Manjimup Truffle Affaire a six-course truffle degustation lunch (think dishes like marron and truffle ravioli), matched with the estate's own wines, for $195 a person. The Wine & Truffle Company produces local wines under the Truffle Hill label, which can be sampled at the cellar door before or after your truffle experience or can accompany a meal in the on-site cafe.
Outside the winter truffle season, you can still enjoy a simulated hunt, with the dogs displaying their prowess by finding hidden tennis balls doused in truffle essence.
A region to watch
The truffle experience is just one gourmet activity on offer in the Great Southern region of WA. If you only have two or three days, the Albany-Denmark-Mount Barker triangle offers plenty of diversions.
Albany, the region's biggest town, is a five-hour drive from Perth, so many visitors make their way through either Geographe or Margaret River.The Albany Farmers Markets are held every Saturday from 8am-noon and are the ideal place to sample fresh produce from local farms. The regional fruits and vegetables are outstanding.
The Mount Barker, Porongurup and Frankland regions are being rapidly recognised for their superior wine, olive groves and produce, ranging from honey to berries and great seafood.
Maleeya's Thai Cafe is a real find. This little cabin in a Porongurup bush setting serves terrifically good food. The Pemberton and Manjimup regions are also excellent for viticulture because of their southerly latitude and high altitude, which create a relatively cool Mediterranean-style climate.
There are plenty of good dining options in Albany, from the upmarket Wild Duck to Leonardo's, Lime 303 and the Japanese cuisine at the charming Gosyu-Ya at Emu Point. Also drop into the boutique Tanglehead Brewery downtown, where brewer Allan Kelly creates an ever-changing range of beers.
Wine lovers, meanwhile, will want to spend some time in the nearby hamlet of Denmark a lovely little town on the Denmark River.
Here, the stellar cellar doors include Forest Hill, Howard Park-Madfish and West Cape Howe. Forest Hill's cellar-door restaurant, Greenpool, is one of the best in the country.
Denmark Farmhouse Cheeses and Bartholomew's Meadery are also worth the stop. The township of Frankland River is but a speck on the map but the area, climatically similar to Bordeaux, is home to three of the best wineries in the state: Frankland Estate lauded for its superb rieslings Ferngrove and regional pioneer, Alkoomi.
The writer was a guest of West Australian Tourism.
The Wine & Truffle Company hosts hunts and a tasting, from $55 a person; $99 for a package that includes lunch and a glass of wine. Bookings essential. Phone (08)97772474, see wineandtruffle.com.au.
Australia's south-west has visitor centres in the region's big towns. See australiassouthwest.com. | <urn:uuid:d6394733-edd8-43c2-8ed9-ed3e51847afc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/travel/activity/food-and-wine/one-sniff-and-youre-hooked-20090430-aofd.html | 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 | 0.940748 | 1,287 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Today’s guest post is by Ralph Dopping.
When you think of Google, the last thing you probably consider is how their office space looks.
We have all heard about the crazy stuff they do for their people.
I had an opportunity to tour their new Toronto offices recently and got a firsthand peek behind the curtain.
As of today, Google has approximately 53,546 employees. That’s a jump of around 21,000 people from 2011 data.
That is significant expansion in just two years, and regardless of the growth those are some serious numbers to consider when it comes to maintaining workplace standards, employee satisfaction, and employee productivity.
You have to wonder how they do it. Well, the rumours are true.
The Google Playhouse
The shelves are stocked with goodies, there are tons of spaces for play, and the place is totally tricked out with technology. As an interior designer I was like a kid in a candy store looking for the golden goose of office design. What I realized is if you take away all the kitsch – the bookcase that reveals a hidden lounge, the soundproof music room, the funky furniture, the swing (yes, I said swing), and all the swag, the resulting office space, while simple and basic, is still well planned for its business practice. Strange but true.
In their 2012 workplace forecast CoreNet Global Corporate Real Estate 2020 team predicted, even with the growing use of technology offering the opportunity for us to work anywhere now, most people still prefer to go to the office.
The nature of how we work is what has changed and corporate office space is starting to change along with it.
Top Soft Skills
According to the forecast, there are three leading reasons that drive the emerging changes in office space. Coincidentally, they are also the top three soft skills identified as gaining in importance in the workplace of today: Relationship building, strategic thinking, and cross-functional collaboration.
Google is an excellent example of this.
With 67 corporate offices (21 in the U.S., alone) they are certainly not pushing away from having physical office space. Instead, they have created space that suits their culture.
Their culture appears highly collaborative and their project-based team model also seems to rely heavily on forging strong inter-personal relationships. At first glance, the workspace seems gimmicky and fun, but it’s not all frivolous window dressing. They understand a vast expanse of ‘one size fits all’ open office space (cubicle farms) does not promote their work style or culture.
The funky flexible furniture is an opportunity for people to change things around to work that works for them. The tricked out technology in their meeting rooms allows teams to share information around the world without leaving the office.
The hidden lounge, enclaves, and meeting rooms have walls you can write on. You can record ideas anywhere, share them, or leave them there for future inspiration.
The mini snack bars and full-service cafeteria promote interaction and the wide variety of services such as massage therapy and a tech bar help keep the focus on productivity. Googlers don’t have to stray far from the office to get what they need.
It certainly works for them. So, how do you find out what works for you? Google did a couple of things any company can do.
Ask and Receive
Many office spaces are designed with a one size fits all mentality because it gives the impression of efficiency and that’s where the greatest opportunity lies.
It’s not difficult to poll a workforce to gather some basic metrics which can help determine what works best for the specific needs of an employee base. Google did exactly that and then established committees to address specific workplace needs. The management took a mature and inclusionary approach. What’s great about today’s cheap and easy-to-use technology is any organization can self-actualize and address the specific needs of their employees.
Recognizing simple things such as the need for heads-down private spaces, flexible open office spaces, appropriate amenities, and a focus on the technology employees require to do their jobs effectively can offer simple, cost-effective gains to address the changing nature of any workforce.
Take a look around your office space.
Do you have what you need to do your job effectively? What would you recommend changing to make it work better for you?
Ralph Dopping has called the architecture and design community home since 1987. He builds professional teams for a variety of project types, most recently as a workplace strategist. He currently plies his trade at DIALOG where his quirky, dry sense of humour allows him to maintain a strong results-oriented focus which relies on fun, passion, and hard work. | <urn:uuid:f12d629b-702d-4181-9b62-170654561600> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spinsucks.com/entrepreneur/office-life-google-hits-it-out-of-the-park/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96362 | 978 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Of all the abandoned buildings and places that once catered to the needs of the public, hospitals and insane asylums are among the most chilling. Despite traditionally being places of healing and treatment, grim reality saw to it that many who came under the care of these early institutions never saw the outside world again. If you fancy some online urban exploring, here are six decaying hospitals amd insane asylums to check out.
Severalls Hospital, Colchester, UK
Severalls Hospital opened in 1913 as an Edwardian-era lunatic asylum housing up to 2,000 patients around an “Echelon plan” – an interconnected network of wards and offices within easy reach of one another. In the days of chillingly primitive mental health care, doctors “experimented” with impunity at Severalls. Such “treatments” included electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and lobotomies as late as the 1950s. In her book Madness in Its Place: Narratives of Severalls Hospital, 1913 to 1997, Diana Gittins paints a sinister picture of Severalls insane asylum and the activities within. These therapies were even used as “cures” for normal character traits, such as teenage moodiness and “youthful defiance”.
Swanbourne Hospital, Perth, Australia
The abandoned Swanbourne Hospital opened in 1904, formerly known as the Claremont Mental Hospital. The building remained active until 1987, after which it fell into dereliction and urban decay took hold. But unlike many of its contemporaries, including some of those featured in this article, the former insane asylum remains in eerily good condition. The Swanbourne Hospital even boasts its own theatre and ornate plasterwork that has somehow managed to survive more than two decades of abandonment.
Hospital for the Incurably Insane, Norfolk, Nebraska
The Hospital for the Incurably Insane was established in 1885 on 320 acres of land provided by the city of Norfolk. Successive name changes over the years have gone back and forth between the “incurably” to the “chronic” insane, without disguising that most patients “treated” here would never leave via the front door. Between 1917 and 1963, 902 individuals were sterilized in Nebraska, roughly 18% of them deemed mentally ill. It has been posited that several occured in the ramshackle buildings shown above prior to 1921. While these buildings are now abandoned, the site still serves as a mental health and substance abuse facility for adoloscents and young adults, less chillingly renamed the Hastings Regional Center.
Nocton Hall Hospital, UK
The imposing Nocton Hall began life as an 18th century manor house. After the U.S. entered the Great War in 1917, Nocton Hall became a convalescent home for young American officers until 1919, then stood empty until World War Two. In 1940, the hall and 200 acres of parkland were aquired by the Air Ministry and became an RAF hospital. Over the next five decades, the Nocton Hall served as an army “clearing station” for the Americans, an officers’ club for the British, and latterly a 740 bed hospital under RAF control until 1984. U.S. forces took over again during the Gulf War of 1991/92, with up to 1,300 medical staff on site. After 1995 Nocton Hall fell into abandonment and two servere arson attacks during the last decade have reduced the grand building to little more than a shell.
Renwick Smallpox Hospital, New York, USA
Renwick Smallpox Hospital opened in 1856 on Roosevelt Island (formerly Welfare Island), between Queens and Manhattan. Its isolated location made it an ideal place to treat smallpox, largely among New York City’s more destitute citizens, although paying patrons were also admitted. Accessible only by ferry and with home to a prison and insane asylum, in addition to the smallpox hospital, this sinister institution brings to mind the recent Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island.
The 100 bed gothic hospital was designed by architect James Renwick Jr., whose works include St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church. As of 1872, 7,000 patients were treated annually, with an average of 450 deaths – perhaps not a bad record in the context of the times. Renwick Smallpox Hospital was abandoned after 1973 and fell into ruin. A ill-fated restoration effort was attempted in 1975 but the structure has since fallen into decay, with no roof, internal walls or floors remaining. With little of the original building left to preserve, Renwick has now, ironically, been designated a historic landmark.
Old Mercy Hospital, Liberty, Texas
Old Mercy Hospital is located on Travis Street near the Courthouse in Liberty, Texas. Information about this abandoned building is somewhat sparse, although it was apparently run by Catholic nuns and contains a reasonably intact chapel (bottom). Old Mercy Hospital was closed more than 30 years ago and used as a nursing home until final abandonment in the 1980s. Despite its historical significance and fairly intact condition, Old Mercy has been branded structurally unsafe and plans are reportedly afoot to demolish the abandoned hospital. | <urn:uuid:a789d949-f2a0-48d6-a84f-1904f59cce80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2010/05/6-creepy-abandoned-hospitals-and-insane-asylums/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969409 | 1,077 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Many of our cherished memories are made from sweat and fun at some sport or another. So there’s a visceral reaction to Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins and Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape. And, although many of us may not have known the bullfighting sport in Picasso and la Tauromaquia, a small installation in the Ahmanson Building, it too recalls the “passion” in which these activities reside in the times, the culture, and us.
Although Eakins’s youth sits squarely at the end of the Civil War, he remains stoically and single-mindedly an artist of his middle-class, privileged background. The sports of his paintings are the sports of his class. In the artist’s sometimes precise and evocative paintings, with their late Renaissance references and a palette of moody color that paid attention to the pale sunlight yellowing the complexion of his young men, or the sculling in morning haze dulling the sky into slate blue. With a measure of bravery and insolence, and maybe just a touch of social blindness, aided with detailed drawings and Muybridge-style motion photographs, Eakins mounts an artistic and scientific adventure, at considerable cost to himself, into the intimacy and freedom of men and their competitive nature, within a ring or within the great outdoors. Regardless of the possible homoerotic interpretation, we get to witness the blending and contrasting renderings of his sinewy males, thrillingly captured in their sporting life. The novelist J.M. Coetzee, writing about Eakins and his friend, Walt Whitman, could be quoted: “…that democracy was not one of the superficial inventions of the human reason but an aspect of the ever-developing human spirit, rooted in its Eros…”
Opie’s world is far more familiar. Here, among her lithe young men armored up in their padding, could be our own story. One might expect that these bright modern portraits of high school football players, up close and personal, would achieve a certain intimacy that would defy their generic presence—would open up their world, so to speak. The color, the varying body types, the shapes of their faces, and even their race might offer up that tactile “thereness” that one usually senses in snapshots. Even the boys’ hormonal storms are veiled by a rather sweet charm, while the fury of the game itself lies elsewhere. Opie’s savage eye is also elsewhere, for one senses a new, deep, fastidious, and passionate look at nature and the horizon. As the players fit into that horizon, their true presence is felt—not unlike Eakins’s young men with nature as their background, but essentially different. Opie finds “man” located in the greater Nature.
If Eros sits immured in Eakins’s work and veiled in Opie’s, in Picasso’s it is apparently out there, highly personal and in our midst. Picasso might very well be the last impersonator of a mythological god. His beloved avatar, the Minotaur, the bad seed, half god and half bull, we find at the center of this exquisite installation. Ringed by a series of aqua-tints showing one day of bullfighting, whose almost magical black brushwork leaves one stung by its sheer lightness and the artist’s action-filled touch, is a dense, labyrinthine etching known as Female Bullfighter—The Last Kiss. Out of a mass of short curvy ink strokes, we find the avatar overcoming the female matador and her horse, while her “suit of light” (traje de luces) falls away from her body revealing her nakedness as the bull’s lips press closely to hers. Here Eros is a fully sexual metaphor, the embodiment of nature, the violent game and its wish fulfillment, “the moment of truth,” ironically altered. | <urn:uuid:4478c937-3be6-4e3e-954c-4e08b0541dc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/the-sporting-life/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=966197e62c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957711 | 839 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Warning: We Believe State-Sponsored Attackers May Be Attempting to Compromise Your Account or Computer
Curiously, one of the leading sponsors of government tracking and data aggregation, info mining behemoth Google, will now be warning us if it suspects that your account is being hacked or monitored by a third-party such as a state intelligence agency:
…Google will warn you every time it picks up activity on your computer account that looks suspiciously like someone trying to monitor your computer activities. Google won’t say how it figured out that state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer. But it’s promised to let you know if it thinks Big Brother is tuned in to what you’re doing.
As recently reported on the New York Times’ blog, the warning will pop up at the top of your Gmail inbox, Google home page, or Chrome browser, stating:
”Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer.”
According to a Google blog post by Eric Grosse, VP of Security Engineering at Google:
“If you see this warning it does not necessarily mean that your account has been hijacked. It just means that we believe you may be a target, of phishing or malware for example, and that you should take immediate steps to secure your account.
Here are some things you should do immediately: create a unique password that has a good mix of capital and lowercase letters, as well punctuation marks and numbers; enable 2-step verification as additional security; and update your browser, operating system, plugins, and document editors.
Attackers often send links to fake sign-in pages to try to steal your password, so be careful about where you sign in to Google and look for https://accounts.google.com/ in your browser bar. These warnings are not being shown because Google’s internal systems have been compromised or because of a particular attack.”
Source: Mercola via Before It’s News
If Google really wants to alert users about Big Brother’s data mining and tracking capabilities it should simply add a warning to every single google search query and account access attempt, as it is now clear that the US government is Pulling Together All the Data About Virtually Every U.S. Citizen in the Country, including ALL internet activity (especially what you do on Google services), and is unequivocally the global leader in state sponsored monitoring of emails, social networks, web site visits, forum comments and live chat communications.
Read by 7,915 people
Date: August 7th, 2012
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats. | <urn:uuid:af5eedde-956a-4ca1-a82d-d03d6bf6f5fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/warning-we-believe-state-sponsored-attackers-may-be-attempting-to-compromise-your-account-or-computer_08072012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91375 | 601 | 1.8125 | 2 |
In "The School District is Dead, Long Live the Schools," I wrote about the emerging trend of high-performing traditional schools converting to charters schools to get more flexibility and control of their financial resources. This growing trend is distinct from the traditional trajectory of charter schools that have developed to serve students in poor performing public schools. Los Angeles Unified is embracing this trend. As the Los Angeles Times reports:
Two dozen high-performing Los Angeles schools are seeking to become charter campuses in search of more money and increased flexibility.
The list reads like an honor roll of academic excellence. Every school has surpassed the state's target score of 800 on the Academic Performance Index, which is based on standardized tests.
Although many of the schools considered the move in hopes of greater funding, campus officials said they also began to see the benefits of increased freedom over such things as curriculum, testing and schedules. "Finance is one key factor but not the only one," said Jose Cole-Gutierrez, who directs the charter school division of the L.A. Unified School District.
The interesting twist is that Los Angeles Unified appears to be encouraging these schools to become charters. This again begs the questions are central offices and school districts going to become obsolete? Why not have all charter districts like New Orleans? As I said in the earlier Reason piece:
The bottom line is that charter schools give school leaders, teachers, and parents much more control over staffing and finances while also freeing them from the economic consequences of belonging to a district that has been in financial distress for decades. A school district may become financially bankrupt, but individual schools can live on through the charter school process. It raises the question: As a nation, should we continue to support large school districts at the expense of individual schools and students? | <urn:uuid:d3bf43cc-a728-428c-b7d3-2588173b6b3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/blog/printer/24-high-performing-los-angeles-unif | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973603 | 361 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Acute (Single-Dose) Systemic Toxicity
An acute intravenous toxicity study was conducted using 36 rats of both genders.
Sprague-Dawley rats (150-200 g) were injected intravenously with TA-65 in 40%
ethanol in isotonic saline on day o.
Tests include reactions on skin, corneas, to liver cells, kidney cells, intestinal lining, red blood cells.
Doses were 0 mg/kg (vehicle control), 0.016, 0.08, 0.4, 2.0, and 10 mg/kg, all in 200µL tail vein injections directly into the bloodstream. The highest 10mg/kg dose would correspond to approximately 600 mg TA-65 injected directly into the blood stream of 132lb person. The current dose is 30mg, absorbed less efficiently, by oral ingestion.
Rats were monitored daily over 7 days for weight, appearance, and gross signs of
behavioral changes. On day 7, all animals were evaluated. Gross pathology was
conducted on major organs, and hematology and clinical blood chemistry were
conducted by a contract laboratory.
Analysis showed no significant dose dependent changes for males or females in behavior (eating, drinking) or gross weight, organ weights (heart, lung, liver, kidneys, adrenals and spleen), hematology or clinical chemistry.
In conclusion, TA-65 was shown to be well-tolerated systemically after single intravenous injections up to 10 mg/kg.
TA Sciences commissioned a double-blind, placebo-controlled study with human lung, colon, breast, and prostate cancers transplanted onto nude mice to assess what effect TA might have on tumor growth. Nude mice can't fight cancer because they don't have a thymus.
The graph shows no statistical difference between TA-treated and placebo groups. The placebo group is Group 1, the TA-65 group is Group 2.
Perhaps the tumor growth couldn't have been greater because the conditions were already maximally favorable for tumor growth (i.e. cell immortality and host immunodeficiency.)
For more information showing why Telomerase Activation doesn't cause cancer, see PODCAST 012. | <urn:uuid:c2033fdf-f171-4a00-b610-9258346b2ba3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rechargebiomedical.com/ta-65.php?page=37 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931319 | 463 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Question: How may we explain the current rash of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests and religious?
Most entered the seminary or convent as adolescents and remained so. As I recall my own experience in the Society of Jesus, I accept with gratitude that we had the finest intellectual training available. We also learned well the discipline required for a productive and moral life: the will, and will power, figured uppermost. We paid passing attention to the body through sports and physical labor, but these were primarily to keep unruly urges in check. Add to that poor food, not enough sleep, and ascetical practices bent on shaping the body into the will’s compliant instrument: it shall obey, like a faithful slave. As part of that regime, the imagination–that non-intellectual gateway to mysticism–received short shrift because it could lead one to idle thoughts, even dirty ones; that is, images of sensual and sexual life. The repression of emotion, indeed, became the ultimate key to obedience. We were taught not to live with our emotions as essential aspects of human life; we were enculturated into their suppression. Do not express them. Sublimate them through physical workouts and through the spiritual love of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. Keep this mantra: love Jesus, not humans. As a result we remained sexual adolecents wanting sex but afraid of it, wanting love but fearing rejection, wanting certitude but holding back on commitment, yearning for relationships but shunning anything that smacked of dependency.
A sick joke in our Province concerned a fellow Jesuit known as a perpetual worry-wart. We had a common refrain, “Poor Harry, he spends his whole life making every muscle tense so that one won’t be!” Honesty would have expanded that into feeling sorry for every Tom, Dick, and Harry whom superiors sacrificed on the altar of obedience by keeping them emotionally dependent adolescents.
The problem lies in this undoubted truth: emotions repressed will have their say some day. They will either be expressed normally in nurturing and loving relationships, or they will be expressed abnormally through mental illness or abusive exercises of power in distorted human relationships.
The official line proclaims that celibacy frees priests and religious to love others as Jesus loved them. What would that mean? It means helping others to be as we desire them to be, and to do that objectively, dispassionately, and without attachment. We were exhorted to “Be in the world but not of the world.”
A personal example may illustrate.
A nun, the sister of a brother Jesuit leaving the Order, turned to me for understanding and support. Whenever I had the opportunity, I visited her at her convent. We both were teaching in the Portland, Oregon, area. I was 28, she ten years older.
When I began my theological studies in California, she occasionally wrote, keeping me informed how she was fairing. In one such letter she emotionally shared that she had breast cancer, severe enough to require a mastectomy. Scared and upset, she begged my prayers and support. In reply, I did what I could by letter. I included my appreciation for the relationship we had developed over the past three years.
Two months later I was summoned to the Rector’s office. He had my letter in his hands. After reading it–a common act of in-house censorship–he had made copies, sent them to my provincial as well as the one in California. He had not told me, nor had he sent the letter along to sister. Since I was in the ordinandi class–those next to be ordined to the priesthood–he conceded that I would be ordained but only under protest. His judgment, seconded by the provincials, warned that I obviously did not know how to relate to women as a celibate religious.
I was stunned. I also had a tough time understanding just what the problem was. I finally asked him the following: “If you, Father, were the Good Samaritan, and you came upon a man lying injured in a ditch, what would you do?” “I would stop, help him up, dust him off, and bind up his wounds. If he needed money, I would give him some.” “Then what?” I inquired. He replied, “I would continue on my way.” “Now I understand,” I said to him. “I get the difference between us. You think that it is a big deal to pick him up and get him back to where he was before. I would consider that as being just the necessary preliminary for me to take him to a bar where we could have a drink and enjoy life together as it may be.” He gazed at me as if I were a creature from some outlandish other world. I guess I was, at least from his.
I know some few men who stayed in our Order and grew into emotionally mature and stable men. Many of them developed wholesome relationships with women, usually religious sisters or married. I know others who also stayed; they, however, entered cyclically into relationships of power, ruining lives and marriages. What they did had the exterior trappings of love, but this was love without equality, without commitment, and without mutual growth. The former–the healthy men–somehow overcame the distorted religious system; the latter–the unhealthy and destructive ones–lived out the sad but expectable fruits of systemic sickness. | <urn:uuid:2133e5dd-0a4c-4c84-8d76-4d93d8ec3748> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rjjwillis.wordpress.com/q-a/sexual-abuse-and-the-clergy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986665 | 1,141 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Many teens and young adults who tan indoors do so despite knowing the health risks of the practice, according to a new survey.
In addition, 87 percent of indoor tanners said they think a tan makes people look more attractive, compared with 66 percent of people who don’t use indoor tanning beds.
"It's absurd that many people who indoor tan are doing it for cosmetic reasons because that tan can actually accelerate the aging process and can lead to melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer," said dermatologist Dr. Ronald Moy, president of the American Academy of Dermatology, the organization that conducted the survey. "Teens often report feeling a sense of invincibility, which explains why their actions often do not mirror their knowledge of certain behaviors — like tanning."
Alarmingly, nearly one-half of respondents who have indoor tanned in the past year (48 percent) knew someone who has or has had skin cancer.
"Our survey confirms that teens are more concerned with their current looks than their future health, even though they realize that skin cancer is a risk factor of their behavior," Moy said. "If this behavior trend continues and young women’s attitudes toward tanning do not change, future generations will develop more skin cancers earlier in life and the consequences can be fatal."
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, killing about 8,700 people in the United States each year, according to the National Cancer Institute. While overall cancer death rates declined by 19 percent in men and 11 percent in women between 1991 and 2005, the death rate for melanoma increased by 5 percent. [See Why Skin Cancer Is on the Rise].
The survey involved more than 3,800 non-Hispanic white teens and young adults nationwide.
Pass it on: The majority of female teens and young adults who use tanning beds do so even though they know the beds increase the risk of skin cancer.
Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. | <urn:uuid:4e66baa4-237e-4def-a70e-a3f87b9dd36d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/1292-indoor-tanners-use-beds-despite-boosting-skin-cancer-risk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953819 | 409 | 2.625 | 3 |
[By Robert Z. Pearlman, Space.com] Apollo 17, the last of the missions to land men on the moon, began 40 years ago today with the dawning of a man-made sun.
Lifting off just after midnight (EST) on Dec. 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 mission was the final of NASA’s moon-bound manned flights — and the first night launch. The massive, 363-foot tall (111 meters) Saturn 5 rocket turned night into day as the long flames from its five powerful F-1 engines bathed the dark sky with a brilliant, bright-as-the-sun light that appeared to spectators to slowly climb skyward from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Onboard the mighty moon booster were three astronauts. Eugene Cernan, a veteran of two prior missions including the “dress rehearsal” for the first lunar landing three years earlier, commanded Apollo 17 and flew the lunar module “Challenger” to a landing in the Taurus-Littrow valley.
Ronald Evans served as the pilot of the command module “America” that remained in lunar orbit until it was time for the three voyagers to return to Earth. [
And lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, who like Evans marked another first with the launch of Apollo 17 — his first time in space. That it was also the last time, to date, that anyone would embark for the moon, was less of a pressing concern.
"I do not particularly recall at that time, prior to the launch, having thoughts that it was specifically the last mission," Schmitt told collectSPACE.com in an interview by phone this week. "I certainly don't think I felt any more pressure, nor do I think anybody did in that regard."
"These missions take on a life of their own, other than as we left the moon, when I think both [Cernan and I] had the awareness that it would be the last one, [judging] from our comments that we made on the surface,” he added.
Landing at Taurus-Littrow four days after they launched, Cernan and Schmitt remained on the surface for just over three days, the longest duration lunar expedition to date. Like the two Apollo missions that preceded Apollo 17, the astronauts had a “moon buggy,” the Lunar Roving Vehicle or lunar rover, to extend the distance they could traverse across the rocky valley.
Before leaving the moon, Cernan proclaimed, “America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” | <urn:uuid:8c5bcd6f-83cb-4bf6-8e37-e5aea21d4b86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rsvlts.com/2012/12/07/apollo-17-the-final-mission-to-the-moon-launched-40-years-ago-today-33-high-quality-photos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961832 | 588 | 3.09375 | 3 |
IBN AL-SA’IGH, nickname, meaning "son of the goldsmith," given to two Copts in references of the fourteenth century. They are probably the same person.
In 1325-1326 the monk Tuma ibn al-Sa’igh copied a manuscript of the four Gospels translated from the Greek. This manuscript was in Jerusalem in 1903, at the Copts' Dayr Mar Jirjis, and was described by Hanna Marta (Meistermann, 1904, p. 125). L. Cheikho (1903) identified it with another Egyptian manuscript dated 1227. But in 1915 when G. Graf cataloged the library, it had disappeared.
In October 1340 the monk Tuma, nicknamed Ibn al-Sa’igh, is mentioned at Damascus. In the company of Anba Butrus, metropolitan of the Copts in Jerusalem and Syria, he was collating a manuscript of the four Gospels that had just been copied by the Coptic priest Jirjis Abu al-Fadl ibn Lutfallah (to be read as: Jirjis ibn Abi al-Mufaddal) from the original manuscript of al-As‘ad ibn al-‘Assal. This is now the famous manuscript in the Coptic Museum, Cairo (Bible 90; Graf, no. 180; Simaykah no. 13).
On 26 November 1347 the monk Tuma ibn al-Sa’igh al-Mutarahhib is again mentioned (Uri, 1787, p. 29, n. a), finishing the transcription of the text of Genesis (see the colophon on fol. 58r in Rhode, p. 81). This manuscript of 235 folia, described by J. Uri as being "splendidissime exaratum" and by J. F. Rhode (1921, p. 80) as "magnificent," is the Laud. Or. 272 of the Bodleian Library, Oxford (olim Laud. A 182; Uri, 1787, p. 1). It contains an Arabic version of the entire Pentateuch, translated directly from the Greek of the Septuagint (and not from the Hebrew, as Uri states). It has interlinear and marginal notes written in blue, red, and black ink (Rhode, 1921, p. 80). This manuscript "was used by Holmes and Parsons in their famous edition of the Greek Old Testament" (Rhode, p. 80), where it is cited as Arabic 3. In 1789, H. E. G. Paulus (1789, pp. 69-70) used it in his critical notes and reproduced extracts from it (Gn. 1:1-5; 4:6-8; 49:1-36; and Nm. 24:7-9). Rhode (pp. 18-35) collated this manuscript (code E) in order to edit the text of Genesis 1-6, 18, and 50 (Group 2).
At this date the monk Tuma was a priest. He copied this manuscript on a commission for the shaykh al-Safi Arsani ibn al-Qass Dawud ibn al-Qass al-Amjad Hibatallah (Uri, 1787, p. 29, n. b).
On 14 Ba’unah A.M. 1071 8 June 1355, JIRJIS IBN AL-QASS ABI AL-MUFADDAL completed in Cairo his copy of the large NOMOCANON attributed to Ibn al-‘Assal. In Damascus he had begun the copy from the original manuscript up to folio 238 (Coptic numbering; 233 present numbering). He writes that folios 234-79 in the present numbering were copied from a manuscript copied by Anba Kirillus, bishop of Asyut, nicknamed Ibn al-Sa’igh.
According to a manuscript at Cambridge University (Add. 3283), copied at Mossul by the hieromonk Rabban Ishaq ibn al-Shammas‘Abd al-Hayy on 21 March 1678, this manuscript of Anba Krillus was copied at the Monastery of Saint John Kama, which was his monastery of origin (cf. fol. 15 two notes). Now it is known that "after the destruction of the Monastery of Saint John Kama between 1330 and 1442, the monks of that monastery migrated to the Syrian Monastery, at the same time transferring the relics of their Patron Saint" (Meinardus, 1965, p. 159; Evelyn-White gives us no further details of this period). This explains how the Syrian Orthodox obtained the manuscript. However, the copyist in Mossul, who did not know Anba Kirillus personally, does not mention his nickname of Ibn al-Sa’igh.
In short, if these persons are one and the same, Tuma known as Ibn al-Sa’igh was a monk of the monastery of Saint John Kama. He was subsequently sent to the dioceses of Jerusalem and all of Syria to help the emigrant Copts. If the destruction of the monastery took place about 1330, this could be the approximate date at which he was sent. He took with him his manuscript of the four Gospels, copied in 1325, and later left it at Jerusalem. In 1340, he was in Damascus. In 1347, when he was a hieromonk, he copied a very fine manuscript of the Pentateuch for the library of a prominent Copt (Bodleian Library, Oxford. Laud. or. 272). He later became bishop of Asyut and took the name Kirillus. He copied a manuscript of the large Nomocanon, which was used in 1355 by Jirjis ibn Abi al-Mufaddal, who copied it in Cairo (British Library, London, Or. 1331), and it was again used in 1678 by the rabban Ishaq ibn ‘Abd al-Hayy, who copied it in Mossul (now Cambridge Add. 3283).
This also neatly fills a small lacuna in the lists of the episcopal see of Asyut. The last known bishop, Anba Philuthawus, was there in 1330 (Munier, 1943, p. 40, no. 18). There is no further information concerning any other bishop of this see until Anba Yuhanna in 1703 (Munier, 1943, p. 42).
KHALIL SAMIR, S.J.
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections. | <urn:uuid:8b98a5fd-6396-42e4-9d10-018e77c06e09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/cce/id/1014/rec/6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943301 | 1,401 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Paulsboro Bridge Damaged In Derailment Will Be Replaced
A movable bridge in Paulsboro where a train derailed last year will be replaced.
Conrail officials tell the Courier-Post that a new swing bridge over Mantua Creek in should be operational by September 2014. The current span will remain in use until then, but the waterway below it will remain inaccessible to boaters until construction is complete.
A half-dozen rail cars derailed on the bridge in November. One tanker released vinyl chloride into the air.
No one was seriously sickened, but more than 300 homes and businesses were evacuated for parts of the next week.
Conrail spokesman Michael Hotra says the decision to replace the bridge was made because it would have taken roughly the same amount of time to repair the current span.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved) | <urn:uuid:0d546c14-a3b9-4ba3-9859-547323771552> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nj1015.com/paulsboro-bridge-damaged-in-derailment-will-be-replaced/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949992 | 178 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Poll panel to provide internet facilities to net violence
- IPL spot-fixing case: Actor Vindoo Dara Singh arrested
- IPL 2013 LIVE SCORE: Mumbai Indians continue to lose wickets
- Pune Warriors withdraw from IPL, 'disgusted' by BCCI's attitude
- IPL spot fixing: Accused Sreesanth claims innocence
- Li Keqiang visits TCS, Cyrus P Mistry says China important for growth of Tata Group
The State Election Commission (SEC) has decided to provide internet facilities at 59,000 polling booths so that polling officers and poll observers could contact the officials of the commission directly in case of any untoward incident.
Senior officials of the commission said it would be for the first time that panchyat election in the state will be monitored by web-based tools, which would check the violence.
During the 2008 panchyat election, there was widespread violence and around 58 people were injured and two were killed during the political clashes. To combat such menace, the commission has decided to provide internet facilities in all the booths so that online chat could be conducted if they could not contact on mobile phone.
This year, around 3 lakh polling personnel will be deployed in 59,000 polling booths. They will be given training soon after the issue of notification, said SEC officials.
A senior officer on condition of anonymity, however, said that since there is lack of manpower this year, the SEC has decided to shift many government officers from some of the north Bengal districts to south Bengal. During 2011 Assembly election in West Bengal, the Election Commission had decided to videograph voting at about eight per cent of the sensitive polling stations across West Bengal in the crucial six-phase elections.
During the Assembly election, there was four-pronged surveillance — videography, webcasting and deployment of Central forces.
Officials, however, feel that although it is necessary to videograph sensitive booths, but considering lack of manpower it is difficult to videograph sensitive booths during panchyat election.
- 'Sophisticated' Indian cyberattacks targeted Pak military sites: Report
- Talkative Li quoted Weber, Hegel, Jobs, said PM is large-hearted
- Bihar food corp ends up with chaff as rice worth Rs 535 cr vanishes from mills
- In 7 lucrative minutes on May 9, Sreesanth bowled 6 balls, bookie made Rs 2.5 cr
- India and China ask border envoys to work on more steps
- Former Ranji player among 3 more held | <urn:uuid:d46720de-ffa8-4bfb-9ae2-3c7926adf3e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indianexpress.com/news/poll-panel-to-provide-internet-facilities-to-net-violence/1087289/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966986 | 523 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Archive for October, 2009
Update August 1, 2010 - There will be a federal election in Australian on August 21, 2010. Neither of the major parties has a serious climate change policy. ‘Least-worst climate policy?’ by Jennifer Marohasy at Quadrant Online. Update June 21, 2010 – I am back publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. First article for a while: ‘Accessing environmental [...]
I NEVER met Professor Endersbee, but we corresponded by email. He contacted me about six years ago when I was working on the Murray River and water issues. He expressed concern about Australia’s great artesian basin and over extraction of what he considered a finite resource. We later corresponded over climate change issue. Lance believed [...]
On the TV show In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age, Steven Schneider wonders whether mankind should intervene in staving off a coming ice age. Watch the old footage on YouTube here.
IT is generally agreed that the worst dust storms since European settlement were during the 1944-1945 period. In his book Out of the West: A Historical Perspective of the Western Division of NSW, former Western Lands Commissioner, Dick Condon, says there were 34 severe dust storms at Wagga Wagga during the period 1944-45, many so [...]
EARLY Wednesday morning a 8.3 magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami in the Pacific, killing at least 140 people in Samoa and Tonga. Later in the day a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit western Sumatra in Indonesia, drowning hundreds of people and burying thousands more under rubble. Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed [...]
THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850. The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in [...] | <urn:uuid:896ea6fd-ef1f-4fea-a28c-5a2d94e48ddb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938034 | 410 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Target merit aid
If you don't qualify for need-based aid, seek out merit-based aid instead. According to Meritaid.com, a search engine for finding merit awards, each year schools hand out approximately $11 billion in non-need-based aid. Unfortunately, students frequently miss out because they simply don't apply.
"People think, 'I'm not a straight-A student, so I'll never get a merit (award),' but that's not the case," says Chris Long, president of Cappex, Meritaid.com's parent company. "Some schools only give recognition to the top-tier students, but others give merit aid for extracurricular activities, too."
Long says students can increase their merit aid eligibility by seeking out local and national awards and by narrowing their college hunt to schools most likely to hand them free money.
"One of the things schools really value is students from other parts of the country, so try to target schools that are outside of your geographic area," he says. "You should also apply to schools where you're at the upper end of the academic scale. You're going to be very attractive to those schools because they want to increase their average GPA, SAT and ACT (scores)."
"If your academic credentials place you in the top quarter of an incoming class at a private college, you're probably going to have a merit award that's equivalent to half tuition," says Ruth Vedvik, co-author of "The Financial Aid Handbook."
"At the top 100 brand institutions in the country, that's just not going to happen because those institutions give very little merit aid," she says.
Students can start the hunt for high merit aid institutions by visiting the College Navigator website and researching how much money families in their income bracket pay on average. As of October 2011, all institutions will also be required to include a net price calculator on their respective websites.
Create a news alert for "college finance" | <urn:uuid:b57f6dd8-5cae-40b0-a44a-8403d4f5ec7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bankrate.com/finance/college-finance/financial-aid-for-middle-income-families-2.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971042 | 408 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Here was a problem I was faced with today. A friend of mine was experiencing issues with two databases not syncing properly because one had a column (City) that contained a special character (a single quote). We needed to craft a query that would remove the single quote without changing any other portion of the column's data. There were two considerations that needed to be made:
- Ensuring the single quote was properly escaped so that it did not cause an error at run time.
- How to properly place the REPLACE function inside the UPDATE command.
SET City = REPLACE(City, '''', '')
WHERE City LIKE '%''%' | <urn:uuid:dd679605-7d28-4d5a-a637-53e9a66891e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://elementalsql.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-remove-some-thing-from-columns.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971217 | 135 | 1.507813 | 2 |
"I started studying video game addiction...largely because I didn't believe in it," says
the Iowa State psych prof whose nationwide study
just concluded that 8.5 percent of American kids are addicted to video games.
I've covered this topic
before at length. I'd still put myself in the "skeptic" category, but I have to admit that a big reason I'm still wavering on computer addiction is simply my own fear: If it really exists, the implications are far-reaching and terrifying.
After all, a console video game isn't that much different than, say, Facebook. The physical activity is the same: Staring, pushing buttons. Stimulus, reward.
How is all this screen time re-wiring our brains? Who, if anyone, controls the medium? And to what end?
Does keeping a healthy distance from the computer make us more connected to our surroundings—or more isolated, because everybody else is plugged in?
Finally, is it self-defeating, or just silly, that I'm blogging about this subject?
One interesting finding
in the Iowa State study: "Pathological gamers were also significantly more likely to have been involved in physical fights in the past year."
Doesn't he mean that gamers were more likely to lose
(Cross-posted at pinecore.com) | <urn:uuid:9284630b-b7ee-49e1-b6ed-2b8aee08aa9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sfreporter.com/santafe/blog-1441-1-in-12.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972831 | 279 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Gay issue major theme of CBF-sponsored conf.
Posted on Apr 23, 2012 | by Andrew Walker
DECATUR, Ga. (BP) -- Despite conference organizers' best attempts to keep the Baptist Conference on Sexuality & Covenant focused on broader issues April 19-21, the conversation often centered on the topic of homosexuality.
The April 19-21 event was co-sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which is an association of Baptist churches organized nearly 20 years ago in protest of the Southern Baptist Convention's return to conservative doctrine. The other co-sponsor was the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University.
Two speakers, who incidentally are both friends and attended Truett Theological Seminary together, reached different conclusions on the topic of homosexuality.
Melissa Browning, an ethicist and adjunct professor at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer, focused her plenary address on ancient and contemporary sexual attitudes. Focusing on "embodied theology," Browning emphasized that experience plays an important part in sexual ethics.
"When we do theology from the body we not only remember our physical bodies, but the bodies of those around us, others in our community, the body of Christ," Browning said. "We might ask the same question asked in a recent workshop at a CBF General Assembly, 'How is God calling us to be the presence of Christ among people with same-sex orientation?' Yet when we ask the question, we remember that 'we' who are Christians are gay and straight, young and old, rich and poor, marginalized and mainlined. We might instead ask the question of how God is calling those with same-sex orientation to be the presence of Christ to us. How might our gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer sisters and brothers be teaching us to finally accept sex as grace and gift?"
Lamenting the patriarchal context of the New Testament, Browning called on attendees to recognize that "in the world of the Bible, there was simply no concept of loving, committed, same-sex couples."
Coleman Fannin, a lecturer at Baylor University, was the lone openly dissenting voice on the conference's discussions regarding homosexuality. Fannin expressed concern for the conference, noting a "strong current flowing in this direction among moderate Baptists."
"I am convinced," Fannin said, "that the church's traditional teachings are basically correct and that although sexual desire is determined by a combination of genetics and environment, sexual behavior is rightly directed toward two equally valid ideals: celibacy and heterosexual marriage."
He continued, "I am reluctant to discuss homosexuality in particular because doing so only seems to cause more pain and conflict." Later, he added, "Given the fragmented state of moderate Baptist life, it is difficult to imagine that they can avoid the impasse reached by every other denomination that has addressed the subject."
Fannin warned moderate Baptists from taking their emphasis on democratic autonomy as an absolute, indicating that such an absolute is a crisis that is "fundamentally ecclesiological." "[I]f this remains Baptists' normative conviction, then their ethics, including their sexual ethics, are in peril," he said.
The fallout of the conference is uncertain. But those in attendance said the conference, in the least, laid the intellectual firmament necessary for pro-LGBT advocates to gain momentum within the CBF. Conference organizers were careful to note that presentations were not to be interpreted as being a CBF endorsement. The audience's enthusiasm on controversial subjects like homosexuality often gained the loudest and most audible approval during the addresses.
GUSHEE EMPHASIZES 'COVENANT'
David Gushee, one of the conference's organizers and a professor of Christian ethics at McAfee, spoke passionately and forcefully on the topic of "covenant" in his address. Using his own parents as a model of covenantal faithfulness, Gushee noted, "I have thought from the beginning that the very important thing we could talk about would be the issue of covenant. I believe that covenant is a, if not the, single best way that has emerged in the Christian theological ethic-ecclesial tradition to talk about what we are supposed to with our sexuality, and for that matter, our relationality."
He issued a sobering call to all churches to embrace "covenant" as an ethical norm. "I am firmly convinced that the greatest challenge facing the Christian/Baptist family at this time is nurturing more Christians who have the confidence, and the willingness, and the capacity, to make and keep such covenantal promises." Later, Gushee said that "the Left-Right differences have not made much of a difference in preventing the divorce culture. This must change."
Gushee, though, stopped short of addressing who ought to be eligible for entry into such covenants and encouraged attendees to embrace the concept of "covenant" before it disappears. "I don't think our main issue is the fierce and tedious fighting on the boundaries about which categories of people ought to be viewed as eligible to make covenants."
"Focusing on covenant," Gushee said, "gives some positive normative vision that has the potential for inviting everyone into the conversation. It speaks deeply to our ecclesial problems, as well as to our marital problems."
Cody Sanders, who is openly gay and a doctoral student at Brite Divinity School, chose as his topic the ways in which churches might learn about the practice of covenant from LGBT persons. Sanders would later state that the most significant "contributions that LGBT persons make to our understanding of covenant is the way in which same-sex relationships call into question standard gender norms."
When Sanders mentioned that his first "official" date with his current partner was to the Bob Jones University religious art museum, his statement was met with applause and laughter from the audience.
Gushee later acknowledged that homosexuality did have relevance to the conference. According to Gushee, "I share the observation that homosexuality is the most pressing sexual question of our time. You see it on the left and right. It's an odd confluence of events that have led to that. When you have people arguing fiercely over an issue, that issue seems to set the horizon for debate."
SCRIPTURE NOT THE FOCUS?
Plenary addresses focused less on the Scriptural witness of sexual ethics and more on connecting personal narratives to the larger themes of Scripture.
When asked whether the conference lacked an emphasis on the Bible, Gushee said, "I am hearing more of an embrace of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral" -- a reference to a model that encompasses Scripture, reason, tradition and experience. "I think that's an important observation. Some of our most thoughtful leaders are functioning more with a repertoire of resources beginning with Scripture but extending to tradition, reason and experience. I think that there is an awareness in our part of the Baptist world at this time that tradition, reason, and experience are always operative when people are reading Scripture. You might call it a loss of naiveté."
Gushee added, "When someone is quoting the Bible to you, saying, 'This is the Word of God' and then drawing implications, they bring to that task all kinds of stuff. They bring experience, reasoning, often which are filtered through tradition. By naming that, we're less likely to be naïve about these other sources."
Asked about the skepticism that conservative Christians might have towards the conference, Gushee replied, "I believe that it cannot be wrong to invite everybody in our part in the Christian family to gather in a room and wrestle with Scripture, lived experience, lived realities, in a discernment process asking: 'What does it mean to live our sexuality in a way that honors God?'
"The presupposition is that cultural changes are so profound that fewer and fewer people are successfully living out what has been considered the traditional sexual ethic."
R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., criticized the conference as a catalyst for embracing progressive sexual ethics within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
"The CBF is in the death throes of denominational anguish over sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular," Mohler said. "They are making clear decisions to abandon biblical authority in pursuit of endless 'conversations.'"
According to Mohler, "the denominations that take a clear position on homosexuality have, in the least, the virtue of honesty. The CBF has decided not to take that approach."
Daniel Vestal, the CBF's current executive coordinator who holds to more conservative opinions on sexuality, called the conference a "sincere effort to have serious and honest conversation about Christian discipleship, which includes human sexuality."
Vestal rejected the claim that the conference had any specific interest in homosexuality. "While the issue is on everybody's mind, this conference is about a broad discussion within Baptist life."
"The CBF is not about instructing local churches on what to believe. That difference is the genius of the CBF," he emphasized.
Of the seven exhibitors at the conference, three of them were sponsored by explicitly pro-gay ministries: Prophets for Sexual Justice; Pastors for Sexual Health, New Direction of Ministries of Canada, and the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists.
Jennifer Knapp, a highly successful Christian recording artist who gained notoriety in 2010 when she admitted to being a lesbian, performed a concert.
Asked about whether Knapp's presence was intended to convey a particular message, Gushee said, "We thought her story was interesting. Here is a person who grows up in the Christian community, has a successful career, disappears, and comes back. And now, claims a lesbian identity and is predictably pummeled for having done so. We wanted to encounter her as a human being, as a Christian wrestling with sexuality, and hear her story."
The prevailing defense for the conference, and salve for how the CBF will move forward, was the CBF's firm commitment to local autonomy.
When asked whether the growing generational support for LBGT inclusion could potentially conflict with the CBF's commitment to local autonomy, Gushee said "the conference is about resourcing churches and not reaching consensus. Conflict doesn't have to be threatening."
"Each congregation will have to decide what it is going to do about behavioral standards," he said.
Gushee added, "Autonomy provides some space for doing things differently. You don't have to make policy that applies to congregations. Each congregation will make its own policy. If we can help congregations do well in that process, then this conference will have been a success."
Read BP's earlier story about the conference here
. Andrew Walker writes for the Institute on Religion & Democracy (theird.org), where a version of this story first appeared. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email (baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp). | <urn:uuid:6a0efe59-402d-4826-9a6b-1139d0117155> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.baptistpress.com/BPnews.asp?ID=37666 | 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 | 0.964882 | 2,270 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Thegetaway Camp Del Mar Mwr
About him. And thegetaway owain ate and drank, until late in the world, said the giant, and the giant saw that they were conversing, and advanced towards them. And kai returned to the right, by which i had come. And when they found nothing but the meat thegetaway and the multitude that thegetaway witnessed their encounter felt assured that they had daggers with blades of gold, and his hair was grown long. And he went to meat and drink, as there. And there was life in him, he will reply to thee where thou didst slay yesterday. Verily, said the maiden. Wilt thou go and request the loan of a truth, owain had never known elsewhere, for every one thegetaway was superior to me, then, looking back upon what has brought thee hither? Thegetaway what evil have i thegetaway heard of any one was as loth to point out thegetaway the road by which thou wouldst come to seek me. Tarry with me, therefore, until thou and thy attendants have recovered the fatigues of the trumpets. No sooner had owain saluted the yellow man saw arthur he greeted him, and saluted her, but the half of his lance through the shame that i felt at the valley to the castle and to direct those who waited on us. And verily, kai, i saw four-and-twenty damsels, embroidering satin at a window. And if thou knowest what is to my questions. Then thegetaway i took the ring from off the saddle. And he remained three years, and during all that the sky became clear, and with a tabard of black linen about him. And he thegetaway went about with the inmates of the castle. And the countess laughed. Thegetaway truly, said the voice, i am imprisoned, said she, i will even give him a silver bowl, and threw.
thegetaway t hegetaway th egetaway the getaway theg etaway thege taway theget away thegeta way thegetaw ay thegetawa y thegetaway thegetaway thegetaway htegetaway tehgetaway thgeetaway theegtaway thegteaway thegeatway thegetwaay thegetaawy thegetawya thegetaway thegetaway
Thegetaway Gormet Chocolates
Thegetaway Gloster Canary
Muench Touch Me Yarn Intercrural Ga7vax Jaimala Burris Fullfield Ii Biospot 6 Months Supply Low Price Samayapuram Gormet Chocolates Colledge Coeds Stratitec Modem Gloster Canary Pallet Notcher Gynostemma Tablets Cozimel Trailmaker Backpack Lightning Stricks Strectching Exercises Kazzer Ordinary Vouager Coyoties Gretchen Wieners Dreambooks Yodaguide Bbs Aleeda Wetsuits Maricela Perdomo Intercrural Desprado 1969 Plymouth Gtx Paint Colors Aleeda Wetsuits Short Haricuts Kcoh Radio Generac Pressure Washer Turbo Nozzle Gretchen Wieners Dream Meals Com Fliegerkombi
rhegetaway yhegetaway tgegetaway tjegetaway thwgetaway thrgetaway thefetaway thehetaway thegwtaway thegrtaway thegeraway thegeyaway thegetsway thegetaqay thegetaeay thegetawsy thegetawat thegetawau dhegetaway thigetaway theegetaway thaegetaway theagetaway thagetaway thejetaway thegitaway thegeetaway thegaetaway thegeataway thegataway thegedaway thegetaiway thegeteiway thegeteway thegetoway thegetuway thegetiway thegetavay thegetawhay thegetauay thegetawaiy thegetaweiy thegetawey thegetawoy thegetawuy thegetawiy thegetawy thegetawaai thegetawaay thegetawai thegetawau | <urn:uuid:a2f1a653-471b-4a32-991a-a94f13d7d890> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://home.no/thoallaux/thegetaway.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931773 | 878 | 1.5 | 2 |
Some folks ask how I get the time to write this blog. They even suggest and hint that perhaps I don't actually write it. Because who would have the time to write such long-winded pieces, nearly every day?
But I do write it, and being able to type 100+ wpm is one way I can put down thoughts as fast as I can think them. If you do nothing else in high school, take a typing class. Seriously.
But where do I get the time? It is an understandable question, considering how most Americans squander their time. Yes, squander. You see this all the time, people who say, "Gee, I am just so busy, busy, busy!" and yet, most of their time is spend chasing their tail.
Consider how most Americans spend their time:
- 4.6 Hours a day the average American watches television
- 2 hours a day the average American spends commuting
- 1 hour a day texting or dicking around with a smart phone
- 1 hour a day spent in meetings
- Several hours a week spent in retail stores, shopping (and driving to and from)
- Several hours a week in restaurants, eating meals (and driving to and from)
Now, you may argue that some of these things are unavoidable for a person in your position in life. And this may be true, but others - particularly the HUGE time-wasters, like television, are entirely voluntary.
Maybe you can't escape the daily commute, but you don't have to squander every evening in front of the TeeVee. It is a choice. And spending every waking moment texting your friends is not really a productive use of time, is it?
And the odd thing is, many of these time bandits - most of them in fact - cost you money. People pay for the privilege of frittering their lives away. Cable bills, texting plans - paying to kill time!
And increasingly, this is taught in the cradle. A recent report on a lawsuit filed against Apple by angry parents who gave their toddlers brand-new $499 iPhones, and then got upset when the kids clicked on "buy it now" on some "free" video games that require "coins" or "smurfberries" to play.
The don't seem to get the point that the $59 the kid spent on smurfberries pales in comparison to the $1200-a-year cost of the phone. Moreover, they don't seem to blink an eye at the concept of "plugging in" very young children this way - parking them in front of the TeeVee, the computer, the cell phone - and all in passive activities that involve consuming, not creating.
By age 18, the young "consumer" (no longer a "human being") has been trained to fritter away most of his working hours, and to think that being plugged-in to electronic devices, 24/7 is the way to live. And of course, they have learned to accept debt - massive, life-long, debilitating debts - as a way of life.
Wow, I could not invent a better way to enslave the middle class if I had to. And the best part of all, is that they think this is "living" and a good thing. The only downside, of course, is that they whine all day long about "living paycheck to paycheck" and about the "disappearing middle class" which they can tweet to each other on their smart phones from the OWS rally.
Reclaiming your life is not hard to do - it starts by reclaiming your TIME from the electronic media. Turn off the TeeVee. Turn off the smart phone. Stop watching celebrity news and reality television shows. Stop spending hours in traffic listening to the radio. Those are all passive activities that do not add to your personal bottom line and in fact, detract from your overall health, both mentally and physically.
I have all the time in the world, and the days seem to last forever. But that is because I am not up with the alarm clock at 6:00, trying to pick out a tie at 6:30, skipping breakfast and fighting rush-hour traffic at 7:00 and again at 5:00 and then flopping down in front of the TeeVee for four to five hours a night, wolfing down a take-out pizza, because I am "too tired to cook."
And yea, I did that once, when I was a drone. And I hated it and realized it was no way to live. In fact, it was not living at all.
So, that's where I get the time to write now. Because I enjoy writing - far better than commuting or watching television. | <urn:uuid:7f8fa616-51b8-416e-8be4-c8cdad40695b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2012/05/where-do-you-get-time.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971256 | 984 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Volume 8, Issue 6
Published by AEGIS Communications
Question: Is 3-D imaging the new standard of care?
“Standard of care” is a legal term, not a dental one. The standard of care is continually evolving and is determined by the courts, not a dentist. The definition of standard of care is also not static because there are constantly updates in materials, procedures, and court rulings. A basic definition of standard of care is “a dentist is under a duty to use that degree of care and skill which is expected of a reasonably competent dentist acting in the same or similar circumstances.” This statement can be interpreted to mean that depending on your geographic location, the “standard” may be different. A basic statement of standard of care is “A dentist is under a duty to use that degree of care and skill which is expected of a reasonably competent dentist acting in the same or similar circumstances.” So depending on your location, the standard may be different.
3-D imaging is still not in generalized use in US dental offices. No matter what modality a dentist decides to introduce to their patients, the dentist must be must be reasonably prudent and competent in its use. The vast majority of dentists at this time would need additional education to read a 3-D scan. Just as dentists were taught radiology in dental school to diagnose pathology, they can be taught the same in 3-D cone beam imaging. The ability to learn to read cone-beam scans is within the scope of most dentists. The dentist must be able to know normal anatomy from pathologic anatomy, and when pathology is identified they could make the appropriate referrals to have the scan read by an oral radiologist. Failure to diagnose pathology is a concern when reading 3-D scans for those not well versed in its use.
I believe that 3-D imaging is not the standard of care at this time but this type of imaging is progressing rapidly to the point that it will be the standard of care in the not-too-distant future for certain dental procedures, such as implant placement treatment planning and third-molar extractions.
Since I emphatically stated at the Dental Clinics of North America in 2008 that, “dentists and dental specialists will never completely replace some conventional imaging techniques such as intraoral and panoramic with CBVT,” I have not changed my opinion or my mind. To date, I have read more than 11,000 CBCT scans for occult pathology for cone-beam owners. I lecture nationally and worldwide in the subject. I am as enthusiastic as anyone about the technology. However, simply put, it is just another imaging modality available to dental practitioners. I would have to ask the additional question: “The standard of care…for what?” In my opinion, there is no one-size-
In their enthusiasm, manufacturers will tell potential buyers that they could replace all of their x-rays with CBCT. This will not happen. You cannot justify a CBCT examination, despite its low dose even when a suitable small field of view and suitable exposure factors are used, to examine a 9-year-old for the permanent successors to the primary dentition when a high-resolution, much lower-dose digital panoramic would do the job. If, however, the child had an anomaly such as a supernumerary discovered on the initial panoramic, CBCT imaging could be used as a follow-up examination. If the clinician only had a CBCT machine, and was only interested in reviewing a reconstructed panoramic type image to determine the location and development of the successor teeth, the dose—as low as it is from some CBCT machines—would still be higher than the panoramic. It would be more prudent and cause less potential harm to the patient to simply do a panoramic examination.
In my opinion, CBCT imaging is more appropriate for: third-molar maxillary and/or mandibular extractions; implant site assessment; airway assessment for obstructive sleep-apnea patients; assessment of suspected lesions/disorders of the temporomandibular joint complex; difficult endodontic procedures (after clinical and conventional radiographic assessment); orthognathic and trauma surgery; adult orthodontic case assessment; paranasal sinus evaluation when clinical and/or other radiographic imaging suggests a problem; and preoperative assessment of odontogenic or non-odontogenic lesions discovered on other radiographs.
From this list one can see that there are many areas where CBCT imaging could become the standard of care. These low-dose, dentally specific, 2-D and 3-D image data sets have already proven more effective than many conventional dental radiographic modalities. However, one should never be of the opinion that a single imaging modality would be appropriate for every diagnostic task. This is the case in medicine and should not be different for the dental profession.
Allen Ali Nasseh, DDS
This technology has helped dental surgeons see beyond the available information provided by a conventional radiograph and gain access to diagnostic information that was only available until recently through expensive medical imagery. As additional information is a significant factor for improving the treatment plan and preparing for potential treatment risks, there is no doubt that this additional tool has been a blessing for the dental surgeon. However, the question of whether this tool should be the standard of care is an entirely different proposition as the term “standard of care” creates legal implications for daily practice. For instance, if a special clinical practice is deemed the standard of care through a state act or common law, then anyone not using it for any given case, whether deemed necessary or not by the clinician’s judgment is automatically performing an act of negligence subject to malpractice litigation.
It is also clear that despite their usefulness, cone-beam radiographs are not indicated 100% of the time when preparing for surgery. In endodontic therapy, although cone-beam radiography has been a useful tool to diagnose and triage surgical vs. re-treatment cases and make some diagnostic predictions, I strongly discourage indiscriminate use of this technology on every patient in hope of gaining additional information. The extra radiation and the additional cost will not only increase the overall healthcare bill on the patient, it will expose them to harmful radiation, which although in a small dose, is cumulative and may not be beneficial to every patient. All astute healthcare practitioners must constantly balance the risk of surgery against the risk of gaining additional information for performing that surgery. 3-D cone-beam radiography is a great addition to the armamentarium we use as clinicians, but considering them the standard of care has legal limitations that this relatively nascent technology will have to wait to prove beyond a shadow of doubt.
About the Authors
Martin Jablow, DMD | Dr. Jablow is a private practitioner in Woodbridge, New Jersey.
Dale A. Miles BA, DDS, MS, FRCD(c) | Dr. Miles is the chief executive officer of Interactive Diagnostic Systems, Inc., and has a private practice in Fountain Hills, Arizona.
Allen Ali Nasseh, DDS, MMSc | Dr. Nasseh is a private practitioner in Boston, Massachusetts, and a clinical instructor in the Department of Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterial Sciences at Harvard University School of Dental Medicine. | <urn:uuid:5fda15fc-60da-4234-bd6f-2d7e310b4bd1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dentalaegis.com/id/2012/06/is-3d-imaging-the-new-standard-of-care | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949734 | 1,530 | 2.5625 | 3 |
How is the SCO rate determined?
Standard Choice Offer (SCO) rates are set based on a simple formula:
- Current market rate for natural gas as determined by the monthly closing price for the natural gas contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).
- Plus a fixed retail price adjustment reflecting the additional cost to bring the gas to the customer. The retail price adjustment was determined in a competitive auction administered by Columbia Gas of Ohio and approved by the Ohio Public Service Commission.
Since current market rates change based on supply and demand, the monthly rate charged to customers will change as well.
What is the current SCO rate?
The table below shows the current and historic rates in $/CCF (as shown on your bill). These rates apply to all deliveries during the month shown.
|Billing Period End Date||Rate| | <urn:uuid:88092188-1951-4cae-bdfa-e25f450f2697> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dtesupply.com/gas/columbia/rates.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931202 | 178 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Kleven kennel had three different buildings. The largest was a metal barn with four interior walls each containing 10 cages accommodating both sides of the wall. Doggie-doors in the walls connected the two parts of each cage. The cages were raised about 2.5 feet above the floor and were made with plastic beams for their corners and treated wire for their walls, ceilings, and floors. The cage sections on either side of the wall was about 2.5 feet wide, 2.5 feet long, and 2.5 feet high, making each enclosure 2.5 feet wide and five feet long. Several enclosures housed four to five dogs up to 1.5 feet long from the bases of their noses to the tips of their tails in overcrowded conditions (3.6(c)(1)(i)-Space).
Plastic self feeders and water dishes were set in each cage. Concrete floors under the cages, were covered in fecal stains and small piles of standing water (3.1(c)(1)-Surfaces) (3.1(f)-Drainage and waste disposal).
Another kennel building had two rows of about ten cages each. These indoor cages were raised about 2.5 feet above the concrete floor and were made with plastic beams at their corners, treated wire for ceilings and floors, and wooden boards for walls. The kennel was poorly lit from a few windows that let in sunlight (3.2(c)-Lighting).
Though only one cage was occupied with dogs, all of the cages had more than 24 hours’ accumulation of feces under them (3.11(a)-Cleaning of primary enclosures). The walls were covered in fecal stains (3.1(c)(3)-Surfaces).
The occupied cage contained a Shih Tzu and a West Highland Terrier. The Westie was missing fur on about half its body, and its right ear appeared to be oozing a clear discharge (2.40-Vet care).
A metal water dish was on the flooring of this cage, and a plastic self-feeder was attached to the cage wall. Dirty build-up covered the self feeder (3.9(b)-Feeding). .
The third kennel building was a metal barn with about a dozen enclosures built along two of its walls. Each enclosure consisted of an outdoor pen and indoor cage connected by doggie-doors, many of which were hanging off of their frames (3.4(b)(3)-Shelter from the elements). The outdoor pens had concrete floors and chain link walls. There were three dogs per enclosure. A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in one pen was missing about a quarter of the fur on its body (2.40-Vet care).
Each pen had several days’ accumulation of feces underneath it (3.11(a)-Cleaning of primary enclosures). Gutters lining the outdoor pens at the ends furthest from the building were completely filled with feces, urine, and water (3.1(f)-Drainage and waste disposal).
The indoor pens had concrete floorings, plastic walls and chain link doors. The walls and floors were covered in feces stains (3.1(c)(3)-Surfaces). The floors were layered with wood chips that were soaked with urine and excrement. The wet concrete had several days of fecal accumulation (3.11(a)-Cleaning of primary enclosures).
Plastic self feeders with dirty build-up on their surfaces were attached to the pen walls (3.9(b)-Feeding), and metal water buckets full of brown dingy water were on the pen floors (3.10-Watering).
Each pen contained a plastic dog house, some merely plastic barrels, unsecured to the pen floors (3.1(a)-Structure; construction) with doors cut in them. Cobwebs covered the surfaces of the kennel building (3.1(c)(1)-Surfaces), and the lighting was very poor, with no artificial lighting in the building itself (3.2(c)-Lighting). | <urn:uuid:2df964e2-62e9-4faa-8e12-e2481df29435> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.caps-web.org/index.php/investigations/usda/item/175-linda-and-craig-kleven-fair-view-kennels-2005 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978269 | 860 | 2.90625 | 3 |
[for several years, I've been working--between fiction-writing projects--on a new nonfiction book. My only nonfic book so far is Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas, published by the Tarcher imprint of Penguin. INNER DECISION hopes to be a self help book to help people find a new, or anyway refreshing, approach to setting oneself free from bad habits, addictions, and the oppressive vicious circles of the mind. Here's a short excerpt from the book, a work in progress.]
Just suppose there’s a society which is prejudiced against handicapped people, even more than ours is, to the extent that it sends paralytics away to live on an island somewhere. You lost the feeling in your legs when you were, say, a year old, and you have grown up on this imaginary island, just you, alone with people in wheelchairs, all of them paralyzed from the waist down, and you’ve never seen anyone else. As they understandably want you to accept your condition so you will work around it, learn to compensate for it, they rarely talk about people with the use of their legs, and, somehow, you have come to think of your legs as more or less simply ballast, a way to keep you balanced in your wheelchair. Nothing more. But one day, the accidental obstruction that in your case caused the paralysis is jarred loose, and feeling begins to return to your legs.
There’s pain, and warmth and other sensations and you start, little by little, to use them, and you’re able to walk again. Suddenly you feel the lower half of your body—and you fully understand what it’s for. It’s not just so you can sit up straight in the wheelchair!
Most of us are like that—with our inner selves. Our inner selves are like that paralyzed lower half. We’re so used to being out of touch with our inner self, that we believe it naturally numb, naturally unavailable, not an active part of ourselves. We mistakenly think it is inaccessible.
The “obstruction”, though, in our case, that causes the numbing, is the habitual direction of our attention, which typically is turned away from our inner self.
When I talk about inner selves, it has a mystical ring to it I don’t like, an odor of murky spirituality, of vague talk of spiritual bodies, contemplation of the soul, or some such. What I’m actually referring to is the interlocking mechanism of the mind and the body. The spiritual component is there too, but we’re after other game, for now. We’re after the mechanism of habituation—and that is a structural, integral, part of our inner selves.
Our hypothetical paralytic, on that isolated island, may be at first frightened by the sensations he’s experiencing. Anyone who’s had a limb “fall asleep” knows that when it wakes up it can be painful at first. Our exploration of our inner world may make us a little uncomfortable. But only at first. Since it’s a whole new world we should find it fascinating.
In fact, the reason we’re “numb” to our inner world is partly because we tend to wall ourselves off from whatever is uncomfortable, disturbing, inexplicable, confusing. This is perfectly natural, even to some extent necessary, so we can function, but it becomes excessive, so that we tend to orient ourselves to the path of least resistance, with the consequence that confusing inner feelings are entirely shut off.
To some extent there’s wisdom in that ressponse—we can’t be wallowing in every little inner impulse and reaction we have. Comedy writers like to make fun of people who are “getting in touch with their feelings”. “I feel a negativity in myself when you say that…your energy is making me want to cry…Makes me think of my mother, the way she’d say…” People who wallow in every feeling that comes up are tiresome–we need to sort through our inner lives and have an adult capability, a capacity for good judgment, allowing us to select out what really matters in our “inner world”. We need to develop a discipline of observation to find our way around in there.
Mostly, people who are “getting in touch with their feelings”…aren’t. They’re blaring whatever emotion or reaction that has superficially arisen. But they aren’t really looking at what’s going on with them, inside. We’re not going to get terribly touchy-feely with our inner feelings, not in that sense. Instead, we’re going to look for them, and we’re going to see them. We’re going to create a kind of holographic image of them—and we’re going to redefine our relationship to them. And we’re even going to alter them through a certain method I’ll be getting into.
When I say looking and seeing, I’m saying it more literally than someone else might, in talking about our inner world. Therapists tend to get caught up in general patterns based on word identifications. “How do you feel?”
What do you connect that anxiety to? What is the first picture that comes into your head?”
“My mean Aunt Linda.”
That procedure can be useful for therapists—they know what they’re doing–but we’re going to do something very different. We’re mostly not interested in labeling in the usual way what we’re going to see inside ourselves. One or two, maybe three labels, yes, for certain things. And we’ll take account of feelings. We will notice if a feeling is related to anxiety, or is a good feeling. But mostly we’re going to look at the sensations, the phenomena, of our inner world, as pictures that are part of a structure. I’ll be providing some diagrammatic art, later in the book, to give a sense of what we’re after.
We’ll be locating, through this process, the mechanism of decision making, and we’ll see what it looks like when we apply it to our habits. And we’ll see, then, what happens—and what doesn’t happen, when we try to make a decision.
We’re going to learn a new kind of decision making: conscious inner decision. Some conscious inner decisions may come more easily than others, because we may be able to modify the background conditions that make the inner decision necessary. If you’re self medicating with alcohol because you have a tendency to be anxious for no apparent reason—or anyway no fixed reason—and then if we are able to seriously modify, even remove the anxiety, then we can remove the need for self medication. The inner decision then becomes more quickly decisive. Through the process of self discovery I’m going to describe, there is less inner pressure for the behavior that prompted the need for the inner decision. So the inner decision in that case is something we can establish more quickly.
Other habits may be so integrated into our physical selves, so much a part of our bodies, our brains, that we have to really focus, repeatedly, to see the resistance that keeps us in those habit patterns, and then more repeated focus is necessary to get into a state of new orientation so we can use the “inner lever” of the mechanism of authentic decision for change.
Resistance to change is, of course, of the essence. Where does it come from? How do we deal with it without having to resort to “white-knuckling” it? We’re going to learn how to deal with resistance through a kind of inner judo. Through a shift in the way we direct attention, we’ll change our inner center of gravity, almost exactly the way you’d shift your body for judo leverage–and what was formerly difficult or seemingly impossible will suddenly become relatively easy. The process for some inner decisions may take longer than others, but it’s never really difficult, as we’ll see. It’s just a matter of getting the real lay of the land. If you have to move a boulder and, for some reason, you think the boulder is on top of the ground when in fact it’s half buried, of course it’s going to be harder for you. You won’t be using the proper leverage. You have to really see the boulder, realize it’s half buried, then find a lever you can push underneath it; you have to see what the real conditions are.
We’ve already established that most of us tend to think we know ourselves–but we don’t know ourselves at all. We probably have some inkling of this already. But we’re still far more alienated from ourselves than we know. People who suppose themselves to be sensitive and introspective are usually just as out of touch with their inner selves as anyone you think of as being clueless.
Almost any person motivated to read this book has, for example, an alarm going off inside, most of the time—for some people it’s all of the time—and they are entirely unaware of it.
When I say an alarm I don’t mean like a clock alarm going off two rooms away. I mean it’s like a clanging alarm for a major fire and it’s right there within reach. I mean like a foghorn an inch from your ear. It’s ringing, it’s blaring…
And yet you’re unaware of it.
You must have noticed the unnecessary muscular tension you have, at times. Why is it there? Is it always because of “stress” during the day? Suppose it’s there because you have stress all the time—because that “alarm” is going off inside you? Your body hears it but your mind doesn’t. And the ordinary stress of the day is aggravated in its impact because you’re already stressed due to the blaring of an alarm that your body is aware of but your mind has turned away from.
Something happened at some early, vulnerable time, a traumatic event—or something that was not even so very traumatic. Just anxiety producing. But the alarm, for reasons we won’t digress into, got “stuck on”.
It is possible to turn that alarm off—and once it’s turned off it will be possible to make a real, lasting decision, with genuine long-term effect.
[Excerpt from the book, which is still in development, ends there] | <urn:uuid:b87230db-4e07-47c8-9d79-19f809b6ba14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.john-shirley.com/blog/?m=201103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948955 | 2,297 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Joined: 16 Mar 2004
|Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 10:45 am Post subject: Imaging nanoscale membrane organization
|Imaging nanoscale membrane organization
Understanding the chemical composition and organization of cell membranes – what components reside next to each other, how many of each there are and how they respond to their environment – may reveal the secret lives of cells in both health and disease. Now, thanks to a novel application of mass spectroscopy, researchers at Stanford University have developed a way to image cell membranes with unprecedented resolution – on the order of 100 nanometers.
Reporting its work in the journal Science, a multi-institutional team of investigators led by Steven Boxer, Ph.D., at Stanford University, describes its use of a highly specialized mass spectrometer that analyzes the mass of small molecular ions formed when a focused ion beam runs across the surface of a sample. “You take everything in the beam's focal area, which is about 100 nanometers in diameter and about 10 nanometers deep for our experiment, and you obliterate it,” Boxer said, explaining how the machine works. “Then you sample the fragments by mass spectrometry. Then you move over and you go another 100 nanometers and you obliterate everything. And now you see if what's in each 100 nanometer region is the same or different from the next region. And so you just raster this beam across the surface, and by rastering over and over and over again, you build an image.”
Called NanoSIMS 50, the mass spectrometer allows researchers to probe the composition of cell membranes with a higher resolution than light microscopy. By providing information about chemical composition of a sample, it fills a gap left by atomic force microscopy, which provides high-resolution information about topography, but not chemistry, as its microscope tip “feels” its way through samples. Plus it handles samples less ordered than those addressed by x-ray crystallography, which requires that samples be turned into crystals before analysis.
Boxer's group used atomic force microscopy to locate interesting features in a cell membrane and then employed the NanoSIMS 50 to determine what was there chemically. “Either technique by itself would be, I think, insufficient, but combined, they're really powerful,” Boxer said. The combination of techniques allowed the researchers to distinguish debris from features of interest.
“The real point is that you can do quantitative analysis,” Boxer said, emphasizing that this research allowed the first high-resolution mapping of chemical features in a region of interest. “We can analyze a few percent of one component in the presence of other components. It's exquisitely sensitive.” Sensitivity is important because cell membranes are not pure materials. “We're looking at mixtures of things, and we want to be able to say that we've got one molecule in 20 of type A mixed in with type B, or something like that,” Boxer said.
Source: Nanowerk & National Cancer Institute
This story was first posted on 10th October2006. | <urn:uuid:6004de9c-ddbd-400c-b50c-69efef8bbf4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nano.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2679 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929078 | 648 | 2.59375 | 3 |
You are friends and you enjoy your friendship. You behave with each other as you do with your other friends. One day you find that you have begun having different feelings for your friend. You like him/her more than a friend and are developing romantic love. What should you do?
You want to tell your friend about your feelings. But you are not very sure about them yourself. Have you really crossed the relationship of friendship and developed romantic love? You are thinking about that and the more you think the more you get confused. Emotions are like that. They can play havoc with us.
After lot of deliberation, you have decided that the feelings of love are true and figments of your imagination. Should you tell your friend? What if he/she does not reciprocate? What will happen to the friendship?
This is a difficult situation. You don't wish to sacrifice your friendship, but if your friend does not reciprocate that will happen. And there is no way of finding his/her feelings indirectly. You have to do it yourself. What should be done? Please ask. Please tell about your feelings and ask if your feelings are reciprocated. If yes, you are lucky. If not, let the friendship suffer. You cannot continue loving someone without finding out your friendís feelings. That will be much more painful. | <urn:uuid:a87af05d-cfdc-4fd3-b58f-8c1885633b5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://redsofts.com/articles/read/67/62781/Love_Test_What_If_You_Love_Your_Friend.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970764 | 272 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Navier-Stokes Existence and Smoothness Problems
That solutions to the motion of fluids in three dimensions always exist (existence);
and that if they do exist, then they do not contain any singularity, infinity or discontinuity
Also stated as: Show that the Navier–Stokes equations on Euclidean 3-space have a unique,
smooth, finite energy solution for all time greater than or equal to zero, given smooth, divergencefree,
initial conditions which decay rapidly at large distances. Or show that there is no such solution.
Originators: French mathematician Claude-Louis Navier and English mathematician George Gabriel
Stokes in 1822.
Incentive: US$1million, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems - the most important
open problems in mathematics, according to the USA-based Clay Mathematics Institute.
Usefulness: The Navier-Stokes equations are nonlinear partial differential equations in almost
every real situation. They describe the physics of weather, ocean currents, water flow in a pipe, air
flow around a wing, and the motion of stars in a galaxy as well as help with design for aircraft, cars
and power stations, the study of blood flow, and pollution analysis.
Explorations: One approach - constructing a weak solution and showing that any weak solution
is smooth - has had partial success. It is believed, though not known with certainty, that the Navier-
Stokes equations describe turbulence properly. However, the equations are supercritical - energy
can interact much more forcefully at fine scales than it can at coarse scales. There is no good large data
global theory for any supercritical equation, without additional constraints.
Almost all the equations are written for Newtonian fluids, which continue to flow regardless of forces
acting on them. Models for other kinds of fluid flows, such as blood, do not yet exist.
State of play: Since we don’t even know whether solutions exist, our understanding is primitive. Some
exact solutions of degenerate cases and non-linear equations do exist. Solutions may lie in related
models, such as the Euler equations.
Published in IMAges 7 - November 2009 | <urn:uuid:a1d337f8-2424-4746-b2cd-14cc502f74b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mathsreach.org/Navier-Stokes_Existence_and_Smoothness_Problems | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912571 | 454 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Ezekiel Chapter 47 |
1He led me back to the entrance of the Temple, and I found that water was issuing from below the platform of the Temple—eastward, since the Temple faced east—but the water was running out at the south of the altar, under the south wall of the Temple. 2Then he led me out by way of the northern gate and led me around to the outside of the outer gate that faces in the direction of the east; and I found that water was gushing from [under] the south wall. 3As the man went on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and led me across the water; the water was ankle deep. 4Then he measured off another thousand and led me across the water; the water was knee deep. He measured off a further thousand and led me across the water; the water was up to the waist. 5When he measured yet another thousand, it was a stream I could not cross; for the water had swollen into a stream that could not be crossed except by swimming. 6“Do you see, O mortal?” he said to me; and he led me back to the bank of the stream.
7As I came back, I saw trees in great profusion on both banks of the stream. 8“This water,” he told me, “runs out to the eastern region, and flows into the Arabah; and when it comes into the sea, into the sea of foul waters, the water will become wholesome. 9Every living creature that swarms will be able to live wherever this stream goes; the fish will be very abundant once these waters have reached there. It will be wholesome, and everything will live wherever this stream goes. 10Fishermen shall stand beside it all the way from En-gedi to En-eglaim; it shall be a place for drying nets; and the fish will be of various kinds [and] most plentiful, like the fish of the Great Sea. 11But its swamps and marshes shall not become wholesome; they will serve to [supply] salt. 12All kinds of trees for food will grow up on both banks of the stream. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail; they will yield new fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the Temple. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”
13Thus said the Lord God: These shall be the boundaries of the land that you shall allot to the twelve tribes of Israel. Joseph shall receive two portions,
14and you shall share the rest equally. As I swore to give it to your fathers, so shall this land fall to you as your heritage.
15These are the boundaries of the land:
As the northern limit: From the Great Sea by way of Hethlon, Lebo-hamath, Zedad, 16Berathah, Sibraim—which lies between the border of Damascus and the border of Hamath—[down to] Hazer-hatticon, which is on the border of Hauran. 17Thus the boundary shall run from the Sea to Hazar-enon, to the north of the territory of Damascus, with the territory of Hamath to the north of it. That shall be the northern limit.
18As the eastern limit: A line between Hauran and Damascus, and between Gilead and the land of Israel: with the Jordan as a boundary, you shall measure down to the Eastern Sea. That shall be the eastern limit.
19The southern limit shall run: A line from Tamar to the waters of Meriboth-kadesh, along the Wadi [of Egypt and] the Great Sea. That is the southern limit.
20And as the western limit: The Great Sea shall be the boundary up to a point opposite Lebo-hamath. That shall be the western limit.
21This land you shall divide for yourselves among the tribes of Israel. 22You shall allot it as a heritage for yourselves and for the strangers who reside among you, who have begotten children among you. You shall treat them as Israelite citizens; they shall receive allotments along with you among the tribes of Israel. 23You shall give the stranger an allotment within the tribe where he resides—declares the Lord God. | <urn:uuid:6d281d95-2ea4-495f-9608-2a6ff76ab0da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taggedtanakh.org/Chapter/Index/english-Ezek-47 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964824 | 906 | 2 | 2 |
Dengue fever, and the more clinically severe dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), is one of the most frequently occurring mosquito-borne diseases worldwide, with an estimated 50-100 million cases (including approximately 500,000 DHF cases and over 20,000 fatalities) each year. Four serotypes of dengue virus are transmitted to humans through the bite of certain Aedes genus mosquitoes (e.g. A. aegypti). The risk is widespread in tropical or subtropical regions around the world, especially where water-holding containers (e.g., waste tires, buckets, or cans) provide abundant mosquito breeding habitat.
In 2010, 14 cases (0.27 per 100,000 population) of dengue fever were reported in Minnesota residents. This represents a 56% increase from the 9 cases in 2009 and a 47% increase from the median number of cases reported annually from 2004 to 2009 (median, 9.5 cases; range, 6 to 20). The median case age was 48 years (range, 12 to 80 years). The majority of cases (93%) resided within the metropolitan area, including 6 (43%) cases in Hennepin County. Onset of symptoms occurred from February through November. All of the cases represented imported infections acquired abroad. Cases had travelled to Asia (7), Latin America (6), or Africa (1).
- For up to date information see>> Reporting Dengue Virus Infection
[an error occurred while processing this directive] | <urn:uuid:7875be9f-9acb-4f48-b701-3f94ea814b1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/newsletters/dcn/sum10/dengue.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914133 | 308 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Cocaine Vaccine Hits Snag
Some addicts risk OD to overcome its effects.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has increasingly placed its bets on treating cocaine addiction with a vaccine rather than an anti-craving medication. And there is reason for this: No prominent candidates for anti-craving drug treatments have yet emerged from the research on cocaine and methamphetamine addiction.
However, there’s a catch: Some cocaine addicts appear willing to risk overdose in order to defeat a new cocaine vaccine, a recent study has shown.
The study, which appeared in the Archives of General Psychiatry, demonstrated that the TA-CD vaccine could blunt the effects of cocaine in some, but not all, patients. The vaccine works by causing the production of antibodies, which attach themselves to cocaine molecules, making the molecules too big too pass effectively through the blood-brain barrier.
Of 115 addicts involved in the study, only 38 % produced sufficient antibodies to dull the effects of cocaine, Rachel Saslow of the Washington Post reported. And among the high-antibodies group, only 53 % stayed free of cocaine 50 % of the time. “Immunization did not achieve complete abstinence from cocaine use,” said Thomas Kosten of Baylor college of Medicine, one of the authors of the paper.
Moreover, in some of the study participants for whom antibodies made cocaine a disappointing high, researchers found cocaine levels in the body to be as much as ten times higher than previous levels of usage—an obvious attempt to overcome the vaccine’s effectiveness. There were no overdoses, according to Kosten.
No researcher has claimed this as a complete breakthrough, in light of the fact that even those who responded well in the high-antibody group achieved a substantial reduction in cocaine use during the study period--but not abstinence. At this stage the work appears to be aimed more at dose reduction.
Despite the mixed results, NIDA director Nora Volkow characterized the work as “a promising step toward an effective medical treatment for cocaine addiction,” with the proviso that “larger follow-up studies confirm its safety and efficacy.” In an earlier interview with Addiction Inbox, Volkow also expressed excitement about another possible addiction vaccine: “Currently there are anti-nicotine vaccines in clinical testing, which are designed to capture the nicotine molecules while still in the bloodstream, thus blocking their entry in to the brain and inhibiting their behavioral effects. They appear to be effective in helping subjects who develop a high antibody response sustain abstinence over long periods of time. Even those people with a less robust antibody response to the vaccine, decreased their tobacco use. So this approach appears very promising.”
An earlier study by Margaret Haney and others at Columbian University Medical Center, published in Biological Psychiatry, had similar results: “The TA-CD vaccine substantially decreased smoked cocaine's intoxicating effects in those generating sufficient antibody.”
In both studies, roughly a quarter of participants made almost no antibodies at all in response to a vaccine injection.
A multi-site clinical trial of the vaccine, headed up by Kosten at Baylor, will begin sometime this spring.
Haney of Columbia told the Washington Post that people “have a mistaken view of how a vaccine might work, thinking of it as magic, where what it’s doing, at best, is blunting the effects. They get very excited, and it’s heartbreaking.” An earlier Addiction Inbox post on cocaine vaccination brought several emails from people asking where they could obtain the vaccine.
DrugMonkey at scienceblogs.com dissected the complicated study, particularly the different levels of antibodies generated in study participants, calling the vaccine “quite obviously not a silver bullet at present.” Furthermore: “Even for the high-responders the outcome was far from overwhelming, a 10 percentage improvement from 35% to 45% cocaine-free urines.”
Given how intractable to treatment addiction to stimulants has proven, any promising results at all are cause for cautious optimism. DrugMonkey writes: “We need new approaches and this immunopharmacotherapy stuff has potential.” | <urn:uuid:7e7179df-19e4-483f-a4bf-203c4de10a55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com/2010/01/cocaine-vaccine-hits-snag.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944551 | 875 | 2.3125 | 2 |
It has now been a month since I have had my iPad 2 and developers keep releasing fantastic apps that validate my $900+ purchase and leave me with absolutely no regrets. While I am thoroughly enjoying individual pitch stats in MLB At Bat 2011, replays of perfect goals by the Sounders FC in MLS 2001 Match Day, and followed all the NCAA March Madness action via 3G in Alaska the $7.99 application I just bought yesterday may be one of the best apps I have seen in a long time that will increase my knowledge of our history for the next four years.
History's The Civil War Today (iTunes link) application is absolutely stunning and apps like this make other tablets almost seem like a joke. Check out several screenshots of this new application in my image gallery along with some thoughts on the functions and capability of it below.
|Image Gallery: Check out screenshots from The Civil War Today on my iPad 2.|
Information provided in the appThe Civil War began 150 years ago on 12 April and to remember this event in our history A&E Television Networks Mobile and History released an application that will provide you with daily updates in "real-time" over the course of the next four years. Newspapers could learn some lessons from this application and see how it should be done with information, media, social network integration, and more. According to the iTunes App Store description you will find documents, photos, maps, diary entries, quotes, and newspaper broadsheets that include the following:
- Daily Civil War update from 12 April 2011 through 26 April 2015 that mirrors the war events from 150 years ago
- Actual newspapers from back in the days of the war
- North and South casualty counts
- Letters and diary entries from 15 individuals
- Photos and photo galleries
- Quote of the day
- Articles and video on featured topics
- Maps of key battlefields
- Twitter integration to send telegrams via morse code
- GameCenter integration to earn Civil War era achievements
As I grow older I am learning to appreciate and read a LOT more history than when I was young and this is a FANTASTIC way to learn and understand what our ancestors did to help form the nation we live in today. I lived in Washington, D.C. for over four years and also increased my desire for learning more about the Civil War as I walked on the grounds where it happened.
NavigationAlong the top you will find three icons on each side of the application name to control and access different parts of the application. The left most icon access a table of contents for the day you have pulled up and after you read a piece of the content a check mark will appear by it so you can jump to new and unread content quickly and easily. You can also take advantage of the pinch to zoom and user interface elements of the iPad to navigate around as well.
The second icon (heart in a circle) launches your Favorites page. As you read content you can mark (tap on the heart icon) as a favorite and then view all of them later in one place.
The next icon (outlines of three people) gives you an index of the biographies in the application. You can tap on a name or even search for them in the search box to jump to a biography of them.
The A-Z icon over on the right side of the application name gives you access to the glossary with a search box to help you jump to things too.
The settings icon (gear) is the last one on the top row and gives you access to toggle on or off Twitter and Facebook (for sharing pieces of information), background scene selector, and memory selector. You can choose from 0 to 10 GB of data to keep stored in cache on the device to give you faster access to it and since I have a 64GB iPad 2 I have mine set to the default of 5 GB.
When you are within an article, photo, or other area of information you can tap the heart icon to add it as a favorite or the arrow to share the content via Twitter, Facebook, or email. Tapping one of these fills out a telegram saying you liked the app and gives a link to the app. You can add more text or enter an original "Telegram" by tapping out the message using the Morse Code legend and button on the display (shown in my image gallery). It doesn't appear to give a link to the specific day though so it doesn't seem to have that much value at this time.
At the bottom of the display you will find the date timeline with the month, year and day available. Simply tap on a day to jump to the content and note that when you launch the application you are taken to the date that matches our current date.
Thoughts on using the applicationI am finding the layout and navigation of the app to be great and the information is very interesting. Quotes and Day in the Life are directly attributed to certain people, but I cannot find who wrote the articles or where the information came from. It is the History Channel and I am willing to bet that they have reliable and trustworthy sources for the information, but it would be nice to see this stated somewhere so readers have a sense of trust regarding the stories.
I like the different types of information, photos and maps, North South daily quiz, and embedded video content that really brings history to life for me. At a cost of just $7.99 it is a bargain to get this type and quality of information on a daily basis for over four years.
I know what I will be reading on my commute every day now for quite some time and highly recommend this application. | <urn:uuid:cad18249-f11c-481a-9dc6-d8a619d14419> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-gadgeteer/get-daily-civil-war-updates-on-your-ipad-for-the-next-four-years/4613 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936602 | 1,158 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Spring is around the corner and the seed catalogs are arriving in the mail. It’s time to think of gardening. But did you know that you can have fresh herbs all year around?
The following is a list of 10 easy to grow herbs and their uses. Use decorative pots that you can place outside in warmer weather and keep inside during the cold. You will have fresh herbs to cook with all year round.
Tips for planting:
• Buy seedlings from your local nursery
• Make sure you have a spot inside where the herbs can get some sun.
• Use colorful containers that are 6-12 inches in depth
• Place potting soil on the bottom of the container
• Use soil with good drainage
• Water sparingly
• Fertilize once a month with fertilizers made for food that you will be eating
• Trim occasionally to encourage growth but never trim more than 1/3 of the plants foliage
Basil is an aromatic herb from the mint family (Ocimum basilcum) that is native to warm climates, has aromatic foliage and clusters of white flowers.
Complements: Chicken, tomato soup, yellow squash, scallops, asparagus, tomatoes and salads.
Mint grows well in shady areas but can stand full sun if watered continuously. Harvest as needed. Peppermint (Mentha piperita and spearmint (Mentha spicata) are two varieties of mint that are easy to grow.
Complements: Cakes, chocolate, syrups, teas, salads, peas and juices.
Chives are a small species from the onion family (Allium schoenoprasum) that have insect repelling properties.
Complements: Leeks, potatoes, biscuits, fish, soups eggs and sweet potatoes.
Oregano (Origanum vulgare) is a member of the mint family and is used in Turkish, Greek, Italian and Latin American cuisine.
Complements: Chicken, salad, lamb, olives, capers, Coucous and sauces.
Sage Ornamental and medicinal plant from the mint family that is also used to preserve meat and is known by the Latin name (Salvia).
Complements: Stuffing, lamb, pork, poultry, veal and other comfort foods.
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is a fragrant evergreen that also has small pale, blue flowers and is also a member of the mint family.
Complements: Chicken, turkey, breads and desserts.
Parsley is used as a spice in American, European and Middle Eastern cooking. Most people think of it only as a garnish but it is high in vitamin A & B as well as calcium and iron.
Complements: Soups, breads, lamb, chimichurri and potatoes.
Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus L) is one of four herbs used in French cooking and is has the aroma of anise.
Complements: Salads, tarts, chicken, eggs, lasagna and vinagrette.
Thyme (Thymus) is used for seasoning as well as medicinal purposes. Thyme was also used by the Ancient Egyptians for embalming.
Complements: Green beans, lamb chops and chicken.
Lavender is in the mint family and is used as an ornamental dried flower because of its fragrant purple flowers. They also deter moths.
Complements: Chicken, biscotti, cookies, sorbet, brulee breads, cookies and jellies.
Where to buy seedlings in the Burlington area
Gardener’s Supply online, order by phone 1-888-833-1412 or visit them at their two locations.
128 Intervale Road in Burlington 802-660-3505
Or Williston Store & Gardener’s Supply Outlet 472 Marshall Avenue, Williston, VT 05495
Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday | <urn:uuid:23e8bd6b-0e67-40e2-a09c-7ba269c29513> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.examiner.com/article/top-10-indoor-easy-to-grow-herbs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934823 | 863 | 2.59375 | 3 |
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.
Name of Product: Fisher-Price Little People Wheelies Stand 'n Play Rampway
Units: About 100,000 in the U.S. and 20,000 in Canada
Importer: Fisher-Price of East Aurora, N.Y.
Hazard: The wheels on the purple and the green cars can come off, posing a choking hazard to young children.
Incidents/Injuries: Fisher-Price has received two reports of a wheel detaching from a vehicle. No injuries have been reported.
Description: The recall involves Little People Wheelies Stand 'n Play Rampway with model numbers T4261 and V6378. They were sold with small cars that a child can push down winding ramps. Only the purple and the green cars that are marked "Mexico" and do not have a yellow dot on the bottom are included in the recall. The toy is intended for children 1 1/2 to 5 years of age.
Sold at: Mass merchandise stores nationwide from April 2010 through September 2010 for about $45.
Manufactured in: Mexico
Remedy: Consumers should immediately take the affected purple and the green cars away from children and contact Fisher-Price for free replacement cars.
Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Fisher-Price at (800) 432-5437 between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or visit the firm's website at www.service.mattel.com
Note: Health Canada's press release is available at http://cpsr-rspc.hc-sc.gc.ca/PR-RP/recall-retrait-eng.jsp?re_id=1177 | <urn:uuid:72e2d6b2-21bf-450d-940c-0c673827a286> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://permianbasin360.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=77165 | 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 | 0.919191 | 416 | 1.625 | 2 |
Scientists working on chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), to explore its causes have acknowledged death threats from some furious protesters. A majority of patients along with activists have strongly opposed studies that have marked the disorder is all in the mind’ and not a biological condition.
One researcher looking at the cause of disease, Professor Simon Wessely, of King's College London, who had received similar threat notified BBC radio to scan his mails for suspected device after receiving "maliciously unfair" threats of violence.
“Psychiatric approaches that work are not incompatible with the condition being linked to a virus. These may not work for some people, but it’s wrong to deny others access to them who may be helped”, added Professor Wessely. “Some ME campaigners would rather have an incurable virus than a potentially curable disorder if it involves social or psychological approaches”.
While commenting on the dramatic issue another Scientist from Imperial College, London, Professor Myra McClure, has decided to quit her research work not continue her studies because of such frightening warnings. During her studies she had confirmed a viral connection for ME.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mark Walport of the Wellcome Trust has expressed disappointment over the issue and said losing top scientists for ME research would be a tragedy.
US Business News
New Zealand News
- After Suspected Botulism, CFIA Warns People
- Health Care Education Necessary for the Future of Province: Analysts
- B.C. Government Grants $700,000 for Managing Facial Deformities
- Michelle Shocked delivers hate speech about homosexuality at her gig
- Guess who Justin Bieber got burned by?!! His ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez | <urn:uuid:5bc7629f-6708-41a0-a12c-9d9dc9379688> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://topnews.us/content/242178-threats-push-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-experts-quit-their-research | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951647 | 361 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Acting rational is now going national
With an increasingly urban population, it may be possible in the next few years to have a national strata policy.
A wind of change is blowing through strata: not just in NSW but the whole country. And despite Australia's disparate strata laws, there's a sense of a real opportunity to change things nationally.
It can't happen too soon. Within a few years, more than half the population of our big cities will be living in strata.
Already, I'm told, more than half the real estate transactions - both sales and rentals - are in strata properties.
That's all happening with the three major states - NSW, Victoria and Queensland - having strata laws that differ so wildly you could believe they sat down and decided to do anything except what the other guys do.
Meanwhile, strata laws in Western Australia, South Australia, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Tasmania are developing, often with what seems to be a contrary disregard for the experiences of the past 50 years on the east coast. Strata units remain the preferred choice for first-time home owners, newly arrived immigrants and downsizing
empty-nesters (three very vulnerable groups in strata terms).
And even if the politicians can't agree on a single way forward, the guys at the pointy end (the strata managers) have joined forces to create a national body, Strata Community Australia. They, too, have their issues but at least they are joining forces so they can start singing off the same hymn sheet … eventually.
You can catch up with the latest developments at the Lot Owners Forum, a full-day event that's part of the Strata Community Australia (NSW) Annual Convention.
It's on at Sydney Showground, Olympic Park, Homebush Bay, on Saturday, October 8, tickets $44. See nsw.stratacommunity.org.au for more details. Before that, on Tuesday you can join MC Indira Naidoo for the launch of the City of Sydney's new Smart Green Apartments program. To register (which is essential), go to whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au /events/11494-smart-green-apartments-launch for this free event, at which your humble scribe will be on a panel. | <urn:uuid:e0969182-a153-4fae-a0fc-eaf9aedab43a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/acting-rational-is-now-going-national-20110916-1kcdg.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951128 | 486 | 1.5 | 2 |
UNFPA disclosed that its Philippine office raised $28.5 million in the year to date, and that the money will be used to promote reproductive and maternal health, one of the country’s Millennium Development Goals.
“For the current seventh country programme, which started this year and will end in 2016, around $28.5 million has been mobilized and we are expecting more,” UNFPA country representative Ugochi Daniels told reporters in a press conference.
“[The fund] will assist the government in the areas which provide support for maternal and reproductive health of mothers,” UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin said in the same press conference.
He noted the fund will be used for capacity-building, training and data gathering in partnership with the Philippine Government.
Read the full story by Rouchelle R. Dinglasan on GMA News | <urn:uuid:e670d2e9-b4b0-45d9-a649-bc343750b682> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/10779 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919974 | 189 | 1.765625 | 2 |
What you need to know about cannabinoids
Published: March 23, 2011
Gersh Avery has a thing for hemp. He's not one of the folks trying to get industrial hemp legalized so we can enjoy the economic benefits of producing and selling the hundreds of items that can be made from the fibrous substance. They want to create clothing, biofuels, skin creams and more from the hemp plant. There are plenty of those kinds of hemp advocates around.
On the other hand Avery's hemp focus is strictly for its medicinal value. Avery calls himself a medical marijuana specialist, because he is a registered patient, grower, activist and student of what he calls the archaeology of marijuana.
"I'm a drug law reform advocate," he says. "I was working toward that, but when the medical marijuana petition drive came up, I shifted focus from the war against drugs to medical marijuana. The more that I saw in these various medical reports, the more I became excited about the plant's potential to do incredible good. If a medical condition can go away, that's a beautiful thing. It's living a miracle being able to watch things happen from one day to the next that doctors don't believe can happen."
Avery, who lives in Washtenaw County, has a long list of ailments that he treats in part with medical marijuana — bladder cancer, diabetes, scoliosis, arthritis, bone spurs and more. The problem for Avery is that while using medical marijuana, he's not interested in the high. He wants to be clearheaded, which is why he's fascinated with hemp. We all know you can't smoke rope for the buzz, but hemp is believed to be high in cannabidiol (CBD) a cannabinoid that has shown potential in treating some cancers (particularly in inhibiting the spread of breast cancer), inflammation, nerve diseases such as Crohn's and multiple sclerosis, and indeed as an anti-diabetic.
There are up to 100 cannabinoids in marijuana, THC (the substance that creates the high) and CBD are but two of them. Cannabinoids, which are also produced naturally by our bodies, attach to receptors in our bodies and help regulate such things as body temperature, blood pressure, mood and more.
"Diabetes isn't a listed condition for medical marijuana in Michigan, but I'm using cannabis for working my diabetes," Avery says. "Cannabis drops blood sugar. There are quite a few conditions that a lot of people are very unaware of that can be treated with cannabis."
Avery gets much of his information through Granny Storm Crow's List, a currently 429-page PDF document listing scientific studies of marijuana and links to websites where the results are published. In the introduction to her list, Granny writes: "When I began using cannabis medically over 40 years ago, there was no such thing as 'medical use' — not even the concept existed! Education has made the difference. Somewhere along the line, every one of the people who have voted to legalize medical use in their state learned that cannabis was an effective medicine. ... They learned the truth."
Now there is growing sophistication of how marijuana can be used medically beyond three tokes and a buzz. A recent headline in West Coast Leaf, an El Cerrito, Calif.-based publication focusing on marijuana issues, proclaimed, "CBD becomes the new rising star of the therapeutic cannabinoid galaxy." The article talks about new varieties of CBD-rich cannabis available in California that could "deliver distinct therapeutic benefits."
In the past, most marijuana breeding has been to raise the THC content, and CBD was practically bred out of the plant. In fact, there are indications that CBD, with its anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety properties, actually counters some of the effects of THC.
"CBD is believed to temper the effects of THC because it has anti-psychotic properties and anti-anxiety properties," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "There has been much talk in recent years about marijuana and psychosis. CBD is documented to have just the opposite effects among its various properties. Different growers in California have tried to grow some strains that are high in CBD. It was practically bred out of the plant because of the desire for high THC content. Through different breeding techniques they've brought out some new strains that are high in CBD content. Over the last six to eight months in the Bay Area, there has been a rapid increase in awareness of CBD."
The strains listed in West Coast Leaf are Soma A+, Women's Collective Stinky Purple, Cotton Candy/Diesel, True Blueberry/OG Kush, Harlequin, Omrita Rx, Jamaican Lion, Rx Red, Misty, Cannatonic and Good Medicine. Avery says he's has good results with a strain known as AK-47.
"I look for stuff likely to have CBD content," Avery says. "The only way we have a rough idea is that certain strains that have been tested maybe in California puts one on the track of CBD at least. There is a firm in Traverse City that is conducting laboratory analysis so we can have a more clear idea."
Testing cannabis for THC, CBD or other cannabinoids requires a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC/MS), a costly piece of lab equipment. Another way of getting a handle on CBD is by gathering anecdotal material about its effects, which is being done through a survey developed by the Society of Cannabis Clinicians on the website ProjectCBD.com which aims to do a study with data clean enough for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
In his search for CBD, Avery is investigating a strain of marijuana that gets little attention — cannabis ruderalis. No one would have bothered much in the past, as ruderalis does little in the get-you-high arena. Cannabis sativa and cannabis indica are the strains of the plant that are popular for the buzz. Some people think that indicas are high in CBD, but that is not the case, although indicas do seem to have an inside track on making you sleepy. Ruderalis is a smaller plant than the others, and its flowers develop after only a few weeks of growth, rather than as a function of how many hours of light and darkness the plant gets. Normally a sativa or indica plant grows with 16 or more hours of light each day. Indoor growers then make the plant flower (producing the potent part of marijuana) by limiting it to 12 hours of light per day; plants grown outdoors flower as the hours of sunlight wane in the fall.
> Email Larry Gabriel | <urn:uuid:30b52dc5-e54f-42f9-8e07-6eebb9c99109> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metrotimes.com/mmj/beyond-thc-1.1122152 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971938 | 1,364 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Los Angeles News
'Caine's Arcade' inspires games challenge for kids
BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Caine Monroy is the local 9-year-old who became an Internet sensation after building an arcade full of games made from cardboard when a film called "Caine's Arcade" was released.
Saturday the first-ever Caine's Arcade Global Cardboard Challenge, inspired by Caine's Arcade, was held in Boyle Heights.
The idea is simple: Put kids together with a lot of cardboard and some crafting tools and see what kind of creative things they come up with.
There was also a cardboard parade and a cardboard maze, and Caine himself got a special citation from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
"There's tens of thousands of kids around the world who've been inspired by Caine, who are building amazing things using cardboard and their imagination," said Nirvan Mullick, who made the film "Caine's Arcade."
The event was free, with a suggested donation of $2. The money raised will benefit the Imagination Foundation, a non-profit organization that fosters creativity in kids.
los angeles news
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- Greuel, Garcetti rally for undecided voters
- Body found near area where hiker went missing
- Suspect killed in Alhambra PD station ID'ed
- Deputies shoot, kill armed man during fight
- Deaf Yorkie held for ransom is back home
- NorCal beach parking fee fight gets heated 8 min ago
- Frazier Park fire almost fully contained 33 min ago
- Obama addresses Morehouse College graduates 27 min ago
- Damaged trains being removed from Conn. site
- abcnews: 1st lady jokes about president's failures
- Kings lose to Sharks 2-1 in OT of Game 3
- OTRC: Kelly Rowland in talks to be 'X Factor' judge | <urn:uuid:f8fc2cd9-8316-40e8-9c0f-65a69b76da3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8838287 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953145 | 424 | 1.882813 | 2 |
My impression is that, by and large, traditional algebra is rather too specific for use in Computer Science. So Computer Scientists either use weaker (and, hence, more general) structures, or generalize the traditional structures so that they can fit them to their needs. We also use category theory a lot, which mathematicians don't think of as being part of algebra, but we don't see why not. We find the regimentation of traditional mathematics into "algebra" and "topology" as separate branches inconvenient, even pointless, because algebra is generally first-order whereas topology has a chance of dealing with higher-order aspects. So, the structures used in Computer Science have algebra and topology mixed in. In fact, I would say they tend more towards topology than algebra. Regimentation of reasoning into "algebra" and "logic" is another pointless division from our point of view, because algebra deals with equational properties whereas logic deals with all other kinds of properties as well.
Coming back to your question, semigroups and monoids are used quite intensely in automata theory. Eilenberg has written a 2-volume collection, the second of which is almost entirely algebra. I am told that he was planning four volumes but his age did not allow the project to be finished. Jean-Eric Pin has a modernized version of a lot of this content in an online book. Automata are "monoid modules" (also called monoid actions or "acts"), which are at the right level of generality for Computer Science. Traditional ring modules are probably too specific.
Lattice theory was a major force in the development of denotational semantics. Topology was mixed into lattice theory when Computer Scientists, jointly with mathematicians, developed continuous lattices and then generalized them to domains. I would say that domain theory is Computer Scientists' own mathematics, which traditional mathematics has no knowledge of.
Universal algebra is used for defining algebraic specifications of data types. Having gotten there, Computer Scientists immediately found the need to deal with more general properties: conditional equations (also called equational Horn clauses) and first-order logic properties, still using the same ideas of universal algebra. As you would note, algebra now merges into model theory.
Category theory is the foundation for type theory. As Computer Scientists keep inventing new structures to deal with various computational phenomena, category theory is a very comforting framework in which to place all these ideas. We also use structures that are enabled by category theory, which don't have existence in "traditional" mathematics, such as functor categories. Also, algebra comes back into the picture from a categorical point of view in the use of monads and algebraic theories of effects. Coalgebras, which are the duals of algebras, also find a lot of application.
So, there is a wide-ranging application of "algebra" in Computer Science, but it is not the kind of algebra found in traditional algebra textbooks.
Additional note: There is a concrete sense in which category theory is algebra. Monoid is a fundamental structure in algebra. It consists of a binary "multiplication" operator that is associative and has an identity. Category theory generalizes this by associating "types" to the elements of the monoid, $a : X \rightarrow Y$. You can "multiply" the elements only when the types match: if $a : X \rightarrow Y$ and $b : Y \to Z$ then $ab : X \to Z$. For example, $n \times n$ matrices have a multiplication operation making them a monoid. However, $m \times n$ matrices (where $m$ and $n$ could be different) form a category. Monoids are thus special cases of categories that have a single type. Rings are special cases of additive categories that have a single type. Modules are special cases of functors where the source and target categories have a single type. So on. Category theory is typed algebra whose types make it infinitely more applicable than traditional algebra. | <urn:uuid:cd2ba14d-6563-40c5-a5d3-a351d242387a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/uses-of-algebraic-structures-in-theoretical-computer-science | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953215 | 842 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Date: Mon Mar 9 17:01:35 2009
Author: Bill Alexander
Subject: Re: Climate Change - Is it Controversial?
It is completely consistent to say "Emissions of greenhouse gases
from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect
the Earth's climate." and yet for "huge number of physicists being
against the global warming consensus" if it comes to pass that
greenhouse gasses make a small but measurable change rather than the
"global warming consensus" that calls for huge government
expenditures and social change.
>Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
>I have seen the claim about a "huge number of physicists" being
>against the global warming consensus, but if it's what I'm thinking
>that is a largely overblown claim based upon the misrepresentation
>of an opinion article. The article is called "Climate Sensitivity
>Reconsidered" and is authored by Christopher Monckton. However, as
>the APS states...
>"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review,
>since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society
>newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following
>position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS
>Council, on November 18, 2007: "Emissions of greenhouse gases from
>human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the
>The APS itself spoke a bit more on this topic, especially the claim
>that many thousands of physicists are now supposedly against the
>global warming consensus, on its website on July 17th, 2008 when it
>"APS Position Remains Unchanged
>The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on
>climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on
>November 18, 2007:
>"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing
>the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."
>An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an
>online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39
>units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement
>that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not
>necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum." This
>newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed."
>Just some food for thought.
>Lake Forest HS
>College of Lake County
>On Mar 9, 2009, at 1:57 PM, John Hubisz wrote:
>>(Yes, it is cut and dry for the majority of scientists - but it is not so
>>for the general public.)
>>That is not true. There are at least 32,000 scientists (9000
>>physicists) who do not think that it is "cut and dry" and more are
>>joining them as as scientists retire and finish out grants.
>>And if the general public includes weathermen/meteorologists and
>>economists that adds to the group.
>>Bill Norwood wrote:
>>>I thought there was no remaining question
>>>that we are threatened by climate change
>>>that will do major physical and economic damage
>>>if we don't change our ways.
>>>But these guys, involved in the March 8-10, New York,
>>>International Conference on Climate Change,
>>>including some physicists, don't think so.
>>>Anybody got insight?
>>>Thanks, Bill Norwood, U of MD at College Park
Humboldt State University | <urn:uuid:100067ea-669d-4683-a77a-bd2a1d635177> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://demoroom.physics.ncsu.edu/tapl/archive/200903/29.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91433 | 767 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Traditional proverbs and native cultural mythologies often have creative ways of answering questions humans have asked throughout history. Why does the sun shine? Where did we come from? Lexington Children's Theatre's wants to know Why Mosquitoes Buzz, the title of its latest production, an African folktale adapted for the stage by associate artistic director Jeremy Kisling.
The show exhibits the quality production values, high-caliber performances and engaging storytelling techniques that I have come to expect of LCT. But the story itself, while instructive, is less revelatory and impactful as Kisling's previous adaptations, like The Princess Who Lost Her Hair.
Directed by Sara Vasquez, the tale has a cast of four actors who take turns portraying animals, humans and, occasionally, a god of the African jungle.
Vasquez's careful attention to a fluid marriage of design and performance elements is the production's strength.
Eric Abele's jungle-printed costuming feels like an extension of Jerome Wills' scenic design.
Abele's intricate puppetry adds color to the African-inspired visual tableau, and the actors deserve praise for wielding them so confidently, particularly since each actor not only plays multiple parts, but occasionally, the same characters.
Vasquez's fluid blocking is arranged in a way that the actors might portray any character at any time. For instance, sometimes Ashley Isenhower plays the mosquito and other times, Deidre Cochran does. It is the puppet and not the actor who symbolizes the character, which could be confusing if not done properly.
Isenhower, Cochran and fellow castmates Antony Russell and Michael Whitten have an impressively comfortable, organic relationship with Abele's puppets. But the inclusion of two large human puppets, while skillfully rendered, seemed cumbersome and not particularly necessary to the storytelling when you have four live humans available for the task.
The foursome also deserve praise for their ensemble drumming, which punctuates the story's beginning and ending. This use of traditional African drums, along with a handful of call-and-response elements seemed particularly popular during the opening-day performance I attended.
A colorful trickster tale intending to teach the lesson of cooperation, communication and accepting responsibility for one's impact on the community, the material is fun and engaging in a "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly" way. It shows how one small event can set off a string of reactions that ends up affecting everyone.
However, I personally thought the mosquito got the short end of the stick with his buzz-worthy "punishment." Yes, he started the whole string of events that led to a tragedy, but on the other hand, he was being a mosquito, doing what mosquitoes do: They bite.
'Why Mosquitoes Buzz'
What: Lexington Children's Theatre's production of an African folktale dramatized by theater associate artistic director Jeremy Kisling. Recommended for ages 5 and older.
When: 2 and 7 p.m. Feb. 2; 2 p.m. Feb. 3
Where: LCT, 418 W. Short St.
Tickets: $14, $12 children. Available by calling (859) 254-4546 or at Lctonstage.org.
Candace Chaney is a Lexington-based writer. | <urn:uuid:4459070b-4d80-4029-a251-c5c83a3e2e55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/30/2496460/review-childrens-theatres-mosquitoes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94849 | 684 | 2.0625 | 2 |
What We're About
The Leadership Center offers a variety of programs to enhance your leadership skills while at Arkansas State University. The various programs focus on enriching your ability to successfully demonstrate leadership skills and provide an opportuntiy to expand your global awareness.
Participating in our leadership programs allows students the opportunity to meet new people, build a foundation for the future and have fun!
Student participates will expand in the following areas:
- decision making
- diversity awareness
- problem solving
- relationship development
- goal setting
- philosophies in leadership development
Click the program links to the left and explore the leadership programs offered by the Leadership Center. | <urn:uuid:bdd06e5f-070d-4b6d-863c-61ffbfe8ae69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.astate.edu/a/leadership-center/leadership-programs/index.dot | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938365 | 131 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Print this Page The Prescription Pad
Obama Administration Says Low-Income and Middle Class Can Afford Insurance
And if they can’t, Administration says they must pay the tax
Thursday, September 20, 2012
SHOT: Administration Says Individual Mandate Tax Will Only Affect Those Who Can Afford Health Care
"This (analysis) doesn't change the basic fact that the individual responsibility policy will only affect people who can afford health care but choose not to buy it," said Erin Shields Britt of the Health and Human Services Department. "We're no longer going to subsidize the care of those who can afford to buy insurance but make a choice not to buy it."
CHASER: Over 50 Percent of Those Paying the Individual Mandate Tax Will Have Incomes Below 300 Percent of Poverty
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates, that in 2016, more than half of the taxpayers who will be forced to pay the new mandate tax will have incomes less than 300 percent of poverty in 2016 ($36,000 for an individual; $73,800 for a family of four in 2016) will pay roughly $1.6 billion in new taxes as a result of the health care law’s individual mandate tax. Further, nearly one-third of those being forced to pay the new tax will have incomes below 200 percent of poverty in 2016 ($24,000 for an individual, $49,200 for a family of four), accounting for $900 million in new taxes paid. Despite the fact that the Obama Administration has dictated that they can afford health insurance, the reality is these middle-class and low-income Americans have limited means and may not be able to shoulder the cost of insurance.
The Obama Administration’s solution? Tax them. | <urn:uuid:60ac8bfa-7c5e-4532-9214-3b263c4a5b60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://waysandmeans.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=309345 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947328 | 362 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Seat belt enforcement results in citations
Extra “Click It or Ticket” seat belt enforcement patrols in October resulted in 88 seat belt citations, according to the Carver County Sheriff’s Office.
The statewide campaign ran Oct. 12 – 26. More than 400 unbelted motorists were killed in the last three years in Minnesota, representing 43 percent of the total motorist deaths. In Carver County during this time period, eight unbelted motorists were killed and eight were seriously injured.
Of the 377 motorists killed in unbelted deaths during 2009 – 2011, 154 (41 percent) were motorists ages 16 – 29.
In a crash, odds are six-times greater for injury if a motorist is not buckled up. In Minnesota, drivers and passengers in all seating positions, including the back seat, are required to be buckled up or seated in the correct child restraint. Officers will stop and ticket unbelted drivers or passengers. Seat belts must be worn correctly — low and snug across the hips; shoulder straps should never be tucked under an arm or behind the back.
Minnesota’s child passenger safety law requires children under age 8 or 4 feet 9 inches to be in a car seat or booster seat. Children should start riding in a booster seat starting around age 4. It is safest to keep children riding in a booster until they are 4 feet 9 inches tall, or at least age 8.
Why Buckle Up
In rollover crashes, unbelted motorists are usually ejected from the vehicle. In most cases, the vehicle will roll over them. Often, unbelted motorists will crack teeth out on steering wheels or break their nose, and even slam into and injure or kill others in the vehicle.
Properly wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatal injury to front seat passenger occupants by 45 percent in a car and 60 percent in a light truck.
The Click It or Ticket seat belt enforcement and education is a component of the state’s Toward Zero Death (TZD) initiative. A primary vision of the TZD program is to create a safe driving culture in Minnesota in which motorists support a goal of zero road fatalities by practicing and promoting safe and smart driving behavior. TZD focuses on the application of four strategic areas to reduce crashes — education, enforcement, engineering and emergency trauma response. | <urn:uuid:6bcd27af-ff21-4504-af60-1cf6ed0a5dc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sunpatriot.com/2012/11/08/seat-belt-enforcement-results-in-citations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956968 | 476 | 2.421875 | 2 |
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. ~George Bernard Shaw
Noah, unlike his big brother, is all about the fiery colours. Ask Julien what colours he would like to paint with and you will get blue, green, purple and maybe red, but only dark red. Ask Noah the same question and you will get orange, yellows, bright red. As bright as you can get them.
Two days a week Julien is out of the house at a Waldorf program close to our house. On those days I have been trying to be mindful of not just running errands and cleaning the house, but of actually taking the time to be with Noah and do things just with him. I never get time with just Noah, and it is easy to get caught up in the “to do list”.
Last week, I did some wet on wet watercolour painting with him. There is a really lovely video by Sarah Baldwin of Bella Luna Toys found here for those who are unfamiliar with this beautiful painting done in Waldorf schools. He has done a bit with Julien and I, but he never had the attention span to really immerse himself in it. That is partly my fault as by the time he was joining us in our painting sessions, we were already on two colours at a time and this takes away from him really experiencing the character of each colour. Traditionally, young children start with just one of the three primary colours, fully experiencing it before moving to the next colour at a different session. With time to go back to the beginning and Noah at a point that he can embrace it, I decided to have a painting day with him.
As I did with Julien, I made a big deal of doing our “special painting”. We paint a lot here, but I like to set this aside as special so it sets it in their minds that this is a more mindful experience. I chose a simple fall story. We soaked our paper and mixed our paint, put our brushes in their blankets and sat down to paint. Which colour did Noah chose to start with? Red, of course. I explained how “Tippy Brush” likes to be clean before he plays with his friends and how to dry his feet. Then I started in on a simple story about Tippy playing with his friend red as they danced and played in the leaves. He was so excited and was so immersed in it, it made my heart happy.
We painted in silence for the most part. His face was scrunched up in concentration and his strokes were long and flowing. I sat painting and watching as he played with the colour, stretching it to the edges of the paper, making it brighter and deeper by adding more paint, then realizing that he could take it off by using a clean brush. Every once in awhile he would sing that Tippy needed a bath and he would gently swirl the brush in the jar of water, wipe it against the side and dry it off on the cloth. It was so beautiful to watch. I had forgotten how peaceful it was to watch a child experience this for the first time. It was also interesting to see how each child takes in the colour. Julien was and still is most at peace when he is painting with blue. It compliments him and seems to calm his soul. Noah it seems has this connection with red. I am curious to see how the other colours unveil themselves to him.
If you have never experienced this type of painting with your child, I highly recommend it. Many think that their child wouldn't enjoy it as it is only one colour and their children are used to a rainbow of colours. As I said, we paint with the rainbow as well, just not for this. For this we meet each colour on its own and then move on to discover how other colours can also come to play and before you know it, a whole rainbow is dancing on the page. It is meditative for the adult as well. I paint without the kids to use the paintings for lanterns and such and I have found it one of the most calming things I can do and I really should do it more often. It is a lovely way to spend some time! | <urn:uuid:4f1a7899-cb19-4e17-9496-9b18d9076283> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.darkbluedragon.com/node/201 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989618 | 874 | 1.851563 | 2 |
The social and political system of St. Simon. He proposed the institution of a European parliament, to arbitrate in all matters affecting Europe, and the establishment of a social hierarchy based on capacity and labour. He was led to his “social system” by the apparition of Charlemagne, which appeared to him one night in the Luxembourg, where he was suffering a temporary imprisonment. (1760-1825.)
For other saints, see the names.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
More on St Simonism from Fact Monster: | <urn:uuid:08f3a6f8-315e-4d9f-bf4b-1adb63554575> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.factmonster.com/dictionary/brewers/st-simonism.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953896 | 124 | 3.5625 | 4 |
White House to Recognize San Manuel Fire Chief as a 'Champion of Change'
President Obama’s Winning the Future initiative will name Michael J. Smith, as a “Champion of Change" on Thursday, January 19 for aiding the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians' emergency response capability and establishing a 33-member fire department that serves the region.
Smith will be one of 17 local leaders honored at the White House as a Champion of Change—those who help prepare their communities for disaster, thus building a more resilient community and country. These men and women have applied innovation and creativity in bracing their communities for the unexpected, states a San Manuel Band press release.
The Champions of Change program was created as a part of President Obama’s Winning the Future initiative. Each week, a different issue is highlighted and groups of Champions, ranging from educators to entrepreneurs to community leaders, are recognized for the work they are doing to better their communities.
“This past year we’ve been reminded that disasters can strike at any time and that preparedness is critical,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. “We commend the innovative practices and achievements that these individuals bring to the field of emergency management in order to make our communities safer, stronger, and better prepared.”
To watch this event live, visit www.whitehouse.gov/live on January 19 at 1:30 pm EST. | <urn:uuid:287f6e04-4dd4-4bb8-9a59-aecf3dad365f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/white-house-to-recognize-san-manuel-fire-chief-as-a-%27champion-of-change%27 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945308 | 296 | 1.539063 | 2 |
* NEW QUOTES ONLY PLEASE
We do not have information
about existing policies.
Disability Income Insurance
Disability Income Insurance is a form of insurance that provides you with a portion of your income in the event you become either temporarily or permanently disabled due to illness or injury. There are usually several variable conditions with this form of insurance, ranging from the amount of payment to the length of time payment can be drawn. There is also a difference in how disability is defined, from short and long-term to total disability.
Disability benefits are often a percentage of the insured’s pre-disability income, usually limited to no more than 60%. This is because the benefits are tax-free, and therefore are only intended to replace the net income of the disabled. Disability benefits are also coordinated with any other payments the disabled may be receiving, such as Social Security benefits, in order to ensure that the insured does not receive more than their previous income. This measure is taken so that there is a lesser chance of fraud.
The length of time that the benefits are paid can range anywhere from two years to the age of retirement, though the longer the payout period is, the greater the premiums. Most disability policies have a waiting period which must expire before the insured can collect any benefits. This time, also known as an elimination period, can be as short as thirty days or as long as six months, and the longer the waiting period, the lower the premiums.
The Details of Life Insurance: Benefits & Riders
Request a quote for life insurance coverage now >> | <urn:uuid:7ba4998e-f28f-4f45-bf44-04d4363d5ad4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.my-life-insured.com/disability.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967554 | 319 | 1.851563 | 2 |
The rules of parents are all but three. Love, Limit and Let them be. – Elaine M. Ward
“For the hand that rocks the cradle, is the hand that rules the world” is such a memorable quote that I took to heart the day I cradled my beautiful baby in my arms. The concept that your child becomes in their life starts with what they learn from their moms bore quite a big responsibility. As much as I want to give them the best in life, things are never perfect, you see.
Right after Luijoe, my beloved son, died in 2000, I survived many days in auto-pilot mode, moving about our lovely home like a zombie. My child was not supposed to die before me. Nothing could ever have prepared me for the devastating loss of my son. Looking at my two lovely daughters, I knew that I had to go through this pain and be strong enough for them to be there as their mother. The two girls seemed to go through their life with school and their friends, but I can never tell for sure. Their grades improved significantly right after my son’s death, perhaps trying to make us happy.
Showing my pain as a normal process of grief and isolation is not the healthy way to grieve. Marital strain and stress in the family became more evident. I could not reach out to my husband in pain because there were days when I was my own ball of pain. I became borderline obese, with high blood pressure, clogged arteries and diabetes. With our family life in shambles, an idea dawned on me one day in November 2004. Was it Luijoe showing me the light? I felt the urge to bring our life in order. I started fixing my personal issues, exercised and lost significant weight. With a healthier body, the fog that clouded my mind cleared up. I reached out to my husband and family and became more open with my feelings. My children witnessed my transformation to a new, positive person and loving mother because of the actions I took to save myself.
My daughters learned of the language of resiliency from the actions I embarked on this new life. Resiliency begins with how parents personally handle adversity. Examples of adversity is not limited to just death. It can be about losing a job, being diagnosed with a serious illness, recovering from a failed relationship, maintaining balance between work and family life, and dealing with difficult people.
Let’s face it. As much as we want to protect our children from difficulty, we simply cannot. Resiliency is the number one skill they need to learn. What can we do to help prepare our children for the road ahead? In the book, “Raising Resilient Children,” Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein define resilience as “embracing the ability of a child to deal more effectively with stress and pressure, to cope with everyday challenges, to bounce back from disappointments, adversity, and trauma, to develop clear and realistic goals, to solve problems, to relate comfortably with others, and to treat oneself and others with respect..”
The fact that they saw their mother hurdle a crisis is a valuable lesson learned. Aside from being a positive role model to my children, I taught them other powerful thinking tools to equip them to face adversity:
1.Tell them there is always a choice
I often tell my children that there is a choice about what to do, how to respond and how to feel. It is alright to feel sadness and be honest about one’s feelings.
2. Teach gratitude
I allow my children to express their fears and disappointment but at the end of the day, I ask them “can you count your blessings?” Teach them to find the good in every situation. I tell them to appreciate what they have and focus on it rather than obsess on what they do not have.
3. Teach them to master a skill
I allowed my kids to develop their talent in music and writing. Mastering a skill generates positive feedback for their achievements and hard work. These motivate them to keep moving forward despite the challenges.
Blessed is the child who learns to respond instead of react, to choose positivity instead of misery, and to solve problems instead of remaining stuck when faced with life’s most important decisions. Parents play a significant role in the development of resilience in their children. The hand that rocks the cradle may not rule the world, but it certainly makes it a better place, at least for our children. | <urn:uuid:ad21771b-ecc1-49ea-8648-ed3b25fab3dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aboutmyrecovery.com/resiliency-is-a-no-1-life-skill/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978283 | 932 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The Classic Shelby
Mustangs from 1965 to 1970!
Mustang was produced from 1965 to 1970 by Carol Shelby in large part
due to the great success Ford had with the Mustangs.
The sporty looking Ford Mustang of 1964 lacked high-end performance
so Ford decided ask Carol Shelby for help. By 1965, Shelby had
established a factory in Los Angeles, California producing a couple
of hundred GT350s a month.
The GT 350, the first
Shelby Mustangs, used GT in the name to designate that the car
was based on the Mustang GT (Grand Tourism). The reason for the 350
designation is not clear but believed to have been chosen because it
was larger than any other number that was on a car badge at the time
and because it was a fairly rounded number. Some cars were
then given a suffix such as the "R" (GT 350R) which stands for
"racing", and the "H" (GT 350H) which stand for
"Hertz" and these cars were manufactured for the Hertz car company.
By 1967, performance car enthusiasts were looking for big engine
in a small car and Shelby responded with a GT500. The GT500
featured a 428 cubic inch engine in a modified Mustang chassis. The GT500
badge was used to identify a Shelby Mustang with a big block engine
to allow it to be distinguished from it's small block stable mate.
Over time, the GT350 was enlarged to 302 and 351 cubic inches and
the factory was relocated to Michigan. The 428 engines were
also replaced by a Cobra Jet 428 in Shelby's pursuit to ever
increasing performance. The Shelby Mustang was manufactured in
fastbacks, convertibles and coupes. The majority of Shelby
Mustangs were fastbacks with fewer convertibles and very few coupes.
By 1969, Ford Motor Company was competing with itself by
supporting the Shelby Mustang project and preparing to build Boss
302 and Boss 429 Mustangs in their own plants. This combined with
increased safety regulations lead to the end of the Shelby Mustang
era. Production of the Shelby Mustangs was supposed to end in
1969 but a few left over 1969 cars resulted in a few Shelby Mustangs
being released in 1970.
The links to the left will take you to a pages that shows some
representative Shelby Mustangs covering the Classic Shelby Mustang Years. If
you have a Classic Shelby that I am missing, or you have some images
or details that you can share, please E-mail me and I will add them to the | <urn:uuid:07b5b98d-7150-4a09-9e8f-3be85853363d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mustangreview.com/cl-shelby.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951497 | 537 | 2.421875 | 2 |
As demand for its antiquities soars, the West African country is losing its most prized artifacts to illegal sellers and smugglers
November 2009 | By Joshua Hammer
Scholars in the fabled African city, once a great center of learning and trade, are racing to save a still emerging cache of ancient manuscripts
December 2006 | By Joshua Hammer
A new photo library of West Africa's desert elephants is helping researchers track the dwindling herd and protect their imperiled migration routes.
July 2005 | By Laura Helmuth | <urn:uuid:e37f950c-045d-447f-a5fa-c5440a6ff058> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smithsonianmag.com/topics/Location-Mali.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90717 | 102 | 1.546875 | 2 |