text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1 value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
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generative modeling for Rhino
im trying to make a hexagon in grasshopper which has edges of 2m i need to manipulate the shape of the hexagon with sliders but keep the edges as 2m when it moves... i have done it using a physical model and posted the pics.. can anyone tell me if its possible or not in grasshopper... i had various goes but with my beginer level of grasshopper i havent been able to do it...
It can be done using the kangaroo add-on. Set all the edges as springs with a rest length of 2 m, set vertices as anchor points and move the in rhino until your structure rests. its not novice level but I am sure that you will get some useful solutions within the forum.
thank you marios so do i start with a point and reference it in rhino or do i start with a curve...
could you possibly attach the file if you dont mind. | <urn:uuid:9ec845f2-3e24-42e2-aa6a-deb1c42500fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/hexagon?commentId=2985220%3AComment%3A599986&xg_source=activity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936653 | 199 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The China Syndrome
The most selfish people I’ve ever met were all only children, and because of their one baby policy, China is going to become a nation of single children. China, with their insatiable resource hunger, simply can’t sustain ever increasing growth rates, currently at 10.7% - capitalism has some rules that have to be followed and with such rapid uncontrollable expansion, economies run the risk of crashing.
I think 3 things will make this economic crash all the more destructive,
1: The horrific environmental damage in China will lead to a sudden environmental collapse.
Every year, it is estimated that around 400,000 people in China die prematurely from pollution-related illnesses.
2: Chinese Capitalism is crony capitalism and has a lot of Communist Party official corruption.
3: The militant history of the peasants, as the crash hits, the rural areas will get hit worst and an angry desperate, mainly male, peasant class with such historical militancy could cause immense damage to an already crippled Communist Party.
Add to this turbulent mix is a new middle class demanding Western living standards and China faces the real possibility of collapsing from it’s own size.
China admits to climate failings
China is failing to make progress on improving and protecting the environment, according to a new Chinese government report.
The research ranks China among the world's worst nations - a position unchanged since 2004. After the US, China produces the most greenhouse gases in the world. The Chinese report, prepared by academics and government experts, ranked the country 100th out of 118 countries surveyed. Some 30 indicators were used to measure the level of "ecological modernisation" including carbon dioxide emissions, sewage disposal rates and the safety of drinking water.
"Compared with social and economic modernisation, China's ecological modernisation lags far behind," said the research group's director, He Chuanqi. Yet, with a fifth of the world's population, China consumes only 4% of the world's daily oil output, importing about three million barrels a day. But its unrelenting economic growth will continue to fuel a voracious appetite for energy. Current plans call for the opening of a new power station every week, most of them coal-fired. The World Bank estimates that China will grow at 6% per year over the next 15 years, twice the rate expected for the world economy as a whole. | <urn:uuid:ff7484c3-6a4d-4a6a-99e2-1dbee58a7b23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2007/01/china-syndrome.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936294 | 490 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Last month, Mike Beltzner shared an early product plan for the next version of Firefox with the Mozilla community and presented our vision for Firefox 4. A big upgrade coming with Firefox 4 is the new theme project: creating a new, sleek, and simpler default theme for the browser. The UX team has been working tirelessly on this – streamlining and modernizing the user interface, particularly on Windows, given the aesthetic changes introduced by Vista and Windows 7.
Note: Plans May Change.
Metrics and Test Pilot have been doing what we can to help guide the UX team as they create an optimized design. A few months ago, Test Pilot released the Menu Item Usage Study, from which we gained valuable insight into how users interact with the menu bar. And a few weeks ago, we released the Main Window Usage Study to capture the remaining major UI elements of the browser, and provide more data-driven recommendations.
Today, we’d like to present some initial findings from this study. Like previous Test Pilot studies, the main window study ran for 5 days and covered Firefox versions 3.5 and up. The sample consists of 9,667 users who have opted into the Test Pilot program AND opted to submit their data.
We usually display study results in charts and graphs on this blog, but for this study, we were inspired by the work of principal designer, Alex Faaborg, and came up with a slightly different kind of visualization. Back in March, Alex created a heatmap to visualize the menu study data (his post is also a great example of how the UX team is using Test Pilot data to inform design decisions). Overlaying the actual UI and putting the data in context was really useful, so with his help, we expanded on the idea and constructed this interactive, web-based heatmap for the main window study:
Currently, the heatmap can display the usage data in two ways. Selecting ‘Used by x% of users’ displays the percentage of users who clicked each UI element at least one time, and ‘Clicks per user’ is simply the frequency click count for each item, divided by the number of users in the sample (we normalize for sample size to make comparisons across the different subsets more meaningful). The first approach is useful because it mitigates the effect of outliers, since each person who clicks an item counts only once, whether they clicked the item 1 time or 25,000 times. The obvious drawback is that this metric fails to capture intensity of use, which ‘Clicks per user’ does capture.
You can also choose to examine specific subsets within the sample; there are selectors to display breakdowns by OS and by self-reported computer/web skill level. Unfortunately, you cannot combine these subsets yet; that is, while you can look at data for just Windows users or for just Advanced users, you cannot look at data for the subset of Advanced, Windows users. Our sample is too small for such sub-setting right now, but we’ll add this ability as soon as our sample size increases.
Be sure not to miss the table to the right of the heatmap – it lists all the UI elements in descending order and also outlines the color spectrum. In addition, if you are viewing data for a subset, the table will show the differences between the currently selected subset and the other related subsets to make comparison easy (the differences for the ‘Used by x% of users’ filter are simply one subset minus the other, the differences for the ‘Clicks per user’ filter are in percentage change).
We’ll discuss results more thoroughly in future blog posts, but here are a few findings that immediately jumped out to us. As always, these findings apply to our sample of Test Pilot users only, and we realize this sample is not likely representative of the population of Firefox users as a whole. Furthermore, its important to remember that usage data like this is only one part of a rigorous design process, and that it alone will not dictate any design decisions.
- The Back button is used far more often than any other navigation element (by which we mean the Back, Forward, Reload, Stop, and Home buttons). 93.1% of study participants used the Back button at least once, and on average, each user clicked Back 66.2 times over the 5 days – that’s 3x more clicks than the Reload button, 10x more than the Home button, and over 30x more than the Forward and Stop buttons!
- Of all items that are not in the Firefox main window by default, the New Tab Button (Navigation Toolbar) is the most commonly used, both by % of users and frequency count. Looking at click counts, the New Tab Button (Navigation Toolbar) is a more popular way to generate new tabs than the New Tab Button (Tab Bar) that is located in the tab strip by default. The New Tab Button (Navigation Toolbar) is also more often used than the default UI elements Bookmark Star and RSS Icon by click count.
- Another conspicuous result is the disparate use of the scroll arrows in comparison to the scroll slider. This holds true for both the vertical scroll bar and the horizontal scroll bar; while 89% of people used the vertical scroll slider, only 21.2% and 16.6% of people used the up and down arrows. And although 42.8% of users used the horizontal scroll slider, only 2.1% and 0.9% clicked the left and right arrows to scroll.
Besides putting the data in a spatial context, another benefit of this visualization is that it is easy to reuse, update, and improve. We plan to add more data, more breakdowns, and the ability to synthesize multiple subsets in the near future. We also want to improve the robustness of our findings by filtering out certain extensions (e.g. some users have the Google Toolbar and might be searching through that channel instead of the integrated search box), and by increasing our sample size.
In addition, the heatmap will be updated over the course of the Firefox 4 beta program. Hopefully, this visualization will help us understand how the various UI changes affect user behavior, and ensure that these design decisions are in fact improving the product for our (beloved) end-users. Look for these updates soon!
Thanks again to Alex Faaborg, and to all Test Pilot users for opting-in to provide us with the data. If you’d like to help us understand how people use Firefox and build a better browser, head over to the Test Pilot website to learn more and download the add-on. And as always, please feel free to download the raw data and supplement our analysis with your own! | <urn:uuid:15ce84a8-62b6-41e2-9413-46249835b230> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2010/07/01/firefox-main-window-study-a-heatmap-visualization/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920972 | 1,394 | 1.570313 | 2 |
To the editor:
When it comes to rankings, Alexandria has accumulated some impressive laurels in recent years: one of the nation’s 100 Best Communities for Young People, Money magazine’s Best Places to Live, one of the top 10 Heart Friendly Cities, and even the top 10 Cities for Single Women, among other lofty distinctions.
However, no place is perfect, and Forbes magazine took a constructive swipe at our fair city last month in its annual list of cities with the worst drivers. The list, compiled by Allstate using the auto insurance claim frequency of America’s 200 largest cities, ranked Alexandria No. 7, with our neighbor, Arlington, following close behind at No. 12 nationally. (The District, as if I had to mention it, topped the list.)
My hope is that this embarrassing distinction will finally prompt the Virginia General Assembly to apply some teeth to its ban on cell phone use while driving. The law is a secondary law, meaning drivers cannot be stopped and punished for this infraction alone; they must be stopped for committing another infraction, like running a red light. This makes the law difficult to enforce. Additionally, this infraction is only considered a minor traffic violation with a fine of $20 for a first offense.
In July 2011, New York’s lawmakers signed into law a ban on texting while driving that made the offense a primary infraction, meaning law enforcement officials can stop drivers for that offense. They also increased the penalty from two to three traffic points, which go toward the suspension of a license.
In the first year since the law was signed, four times as many tickets have been issued than the previous year. It is too soon to tell whether this will have any significant deterrent effect on motorists in New York, but it is certainly a move in the right direction.
Research continues to prove that distracted drivers can be nearly as dangerous as drunk drivers. A 2008 Carnegie Mellon study concluded that driving while operating a mobile device reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,092 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver in 2010.
Yet Virginia lawmakers have not found the political will to help remedy this deceptively dangerous social hazard. After yet another distracted driving bill was shot down in the General Assembly last year, a spokeswoman for Gov. Bob McDonnell issued a feeble statement: “Wireless carriers continue to educate their customers and work with law enforcement officials to ensure the public is aware of the potential dangers of improper use of wireless devices while driving.”
Yes, governor, education is part of the answer to reducing dangerous activity. The other part is swift and strict punishment to deter the self-absorbed among us from needlessly harming the innocent. We just need lawmakers to do their part to help move Alexandria and Arlington toward the opposite end of that list.
- Joe Myers | <urn:uuid:416bc2e2-451f-416e-b059-02669131daa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alextimes.com/2012/09/virginia-needs-to-get-tough-%E2%80%A8on-behind-the-wheel-texting/3/?sort=id&dir=DESC&pagenum=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966862 | 593 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Key At-A-Glance Information
Length: 0.5 miles
Scenery: Woods, wetland, wet woods, and ponds
Trail Surface: Paved, recycled plastic boardwalk, and gravel
Hiking Time: 30-45 minutes
Driving Distance: 2 hours west of Cincinnati
Maps: Chestnut Ridge
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Facilities: Nature center and shop, restrooms, and drinking water
For More Information: Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge, (812) 522-4352 or www.fws.gov/midwest/muscatatuck
Special Comments: Plan to spend a weekend exploring the Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge. Eight hiking trails and one driving trail provide a variety of ways to view wildlife.
Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge was established as Indiana’s first National Wildlife Refuge in 1966 to provide resting and feeding areas for waterfowl during their annual migrations. Muscatatuck is a Native American word meaning “land of winding waters,” and as one of more than 545 refuges of the National Wildlife Refuge system, its mission is to restore and preserve a mix of forest, wetland, and grassland habitat for fish, wildlife, and people.
This is a wonderful place to introduce children to hiking. Muscatatuck has a lot to see—if you slow down and take a close look. Be wary of the trail borders, as an ample supply of poison ivy dominates the edges. If you come in contact with poison ivy, use cold water and soap to wash it off immediately. If that isn’t available, look for jewelweed (it looks like gangly impatiens), crush the stem, and rub the plant on the affected area. The plant’s juices help to remove the oils from your skin. If you don’t recognize jewelweed, don’t guess! Find a place to wash the oils from the poison ivy off of your skin.
After entering the refuge, pass through a gate and take the first turn to the right to the Conservation and Nature Center. Follow the road back to the center and park in either lot.
Take some time to explore the nature center’s exhibits, as well as the birdviewing room. For the shopper in you, the well-stocked nature store is delightful. Immediately outside the nature store, you’ll find maps at a self-serve kiosk on the wall to the right. Grab a copy of the Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge Chestnut Ridge Trail interpretive guide.
When you exit the front of the nature center, walk to the parking lot and look to your left.
The Chestnut Ridge Trail is relatively short at 0.5 miles, but it covers a broad timeframe of history and contains a great variety of habitats, as well as the animals that live in these habitats. While we hiked, we saw white-tailed deer, frogs, turtles, and a very unconcerned water snake.
This trail is excellent year-round. In spring expect to be serenaded by an assortment of songbirds, including neotropical migrants. In fact, Muscatatuck is a well-known birding location, celebrated each year in early May at the Wings Over Muscatatuck Migratory Bird Festival.
Throughout the year, Muscatatuck hosts several events, including butterfly counts, National Public Lands Day Cleanup, National Wildlife Refuge Week, and the Log Cabin Day Festival. For more information, visit www.fws.gov/midwest/muscatatuck.
The Chestnut Ridge Trail’s 13 interpretive points cover the area’s history as well as the plants and animals you are most likely to see and hear. The first 400 feet of the hike pass through a tulip- and oak-dominated forest. Chestnuts used to grow in this area, but a blight wiped out the species.
The enormous white oak tree that is 484 feet into the hike is estimated to be more than 100 years old. At this point, the trail becomes a boardwalk, which was built using “limber” created from recycled plastics, and heads downhill over a series of steps.
One-tenth of a mile into the hike, take the steps down into an old creek channel that keeps the woods wet during spring. In this low area, chestnut oak, hickory, musclewood, and pawpaw trees shade the multitude of wetland plants. The elevated boardwalk provides a bird’s-eye view of the area without the fear of sinking into the mud.
Along this bottom-area boardwalk is a bench at a little over 0.1 mile, the perfect spot to get comfortable and listen to the chorus of frogs and songbirds. The boardwalk ends, and the trail leads uphill on a gravel path at 0.15 miles. At 0.2 miles it becomes paved again. There is an alternate paved route, but it doesn’t go down into the valley.
At the trail split at 0.17 miles, stay to the right. As you pass the man-made ponds throughout this area, look for waterfowl, herons, egrets, turtles, snakes, and songbirds. The pond at 0.2 miles is a nesting spot for wood ducks and is surrounded by chestnut oaks, pawpaws, and sugar maples.
Over the years, the area has been through many changes, with the landscape evolving from chestnut woods to farm fields to forest succession. At 0.34 miles, you’ll see a spot where the forest joins open meadow, creating an edge habitat. Whenever one habitat borders another, a vital habitat is created. Edge habitats are excellent areas to look for various wildlife species, including songbirds.
Another good spot where two habitats meet is at 0.39 miles. This simple pond with the surrounding woods has many surprises—if you sit and wait. In fact, there is a handy bench to facilitate this process. (This is where we saw the water snake plus five turtles that were more interested in sunning than evading us.)
The hike terminates at the nature center. More hiking adventures await, such as the East River and Richart Trails, which are also included in this book. When your feet are too tired to hike, you can choose an auto-tour trail that leads past several of the controlled water structures. Expect to see egrets, cedar waxwings, great blue herons, and hundreds of ducks and geese.
GPS Trailhead Coordinates
View Larger Map
UTM Zone (WGS84) 16S
Latitude: N 38 degrees 57' 34.72"
Longitude: W 85 degrees 47' 55.10"
Other hiking opportunities in this area include Versailles and Clifty Falls state parks, Hardy Lake State Recreation Area, Selmier State Forest, and Pennywort Cliffs Nature Preserve. Seymour, Indiana, is less than 5 miles away from Muscatatuck and offers the standard medium-sized-city amenities. | <urn:uuid:12dbc279-5ede-4dd1-a0eb-1122fdfae3c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-20922-muscatatuck_chestnut_ridge.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931401 | 1,484 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Iran claims second US drone capture in a year
Is the age of the drone nearly over? Iran and US dispute 'capture' of another unmanned craft
THE US NAVY has denied a claim made today by Iran that it has captured an American drone that flew into its airspace. Iranian TV showed footage (below) of what looked like a ScanEagle, a relatively unsophisticated US drone, being inspected by a military commander.
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the naval forces of the Revolutionary Guards, said the ScanEagle had been "hunted down" and forced to land electronically after it violated Iranian airspace, The New York Times reports.
But a spokesman for US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain said: "The US Navy has fully accounted for all unmanned air vehicles operating in the Middle East region. We have no record that we have lost any ScanEagles recently."
The ScanEagle is a 1.25m long drone which can be launched by catapult from a vehicle or ship. Boeing, the US company that builds the ScanEagle, operates a number of units on behalf of Middle Eastern countries, according to Reuters.
If the Iranian claims are true, it would be the second US drone they have captured in the last 12 months. In December 2011, Iran released footage of an RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which it insisted it had forced to land by hacking into its control systems. The US said the drone had crashed in Iranian territory and asked Tehran to return it.
The Daily Telegraph's Con Coughlin says that the loss of the ScanEagle, coming on top of the capture of the Sentinel, shows that "the golden age of the drones, when they ruled supreme in the skies, is drawing to a close".
The proliferation of drones in places like Afghanistan, Libya and Gaza had led experts to believe that manned aerial combat would soon be a thing of the past, says Coughlin. But those experts overlooked one important fact: in most cases, the drones have been operating in uncontested air space.
"When it comes to more sophisticated foes such as Iran, which has Russian-made anti-aircraft missile systems, the drone is vulnerable to attack." | <urn:uuid:efb6e710-9be7-4423-a057-652eb22fb2f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theweek.co.uk/middle-east/50415/iran-claims-second-us-drone-capture-year | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967799 | 454 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Sri Lanka launches ‘world’s largest mission’ to rescue civiliansApril 10th, 2009 - 4:27 pm ICT by IANS
Colombo, April 10 (IANS) Sri Lankan troops have launched “the world’s largest humanitarian operation” to rescue thousands of civilians trapped in the government-declared no-fire-zone after seizing control of the last rebel bastion in the north, the defence ministry said Friday.
It said the troops have “almost swept away terrorist strongholds in the northern anterior of the 12-km-long no-fire-zone demarcated for the civilians” and were conducting mop-up operations in the southern anterior of the no-fire-zone (NFZ).
“Troops have identified the best accessible routes for the civilians to come out of the NFZ and established rescue points there. Some of these rescue points are located just 150 metres short of the LTTE built earth bund on the NFZ border,” the ministry said.
“Troops continuously keep the civilians informed about the safe routes to the cleared areas as they open up more escape routes to the civilians by removing terrorist blockades,” it said, adding that public address systems have been positioned at several locations to inform the people of these routes.
The rescue operation has been launched at a time when the island’s donor chairs expressed their “urgent concern for safety of over 100,000 people” trapped in the fierce fighting between the troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Discussing the situation in the northern war-zone, the members of Sri Lanka’s donor co-chairs, the US, Norway, Japan and the EU, have stressed “the importance of a humanitarian pause” to ensure that adequate supplies of food, water and medicine reach the civilians in the zone.
Dealing a major blow to of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Sunday, the troops captured Puthukkudiyiruppu, the last bastion, where the rebels maintained several military and naval bases and armoury over the past three decades.
Killing over 500 LTTE in 72 hours in the fight for Puthukkudiyiruppu, the military said Thursday that the troops were “so close to last leg of the war” against the rebels who has been fighting for a separate state over the past quarter century.
Tags: accessible routes, blockades, defence ministry, escape routes, fierce fighting, humanitarian operation, humanitarian pause, last bastion, last rebel, liberation tigers of tamil eelam, liberation tigers of tamil eelam ltte, mop up, naval bases, northern war, public address systems, sri lankan troops, tamil tiger rebels, terrorist strongholds, three decades, urgent concern | <urn:uuid:767f89e4-dd27-4b6a-b402-1812d77613e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/sri-lanka-launches-worlds-largest-mission-to-rescue-civilians_100177966.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923782 | 592 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Perhaps the prettiest sight in the kitchen is homemade jelly—there is nothing like a row of clear translucent, stained-glass colors to warm a housewife’s (or husband's) heart and enrich the family table.
What is Jelly?
Jelly contains just the juice of a fruit, whereas jam and preserves consist of bits and pieces of the fruit itself. This is why jelly is so smooth compared to jam and can easily be spread with a spoon.
Jelly Making Tips
- Jellies generally use the whole fruit, including the peel and core which contain a lot of pectin, the natural sugar within a fruit to make it JELL.
- When making jelly, use open stainless-steel cookware and add only the amount of water called for by the recipe. Too much water will scorch the fruit. Cover, bring to boil and cook the fruit until it is soft and the juices are flowing (berries only need a couple minutes; hard fruit like apples may need anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes).
- Suspend a jelly bag (or a cheesecloth) over a colander over a large bowl, and pour the cooked fruit into the bag. For the best results, let it sit overnight. If you squeeze the bag to extract the juice faster, you’ll still get good juice, but it will be cloudy, and so will your jelly.
- Remember: acid thickens the juice while pectin will jell the juice when it is cooked. With some fruits, the extracted juice will contain all of the necessary ingredients without supplement, like tart apples, blackberries, and some grapes. With others, such as apricots, peaches, and raspberries, you will have to add either acid, pectin, or both. Additional pectin must be added to these types of fruits to make them jell properly. You can buy artificial pectin at your local grocery store (available in both powdered and liquid form), and be sure to follow the manufacturer's directions. You can use lemon juice as a substitute for acid.
- Don't forget sugar! Sugar increases the volume of the juice, sweetens it, sets the gel, and helps prevent mold and fermentation. Low-pectin fruit jelly can be made by combining the low-pectin juice with apple, half and half, and using 2/3 cup of sugar for each cup of juice. If you are using blueberries or strawberries, add 1 tablespoon lemon juice for every 2 cups of jelly juice.
- From the exact combination of juice, acid, pectin, and sugar to the temperature you heat your jelly to, everything has to be exact. In general, when no added pectin is used, the jelly stage is reached at 8°F above the boiling point of water. The boiling point for water is about 212°F at 1,000 feet or less. You can use a candy thermometer to determine the actual temperature at which water breaks into a boil in your own kitchen.
- There are several ways you can test whether or not your jelly is jelled. Use a candy thermometer, but if you don’t have one, take a spoonful of the juice five minutes after you’ve added the sugar, let it cool for a minute, then tip the spoon back into the kettle. If the juice runs together at the edge and “sheets” off the spoon, then you're ready to pour. Also, you could take a saucer of the juice and stick it in the freezer for a few minutes. If it firms in that time, you’re good to go.
- Wash and sterilize your jars and caps beforehand by heating a pot of cold water that is gradually brought to a boiling point. Turn off the heat and leave the glasses in the pot until you are ready to use them (they should still be hot when you pour in the jelly). Drain the glasses and place them on a level surface.
- Skim the foam of the jelly, and ladle it into your jars as soon as it is ready. Be careful not to slop any over the sides. If you do, wipe it off before you put the tops on. After you pour the jelly, stir it around once with a teaspoon to eliminate air bubbles.
Of course, these are general guidelines one can follow while making jelly, but you should always follow the recipe. What? You don’t have a jelly recipe? Borrow one of ours!
- Basic Apple or Crab Apple Jelly
- Grape Jelly
- Venison Jelly (Spiced Grape Jelly)
- October Jelly (Spiced Grape Jelly)
- Cranberry Jelly
- Mint Jelly with Vinegar
- Ruth Feeney’s Blackberry Jelly
- Fresh Mint Jelly
- Blackberry Crab-Apple Jelly
- Crab-Apple Jelly
- Dandelion Jelly
- Tammy’s Apple Jelly
Want more jelly recipes? Browse our Almanac Recipe archives! | <urn:uuid:7271b9ee-a168-4c0c-933e-6d16bf604878> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.almanac.com/content/how-make-jelly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907875 | 1,030 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Did you read the story about a library in England that found two devices, designed to steal patron information, plugged into their computers?
It almost sounds like an urban legend, but even if it were it's still a good remind to all of us that this could happen anywhere.
The devices are USB keyloggers - someone would unplug the keyboard from the computer, plug the keyboard into this device, and then plug it back into the keyboard's USB port. With this device between the keyboard and computer, it can record every keystroke made on the computer - including websites visited, username/password combinations, credit information, etc.
The best defense against this is for library staff to check for these, or anything attached to a library computer that shouldn't be there. The article also suggest plugging keyboards into the front of computers, to make spotting them easier.
To notice something like this, of course, library staff must be familiar with what should and what shouldn't be there. I don't mean to be all preachy, but this is a good opportunity to familiarize staff who may not be really tech-savvy with library equipment. And another thing: take a few minutes today and check all of the computers in your library.
Thanks Dale for sending this to me, and it was also on LISNews. | <urn:uuid:04e50fd4-c664-4479-901e-8959433b30d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2011/02/15/spy-tech-devices-found-in-library/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972931 | 270 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Over the years the University had several student centres, but as student numbers increased, they all became too small. When Roper Street was finally closed in 1993, construction of a new student centre could start. The centre designed by Philip Viljoen and sponsored largely by Sasol and other donors was officially opened in August 1995. The student centre is the hub of the campus for most students. It houses a large cafeteria, restaurants, coffee shops, Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and various other shops located around the Piazza, as well as a central circular raised platform used for various activities. The building material used for the construction of the centre, such as the concrete blocks with a sandstone colour and red roof tiles, ensures that the complex blends in with the surrounding buildings.
Sketchup Model drawn by: Mnr S L van der Merwe | <urn:uuid:720311f5-8ddc-4efa-856b-b8c13316b754> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=306635e67af630cfe0606fb4a51d29df&prevstart=0&hl=in&ct=lc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977229 | 175 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The best way to keep your data center cool is to use the cool, ambient air of your natural surroundings.
But if your company doesn’t have the luxury of locating the data center near the moderate Oregon coast, like Facebook, or near the fjords of Norway, the cost of cooling data can be significant.
Data center efficiency has become big business in recent years, with startups like Power Assure getting into the business along with power engineering giants IBM, General Electric and HP. Now there is one more company in the mix, SM Group International, an international engineering firm based in Montreal that is tackling the cooling methods with claimed savings up to 50 percent.
SMi Group’s patent-pending technology isn’t actually new technology at all, but rather a paradigm shift in how to go about lifting heat off of the computers. “We said, let’s try to remove equipment and simplify the equation,” said Jean-Simon Venne, head of the energy efficiency division.
The key to the system is to pressurize the space and blow area directly over the servers before the heat builds up. It also uses traditional strategies, like precooling. But in warm environments, like Miami or Singapore, precooling can only cut down on energy use about 10 percent of the time, said Venne. Data centers account for about 2 percent of electricity use in the U.S. and that figure is growing.
After SMi focused on optimizing precooling, the engineers asked themselves, “Why don’t we just put the computer in a wind tunnel instead of pushing cold air into a square room?”
The combination of moving air efficiently in a pressurized environment cut the energy use by up to 50 percent. But the even bigger savings is that the configuration of SMi’s data centers can cut capital costs by up to 40 percent. Because SMi has also cut down on the equipment needed overall in the data center, Venne said they could also cut the construction time by up to 25 percent.
Venne compared the pressure to somewhere between sea level and riding in an airplane. “Think of how dry an airplane is,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
The average data center has a power use effectiveness (PUE) ratio of about 2 to 3. Facebook’s latest Oregon data center sports a PUE of 1.07 and consumes 38 percent less power than average thanks to a new server design and DC power. GE’s ultra-efficient data center rates a score of 1.63.
SMi said its system can cut the PUE to as low as 1.1 for a new facility. Retrofits results would vary, but if a data center had a PUE of 2, they could probably bring it down to about 1.3.
Venne admitted that he was surprised that their design could be patented, since it was just based on the basic rules of thermodynamics. But with so many other companies focusing on power source (AC vs. DC) or optimizing how the servers run, no one had taken this approach.
The company is currently working with six universities, although Venne said that the number of data center projects coming across his desk is “stunning.”
Cooling, of course, is just one aspect of data center power. Other ideas for curbing power have included weather mapping inside data centers (Sentilla, SynapSense), application shifting (Power Assure), improved AC controls (Vigilent), switching from AC to DC power (ABB, GE, Nextek), swapping disks for flash memory (SandForce), better power conversion (Transphorm), and smaller, more energy efficient servers and chips (SeaMicro, Calxeda).
SMi’s technology also does not have to work by itself. If a data center is converted to DC and uses the cooling system, the savings will be even greater. Because of the lower capital expense and quicker construction time, Venne said his company’s technology can help to commoditize data centers. “It’s easy to do,” he said, “and it doesn’t cost that much.” | <urn:uuid:75a5121e-6985-4f74-a00c-afd4cbd354b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/rethinking-data-center-cooling-for-serious-savings/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946846 | 879 | 2.546875 | 3 |
(BPT) - For many, the holiday period between Thanksgiving and New Year's means family get-togethers, rich food and good times. But it can also mean heartburn.
According to some physicians, planning ahead and knowing which over-the-counter (OTC) treatments may help are essential to keep your gatherings merry and bright.
'The smart thing to do is to be prepared and bring along a few over-the-counter treatments, like antacids or H2 blockers,' says Dr. Paul Farr, attending gastroenterologist for Saint Mary's Health Care. 'The last thing you want to do is have your holiday fun ruined by heartburn.'
Farr suggests that patients consider store-brand OTCs rather than name brands. 'They're just as effective and are approved by the FDA but cost a lot less,' Farr says.
According to Perrigo, a Michigan-based manufacturer of OTC medications found under store-brand labels at leading retailers, grocers, club stores and pharmacies, the primary OTC treatments available for heartburn relief are:
* Antacids. Antacids come as liquids and tablets like calcium carbonate (name brand: Tums).
* H2 blockers. Indicated for occasional heartburn, these medications are most effective when taken an hour before eating. Examples include famotidine and ranitidine (name brands: Pepcid and Zantac).
* Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). PPIs are indicated for people who have heartburn at least twice a week. Omeprazole (name brand: Prilosec OTC) won't relieve heartburn right away - and may take up to four days for full effect - so they're not helpful for immediate, temporary relief after you've already overindulged.
Contrary to its name, heartburn, which affects 60 million Americans at least once a month, has nothing to do with the heart. It's a digestive problem that is also called reflux esophagitis or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Gastroesophageal reflux occurs when contents in the stomach flow back into the esophagus. This happens when the valve between the stomach and the esophagus does not close properly.
Heartburn is most often described as a burning sensation behind the breast bone that moves up toward the neck or throat. This occurs when stomach acid irritates the normal lining of the esophagus. People may also experience acid regurgitation with heartburn, which is the sensation of stomach fluid coming up through the chest into the mouth. Less common symptoms that may also be associated with gastroesophageal reflux include unexplained chest pain, wheezing, sore throat and cough, among others.
'For most people holiday heartburn is nothing to worry about. However, if you're having ongoing symptoms, you need to see a doctor. If you are having any trouble with food sticking on its way to your stomach, be sure to tell your doctor and have it checked out. It may be a stricture which is easily treated. The worst thing you could do is ignore chronic symptoms, hoping they'll resolve in the new year on their own,' Farr says.
You can find more information about the symptoms and treatments for holiday heartburn at the National Institute of Health, or the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. | <urn:uuid:3551a3e3-865d-47ce-9023-ad690ea6a7f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.9wsyr.com/ara/healthwellness/story/Have-yourself-a-heartburn-free-holiday/1MTzCE4HVUqyGajFQ0G-HQ.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946976 | 703 | 1.945313 | 2 |
"GETTING FULL VALUE FROM YOUR SCHOOL GARDEN PROJECT" is the title of this instructional brochure published in 1967 for students and their parents with a home garden. The brochure includes: 1. Instructions for Summer Garden Care 2. Suggestions for Using Vegetables and Flowers 3. A Note for Parents 4. Pupil's Project Score Card and Teacher's Rating 5. Awards and Rewards Prepared by HORTICULTURE DIVISION CLEVELAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1967 SUMMER CARE OF THE GARDEN This instructional brochure was published in 1967 for Cleveland Public Schools garden program students with a home garden, and their parents. The full text is available in this listing. There is a page for a summer garden report card that was filled out by the garden teacher, in this particular case, Dr. Frances Janes, a science teacher at Garfield Elementary School. | <urn:uuid:5600ddc7-9d2e-4c1a-afeb-32a93fc7a17f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/urbanfarm&CISOPTR=294&CISOBOX=1&REC=17 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930322 | 179 | 3.109375 | 3 |
I LOVE This I Believe (“This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada, as well as in regular broadcasts on NPR. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow”).
If I was writing an essay it (actually just one of them) would begin: This I Believe…that it’s okay to let the other guy win even when they don’t deserve it…when they haven’t done the work to prepare, when they don’t have the same values nor the best intentions…when they’ve won and I have lost I can still be the winner…I can take away all the excuses of why I was the loser and I shall forget about how luck was their only means attributing to their success…if I shake their hand and open my heart and bring positive energy to myself and a true enthusiasm for their happiness…then I have done my part in making it both our win.
Some days are easier for me to believe this than others. Seems the days I tell myself I’m going to find something in everyone to love are the days I come home and share a story lacking in personal humility.
When someone is upset with you and he or she feels you owe them an apology, then what you need to do is apologize. Make it a simple apology. You have to allow others to believe what they will about you…you have no control over their thoughts and their perception of you…sometimes you just have to put your tail between your legs. Even when all you want for them is to reciprocate…you should never do anything just for a return. You have to find the good in people and focus on that part of them.
You also need to recognize that some relationships (not people) are toxic. The individuals are good people…but the chemistry of the two can be unhealthy and those people you learn to keep at a distance (sometimes we’re just in a ‘reactive’ period in our lives and can reconnect in time). If I have a good grip about who a person is then I can maintain a relationship with them at the needed distance.
…and always keep in mind to ‘Pay it Forward’ even with apologies…an apology received might remind you of an apology owed.
(First blog…reminds me of LA101…I have the same problem…start with one idea and end with another!) | <urn:uuid:0287af97-fa84-448b-ab79-a26bea821dea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lieselkirkfink.tumblr.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970739 | 554 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Public Papers - 1989 - November
Statement by Press Secretary Fitzwater on the President's Meeting With British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
President Bush and Prime Minister Thatcher met for approximately 4/2\ hours today at Camp David, discussing a broad range of issues related to East-West relations and European stability. They had frank and substantive discussions in the relaxed atmosphere of the camp.
President Bush summarized plans for the Malta meeting, and the two leaders discussed a number of possible subjects to be considered in that meeting. A primary focus was on Eastern Europe. The President and the Prime Minister discussed reforms underway in the Soviet Union and agreed on support for glasnost and perestroika. They both emphasized pursuit of democracy as a first step in the reform process. The two leaders agreed on the need for European stability as NATO faces the changes in Eastern Europe.
The Prime Minister spoke of her commitment to the common market and emphasized her vision of a free and open trading system in Europe. President Bush agreed with her view of a European future that avoids protectionism. The Prime Minister briefed President Bush on the recent Paris summit of European Community leaders, in which it was agreed that all countries should promote democracy as a part of the Eastern European reform process.
The two leaders discussed a number of regional issues, including the Middle East peace process, recent events in Lebanon, China, Cambodia, Central America, Afghanistan, and others.
The two leaders were in very close accord in their examination of all the issues discussed today. Attending today's meeting were General Brent Scowcroft, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger; U.S. Ambassador Catto; British Ambassador Acland; and Charles Powell, Private Secretary to Mrs. Thatcher. The Prime Minister departed Camp David at approximately 2:30 p.m. | <urn:uuid:f09abdea-5e4c-49d6-be2d-7e54c0003b13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=1260&year=1989&month=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959034 | 373 | 1.757813 | 2 |
\"Training\" in Training Races
There's always a catch, and here the catch is that many riders forget the "training" part of "training race." The excitement can often be too much, ego takes over, and people race themselves into the ground before the season even starts. If you participate in training races this winter and spring, it's imperative to lay down some rules for yourself based on your training needs and follow them to the letter, however difficult it may be to hold back when the attacks are going up the road.
One situation that often arises is that short days and bad weather can limit your training time, right up to the point the training races start. This leaves many riders going from 0 to 60 in an incredibly short time, and leads directly to an early exit to the season. Too much supra-threshold work too soon, without the aerobic foundation to handle and recover from it, will always put you on the first bus home. Don't start the training races unless you have at least one 4-6 week cycle of aerobic base training done, including extended intervals in the Light (81-90% of threshold) and Middle (91-100% of threshold) zones. You don't need to be fit enough to win, only fit enough to participate and not set yourself back from having done so. (See other Cycle-Smart training articles for more explanation of power and heart-rate based training zones.)
In most cases, racing to win these early season training races won't be your goal, and it's crucial to remind yourself of that. No one gets a pro contract from training race wins. If you plan on participating, make the races fit your target. If you're focusing on a mid-season goal like the Fitchburg stage race, then you should be limiting your anaerobic work in March and sitting in. If you need to be ready for Athens Twilight in April, then you might take a more pro-active approach, be active in the race, and try to raise the total number of minutes you can spend at and around your threshold, as well as your capacity for riding above it.
Either way, don't race above your fitness level. If you bury yourself on a Sunday in March when you're still trying to improve your form, you run the risk of losing training days during the week. If Tuesday comes around and you're not recovered enough to train because you went beyond yourself on Sunday, you either lose a training day, or end up over-training because you needed the recovery but trained regardless. In both cases, you stunt the development of your form, and the racing is counter-productive.
This doesn't mean you can't win early season training races even when you're holding back, contradictory though it may sound. If you know, for instance you've only been able to finish 30 minutes of intervals near threshold in your training but find that you're fit enough to sit in comfortably during the training race, you might allow yourself the last 30 minutes of the race to be more active. Still, you should do your best to avoid extended period above threshold or going with absolutely every attack. Even if you find that just sitting in is challenging enough for you to get the intensity work you need for the day, you can always allow yourself the freedom to take part in the sprint for whatever places are remaining. In this case, the total amount of time you'll be in the red zone is limited to one final effort, so you can only do so much damage.
Often you'll find that you'll actually be sprinting for the win, which is an excellent lesson in itself. Sitting in during these early season events is an prime time to actually watch and study a race while being a part of it as it unfolds. If you're sitting in, don't do so mindlessly. Ride close enough to the front to watch the race as it goes on. Mark every attack, and who goes with it. See who's fit, and who might be someone to follow when the real races start. See how moves you might have gone with otherwise play out. By doing this, you can start to get a sense of the ebb and flow of the race without having to make tactical decisions while you're at your limit and can't think straight.
The lessons you learn in this approach to training races will hopefully stay with you when you find yourself in an important event, and help you with your patience and choice of tactical moves to make or go with. And in the end, if it does come down to a field sprint, you'll find yourself fresh and ready to make a full-strength go at it. In general, holding back now will let you continue to build your form but still get the benefit of racing, allowing you to be in ideal form when the events that matter come around, and the racing is finally more important than the training. | <urn:uuid:7d785672-56bb-4449-a444-f3cca347e85a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cycle-smart.com/articles/quottrainingquot-training-races | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972505 | 993 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Naxos' six-CD retrospective of Witold Lutosławski's orchestral works is one of the best things that this label has done. Now Naxos, along with the same orchestra and conductor, is turning its attention to the orchestral music of another modern Pole: Krzysztof Penderecki. Penderecki was born in 1933, 20 years after Lutosławski. Unlike his predecessor, he still is alive and composing, although in a style that is markedly different than that which earned him his initial fame around 1960. International attention arrived with Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima – the title was added after the piece was completed. Scored "for 52 stringed instruments," it is a scarifying wall of sound. Penderecki treats the strings like percussion instruments, and conjures wild noises out of them using non-traditional playing techniques. It is a wail, a scream, a sinister muttering, and an orgy of air-raid sirens all in one. Fluorescences, written the following year, out-assaults the Threnody. Here, Penderecki writes for full orchestra, and includes instruments not formally found in an orchestra, including a typewriter (pace Leroy Anderson!); pieces of wood, tin, and glass; and (this time for real) a siren. De natura sonoris II, written a decade later, finds Penderecki refining his sonorist concept. The sounds no longer shock, but they still have the power to provoke debate on whether music can be defined as the organization of noises.
Volume 3 [shortly to be issued on Naxos 8.554492] contains the Second and Fourth Symphonies. Considering Volumes 1 and 2 together, one nevertheless can trace the changes in Penderecki's style through his symphonies alone. The 30-minute First Symphony, written in 1973 for an English engine factory, shows that the composer's sonorist techniques are amenable to symphonic development. Although it is less extreme than the works described above, it still is the work of a composer for whom experimental curiosity is at the fore. By the time of the Third Symphony (begun in 1988, but not completed until 1995), Penderecki has returned to a more traditional language. Striking orchestral sonorities are used, but as a means to expression rather than as an end. The music is tough and biting, but perhaps not as concentrated as it might be. The Fifth Symphony (1992) is even more removed from the sound-world of the Threnody. Here, Penderecki is writing music that would not be out of place in a symphony by Allan Pettersson. The mood is dark and reminiscent of the symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich. The Fifth Symphony, the composer's most recent, alternates between driving intensity and bitter brooding. In the 60s and 70s, Penderecki may have come to feel that his compositional techniques had taken him as far as he cared to go. His music has remained essentially pessimistic, however.
Wit studied with Penderecki, and also with Henryk Czyz, a conductor who premièred some of Penderecki's music. He is at his best in the symphonies, favoring tempos that are a faster than the composers own, and emphasizing structure in music that tends to be a little loose in this department. He and the Polish orchestra seem a bit inhibited in the shorter works; earlier recordings by the composer and Andrzej Markowski took more pleasure in sound qua sound. Nevertheless, those recordings are difficult to find, and there is a definite need for these new versions. The Naxos Penderecki project is in good hands, and I am waiting to see whether it will extend to the choral works as well. (Kosmogonia, with its fascinating texts alluding to the creation and exploration of the universe, really needs to find its way to disc.) The engineering is good, but not as detailed as I would like it to be.
Copyright © 2000, Raymond Tuttle | <urn:uuid:c87e7857-4523-40b8-876e-39f1aa2bdfe2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/n/nxs54567a.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969043 | 863 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Absolute Pitch research, ear training and more
Hello! I'm Chris Aruffo, your host here at Acoustic Learning. It's my goal to dispel the myth and the mystery that surrounds the phenomenon of perfect pitch (also known as absolute pitch), and to make it a skill accessible to anyone who wants to learn it.
To explore ways you can learn absolute pitch, click "Learn AP" or the research links above.
To discover the learning process, we must look to children. Although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated that adults are incapable of learning absolute pitch, the available evidence consistently demonstrates that only children ever have. And they surely have learned it. Conceptualizing a certain swath of sound energies as twelve unrelated yet associated categories, wholly abstracted from their origin and cause, is not a natural interpretation of the world. Regardless of genetic predispositions or neural aberrations, the musical scale is a human imposition; if it is to be known at all, it must be learned. If children learn absolute pitch by a perceptual-learning mechanism, adults should be capable of learning it, as they possess the same mechanisms.
The principal trick is convincing an adult to use those mechanisms. Learning is driven by need-- people learn only when their goals require new knowledge. A child needs to know how to listen to music, which makes new learning necessary. An adult already knows how to listen to music, which makes new learning difficult. To reawaken an adult's need to learn, their existing knowledge must somehow be made to fail.
Any training must also teach the target knowledge. This would seem common sense, but it's distressingly easy to be fooled. Educational systems usually teach their students how to pass tests, which inevitably renders the supposed content generic, irrelevant, and meaningless. For example, I tried out "melody triggers" with this widget a while ago (here's a Mac version) and in a startlingly short period of time I could name notes flawlessly. Even now, I can still use this widget to name notes with perfect accuracy, at a speed rivaling or exceeding that of Miyazaki's absolute listeners (1988). But whenever the melody association falters, I can listen to a note repeatedly and be utterly unable to answer, my mind a blank. Without a melody, I haven't the slightest clue, because there are no other clues. All I learn from this process is how to associate tones with melodies; I didn't (and won't) learn to recognize the tones. All note-naming training methods to date have provided clever workarounds to help you successfully pass a naming test, but what you really learn is the workaround, not the notes' identities. An adult who wishes to learn genuine absolute pitch must dedicate themselves to a training task which cannot be accomplished except by using genuine absolute pitch skill. That task must be structured to teach absolute pitch the way it's actually learned, not through some clever pretense. To acquire full absolute pitch at any age, a musician must discover and practice a style of musicianship that not only uses perfect pitch, but will fail without it.
Again, here's what it boils down to: Like colors, the twelve tones are to be learned as separate and unrelated categorical concepts. Like phonemes, these tones are to be integrated with a linguistic comprehension of musical sound.
A category is learned by examining objects that belong to that category alone. Comparing between categories doesn't help. As this illustration showed, when you compare two "different" objects, your attention is drawn to the objects' individual characteristics, but when you compare two "same" objects, you look for common relationships. Ordinarily, we don't recognize objects by their individual characteristics, but by the invariant relationships among their shared characteristics. Therefore, to learn how to recognize an object, we need to make same comparisons. In other words, you don't learn the concept of cat by comparing cats to dogs, llamas, dump trucks, mailboxes, coffee mugs, or any of an infinite number of other objects, and making lists of characteristics that belong to each. You learn cat by synthesizing your various experiences of cats. The process of categorical learning remains the same when transferred to musical tones-- you don't learn the concept of A-flat by comparing A-flats to G's, B's, F-sharps, or any of an infinite variety of sounds, and figuring out which properties belong to each; you learn A-flat solely by synthesizing your various experiences of A-flats.
This, I'm pleased to say, is what Absolute Pitch Avenue (formerly Absolute Pitch Blaster) already does, at least to some extent. That is, Absolute Pitch Avenue focuses exclusively on within-category comparisons. I designed it with perceptual differentiation in mind, but because this is the proper first step, I'm relieved that I don't have to re-invent the process but build it further to induce categorical learning. The process should create meaningful identities for each pitch category, and allow chroma perception to arise as a matter of course. Absolute Pitch Avenue is an important first step, because it reveals the basic learning mechanism, but this mechanism needs to become the internal engine of the training's active process. If you undergo meaningful within-category training, the mechanism of perceptual differentiation should automatically make it possible to hear tone chroma; simultaneously, the nature of same comparisons should automatically create an understanding of how that chroma definitively relates to all the other characteristics of any particular sound.
This, I'm not so pleased to say. If training can automatically activate perceptual-learning mechanisms by providing meaningful experience, then the training materials need to deliver a meaningful experience. Absolute Pitch Blaster activates the perceptual-learning mechanisms, successfully, but doesn't provide the meaningful experience to complete the learning-- and this is the mind-boggling issue. How on earth are pitch categories made meaningful? It seems that answering this question may mean solving the problem.
I think of how colors are learned. Although colors are generally presented as a set, each individual color is learned by identifying objects that embody the concept. We don't say that objects look like green; they are green. Green is the grass. Green is a turtle. This basic categorical understanding is made more sophisticated by omnipresent color-codings. Children understand that objects with identical shapes may have different functions, and can recognize that the shelf for toys is green while the shelf for books is yellow.
I think of how phonemes are learned. Each individual letter is learned by identifying objects that embody the concept. Sesame Street exemplifies exactly this process, in which letters exist as various objects. C is for cookie, cupcake, car; M is for monster, meatball, monkey. A letter is not learned as a short sound broken off the front of a longer sound. Rather, a letter-category ("M") is populated with concepts, which concepts evoke their respective names ("monster", "monkey"). Once a child learns and knows that these concepts all belong to the M category, then comparing their word-names causes the common phoneme to be extracted. The word-sounds are utterly arbitrary; they could not be remembered except as evoked by their associated concepts. It is, therefore, the act of naming that creates letter-categories.
This may be how absolute pitch is learned. Each individual pitch may be learned by identifying objects that embody the concept. I took another look at Gebhardt's case study and particularly noticed the language reported by little "A.R." as his absolute skill developed. Talking about a car horn, A.R. said "it was a G", not "it produced a G." Told that a trio was playing Beethoven, he said "no, that is D-major," not "it is being played in D-major." This may be the mechanism that We Hear and Play exploits in its use of colored balls to represent each pitch. A ball is red, it is round, it is plastic; a child can learn that it is a C-pitch in the same way they learn that it is a "ball". Names are external, arbitrary associations; for each ball, a child has as much reason to learn a pitch-sound as any other name-sound, and the act of naming each ball helps create the pitch categories.
Does this describe how an adult can learn absolute pitch?
At first glance: it doesn't. The color model suggests that the best thing would be to rush out and start listening to fixed pitches in one's environment-- microwave beeps, elevator bells, ring tones, etc-- but that exact strategy has been thought of before, and if it were the solution, it would've worked by now. The phoneme model suggests that the best thing would be to associate melodies to tones, but the melody-association strategies that have been tried so far are ultimately flummoxed by adults' unconscious knowledge that pitches are "levels" of sound.
On second thought: it has to. If pitches are essentially and fundamentally like colors and phonemes, and this explanation of how colors and phonemes are learned is reasonable, then absolute pitch learned by the same processes and mechanisms would demand the same embodiments, namely, environmental objects and melody-words. Perhaps the reason these types of sounds have been considered is that they are indeed, obviously, the sounds you'd want to use-- but they've never worked to teach absolute pitch because training systems have used them inappropriately. If I'm going to develop a training system that works, I need to figure out how to use environmental pitches and melodies in a way that has never been thought of before.
In the meantime, fortunately, Absolute Pitch Avenue is still worth having out there. It does present the phoneme-word model, just with nonsense words, so while it can teach you to recognize chroma the conceptual anchors for each pitch category are weak. I mean, you could learn the sound for the D phoneme by hearing someone say D-laden babble like dobsy buddso difdum dodle tud-- this is an unconscious process called "statistical learning"-- but you would only learn how to recognize the D-sound. You wouldn't learn what D actually means. This is where Absolute Pitch Avenue is right now, which makes it more useful to skilled musicians than unskilled hobbyists, but it's the right base to start from, and Ear Training Companion upgrades will continue to be free while I figure out the rest.
The bottom line is that each pitch category needs to be populated with concepts. The principal difficulty in finding effective concepts is that adults' understanding of sound is not embodied and integral (a bell is F-sharp) but causal and dissociated (a bell produces F-sharp). This means that an adult will not naturally recognize a meaningful difference between two bells that produce different pitches, or between two identical melodies in different keys. Nonetheless, the task before me is to discover meaningful concepts and transform them into a pitch category. So rather than continue to speculate about what needs to be done, I mainly need to try to do this and get some results, one way or the other. | <urn:uuid:893b002c-f0df-4bb3-ab82-3b3b250d1fa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aruffo.com/eartraining/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96555 | 2,292 | 3.4375 | 3 |
That is the question; in fact, for writers, the only question. We people who hide in closets (garrets), who get arrested for stalking characters in the coffee shop, and who think writing and rewriting pages and pages at a time is actually fun, we writers long to be published.
To hold that book in hand–or on iPad–is akin to reaching the finish line first for a marathon runner, a Derby racer, or a Grand Prix driver.
But along the way there are pitfalls. And you may think you are the only one to have these problems. In the video below, Shakespeare (Hugh Laurie) is discussing what might be cut from Hamlet–ye gods!–with his editor, Rowan Atkinson.
Take a moment and enjoy.
Consider leaving a comment about bright bits you’ve had to snip out. Or malign the editor who suggested this. Just kidding.
Download your free copy of 10 Ways to Improve Your Writing from the link in the side column | <urn:uuid:c45b628d-3233-4f3b-8883-ce09a26ff38a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://elainecougler.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/to-be-published-or-not-to-be/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951283 | 207 | 1.625 | 2 |
Triple or nothing
A UK triple dip? It's just one big slowdown
The usual British definition of a recession - two consecutive quarterly declines in GDP - is misleading. By the more meaningful American standard of “a significant decline in economic activity”, the UK cannot enter its third recession since the 2008 financial crisis - even if GDP falls in the current quarter, as it did in the last three months of 2012.
A triple dip is impossible because the British economy is actually stuck in one long recession. Fourth-quarter GDP was almost identical in 2012 and 2011 - about 2 percent higher than at the post-crisis trough and 3.4 percent lower than the all-time high in the second quarter of 2008, according to a preliminary estimate from the Office of National Statistics.
The stagnation will not last forever. An increase in the British population and the development of new technology will be enough to bring back GDP growth - if not in 2013 then a year or two later. But however long the dull period lasts, it has already gone on for enough years to show that the British economy lacks resilience and flexibility.
GDP should have recovered much faster after the financial sector’s 2008 woes, just as the trade balance should have improved more dramatically after a 20 percent fall in sterling, which started in 2007. Official austerity is no excuse for a lack of growth - the UK recovery has lagged despite a more aggressive monetary policy than the euro zone and higher fiscal deficits than all but the most troubled members of the EU.
Financial excess was a special drag for the UK, but the main impediments to growth are institutional. Among developed countries, Britain is a laggard in professional education and planning regulations. Investment has long been inadequate, the credit system fails small businesses and the government’s economic policies have been incoherent.
These structural weaknesses have developed over a long time and - as any Greek or Italian could explain - are not easily corrected. Unless the UK makes a serious effort to improve its institutions, the recovery - whenever it comes - will be subdued. It could feel depressingly like another recession. | <urn:uuid:dba6dd66-dfcf-4b26-84df-e11aa1bf0483> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.breakingviews.com/a-uk-triple-dip?-its-just-one-big-slowdown/21065938.article | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949866 | 429 | 1.875 | 2 |
Series: The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT)
The close-knit bond between prophecy and history, according to O. Palmer Robertson, becomes particularly clear through the study of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. As the historical context of their messages is explored, it becomes ever more apparent that biblical history -- in addition to providing the context for prophecy -- actually embodies and functions as prophecy. The events that occurred to Judah and its neighbors spoke in anticipation of world-shaking circumstances that were yet to come.
In this commentary Robertson combines the insights of biblical theology with a keen awareness of the age in which we live. After first dealing with the relevant background issues of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah -- redemptive-historical setting, theological perspective, date and authorship, and so on -- Robertson applies the care and precision of an exegete and the concern of a pastor to his verse-by-verse exposition of each book. The result is a relevant confrontation with the ancient call to repentance and faith -- a confrontation greatly needed in today's world.
AWARDS and RECOGNITIONS
Christianity Today, Runner-up Critics Choice for Commentaries (1991)
Walter C. Kaiser Jr.
"O. Palmer Robertson's work on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah is a first-class theological commentary with unique applications to the present day. His conclusions are balanced and well aimed with regard to the particulars of the immediate historical situation as well as with regard to the overall canonical stance of the ongoing drama of revelation. From these three orphan books of the Old Testament Robertson has crafted a most memorable message for the present-day church."
Tremper Longman III
"Robertson has produced an outstanding volume that treats three of the lesser-known Old Testament prophecies. He writes in a clear style with an emphasis on the rich theological meaning of these prophets and with a pastor's insight regarding their relevance to Christians today." | <urn:uuid:eb553553-0422-4674-aca4-08efed9f194f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eerdmans.com/Products/2532/the-books-of-nahum-habakkuk-and-zephaniah.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936749 | 419 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Quote du jour: My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern. -Benoît Mandelbrot
Things I've learned:
Looking back from the time I've started this blog, I really have actually learned things.
- Exercise is for every day, not special occasions. If you force yourself to exercise every day, eventually, eventually, eventually it becomes a habit to do something every day.
- Vegetables aren't all bad. And I love the way I feel after I eat a salad -- light, full of energy -- as opposed to how I feel after I eat a McGreasy burger.
- Even a fat chick can train to run a 5k, do 100 push ups, 200 situps, or 200 squats.
- An injury doesn't mean I need to stop exercising.
Things I still need to pound into my thick skull:
- I still react the wrong way to stress and negative things thrown at me. I want to eat bad food, drink wine, curl up in a ball under a fluffy comforter until the mean people go away. I want to be the kind of person who will get on the elliptical and sweat the anger/fear/frustration/hurt feelings away. And then go calmly confront the mean person, who probably didn't mean to be quite that mean, if you see what I mean.
- It's okay to push myself a bit more sometimes. I don't know my limits until I injure myself, but that's okay. I learn, I avoid the problem next time, and I keep going even if it's at a slower pace or through a different form of exercise.
- However, when I do injure myself, I need to stop and not try to stubborn my way through the pain.
- My exercise plan doesn't have to be followed perfectly; my diet plan doesn't have to be followed perfectly. They just have to be followed. I don't have to be perfect.
Exercise du jour: Wanna do the 3 mile jog. The sun is shining, but it's also cold out there. If the asthma kicks in and I can't jog, I can walk. Or I can
Done! No, not the jog. I walked instead, but to make up for the slackness of not running I extended the walk to 5-1/2 miles instead. Very brisk walking, thanks to the cold. It was exercise, definitely. (HBBC 5)
Happy New Year!
Mandelbrot set courtesy of SiriusB. | <urn:uuid:c8901a01-a8e2-4fb1-a26c-12f172d10ce2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogsheesh.blogspot.com/2010/12/patterns-obligatory-end-of-year-review.html | 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 | 0.963814 | 535 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Raising your own caterpillars can be so easy and truly riveting for even the youngest of children. Instead of buying a kit and ordering caterpillars that might be nonnative to your area, you can start with monarch butterflies which are native to the continental US and much of South America.
To create an outdoor butterfly habit you need to grow a host plant and a nectar plant. The host plant is where the butterfly lays her eggs and will feed the very hungry caterpillars. We have noticed that if you plant the host plants near nectar plants, the caterpillar will climb down the host plant and make his chrysalis near the nectar plant. He will be ready to drink when he emerges.
Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, which is widely available. In fact, many times when you buy milkweed it is already full of eggs. A great nectar plant for monarchs is pentas. If you combine these two you should have the whole life cycle in your yard within a season.
We used to watch the caterpillars in the garden daily and could tell when they were about the turn into a chrysalis by their very slow movement, and eventual upside down position. But, if you skipped checking on them for just a few hours, you might miss the whole thing. And finding the completed chrysalis is nearly impossible. So, now we bring stalks of milkweed in a water jar into our indoor hamper habitat. I found this amazing pop up hamper at the dollar store and it works great. When we get closer to show time, I will use clothes pins to clip the top closed. Right now, we have five hungry caterpillars and watch them eat complete leaves very quickly. Within a week or so they will be very fat and then a few weeks later we will release our butterlies back to their garden, so the process to repeat itself.
You can get more information about butterfly gardening from the North American Butterfly Association iincluding which other butterflies are native to your area and how to attract them.
If you liked this post, you will love Friday's Movie Night post!
Have you raised caterpillars? Which type? | <urn:uuid:1f754497-f17b-458e-aaf8-186ea1ababc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mamascouts.blogspot.com/2011/07/grow-your-own-butterflies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958465 | 448 | 2.796875 | 3 |
School Libraries Group
The School Libraries Group (SLG) of The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) affirms that school libraries and school library services are fundamental to the development of a literate population able to participate fully in a thriving democracy, culture, civilization and economy. The SLG is therefore fully committed to enabling its members to achieve and maintain the highest professional standards, and encouraging and supporting them in the delivery and promotion of high quality library and information services responsive to the needs of users.
School Library Association
The School Library Association (SLA) is committed to supporting everyone involved with school libraries, promoting high quality reading and learning opportunities for all. SLA is an independent charity formed in 1937 and offers advisory and information services, lively, practical publications, The School Librarian, our quarterly journal as well as relevant and focused INSET, a network of branches for local support and advocacy for school libraries and School Library Services..
Youth Libraries Group
The Youth Libraries Group (YLG) of CILIP is the organisation for librarians, information professionals and all those working with or interested in children's and young people's books, reading development, the promotion of libraries and reading for pleasure. YLGs members come from a wide range of workplaces - public libraries, schools, school library services, colleges, universities and early years settings, as well as many student, non-working and international members. With twelve groups across the United Kingdom we form one of the largest and liveliest special interest groups in CILIP. | <urn:uuid:6bf392a7-f09a-4609-81f8-fba5ca6338c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lightingthefuture.org.uk/organisers.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944457 | 316 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Workshop on Experimental Support for Computer Science yields valuable report
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 13, 2012
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The future development of computer science depends on researchers' ability to conduct consistent, controlled, and repeatable large-scale experiments in large-scale, distributed computing and networking.
To tackle this challenge, the FutureGrid project, a partnership among Indiana University and national and international partners, helped host the Workshop on Experimental Support for Computer Science during the SC11 conference in November 2011. The workshop brought together many scientists involved in building and operating infrastructures dedicated to supporting computer science experiments.
A new report, "Supporting Experimental Computer Science," distills the discussion from that workshop into a consensus on the state of the field and directions for moving forward. FutureGrid provides infrastructure for experimental computer science and seeks to contribute to the development of experimental culture in computer science via reports such as this.
"This report will be of great interest to scientists and researchers in experimental computer science," said FutureGrid Principal Investigator Geoffrey C. Fox, director of the Pervasive Technology Institute Digital Science Center at Indiana University and a professor in the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing. "New custom capabilities and software must be developed. We need to know how to support scientists with these specialized requirements, so they can focus on their experiments instead of worrying about hardware. This report continues the positive and forward-looking discussion at SC11." Fox was one of the FutureGrid authors from four different universities who contributed to the report.
The report sets the stage by describing the experimental culture and existing methodology in computer science. It continues with the properties of the experimental test-beds, whose representatives have participated in the workshop-Grid'5000 in France and FutureGrid and Open Cirrus in the United States—as well as the projects that these test-beds support. And, it describes the layers of experimental infrastructure, followed by profiles of tools and approaches taken by the respective test-beds to provide basic experiment management services and experiment orchestration.
"The report is effectively a reference guide for students on experimental methodology in computer science," said FutureGrid Co-PI Kate Keahey, editor of the report, and a fellow at the Computation Institute at University of Chicago. "It also explains how to turn principle into practice on experimental test-beds such as FutureGrid, Grid'5000, and OpenStack."
To view or download the report, click this link: Supporting Experimental Computer Science
(or copy the URL into your browser: http://www.nimbusproject.org/downloads/Supporting_Experimental_Computer_Science_final_draft.pdf)
FutureGrid comprises national and international partners as part of a $15 million project largely supported by a $10.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). FutureGrid is a distributed test-bed for clouds, grids, and high performance computing that makes it possible for researchers to tackle complex research challenges in computer science. These include topics ranging from authentication, authorization, scheduling, virtualization, middleware design, interface design and cybersecurity, to the optimization of grid-enabled and cloud-enabled computational schemes for researchers in astronomy, chemistry, biology, engineering, atmospheric science and epidemiology. See: http://futuregrid.org
About Pervasive Technology Institute
Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University is a world-class organization dedicated to the development and delivery of innovative information technology to advance research, education, industry, and society. Supported in part by a $15M grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., PTI is built upon a spirit of collaboration and brings together researchers and technologists from a range of disciplines and organizations, including the IU School of Informatics and Computing at Bloomington, the IU Maurer School of Law, and University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. See: http://www.pti.iu.edu
About the Indiana University School of Informatics
Founded in 2000 as the first school of its kind in the United States, the Indiana University School of Informatics is dedicated to research and teaching across a broad range of computing and information technology, with emphases on science, applications and societal implications. The school includes the Departments of Computer Science and Informatics on the Bloomington campus and Informatics on the IUPUI campus.
The school administers a variety of bachelor's and master's degree programs in computer science and informatics, as well as Ph.D. programs in computer science and the first-ever Ph.D. in informatics. The school is dedicated to excellence in education and research, to partnerships that bolster economic development and entrepreneurship, and to increasing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities in computing and technology. Visit: http://www.informatics.indiana.edu | <urn:uuid:64170f29-d8ed-454b-ac77-761d87432a3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ovpitnews.iu.edu/news/page/normal/21581.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923038 | 994 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Connecting the Dots
Can the tools of graph theory and social-network studies unravel the next big plot?
The 411 on Telephone Snooping
The newly revealed surveillance programs seem to include several
distinct activities. Some involve eavesdropping—listening in
on telephone conversations or recording the content of Internet
messages. A follow-the-money program gathers information from a
banking clearinghouse. But the reports I find most intriguing
mention efforts to analyze a database of telephone calls with the
aim of tracing links among conspirators. The database includes no
sound recordings or any other hints about what might have been said
in a conversation; it merely lists the telephone numbers at the two
ends of each call and gives the date and time when a call began and ended.
This "call detail" database sounded very familiar. Several
years ago I had read of experiments done with a similar
database—almost surely an earlier version of the one that is
now said to be under government scrutiny. The experiments were tests
of algorithms in the mathematical field known as graph theory, which
studies network-like structures. The phone-call database was a
useful test bed because it can be viewed as an enormous mathematical
graph. I wrote about this work in an earlier column in American
Scientist (January-February 2000).
Vague allusions to the database, or "call graph," appeared
in the first public accounts of the new surveillance programs.
Writing in The New York Times last December, Eric
Licht-blau and James Risen noted, "[National Security Agency]
technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific
conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and
Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism
suspects." The nature of the operation became clearer in May
when Leslie Cauley wrote in USA Today that at least three
telephone companies are voluntarily supplying call-detail records to
the NSA. Two of those companies later denied that they participate
in the program, and USA Today retracted that part of the
story. The third company, AT&T, has declined to comment on the
substance of the report, and so has the NSA. When AT&T was sued
for allegedly violating privacy statutes, the Bush administration
moved to suppress the suits on the grounds that litigating the
matter would reveal state secrets. As this issue of American
Scientist goes to press, the facts remain murky.
» Post Comment | <urn:uuid:db0765d8-2979-40fc-a92c-1972e743bb22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2006/9/connecting-the-dots/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929996 | 523 | 2.5 | 2 |
8-year-old was under 35 pounds when hospitalized.
Authorities have charged a southern Minnesota couple with felony counts of child neglect and endangerment after finding their 8-year-old adopted son so malnourished that his bones were protruding.
Mona Alane Hauer, 44, and her husband, Russell Jerome Hauer, 44, of North Mankato, were charged Friday in Nicollet County District Court in St. Peter after the boy was brought to a Mankato hospital last month "extremely malnourished" and weighing less than 35 pounds, about half of what he should for his age.
According to criminal complaints:
Mona Hauer brought the boy to a Mankato hospital Oct. 9 after finding blood on his shirt.
She told emergency personnel that her son had been regurgitating food since December 2011 and that she had recently put him on a liquid diet after consulting with a doctor about his eating disorder.
She said she noticed he was losing weight in September, about the same time that a dentist noticed that the enamel in the boy's teeth was "starting to wear off" and that he had "sores" in his mouth.
She told an investigator that her son always had an issue with eating, but said she did not think he was too thin or realize he was so sick.
At the time of the boy's adoption, a doctor found he had experienced trauma that would require intensive psychotherapy. The doctor gave several recommendations, but the Hauers did not follow through, the complaint said.
Hauer told investigators her family practices "holistic medicine" and home-schools their children, including two of the 8-year-old's siblings whom they also had adopted.
When the boy was brought to the hospital, emergency workers found his bones protruding, his abdomen distended and his heartbeat slower than normal. Doctors later determined that the malnutrition caused delayed bone growth and brain atrophy.
The boy told investigators that at mealtime, he sat at a table and drank his liquid while his family ate whole food. Sometimes, he was so hungry that he ate at the compost site or from a bird feeder.
Investigators were told that to keep him from leaving his room and stealing food, his parents put an alarm on his door -- he slept by himself in the basement.
Because he had a problem with bed wetting, his parents made him sleep in a plastic, rounded container.
One sibling told investigators that it was his responsibility to hose the boy down several times a week.
The children told authorities that they were beaten with a "long board" or a "broom handle" when they misbehaved, but that the malnourished boy "was hit the most."
The Hauers could not be reached for comment Monday. They are scheduled to make their next court appearance Dec. 11.
Nicollet County Social Services officials would not comment on the case or say whether the other children remained in the home.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Richard Meryhew • 612-673-4425 | <urn:uuid:e122dd41-543f-4239-87d0-09b31a821d56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.startribune.com/local/177407771.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988638 | 636 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The appeal of George W. Bush:
What's wrong with the voting public? Or is it me? For four plus years, I watched Bush on TV and conjured up the image of a spoiled rich kid, a fool who thoughtlessly led the country into a bloody mess in Iraq, screwed up the economy and devastated the environment. Instead of pursuing the terrorists, he made war on Iraq, which had no links to the 9/11 fiends. Bush lost opportunities to pursue the terrorists. But millions of soccer moms and pious working people obviously saw in him a candidate who would protect them from terror. I wouldn?t have bought a used car from this guy, much less a baseball team.
But instead of seeing Bush as a dry drunk who mouthed empty platitudes, almost 60 million Americans saw him as either the lesser of two evils or the guy who would teach their children proper Christian values. Such a thought almost impelled me to try to make my fortune selling the Brooklyn Bridge in the South and Midwest.
One quiet conversation, however, disturbed me more than all the rhetorical ranting during the recent election campaign. An intelligent, sensitive and caring woman said her gut feeling made her trust Bush more than Kerry; a coded message that the abortion issue would determine her vote. Indeed, the gut and not the head seem to have determined the bare majority of the vote ? not a new phenomenon. The tendency of millions of Americans to vote against their own economic interests didn't begin in 2004.
For almost a century and a half, politicians have used distracting issues to manipulate voters. After the Civil War, mountebanks used race and immigration to turn white workers against blacks and Asians. The industrialists and bankers gloated; the union movement was weakened.
In the 21st Century, as we are surrounded by technology and science, tens of millions still cling to the divisive issues that politicians repeat like stale songs to divide working people from their common interests. Race has faded into remote euphemisms and subliminal forms of expression, but immigration remains a hot topic, along with abortion, guns, prayer in schools and gay marriages. Worse, preachers and charlatans have converted these subjects into matters of faith or passion. Indeed, it has become difficult to discuss matters that defy rational discourse.
For tens of millions, the gut has replaced the head as the body part that directs voting. Has the public entered the once fictional world of George Orwell's 1984?
The absence of political coherence frightens me. Five years ago I debated an extreme right winger who insisted that the government should ban abortion and stop subsidizing the poor for food, medical care, shelter and transportation. ?The unborn are innocent,? he bleated.
?Yes,? I replied, and your philosophy claims that as soon as they are born they get what?s coming to them. The government should only intervene to make sure the fetus is born, but not help the tiny baby get nutrition, medical care or any other necessity ? and you?d execute them at age eight if they get really naughty.
The debate deteriorated at that point as he kept insisting that I and my ilk were murderers because fetuses were actual human beings. I retorted with the old line that this came down to a cultural issue and in the culture in which I grew up a fetus didn?t become a genuine human being until it graduated from medical school.
One does easily not convince pro-lifer on the abortion issue; rather, one tries to get an agreement to keep it out of the legislative agenda. Women got abortions before it became legal and many died as a result.
Similarly, the very notion of gay marriage threatened one woman at my university. "It?s beyond disgusting," she said. ?The whole institution of marriage has been put into jeopardy because of this liberal tolerance toward outright sin.?
Did gay marriage cause Rush Limbaugh?s third marriage fall apart earlier this year? Do half the Californians who marry divorce within a decade because they live in daily fear that gays will marry? Yet, a sizeable part of the electorate considered this issue as a major factor in their decision on November 2.
In political science classes, I learned that people tend to vote for their economic interests. The rich traditionally want lower taxes and fewer problems with their servants. Bush fit that bill. Just as Reagan did in 1980 and 1984, when millions of poor, working class and middle class citizens left the Democratic Party and voted for Ronald Reagan, a regular guy who promised to lower everyone?s taxes, meaning he would lower his best friends taxes (the richest) and reduce government services for the rest of the people.
He also promised to privatize some public property, like schools, transportation and health care institutions, and even foreign policy. He handed Middle East and Cuba policy to reactionary private groups as if they possessed more competence to leverage U.S. weight in those areas. (AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Cuban American National Foundation)
Reagan?s cavalier delegation of parts of traditional presidential prerogatives to special interest groups has proven less than healthy for the nation and the areas affected. His economic policies ? Reaganomics ? raised the cost of living, more than canceling out any tax breaks he offered. Reagan also hated abortion, loved guns and wanted more prayer, even in schools. Nevertheless, this less than brilliant grade B actor, became the greatest political educator of the late 20th Century. Along with his pal, Margaret Thatcher in England, he taught people to hate their government and therefore not pay taxes to support it.
I admit that under Clinton, I occasionally felt nostalgia for the Reagan years when sleeping with the president meant attending a Cabinet meeting. And I admired Reagan?s wit: ?Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.?
But except for his amusing one and two liners, Reagan slept his way through the presidency. He actually increased the federal budget significantly, albeit he did slightly slow its rate of growth. Reagan also increased the federal work force by more than 60,000. But his supporters seemed not to care about these details. Clinton, ironically, cut 370,000 jobs from the federal payroll.
Reagan was also a man who learned from political mistakes. When his ideologues convinced him in 1981-2 to try to cut social security, his Party lost 26 House seats in the 1982 midterm elections, largely as a result of this attempt to overachieve.
So, the Great Somnambulist simply reversed himself and bailed out the Social Security system with a $165 billion payment. So what that it meant a hike in payroll taxes and finally taxed the Social Security benefits only of upper-income recipients.
Clearly, the majority of voters found in Reagan their regular guy, a man who didn?t know much about most subjects and told jokes of dubious taste: ?My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.? He told this gag during a microphone check at a radio broadcast.
Like Bush (43), Reagan possessed an appeal that defied my sensibilities. If so many people found Reagan and now Bush attractive as a political leader, despite their destructive policies, how do progressive people begin to rethink political education? Almost 60 million Americans opted for Bush although he had led the country into an unjustified war, screwed up the economy, destroyed as much of Nature as he could and maintained loyalty to a Vice President whose former company seemed to be outrageously stealing from the Pentagon. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to find ways to talk to most of those people. Landau directs the Digital Media program at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. His new book is THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA: HOW CONSUMERS HAVE REPLACED CITIZENS. | <urn:uuid:7d1f05d6-7b77-499a-9d41-9b2e8ecc8ebe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/the-appeal-of-george-w-bush-by-saul-landau | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973617 | 1,637 | 1.523438 | 2 |
For a talking head, Michio Kaku is beyond accomplished. A child prodigy who became one of the founders of the controversial string theory—one that, in essence, picks up where Einstein left off—the 62-year-old is one of the world’s leading cosmologists. But he’s also a genial, engaging TV host who frequently pops up on The Science Channel, The History Channel, and The Discovery Channel. In addition, he’s a radio personality and author whose latest bestseller, Physics Of The Impossible, takes a look at the eventual viability of science-fiction tropes such as starships, robots, and ESP. Kaku, who will appear at Tattered Cover in LoDo Tuesday, spoke with Decider about science fiction, Barack Obama's hypothetical war against the Internet, and what Martians might make of Britney Spears.
Decider: Physics Of The Impossible dives heavily into the relationship between pop culture and science. Is there any science fiction being made now that really engages you as a physicist?
Michio Kaku: On my radio show recently I had on Andrew Fickman, the director of Race To Witch Mountain. He told me that he and a lot of other filmmakers don’t want to make a lot of bloopers when it comes to fantastic technology and outer space. I was kind of heartened by this. Popular culture is now beginning to recognize that we physicists have been pondering these questions for quite a while, and that Hollywood should get at least some of these things scientifically correct.
D: One of today’s most popular TV programs, Heroes, covers many of the subjects you do in your book: invisibility, time travel, teleportation, psychokinesis. Do you follow the show?
MK: I haven’t kept up with Heroes. However, Popular Mechanics asked me to write an article about Lost,which is now starting to incorporate some of the latest theories from physics. Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that. Gene Roddenberry, the father of Star Trek, stole a whole bunch of ideas from physics. Antimatter was one. Some people think Gene Roddenberry discovered antimatter. [Laughs.] It was actually physicists in the 1930s.
D: A lot has been written lately about a new optimism within the science community now that Barack Obama is on office. Is any of that hope trickling over to you?
MK: Well, we hope to benefit from funding. President Obama is talking about rejuvenating science. Science is definitely part of America’s infrastructure, the engine of prosperity. And yet science is given almost no visibility in the media. If a Martian came down to Earth and watched television, he’d come to conclusion that all the world’s society is based on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. He’d be amazed that our society hasn’t collapsed.
D: In the book, though, you talk about how a global identity “dominated by youth culture and commercialism” might actually be a step toward the next stage of human civilization.
MK: I was just trying to comment on the way things are, independent of people’s will. In other words, no matter what your politics or sensibilities are, youth culture and commercialism are now taking place on the scale of billions of people. No one person can stop this progress. If President Obama were to, for example, ban the Internet, everyone would laugh.
D: It’s hard to imagine Obama wanting to do that.
MK: [Laughs.] If anything, he’s benefited from technology, hasn’t he? My point is, no one can stop the Internet. No one can stop that march. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be smooth, though. We do have hazards facing us. But the trends we’re seeing—NAFTA, the European Union, the spread of English—these are unstoppable. What’s important is what we do with them, how we want to view the future.
D: You seem evenly split between debunking futuristic technology and paranormal ideas and propping the door open to their possible development. Do you consider yourself a skeptic?
MK: Murray Gell-Mann, the winner of the Nobel Prize, is a member of The Skeptics Society. He’s said that sometimes he really wishes there was a little truth to all these claims regarding the paranormal. That’s what makes things interesting, right? It’s always kind of depressing to realize this is not possible and that is not possible. So I took a different point of view: not to say what is impossible today, but to say what might be possible tomorrow. That’s kind of my goal: to quantify the impossible.
For a longer version of this interview, visit avclub.com. | <urn:uuid:e080714e-ad48-46b6-a2b9-7bdf9643cd8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sdparanormal.com/articles/article/1961531/123523.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949912 | 1,045 | 1.84375 | 2 |
As a grad student, I haven't really written anything to test my code. Usually what we do is just run the code on some test input and if the output result looks okay or as we expected then we just assume the code is correct.
However, I always have this kind of paranoid feeling that some piece of the code might be incorrect. So I decided to learn some TDD approach to partially ensure the quality of the code production. I don't have TDD experience and I usually use JAVA & Python.
Could anyone point me to some good books/resources/ways to learn TDD? | <urn:uuid:88893b75-cde7-411c-b2f4-b66b3d5d2ded> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78663/what-are-some-good-books-resources-ways-to-learn-tdd?answertab=active | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955641 | 124 | 1.867188 | 2 |
This story has been fully funded.
Advertising revenues are dropping, circulation is falling, the economy is in a recession, jobs are being cut, and a few companies own all of the newspapers in the Bay Area. It's a tough time to be in journalism, but especially at newspapers, which are cutting jobs and trying to figure out how to increase circulation and advertising while losing readers to the Internet.
What plans to the major Bay Area newspapers have for 2009? How will they capture more audience on the Internet? How do they plan to increase advertising and circulation? For the most part, people still rely on their hometown newspaper to get news about their city or neighborhood. If newspapers have plans to cut staff, move more to the Internet or look for new ways to keep and add readers, then anyone who reads a daily paper in the Bay Area will want to know what their newspaper plans for 2009.
This story will help newspaper readers in the Bay Area understand what their papers have planned for 2009, including how the Internet will affect the daily newspaper they hold in their hand every morning. It will look into the viability of newspapers in the Bay Area and what they plan to do to survive. | <urn:uuid:fa9dcb2c-c52e-41a2-a670-71ef660aae99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spot.us/pitches/66 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977833 | 239 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Clearly we want one. A thread on LinkedIn a couple of months ago attempted to define the value of EA, and produced a tirade of over 1,300 entries! But while individuals were busy chatting, the Enterprise Architecture Research Forum took a different approach. This body is a collaborative including the Open Group South Africa, the Meraka Institute, Real IRM, Telkom, Unisa and the University of Pretoria (link).
This group started with a “definition of definitions.” In other words, they thought about the requirements of a definition before producing the solution. (What a novel idea :-). The requirements that they used come from a paper by Dr. Sam Vaknin. Dr. Vaknin’s definition of definitions indicates that a definition should explain the meaning, use and function, essential characteristics, and the differentia of the concept. (link)
Using this model, the EARF created the following definition:
Enterprise Architecture is the continuous practice of describing the essential elements of a sociotechnical organization, their relationships to each other and to the environment, in order to understand complexity and manage change.
Let’s compare that definition to the “compromise” definition that emerged out of the “160 character challenge” on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn thread that I’m referring to started as a post, by Kevin Smith (author of the Pragmatic EA Framework, or PEAF). Kevin asked participants to define the “value” of Enterprise Architecture in a message short enough to send in an SMS text message. While the length constraint was arbitrary, it was useful for insuring short responses. Kevin then collected the data and, in a fairly rigorous process, analyzed it to produce a more succinct definition (link).
Using the responses as a guide, Kevin found that three different aspects of Enterprise Architecture were appearing over and over in the various definitions so his construct includes all three. He refers to these aspects as the “why, how, and what” perspectives. Kevin’s combined definition follows:
The purpose of Enterprise Architecture is to enable an enterprise to realise its Vision through the execution of it’s Mission, whilst enabling it to respond to change and increasing its effectiveness, profitability, customer satisfaction, competitive edge, growth, stability, value, durability, efficiency and quality while reducing costs and risks by Strategic Planning, Architecture and Governance supported by a Decision Support framework in the context of aligning all parts of the enterprise using Models, Guidance, Processes and Tools.
Now, to be completely fair, I participated in Kevin’s “160 character challenge” on LinkedIn. I do not have a single definition of Enterprise Architecture… I have three. Just as a dictionary may show you many definitions for a word, I have found that the term Enterprise Architecture is used in three different ways: As the name of a business function, a reference to a team of people, and as a reference to a model that describes an enterprise.
When creating my submission, I was not being particularly rigorous, so I see flaws in my definition as I type this blog entry. (to whit: EA is not limited to businesses). That said, I will cite my original words rather than revise history. Note: In order to fit into Kevin’s challenge, I submitted each of my definitions independently. Recombined as a single definition, my contribution was as follows:
-- Noun 1. A business function that collects and manages business information for the purpose of improving the way that a business responds to current or future challenges and opportunities. 2. A rigorous model of the motivations, structures, information, processes, and systems of an enterprise created for the purpose of decision support. -- Adjective (used with object) 3. A team of influencers and thought leaders within an enterprise chartered with understanding, optimizing, and improving the way the business operates.
Is there a right answer? Which of these is a better definition? Which misses the point? Could we improve one of these entries and recognize it as canonical? Is there a better definition of Enterprise Architecture, and if there is, what would it be?
What is your opinion?
The elements that get mentioned are description , understanding and management of change. I guess the definition does cover codification and rendering explicit the description of systems but it is also important is the collaborative part of enterprise architecture development and the aim of achieving coherence
hemm..The purpose of Enterprise Architecture is to enable an enterprise to realise its Vision through the execution of it’s Mission.
Hi Guna88: "to enable an enterprise to realise it's Vision through the execution of its Mission" is generic, and does not differentiate the EA function from any other business function. The Sales team enables an enterprise etc. The Customer Service team enables an enterprise etc.
Please read the referenced sources for full analysis of a definition and see if you would agree that your definition meets the criteria that Dr. Vaknin describes, or that Kevin Smith discovered through analysis.
Hi Nick: I'm very happy with all three of those definitions (though slightly surprised that you described 3. as an 'adjective', because that definition [a team'] is kind of halfway between a noun and a verb, surely?) What I'm delighted to see is the _absence_ of any reference to IT as such - that's a big shift from where the industry was even just two or three years ago.
I _really_ like the point about 'definition of definition' - not surprised it comes from the RealIRM crew, to me they're some of the most perceptive and forward-looking in the industry.
In my own work I tend to describe EA as "custodian of a body of knowledge about enterprise structure and purpose". It sort-of incorporates all of your definitions, but misses the very important point about dynamics, about guiding change, and also the necessary emphasis on rigour. So although your definitions are longer, they're probably better and more useful than mine.
Useful and thought-provoking - many thanks.
I have to say that this MSDN blogging framework is pretty primitive. I lost twice my whole reply when deleting a small section. I give up. Read my blog.
Hi Adrian, Sorry for your frustration. The software does do weird things with very long responses. I'm watching your blog for a response. Looking forward to your insight.
Hi Tom, Thank you for the feedback. The 'very-short-form' of the definition of EA that you propose is useful, especially in situations where brevity is more important than purity. (e.g. Business :-). I like it.
I've never understood why we don't define EA in the most obvious way possible -- an enterprise architecture is the architecture of an enterprise.
Admittedly, this just pushes the interesting questions (what is architecture? what is an enterprise?) under a different part of the rug, but regardless of how you answer those questions, it still accurately defines enterprise architecture.
Indeed, I find that in most proferred definitions of EA it's difficult to tease out the enterprise part and the architecture part.
I had a lot more to say, (about the ways we use the phrase "enterprise architecture", and about the EARF definition in particular) but it all disappeared when I tried to post it, so I'll stop here for now.
I agree with most of the definitions, but there is another important point most of the definitions missing.
Enterprise Architecture is defined by most of the Architects is Uni-Directional like improve efficiency, control, profitability, value etc as if no end for that. Don't forget one more important aspect. For every aspect there are positives and negatives.
An Enterprise Architecture must survive in situations in least/worst case scenarios too. And the real stoppers for all positive terms you used above are "Set of Constraints", who take active part in most of the situations and definitely over period of time. These constraints are regulatory, budget, skills, an undocumented political views etc. Before I assess any architecture value or survivorship in ever changing environments, I consider to measure how much each constraint will contribute to Enterprise Architecture success factor.
Well, at least here in Holland every client I've worked with (and I've been working with some of the biggest companies there are) sees EA as an IT function, whether we EAs like it or not. So maybe that's the to-be conceptual definition, but I don't think it accurately describes the reality of what EA is today.
And I'm not sure these definitions would be meaningful to someone who's not already familiar with EA - they're so high level. They certainly wouldn't pass the "explain it to my (really smart but not technical) wife" test. The closest I've come to one that does is:
I look at what the business is trying to do, model the different parts of the business (the information they use, the tools they use, how they're organised, etc.) and figure out how to change them so that they work together better.
@Len: If you look at Dr. Vaknin's definition of definitions, you would see why the definitions are all longer than "architecture of the enterprise." There is a simple elegance to your idea, but unfortunately, it wouldn't meet the requirements.
@Sree: I grant that one of your practices includes considering the negative constraints, but it is not clear to me how (or why) you would want to change the definition of EA to include that particular practice. Is that practice so much more important than the other practices that you would consider it "definitional?" Would you make the claim that it is not possible to practice "true" enterprise architecture without the single practice you illustrate?
@Derek, Most clients in the USA also see EA as part of IT, but the place where EA lands is not the same as it's definition. (Your explaination does not say that EA is in IT either.) The explanation that I use is even simpler: "I draw pictures of business structures to make it easier for business people to fix things."
Interesting that I like all four :). Kevin's canonical definition seems to be exactly that. It has everything you could think of wrt the stuff we try to do every day. Like a description more than a model. Yours on the other hand are a bit simpler and maybe a bit more tactical or usable. More like a model than a description.
I don't know.. I was just thinking about it a bit. Could be wrong. I posted something on linked the other day asking members for an opinion of what a good "Mission Statement" would be for an EA team. I feel like your "Adjective" definition could actually be that. Hmm....
dang.. my coffee is cold now..
Thanks.. GREAT POST.. you are my FAV.
So, I participated in that LinkedIn thread as well. I shared a prior tweet of mine, “The ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture is change-friendly capability delivery”.
Interestingly, most replies in that thread interpreted “purpose” as describing the function, rather than the outcome. I find this problematic.
I think the number one question Enterprise Architects and Enterprise Architecture Practices need to answer is “What do we contribute to the business”. What is the ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture? And therefore, what would be missing (or more difficult) without Enterprise Architecture.
For me, it’s getting to “change-friendly”. If I’m reading correctly, your definition and the EARF contain a similar theme. So, it seems purpose-wise, we coalesce on enabling change.
Additionally, I agree with the EARF purpose of reducing complexity, and as Aleks Buterman often calls out, EA plays a large role in technology investment management.
So, I propose we think of EA as a business and work backwards from the desired outcomes -- ease of change, reduction of complexity, and better technology investment return.
To achieve those outcomes, what capabilities, policies, people and tools are required. And then, how would we describe (classify) that?
Would it be a rev of Enterprise Architecture? Something else? I know it’s not the Linkedin Group output.
Your comrade in the EA revolution,
@Brenda, As always, your comment is too insightful for me to respond in the thread... I'll have to grok it and respond with a new post. I've thought a good bit about "what we contribute to the business" and there are soooo many twists to answering that question in a way that encourages the development of the EA discipline without derailing it in politics.
@Mitch: think you for your kind remarks! It is interesting that you mention the mission statement. Our EA team just went through a process of creating a new Mission and Vision statement. As soon as it is baked, I'll probably blog it, along with my insight into the process of creating a mission and vision statement, and how that applies to EA practices.
Good articale as ever. I like the first statement although something that I do not think comes out of it (or out of yours) is the forward looking and planning aspect which I regard as crucial. They seem to be a documentation of the as is state.
The second definintion seems a bit long winded and, dare I say it, looks like it was written by committee. It seems to define what an enterprises vision would be, eg improve profitability, but how would that work for a non profit making organization, e.g. a charity? It does I think though show that the future landscape and route map are part of EA.
The first definition uses the word "sociotechnical" instead of enterprise, how far do you think EA can be taken out of the technical environment? Is it valid in an environment with no IT or no technology?
@Erik, Excellent points. You are correct in that the definitions say very little about one of the key values of EA (in my book): the consideration of new innovative ideas, both technical and non-technical, in the generation of new business strategies. That is a very valid criticism.
The second definition, while it was written by a single person, was an intentional compromise composition of the concepts and memes submitted to LinkedIn. In effect, it is worse than something designed by committee, because a committee can at least work to reduce the definition... no committee existed in this case to produce a more viable compromise.
The point of "sociotechnical" is to describe the elements that are being captured by the EA function... they are both social and technical elements in a single interrelated model. This does not exclude technology but rather includes it in the business context.
One valid consideration in the use of that word (sociotechnical) is to recognize that the boundaries of an enterprise architectural model do not have to be defined by the boundaries of the enterprise. The model can extend to include many aspects beyond the enterprise, including competitors, partners, customers, suppliers, influencers, and potentially influencial proposals for legislation and regulation. | <urn:uuid:0e9de145-244c-47e0-9ba5-75b1e8eb8b33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nickmalik/archive/2010/08/08/a-reasonable-canonical-definition-of-enterprise-architecture.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949247 | 3,154 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Evolution of Music by Public Choice
This is the publication entry for the paper, if you want the story around it, click here.
Abstract: Music evolves as composers, performers, and consumers favor some musical variants over others. To investigate the role of consumer selection, we constructed a Darwinian music engine consisting of a population of short audio loops that sexually reproduce and mutate. This population evolved for 2,513 gener- ations under the selective influence of 6,931 consumers who rated the loops’ aesthetic qualities. We found that the loops quickly evolved into music attributable, in part, to the evolution of aes- thetically pleasing chords and rhythms. Later, however, evolution slowed. Applying the Price equation, a general description of evo- lutionary processes, we found that this stasis was mostly attribut- able to a decrease in the fidelity of transmission. Our experiment shows how cultural dynamics can be explained in terms of com- peting evolutionary forces. | <urn:uuid:dea1e4ec-4e98-4d16-b315-0a89a64f9f26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://schall-und-mauch.de/artificialmusicality/2012/06/evolution-of-music-by-public-choice/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920947 | 202 | 2.265625 | 2 |
|Owner(s)||Digital Sky Technologies|
Mirabilis was founded in June 1996 by Arik Vardi, Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser and Amnon Amir. It was purchased by America Online (AOL) for $407 million in 1998. Funding for Mirabilis came from Yossi Vardi, father of Arik Vardi.
Goldfinger, Visiger, Vardi and Amir met while working for a Tel Aviv software company, Zapa Digital Arts, that specialized in three-dimensional graphic tools for the Internet. In 1996, they left Zapa and began to toy with ideas for new Internet innovations. They created ICQ in less than two months, but had no funding. Yossi Vardi, one of the founders of Israel Chemicals, agreed to invest a few hundred thousand dollars to develop the technology. Mirabilis was established in a small apartment in San Jose, California, where Internet access was cheaper.
ICQ grew as people encouraged their friends to join so they could communicate with each other. This established a powerful network effect as prospective users strongly preferred the system where their friends were likely to be. | <urn:uuid:81ebfba9-bdc5-4e80-8188-585d1761c12d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabilis_(company) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947448 | 238 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Not exactly sure what this is, but I like it. A seemingly simple concept, Redacted Chimp is exactly that — pictures of chimpanzees with black (sometimes other colors) redaction strips covering their eyes, as if to mask their identities. Or perhaps their identities have been taken from them? Or they never existed in the first place? Or perhaps they are us, our proxy in the wild world? It’s impossible to say for sure, because interpretation is left to the viewer. But what makes this site even more interesting are the poetic fragments of narrative that are paired with each image. Here, for example, is the complete text that accompanies the image above:
Redacted Chimp 010. I love holding hands with your foot, in the rain, in the sun, in the rain. I love watching the rain careen off my hand, off your face, off the palm of my hand. There are plants in the world that nobody even knows the names of yet, that don’t even have names yet, that don’t have names. I love holding flowers in your hands, with my feet, in your rain. (Redacted Chimp 010)
A lovely image, probably triggered by the chimp in this picture holding hands with his (her?) own foot. And of course I love that it is also a musing on names.
Could the chimps be the poets here? Maybe they made this website as a way to reclaim their identities? Maybe this is the true beginning of the Planet of the Apes. Check it out, and report back here if you learn anything more. | <urn:uuid:a67c0ddb-ee38-4bcb-8b80-e9ab52851754> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordlab.com/2012/05/the-strange-poetic-beauty-of-redacted-chimp/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96676 | 332 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Key Kentucky Legislative Panel to Hear Horse Industry
Updated: Thursday, July 15, 2004 3:35 PM
Posted: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 1:24 PM
The Kentucky equine industry, for the first time, will be the focus of a September meeting of the state General Assembly's Interim Joint Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources, legislators announced July 14.
The meeting will mark a major step forward for the horse industry, which is attempting to educate the public and lawmakers on its importance to the Kentucky economy in the face of competition from other states that are bolstering their horse breeding and racing programs.
Sen. Damon Thayer, who co-chairs the Subcommittee on Horse Farming, said about 45 of the state's 138 legislators sit on the agriculture committee. He indicated it would be a great opportunity for the horse industry to tell its story.
The subcommittee met July 14 in Frankfort for the first time this year. It heard a presentation from the Kentucky Equine Education Project, whose mission is to coordinate educational efforts in all 120 counties with a goal of having a major influence on the state legislature in 2006.
"We believe there is power in numbers," said Claria Horn-Shadwick, executive director of KEEP. "This is a race Kentucky cannot afford to lose."
Horn-Shadwick outlined the horse industry's economic and historical impact, threats from other states, and the goals of the organization, which recently cleared the $1-million mark in funding. Lawmakers on the subcommittee seemed receptive to KEEP.
Rep. Tom McKee said emphasizing all horses and breeds--not just those that race in the state--is extremely important. He said he visited a Quarter Horse competition at a fair in Pendleton County and was amazed at the number of horses and participants.
"We're talking about the winner of the Kentucky Derby, but also the 16-year-old competing on a Quarter Horse at his county fair," McKee said.
KEEP is charged with uniting all breeds in the state. It plans to pursue legislative initiatives that are common to all members, Horn-Shadwick said.
The subcommittee meeting featured brief discussion about breed development programs in other states such as New York. There was no mention of seeking legislation for alternative gaming, and in fact KEEP has said it wasn't formed for that purpose.
Still, it remains to be seen what initiatives aside from tax parity the organization will pursue. Legislators noted the state gets about $30 million in taxes each year from the horse industry, and budget problems make it difficult to give up revenue.
"If we had good economic times in the state, it would certainly be easier," Rep. Royce Adams said of approving tax relief for the industry.
"We're looking at an alarming trend," Rep. Susan Westrom, who co-chairs the subcommittee, said of the horse industry. "This is a very frightening time for our industry."
Rep. Don Pasley suggested the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee take up horse industry-related issues because the industry is a major contributor to the state economy. "It's important for people to know we're in a fight for our life," he said.
KEEP has appointed two members to its board of directors. Kentucky Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association president Susan Bunning, and Dan Kenny, a bloodstock agent, are now members of the board.
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Follow the top stories of major racing events, racing previews and results with FREE e-newsletters from bloodhorse.com. As news develops, we'll deliver updates to your inbox. Follow important events moment by moment, step by step! | <urn:uuid:2ed8425c-f85f-4fa1-88ff-ee66030e28a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/23398/key-kentucky-legislative-panel-to-hear-horse-industry | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96658 | 761 | 1.539063 | 2 |
There is a very good reason why Robert Louis Stevenson's books are still made into movies. Take, for example, the Disney animated hit Treasure Planet, which was based on Stevenson's Treasure Island. The book is just as rousing an adventure now as it was more than a hundred years ago, and has therefore been the subject of many movie adaptations and the inspiration for countless other children's novels since then.Although somewhat lesser known, Stevenson's Kidnapped is no less timeless. Following the death of his father, David Balfour finds that he has wealthy kinsmen in a nearby town, and that his father's wish was that he would seek them out. Upon his arrival at his uncle's house, David discovers that he is unwelcome, and slowly the truth of his identity begins to unravel.
Kidnapped is more than a story about a young man's search for his true birthright, however – Stevenson knew that more than that was needed to capture a young adult's attention for the length of an entire novel. Even as David is working out the meaning of his uncle’s odd behavior, his newfound relative is plotting against him. David suddenly finds himself kidnapped and aboard a ship destined for the American colonies, where he is to be sold into servitude, presumably at his uncle's behest.
Although it is the kidnapping that starts the novel's adventures, David spends only a short time as a captive. In fact, without Alan's friendship, the story might have been quickly resolved, with David either being delivered into slavery or escaping to starve for want of money. As it is, David ends his captivity aboard ship by stumbling into new adventures, all the while with Alan at his side: he is wanted for murder, evades soldiers and scouting parties, meets dangerous Jacobite outlaws, and eventually develops a ploy to trick his uncle into giving him his inheritance.
It is hard to believe that a novel of Kidnapped's caliber – or, indeed, any of Stevenson's adventure novels – was written primarily from Stevenson's bed. Unfortunately, Stevenson suffered from lung ailments throughout his short life. As did many who could afford to in those days, Stevenson traveled extensively, always in search of a climate that could cure his condition. Stevenson was often confined to bed on these travels, leaving him to imagine and write all of the adventures he was never himself able to experience. Some of his most well known adventures – Treasure Island, The Black Arrow,Kidnapped – were written during periods of almost constant illness. | <urn:uuid:27e18ad6-c7e9-42a4-b70c-00334e861128> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.booksie.com/other/book_review/sahar_ahmad/kidnapped-by-robert-louis-stevenson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992505 | 508 | 2.984375 | 3 |
I understand that Korea does not have snow days, but do Korean kids even play in the snow or do their parents make them study?You're right that Korea, like many northern US states and Canada, is not really into snow days. Being from Tennessee myself, I enjoyed countless snow days (and cold weather days) and still get a bit nostalgic when I see the flakes coming down, but since Korea does not have a public school busing system, there is no need to call school. If you can't make it in, then you have a personal snow day. Franchised hagwons that use buses typically will have a snow day every now and then. If you're teaching adults, well, then you're open no matter what.
The second part of the question is more curious though. Of course Korean kids play in the snow and of course their parents allow it. While I'm sure that some parents might force their kids to study or play inside, the vast majority of the kids are outside playing.
If you're based in Seoul or any other city center, then you might not be able to witness that much playtime, just like you wouldn't in Chicago, New York or Boston, but they're out there.
Sledding, whether it be on hills or iced streets (my personal preference), is pretty tricky since every city is packed with people and cars. In Seoul, I saw a sledding ramp in one of the Han River parks that was packed. Some of the amusement parks have ramps as well.
Building snowmen (눈사람) is more interesting to me. For those of you who have taught children, I'm sure you already know that in Korea, the snowman doesn't consist of three parts like their Western cousins.
Typically American, huh?
Rather, the Korean snowmen boasts only two parts: a head and body/legs. No midsection for Korean folks. I asked my wife why they went with the duo and she said because a snowman's legs are too small to merit an additional snowball. Who knew?
Another thing that I found interesting is what is used to decorate the snowman. From what I have discerned from conversations, photos and experience, there are no carrots, pipes or buttons used on the Korean snowman. A stick is typically used for the nose and arms. A pine-cone or rock might make its way to the eyes and a pepper was, at one point at least, the acceptable adornment for the mouth. I personally prefer the Western-style snowman made in the image of Frosty, but it really doesn't matter.
I'd like to add that my opinion on snow and the excitement that I get from it stems from my region/climate. As I mentioned, I'm from southeastern US. We got snow regularly, but not heavy accumulation like they did up north. If the snow neared 2 inches or more, school was called. Sometimes they even called it preemptively. I remember there was nothing more exciting than going to bed, knowing that it was supposed to snow. The very real possibility of having a snow day usually kept me up well after the lights went off, but the sheer bliss of waking up to find the entire neighborhood blanketed in snow was one of the great pleasures of being a child.
That enthusiasm and hope for more snow still remains with me today. Sure, I get irritated by dangerous roads, perilous sidewalks and the fact that the world doesn't actually stop operating when it snows, but that southeastern child in me still is hoping for more snow. This feeling, however, is lost on people from colder/snowier climates and that's too bad because the innocent joy of snow and a snow day is as just about as good as it gets.
Has anyone seen any good snowmen or sledding sites on the peninsula? | <urn:uuid:96efc57b-811a-4516-9270-5b537e44c492> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asktheexpat.blogspot.com/2010/01/snow-days-and-snowmen-in-korea.html?showComment=1263681829764 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981007 | 795 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Schools for Misrule: A Conversation with Walter Olson
Walter Olson’s acclaimed books—The Litigation Explosion, The Excuse Factory, and The Rule of Lawyers—have changed the way we think about the American legal system.
In Olson’s latest contribution, Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (Encounter) he exposes the cause of the Litigation Explosion; we see how the American workplace became a “sued if you do, sued if you don’t” Excuse Factory, and how self-government has been overturned in favor of the Rule of Lawyers.
Olson shows that the overlawyered world we live in is not an accident. It’s a self-conscious intellectual project that emanates from our nation’s most prestigious law schools or—as Olson calls them—“Hatcheries of Bad Ideas.” Law school elites have spent the past 50 years remaking our democracy, in the process transforming themselves from its guardians to its rulers.
From socializing torts, to public interest law, to global lawfare, change follows a pattern: Law reviews and books become the basis of new legal approaches that are often operationalized through legal clinics. Left-leaning foundations fund these clinics, which displace legislators, making lawyers and judges the new power brokers.
Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. Prior to joining Cato, Olson was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and he has been a columnist for Great Britain's Times Online as well as Reason. His writing appears regularly in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New York Post. He has appeared numerous times before Congress and advised many public officials. The Washington Post has dubbed Olson the "intellectual guru of tort reform."
Watch Walter Olson talk about Schools for Misrule at a Heartland Institute luncheon on March 24, 2011: | <urn:uuid:88e9ad05-8eff-4b94-af78-dddddcd7f5a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heartland.org/events/schools-misrule-conversation-walter-olson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95324 | 407 | 1.765625 | 2 |
E-News Issue #65
Low Wattage Appliances
I often get requests for ‘lower than usual’ wattage appliances for customers who have the available power but whose inverter is of a modest size. This particularly applies to kettles, irons, and hair dryers. Most of the standard ones are often around 2000 Watts. They are designed to do the job quickly in our modern, fast society. However, low wattage units will often do the job, perhaps at a bit slower pace.
Most electrical jugs are 2200 Watts but there is a nice Kambrook kettle (KE9) that holds a litre and is rated at 1250 Watts.
Lately, I’ve had requests to source low wattage irons and hair dryers. These are sometimes sold as travel items (e.g. to take on holidays). If you have any suggestions in this regard, let me know and I’ll pass on your suggestions.
Bob got one of these new style televisions – his LG model uses 3.8 Amps – a bit more than he expected - when connected directly to a 12 Volt battery bank. A ‘normal’ 14 inch / 34 cm television usually uses around 5 Amps on the DC side of the inverter. Bob has heard that the Sharp one is better quality, but they wanted $140 for the DC lead!!!
LCD Computer Monitor
My computer is an AMD 1300 Mhz with 128Mb RAM, 20 Gig ATA 100 hard drive, CD burner, and 56K built in modem with a 15-inch LCD monitor.
I measured the wattage with an Emu meter at 101 Watts and 105.4 Watts on a Spar meter on the AC side with everything on. Taking a bit of an average gives 103 Watts of which 19 Watts is consumed by the LCD monitor.
On the DC side of my Selectronic SE22 inverter, the current was measured at 5.0 Amps @ 25.4 Volts (about 127 Watts), which gives an efficiency of about 81% (when nothing else is being run off the 1600W inverter).
Interestingly, turning the monitor off made no difference to the power consumption as measured on the DC side. I assume this is because the inverter became more efficient with the extra load. If the computer system is run with an 800W resistive load also on the inverter, the computer system still use 5 amps @ 25.4 volts with everything on, but this reduced to 4.0 amps when the LCD monitor is turned off.
Forgetting this anomaly, I would say that using an LCD monitor over an older conventional one saves about 50 Watts. In a grid connected ‘office’ situation – 8 hours/day, 250 days a year, the saving in power would be in the order of 50 x 8 x 250 = 100kWh. In a solar situation, with your computer on 8 hours per day, you should save about 400Wh per day, which would be a saving of about one 120-Watt panel. This depends of course on your solar insolation, seasonal variations etc.
In Australia there is a Telstra Service for Internet users called ISDN. In brief, this service gives you a second phone line and a 128K-speed modem (64K when the phone is being used). Telstra supplies the ‘modem’ device. The service offers Internet speeds 2-3 times faster than a normal 56K modem dial-up service. It is available in many areas where ADSL is not available.
Now that the ad is done, the electrical requirements are easy and straightforward. It uses 2.7 Watts measured on the AC side. You can turn it on only when your computer is on so, compared with the computer; the power usage of this special modem is pretty insignificant.
We welcome your comments, questions and price inquiries about this
enewsletter. We would appreciate it if you could tell is which country
you are from (if this is not obvious from your email address). You do
not need to return our whole newsletter back to us with your email.
Cheers from Dave and all the RPC crew.
Dave Lambert (Director)
- Issue #92 - 06/12/2005
- Issue #91 - 15/11/2005
- Issue #90 - 20/10/2005
- Issue #89 - 29/09/2005
- Issue #88 - 01/09/2005
- Issue #87 - 29/07/2005
- Issue #86 - 04/07/2005
- Issue #85 - 03/06/2005
- Issue #84 - 05/05/2005
- Issue #83 - 01/04/2005
- Issue #82 - 03/03/2005
- Issue #81 - 23/02/2005
- Issue #80 - 02/02/2005
- Issue #79 - 05/01/2005 | <urn:uuid:1c2292c7-4b3d-47cb-b7aa-7922e7e1f2a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rpc.com.au/news/newsletter/65.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935474 | 1,025 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Forbes magazine's 2012 “Best Cities” analysis and global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. say growth is coming from cities with less than 1 million residents. Despite the culture and excitement big cities provide, baby boomers and their offspring continue migrating to suburbs, college towns, and state capitals to retire and raise children in communities that provide similar amenities for less, and with less hassle.
These “middleweight” communities account for 27 of the 30 urban regions that are adding jobs at the fastest rate; 257 of them generate 70% of U.S. GDP.
Now look at the map below. Developed by the Regional Plan Association, it shows 11 areas of the country where separate metropolitan regions have blended into one gigantic community. Federal funding is increasingly directed toward multijurisdictional efforts, and that emphasis isn't likely to change. The stimulus package Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants and FHWA's Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program are for projects of regional importance. Similarly, EPA's watershed-based permitting acknowledges that water honors no man-made boundaries.
Assuming this trend continues, how will infrastructure not in or near a megaregion fare, especially in cities and counties that aren't sitting on a natural gas reserve or other source of economic growth? (That growth, by the way, is taxing rural highway and water operations to the limit and beyond.) By themselves, colleges, universities, and state capitals don't generate the volume and diversity of jobs necessary to attract an influx of new residents or companies.
I can't help but think of the communities of my youth, farm towns in western Illinois that boomed during the 1970s but are now almost ghost towns. Manufacturers moved to Mexico or elsewhere. Agriculture, like other industries, has consolidated; fewer people are required to work ever-larger operations, which means fewer people are coming to town to shop and eat in local businesses. These communities are quiet and beautiful, replete with gracious old homes available for a song. The air smells different than in the city. If you've got a job and can ignore the empty store-fronts, they're not a bad place to live.
But for a public works professional, they're all mini-Detroits. Much of their infrastructure was built long ago and expanded to service more people. Today, fewer people and businesses are supporting even older assets. If service falls to unacceptable levels due to budget cuts, even fewer people and businesses will make such communities their home.
These communities need capable infrastructure managers to prevent such a scenario. What are we doing to ensure the men and women who commit their skills and expertise to them will succeed?
Editor in Chief
OUR 11 FUTURE ‘MEGAREGIONS'
With federal resources increasingly targeted to regional rather than state or local infrastructure projects, communities that aren't in one of these clusters of metropolitan areas will have to devise innovative ways to fund maintenance and improvements. Source: America2050 | <urn:uuid:599772c0-4d29-4a30-a387-4670284e0ec7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pwmag.com/transportation-projects/will-you-be-in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time.aspx?rssLink=Will+you+be+in+the+right+place+at+the+right+time+for+the+right+future%3F | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953351 | 618 | 2.25 | 2 |
islam allow my activity or not?
Rising hands to the ears while callind athan is Sunnah and a recommended act. However, it is permissible to leave hands down as well. There is no drawback.
- What does Jihad mean? Why do some people explain jihad as “the holy war”?
- What are the fundamental characteristics of Islam?
- How should our style (method) be in (conveying the message of Islam, propagation of Islam)? How should I convey the message of Islam to people who despise Islam?
- What does malayani (futile things) mean? Are our deeds related just to the world and not to the Hereafter futile?
- Does Freedom mean doing whatever someone happens to want? If not, how should real freedom be understood? | <urn:uuid:727d7b74-394b-4ee2-a53a-b7e5523496c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.questionsonislam.com/question/islam-allow-my-activity-or-not | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918025 | 168 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Tuesday 21 May
Black-footed rock-wallaby (Petrogale lateralis)
- Black-footed rock-wallabies rarely drink, surviving mainly on the water they obtain from their food.
- In bad conditions female black-footed rock-wallabies will pause the development of an embryo, waiting until environmental conditions improve before continuing development.
What’s the World’s Favourite Species?Find out here.
Black-footed rock-wallaby fact file
- Find out more
- Print factsheet
Black-footed rock-wallaby description
The colouration of the shy, wary black-footed rock-wallaby (Petrogale lateralis) helps it to blend in with the background of rocks (3); it has dark to pale greyish-brown upperparts, a paler chest and dark brown belly (2). The dark face is marked with a white or sandy-coloured cheek stripe, and a dark brown to blackish stripe extends from between the ears to just below the shoulders. During summer these wallabies tend to become lighter in colour (2). The thick woolly fur is particularly dense around the base of the tail, the rump and flanks (2). The very long tail, which ends in a dark brush, is useful in maintaining balance when these animals jump from one rock to another (3). Furthermore, the soles of the feet are highly textured to prevent them from slipping (3).
- Also known as
- black-flanked rock-wallaby, warru.
- Male head-body length: 475 - 521 mm (2)
- Female head-body length: 446 - 486 mm (2)
- Male tail length: 320 - 606 mm (2)
- Female tail length: 320 - 597 mm (2)
- 2.3 - 7.1 kg (2)
Naturebase - Department of Environment and Conservation, Western Australia:
WWF - Black-footed rock-wallaby fact sheet:
BBC Wildlife Finder:
- The state of being pregnant; the period from conception to birth.
- A population usually restricted to a geographical area that differs from other populations of the same species, but not to the extent of being classified as a separate species.
IUCN Red List (February, 2011)
Naturebase – Department of Environment and Conservation, Western Australia (June, 2008)
WWF - Black-footed rock-wallaby fact sheet (March, 2004)
- Maxwell, S., Burbridge, A.A. and Morris, K. (1996) Action Plan for Australian Marsupials and Monotremes. Australian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group – IUCN Species Survival Commission. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.
- Kennedy, M. (1992) Australasian marsupials and monotremes - an action plan for their conservation. International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Gland, Switzerland.
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Black-footed rock-wallaby biology
This shy wallaby lives in groups of 10 to 100 individuals (3). They tend to feed at night in open areas on grasses, fruit, leaves and various herbs. They rarely drink, deriving most of the water they need from their diet (3). They also conserve water by taking refuge from the heat of the day in rocky caves (2). They are most active in the early evening when they leave their shelters (3).
Individuals typically reach sexual maturity at one to two years of age, after which time breeding can be continuous, but depends on the rainfall. Female black-footed rock wallabies show embryonic diapause, which means that the development of the embryo can cease temporarily until the environmental conditions become suitable for it to complete its development (2). The gestation period lasts about 30 days, and the newly born rock-wallabies, like most young marsupials, are initially very poorly developed and suckle for a time inside the mother’s pouch (3). Other wallabies and kangaroos tend to stay with their young continuously until they have weaned, but black-footed rock-wallaby mothers often leave their offspring in a sheltered place while they go to feed. It is thought that this may be a safe option, considering the treacherous rocky terrain in which this species lives (3).Top
Black-footed rock-wallaby range
There are four known subspecies of black-footed rock-wallaby and two geographic subpopulations (5), all of which differ in terms of their geographic range and fur colour (3). The distribution of the MacDonnell Ranges race, known locally as warru, has declined over most of its range. At present, it is found in the east and western MacDonnell ranges of the Northern Territory, in a few scattered populations in the Warburton area of Western Australia, and just one isolated small colony in north-western South Australia (5). The western Kimberley race is found only in the Edgar Range, Erskine Range, Grant Range and nearby parts of west Kimberley in Western Australia (5). The subspecies Petrogale lateralis hacketti occurs on three islands (Mondrain, Wilson and Westall) in the Recherche Archipelago off the southern coast of Western Australia (1). P. l. lateralis is currently declining throughout its range. It was formerly found in suitable habitat in central and southern Western Australia, but now exists as just six populations in the Wheatbelt, and at Little Sandy Desert, Cape Range and Barrow and Salisbury Islands (2). P. l. pearsoni is restricted to Pearson Island (South Australia), with 300 individuals on the main island, 200 introduced to Wedge and Thistle Islands and 190 that were introduced accidentally to the south island (1).Top
Black-footed rock-wallaby habitat
The black-footed rock-wallaby is found amidst rock piles, steep cliffs, boulder scree slopes and granite outcrops, typically where there is some cover in the form of open vegetation (4).Top
Black-footed rock-wallaby status
The black-footed rock-wallaby is classified as Near Threatened (NT) by the IUCN Red List (1).Top
Black-footed rock-wallaby threats
A major cause of the decline of these wallabies has been predation by introduced foxes, which is thought to be responsible for the extinction of several populations. Predation by feral cats, alteration of fire regimes and habitat damage caused by grazing sheep, goats and rabbits are also thought to have been problems (2) (4).Top
Black-footed rock-wallaby conservation
Various populations of black-footed rock-wallaby occur within protected sites. A recovery plan is currently underway, and much of the suitable habitat within reserves has been protected. Furthermore, fox control measures have been established at several sites (4).Top
Find out more
For more information on the black-footed rock-wallaby:
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In the 1960s, architects learned to use concrete like no one since the Romans. And all around the world, their concrete creations have been allowed to rot – as per this image of the once-lovely and popular "Seasons of the Year" restaurant in Gorky Park in Moscow. Yet that 1968 structure is now set to have a future as well as a past. Today in Moscow, Dasha Zhukova, founder of the city's famous Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, is announcing detailed plans for the renovation of the old park pavillion, under the guiding hand of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Until recently, Garage occupied a 1926 building on Moscow's outskirts designed by the Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov, but in 2013 it will be moving to its renovated home downtown in Gorky Park. (The park also happens to have been planned by Melnikov.) Koolhaas says that he will be keeping much of what's left of the Soviet building – especially its late-modernist tiles, mosaics and brickwork, with what he calls their "collective aura" – but he will also be making it fit for 21st-century use. A new facade will be made from translucent plastic panels, with sliding sections that will let the park seem to enter the center. The building's interior will be divided between spaces for traditional artistic media, on the second floor, and more wide-open areas at ground level that will host performances and videos and such.
It's one thing for Americans to renew buildings from the 1960s, heyday of our Dream. In Moscow, it will be interesting to see whether locals respond to this building's rebirth with nostalgia for the communist past it represents, with contempt for its failures, or with hope for a future that surpercedes it. Will the new Garage in Gorky Park help preserve memories, or lay them to rest?
For a full visual archive of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive. | <urn:uuid:537eaca7-c3e8-488b-bad8-ae68847d523b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/27/garage-art-center-and-rem-koolhaas-renovate-vintage-building-in-moscow.print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963951 | 412 | 2.125 | 2 |
Welcome to MedLibrary.org. For best results, we recommend beginning with the navigation links at the top of the page, which can guide you through our collection of over 14,000 medication labels and package inserts. For additional information on other topics which are not covered by our database of medications, just enter your topic in the search box below:
|Government of the Russian Federation|
|Formed||1993 (current, 2012)|
|Headquarters||Russian White House, Moscow,|
|Minister responsible||Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister|
The Government of the Russian Federation (Russian: Прави́тельство Росси́йской Федера́ции) exercises executive power in the Russian Federation. The members of the government are the Prime Minister of Russia (Chairman of the Government), the deputy prime ministers, and the federal ministers. It has its legal basis in the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the federal constitutional law "On the Government of the Russian Federation".
|This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Council of Ministers had become the main executive body. At some points it contained over 69 state committees, 16–17 ministers, 5 federal services, and over 30 governmental agencies. After the 2004 reform, government duties were split between 17 ministries, 5 federal services, and over 30 governmental agencies.
The prime minister is appointed by the president of the Russian Federation (currently Vladimir Putin), and confirmed by the State Duma. He or she succeeds to the presidency if the current president dies, is incapacitated, or resigns. The current prime minister is Dmitri Medvedev.
The body was preceded by Government of the Soviet Union. Since the Russian Federation emerged in 1991, the government's structure has undergone several major changes. In the initial years, government bodies, primarily the different ministries, underwent massive reorganization as the old Soviet governing networks were adapted to the new state. Many reshuffles and renamings occurred.
On 28 November 1991 President of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin signed presidential decree №242 "On reorganization of the government bodies of the RSFSR" (Russian: "О реорганизации центральных органов государственного управления РСФСР").
Responsibilities and power
The government is the subject of the 6th chapter of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. According to the constitution, the government of the Russian Federation must:
- draft and submit the federal budget to the State Duma; ensure the implementation of the budget and report on its implementation to the State Duma;
- ensure the implementation of a uniform financial, credit and monetary policy in the Russian Federation ;
- ensure the implementation of a uniform state policy in the areas of culture, science, education, health protection, social security and ecology;
- manage federal property;
- adopt measures to ensure the country's defence, state security, and the implementation of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation;
- implement measures to ensure the rule of law, human rights and freedoms, the protection of property and public order, and crime control;
- exercise any other powers vested in it by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, federal laws and presidential decrees.
The government issues its acts in the way of decisions (Постановления) and orders (Распоряжения). These must not contradict the constitution, federal constitutional laws, federal laws, and Presidential decrees, and are signed by the Prime Minister.
The cabinet consists of the following members:
- List of heads of government of Russia
- Government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
- Government of the Soviet Union
- Russian Government web portal – Text of 1997 Federal Constitutional Law "On the Government of the Russian Federation" (in Russian)
- Russian source, Vesti.ru
- New Cabinet Has Familiar Cast of Characters, Moscow Times, May 21, 2012
- The Constitution of the Russian Federation: Chapter 6
- Governmental Structure
- Russian source: Janna Odinsova was appointed as Aid to Prime Minister, Vesti.ru | <urn:uuid:d11d99ae-ed2f-4bb1-af5d-d2d4a74eba94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Government_of_the_Russian_Federation | 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 | 0.901429 | 966 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Drain / sewer lines are a vital component of the day-to-day operations of your home. Without proper drainage,
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Let Thos. R. Birnie & Sons Ltd. help you in this time of need. Grants from The City of Hamilton are available for those that qualify if you update your sewer with the installation of a backwater valve to avoid disasters like the ones that occured this past summer. Call today for your free estimate! | <urn:uuid:1022324c-045a-48e8-8653-dbea6ede5799> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.5stinky.com/drains_and_sewers.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916563 | 312 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Principal for a Day (PFAD) allows businesses and organizations the opportunity to visit a school and shadow the principal to increase public awareness of the accomplishments and challenges at CPS.
- Strengthen existing partnerships
- Generate new partnerships between CPS schools and businesses, non-profit organizations, associations and individuals
- CEO visits the partner school once a year
- Business volunteers participate in three separate activities annually
- Business and PFAD provides the school with material resources/in-kind annually
- PFAD helps to sustain partnerships between business and individual schools
The goal of Principal for a Day is that all PFADs will continue to engage themselves, their companies, organizations or associations in continued involvement and support throughout the year at their school. Learn more at the PFAD website below: | <urn:uuid:0ed20668-370a-4ae6-8a1f-460c2a0e35d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cps.edu/Programs/Community/Pages/PrincipalforaDay.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953004 | 159 | 2.1875 | 2 |
The more our everyday activities become digitally led, the more we rely on the remote control to simplify our relationship with digital media. The EPFL+ECAL Lab - a partnership between Lausanne's tech institute and design school - spotted this early and embarked on a mission to give the humble remote a makeover.
Along with three top design schools (ENSCI-Les Ateliers in Paris, London's RCA and New York's Parsons), the EPFL+ECAL Lab explored some truly innovative propositions for remote design. The collaboration led to the unveiling, this week, of Lazy Bytes, a range of ergonomic digital prototypes designed not only for entertainment but just about every facet of our lives.
The moniker blends the name of the first ever remote (the Lazy Bones, which hit the market in 1951) with that of a key partner on the project, interactive design pioneers Luckybite. Similarly, the project aims to pioneer an interactive product with a greater number of functions at a retail cost more in line with its mid-20th-century predecessor.
'Why the remote control? Because we decided to launch a much wider program about digital interfaces and more generally our relation to the digital world,' explains EPFL+ECAL Lab director Nicolas Henchoz. 'One thing we can observe is that most of the interfaces are driven by performance. We've added more and more features and functions.'
In terms of ideas, the sky was the limit - as the diverse results demonstrate. Tiny plastic 'Freehand', by ECAL student Cleo Jacquet, attaches itself like a children's toy to household objects with its twin suction cups. The notion is that anything can become a remote. Meanwhile 'Platform', by ENSCI student Florent Julien, and the intriguing wood 'Twistymote', by Parsons group Hilal Koyuncu, Leif Percifield and Francisco Zamorano, incorporate simplified interfaces that belie their inner complexity.
The prototypes will headline an exhibition in late 2013, followed by a conference - after which the remote control will surely take its place as the rightful icon of the digital world. | <urn:uuid:85f9b130-475e-4b70-a736-6faa480f4077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wallpaper.com/technology/epfl-ecal-lab-pushes-our-buttons-with-its-lazy-bytes-project/6202 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928821 | 437 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Sustainable Design in a New Science Building
November 21, 2008
In this segment, we talk to architect Tony Alfieri of the Perkins and Will architectural firm. He discusses the design elements and sustainability features in the College's new science building, now under construction.
3 Minutes 56 Seconds
"Strides in Sustainability" takes you through the Bronx's journey toward energy efficiency in its new buildings and transportation systems and explores some of the environmental efforts underway on the Lehman campus as well as in the borough.
This is Neem Dewji, a student at Lehman College.
In this segment, we talk to architect Tony Alfieri of the Perkins and Will architectural firm. He discusses the design elements and sustainability features in the College's new science building, now under construction. His firm designed this new facility.
The new science building is a blend of teaching labs and research labs. And for us, that was very important because there's a very strong connection between teaching and research. We want to establish a lot of connections and foster collaboration between the undergraduates and the teaching faculty. Between the undergraduate students, the graduate students, provide a welcoming place for some of the high school students who takes classes on campus, and to provide a welcoming amenity to their surrounding community. So, a place that all these different groups can come together and meet one another and exchange ideas.
The new building will form an enclosed courtyard. The other piece that will enclose that courtyard is Gillet, and then Phase Two will complete the courtyard. And so, the plan is to create a campus within a campus, or an academic village dedicated to the sciences, and Phase One will be the first new piece of that.
It will consist of two wings, one with teaching labs for undergraduate courses in biology and chemistry, and then another wing for research space around mostly plant scientists. So, biologists, chemists, and environmental scientists, all working with different issues relative to plant science. Which is, you'll remember is a strength of the Lehman College Graduate Program here.
The new science building was designed with what we'd like to describe as an integrated approach to sustainable design. And by that, we mean, we-- we don't just layer on surface features, we actually knit sustainability into the core thinking of the building.
Now, what I mean by that is, for example, we are gathering storm water on the roof, and then in retention tanks in the courtyard, that water will then be cleaned and reused within the building for maintenance reasons, and then that effluent will again be gathered and cleaned once it leaves the building.
The-- system of cleaning is through a -- what we call a constructive wetland, or planted area with grassland plants which have microbes in their root systems that clean the water. Students and faculty will be able to test the water at different points in the process, plants at different points in the process. So, they can really understand the connection between the health of the water, the health of the plants, the health of the soil.
It'll be a teaching tool, it'll be a research tool, it'll be a building system, so it'll be all about plumbing and water, but it'll also be about education and science. In terms of the-- the-- the physical characteristics of the building, we-- we're using what was called a high- performance glazing system. We're using glass that-- lets in sunlight but keeps out heat and controls the in-- interior environment of the building.
We're also using an interesting sort of -- an interesting kind of -- acrylic glazing on the greenhouse that will maximize the amount of natural light we get, and act as, what we call, a heat blanket. So it will retain energy that's usually lost in a greenhouse. So we're using a lot of specific building materials that are all designed to increase the energy performance and efficiency of the building.
Then, within the site landscape, you've mentioned the-- the courtyard has an extensive amount of planting in it. And the interesting thing about that is that it's all self-maintainable, it's-- it's a closed system, so to speak. So it will minimize the amount of maintenance. And I described, those plants will clean the water that comes out of the building and is collected from the storm water. So they're attractive, but they're also highly functional.
For information on other sustainability projects at Lehman, visit www.lehman.edu. This is a production of the Lehman College Media Relations Office.
[END OF AUDIO] | <urn:uuid:4d28b931-ccdf-4bdc-91ae-aa38ed88f2ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lehman.edu/lehmantoday/2008_11/a_sustainable_design.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961563 | 938 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Going Green: It’s Time for ‘Show and Tell’
Just as in grade school, “Show and Tell” is an important part of the learning process. So as 2010 has just ended and green meeting practices have continued to evolve, it seems like a good time for some “show and tell.”
Following is how four different organizations were able to accomplish both. We’ll let them share their stories so we can all learn.
Donation Leads to Reuse
Eclipse Summit Europe is an annual event traditionally held in Germany with over 400 participants. The conference manager reports, “When we left Eclipse Summit Europe 2009, we donated the sign easels to a local art school. The teachers and students were thrilled to have the easels and wanted us to use them when we came back to town. Sure enough, we called today (almost a year later) and they offered to bring the easels to the venue for our use. We also had to purchase lamps for this year’s event and donated them to the school afterwards. One of the key sponsors heard of our donation and has done the same with many of the components of her booth.”
Communication & Education: attendees and peers
Oracle OpenWorld, an annual meeting of over 40,000 held in San Francisco, stepped up its Web and e-mail communications to attendees in 2010. An expanded Web page for registrants and exhibitors was created, with specific tips for each about how to reduce their footprint. Mobile applications provided gentle reminders of how to be green once in San Francisco. Green team members also continued to share their sustainable event knowledge to peer networks, both on-site and post-event. Since 2009, Oracle has hosted a special “green” tour of OpenWorld for Green Meeting Industry Council members, who take a special look behind the scenes at what is being done to shrink the event footprint. Show and tell during the event has helped fellow meeting managers better understand how it “looks” during the event itself.
Choosing the right destination and vendors
Canada Media Marketplace is not a large event but has taken its sustainable initiatives very seriously. Destination selection was based on sustainability criteria, which resulted in moving the West Coast event from Los Angeles to San Francisco. In addition to meeting sustainability goals, this also aligned with improving accessibility for media attendees and reducing overall air travel.
Canada Media Marketplace has limited buying power, so it can be tough to negotiate greener practices from vendors who are not already sustainability-minded. It can also be hard to secure event-specific measurements when you’re one of multiple events on-site. One of the primary reasons the 2010 event was able to set and achieve high targets was because event planners chose vendors who were already prepared and willing to accommodate specific practices and measurement. The event will continue to benefit by partnering with vendors that prioritize sustainability as a standard part of their business practice.
Measuring Impact Assists With Critical Decisions
The 2010 UUA General Assembly, an annual event of nearly 4,000 participants from the U.S., has been measuring and reporting on its environmental and social impact for years. Highlighting waste management, this information has allowed it to make informed decisions to minimize conference materials and to work with vendors on increasing their recycling diversion rates.
This consistency has certainly paid off. In 2010, the amount of materials disposed of on-site was reduced by 46 percent over the 2009 event. The event also diverted 76 percent of the waste it produced from landfills and incineration, exceeding pre-event goals by 16 percent and the facility baseline for recycling diversion by 42 percent.
How did this impact the conference experience you might ask? Senior managers and attendees are both highly engaged. For example, the volunteer recycling corps submitted two pages of constructive feedback to improve waste management next year, in addition to the attendee feedback. Senior managers are committed to putting event contracts on the line—in more than one instance—to live up to sustainability principles.
Reflecting on 2010, what would you like to show and tell? Think back on your own year of incorporating sustainable initiatives. Did you take the first step and choose one practice to add during your meetings, such as recycling? Did you measure what you were able to accomplish? Did you take your current practices to another level? Did you get education to begin the process? Did you tell others about your challenges and successes?
As we move forward into the new year, one thing is for sure: 2011 will bring increased attention to the sustainability initiatives of our industry. Green event practices will most likely be standardized, formalized training will become available, and industry-sanctioned certification programs for green event managers will be a reality—a good year indeed to go to the head of the class!
Nancy J. Zavada, CMP, is a leader, innovator and entrepreneur in the meeting planning and events industry. She began her career in the industry in 1978 and is now a principal with MeetGreen, a Portland, Ore.-based conference management and consulting firm that she founded and which specializes in green meetings. Zavada served on the Live Earth Global Green Team and is cofounder of the Green Meeting Industry Council. She is also the coauthor of Simple Steps to Green Meetings and Events. Her blog, “Pretentious Musings of a Meet Green Martyr,” shares resources, tips, ideas and funny stories about the life of a green meeting planner, and can be accessed at http://blog.meetgreen.com. To enquire about purchasing a checklist and other tools for planning a green meeting, contact MeetGreen at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:12ed4eed-f0a7-4edb-8fd9-f3815e526a25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://meetgreen.com/going-green-its-time-for-show-and-tell/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965915 | 1,166 | 1.773438 | 2 |
A British mother is fighting to change the country's maternity laws after being denied paid leave time because she used a surrogate to have a child.
Jane Kassim learned at age 15 that she would never be able to become pregnant because she was born without a womb, The Telegraph reported.
Her cousin agreed to be a surrogate, and gave birth to twins Isla Jane and Ivy May last month.
According to The Telegraph, Kassim has only been offered 13 weeks of unpaid leave. Most mothers in the U.K. are entitled to 52 weeks of paid leave.
The 30-year-old argues that's not enough time to bond with the twin girls.
John Healey, a member of Parliament, has taken on Kassim's case and is trying to find a "legal loophole" for all mothers who use surrogates, according to The Huffington Post.
He has introduced a bill calling for appropriate leave, pay and allowance arrangements for parents who use surrogates to have children.
According to The Mirror, Kassim is also pushing an e-petition for the law to be changed that has more than 1,400 signatures.
"Under current law, people like me don't have the maternity rights that mothers who give birth themselves or women who adopt are entitled to," she told The Telegraph. | <urn:uuid:7dc07ff9-da17-4513-874f-a0509b17823f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wpbf.com/news/health/Mom-who-used-surrogate-denied-maternity-leave/-/8788734/11169814/-/nurvbh/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981307 | 266 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Limestone formations along a hiking trail in the Ojito
The Ojito Wilderness is about 11,000 acres of Sandoval county, New Mexico that was designated wilderness by congress in 2005 throught the 1964 Wildness Act. It is located west of Rio Rancho, New Mexico and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The glow from Albuquerque can bee seen east of the Ojito. The Sandia’s can bee seen to the left of the short mesa and right of the tall light tower. The small red lights are from the radio towers on top of the Sandias.
People have been going to the Ojito for years before it was protected as a wilderness, it’s not one of the better known outdoor areas near the Albuquerque. The Ojito is a combination of desert; sand, cactus and scrub but also contains some pine trees and grasses. It’s sort of a transition area between the deserts in Albquerque and the forests of the Jemez. What makes the Ojito special is the number of impressive rock formations. There are a number of hoodoos formed by water millions of years ago, badlands and buffs.
I have had two trips to the Ojito, once in April of 2011 and this last time in June of 2012 and it will probably be a annual trip for me. Spring or Fall are good times to spend overnight in the Ojito, June is not. It’s hot, most plants have stopped flowering and there was a large number of nats and other flying insects. One of the reasons I like living in the desert is the lack of flying bugs so I was surprised at how many there was. There is no water, lakes or streams and people must bring it with them. As this is official Wilderness land no wheeled vehicles are allowed. Including bicycles. This probably keeps people away but backpacking a short distance in is well worth experience.
Firepit with hoodoos and a pine tree in the background
The area I camped included a group of hoodoos with a large area of sand and trees farther out. In the middle of the sand area there is a fire pit. Believe it or not while the rest of the state was under fire restrictions the Ojito was not. I verified with the BLM and was specifically told that the Ojito was not included with the rest of the state. Part of the reason might be because there is so little to burn. There are some pine trees spotted around the area the vegetation is pretty spares and well adapted to not getting water.
Trying to find out the fire restrictions in the Ojito was difficult. The official BLM webpage for the Ojito doesn’t tell a whole lot about restrictions in federal lands, as they are often different from the state lands. NM Fire Info lists state land fire restrictions and Public Lands Information Center lists federal fire restrictions.
FInally, New Mexico First District Representative Martin Heinrich created the Ojito.org website.
“Thank you for visiting the Ojito website. I hope you find the information here useful as you learn about and explore this unique and beautiful place. As someone who dedicated several years of my life to the creation the Ojito Wilderness, I also hope you will leave the area just as you found it. If we are all good stewards of this wild landscape, generations to come will continue to enjoy Ojito’s opportunities for hiking, hunting, photography and outdoor adventure. Enjoy. This is where the West is still wild.” | <urn:uuid:595edfb4-5786-44ad-9695-125efa9de3d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greginthedesert.net/2012/07/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969922 | 733 | 2.390625 | 2 |
The Governor would create a new pension tier – Tier 6 – for state workers and other public employees with dramatically reduced benefits and increased employee costs. Cloaked in the guise of reform, this proposal is about politics and placating big business special interests, not sound public policy. This bill ignores the landmark Tier 5 pension reform enacted by the legislature less than two years ago which is estimated to save the state and local governments $35 billion over 30 years. We don’t need a new tier to cut costs, just let Tier 5 work as intended!
The Governor’s plan would result in much smaller pensions and a loss of security for workers. It is a first step toward ending secure pensions entirely by introducing a 401K plan that is presented as “optional”, but also cutting pension benefits to the point where a traditional pension is no longer a good option. For most state workers this bill would double the amount that they are required to have taken out of their paychecks. And this tax on workers paychecks could go even higher due to a variable rate formula in the bill. If this formula was in effect today, many state workers would be required to contribute more than 10% of their salary to the pension fund.
Despite press reports to the contrary, public employee pensions are not overly generous. The average benefit for a member of the state and local employee retirement system is $19,151. Pensions are not a gift or a special privilege. They are earned by many years of hard work. The pension system is a long term commitment that must not be abandoned for political gain. | <urn:uuid:9ccd8895-55d6-4c12-89b4-d497160ea0c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pef.org/tier-6/2012/1/31/tell-your-legislators-to-oppose-tier-vi.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970066 | 322 | 1.9375 | 2 |
In about Thirty Parts at Twenty-five Cents each.
In one large volume handsomely bound, price $10, or in plain binding, strong style, at $8, and per Mail, fre
of Postage, to any part of the United States.
Superbly Illustrated with upwards of Three Hundred Engravings,
Rivera Mountains, Hills, Dales, Public Buildings, Fine Mansions, Street Views. Water Falls
Prairie And Railroad Scenkry, Views Ok The Cities And Towns Throughout The
The Land We Live In:
Historical, Geographical And Statistical;
A Full And Comprehewsive Review
Of The Progress, Present Condition, Commercial. Railroad, Manufacturing And Industrial Re
The American Confederacy.
The United States—Historical, Commercial and Political.
The States aDd Territories, (each by itself,) Geographical, Statistical and Industrial.
Full Description; Statistics of the Principal Cities and Towns, showing their Resources, Manufacturing, Commercial,
and other advantages, as also in drawing the attention of Capitalists and others thereto, as the most
profitable place for investment.
The Internal Improvement System of the United States, embracing a Historical and Descriptive Acconnt of the
Rise And Progress Of Railroad, Steamship, Steamboat And Telegraph Companies, &C.,
With a full exposition of the modus operandi of their management by the various Presidents and Boards of Directors,
With Numerous Beautiful Illustrations Upon The Different Great Routes.
The following distinguished Gentlemen art among the Contributors to this Great Work:
Henby V.Poor, .Esq., New York.
E. D.Mansfield, , Esq., Cincinnati.
Ben.Cassady, . Esq., Louisville,
R. S.Fisher, , M.D., New York.
Emerson, Bennett, Philadelphia.
R. S.Mathews, , Esq., Baltimore.
From the Hon. Judge Le Grand, Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals.
Sir :—I have had exhibited to me some of the proof sheets of the work you propose to publish, showing the Growth
and Progress of this Republic, Historical, Commercial, and Industrial. I take pleasure in saying that the examination I
have been able to give to the sheets presented, convince me it will prove not only interesting, but of practical utility to
our whole people. The part of it which I have seen has been compiled with great fulness and accuracy of detail I
cannot doubt the business and scientific portion of our population, throughout the Union, will welcome the issue as a
valuable auxiliary to their present stock of knowledge. With respect, your obedient servant.
John C.Crand, .
From the Hon.Honorable A, P.Sutler, , U.S. Senator for S.C.
In the foregoing recommendation of Judge Le Grand I cordially concur.
A. P.Butler, .
From the Hon. Thomas Swann, Mayor of Baltimore.
Sir :—I have examined the proof sheets of The Land We Live In," which you have submitted to me, and take pleas-
ure in saying that it promises to be a valuable and useful work. A comprehensive view of the resources of the Ameri-
can Confederacy cannot fail to prove a useful appendage to every library.
RichardEdwards, , Esq., Baltimore.
From the Hon.Honorable Thomas J.Rusk, , U.S. Senator for Texas.
Sir :—I have examined the pages of a work entitled "The Land We Live In," and take much pleasure in recommend
ing the same to the patronage of my countrymen, and trust you may be liberally rewarded for your labors.
Thomas J.Rusk, .
Front his Excellency, Gov. Wise, of Virginia.
Sir :—I have cursorily examined the proof sheets of the new work you propose publishing, submitted to me I re-
turn these sheets to you, as you request, and take pleasure in saying that, as they enable me to judge, I approve very
much of the work and recommend its publication, and you will please accept my order for a copy, and am yours, very
RichardEdwards, , Esq., Baltimore.
Henry A.Wise, .
From the Hon.Honorable Thomas H.Benton, , Senator for thirty years from Missouri.
Sir :—I cheerfully recommend your book to the patronage of the public. I think it well calculated to promote the
business, pro perity and happiness of the people of this wide-extended nation. I wish you much success in your enter-
Thomas H.Benton, .
Any information from Merchants, Manufactures, Literary Gentlemen, and others, will be thankfully received. Such
can be addressed to RichardEdwards, , Editor , Box 1027, Baltimore P.O., or Box 1619, St. Louis.
T. B.Peterson, & Brothers , 306 Chestnut Sts.Streets , Philadelphia.
Sold by appointed agents in every County, Town and City throughout the United States.
Virtue, Son & Co.Company , London, Wholesale Agents for Europe.
Persons Wishing The Agency Of This Work Will Please Apply To The Editor As Above. | <urn:uuid:c80c44d3-00c7-4dd8-be33-4e8e90f25a9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital.wustl.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cty;cc=cty;rgn=div3;view=text;idno=cty1859.0001.016;node=cty1859.0001.016%3A8.9.1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900106 | 1,122 | 1.835938 | 2 |
In the bizarre world of cryptozoology, the yeti looms large, its potential existence the stuff of legend since the days of the first Mt. Everest expeditions. Now a new effort could settle it for good, by studying DNA from hair samples stored at various institutions around the world. Maybe the samples do belong to a yeti or some type of beast unknown to science, or maybe it’s as boring as a bear — a team of researchers at the University of Oxford and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology aim to find out.
We don't see a lot of cryptozoology - the study of animals that have not yet been proven to exist - in the pages of PopSci these days, but that's what we have the archives for. Buried within the decades upon decades of "real" science, filled with "facts" and "research" are some gems of articles, where we chart the progress of believers searching for creatures we strongly suspect they may never find, but secretly hope they will.
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more. | <urn:uuid:38db9584-8f3c-4a95-8edc-ce9b4f88d693> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/cryptids | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949449 | 262 | 2.5 | 2 |
Cape Vidal, KwaZulu-Natal
Did you know?Cape Vidal is the final resting place of the Dorothea, a gold-laden ship that foundered on a reef in 1898. Her exact location remains a mystery.
Cape Vidal, Sodwana Bay, uMkhuze, Kosi Bay, False Bay and Maphelane form part of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a World Heritage Site on the northern coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
Cape Vidal is named after Captain Alexander Thomas Emeric Vidal, a British Royal Navy surveyor responsible for charting the African coast during the 1820s.
The bay at Cape Vidal is a popular fishing, snorkelling and swimming spot with a sheltered launch site for boats.
Due to its location between two diverse environments, Cape Vidal offers travellers a choice between the wildlife of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park and the marine life of the Indian Ocean – a true beach-and-bush destination.
The birdlife here is prolific, as are vervet monkey troops, and is best enjoyed by exploring the many self-guided trails leading into the wetlands around Lake Bhangazi.
Cape Vidal also provides access to the eastern shores of Lake St Lucia where reedbuck, hippo, crocodile and buffalo may be seen, along with many bird species. Further afield game parks like Hluhluwe-Imfolozi are home to rhino and other large game.
Humpback whales migrating north to Mozambique pass relatively close inshore, while game fish such as marlin and sailfish attract anglers. While frolicking in the waves you’re just about guaranteed to see dolphin pods, especially in the early morning.
During December, endangered loggerhead and leatherback turtles arrive at the beaches to lay eggs in protected zones.
The summer months attract sun worshippers who revel in the swimming, surfing and sunbathing along the coast. Offshore reefs and clear water make snorkelling hugely popular, or you might prefer a guided tour to deeper waters.
Cape Vidal falls within a malaria zone, so it’s imperative that you take preventative medication for three weeks before your expected arrival date. | <urn:uuid:18e322c1-18e5-4c31-8479-08b2bad7d075> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-cape-vidal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920799 | 477 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Background, Status, and Issues Related to the Regulation of Advanced Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycle Facilities: ACNW&M White Paper (NUREG-1909)
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Manuscript Completed: May 2008
Date Published: June 2008
A.G. Croff, R.G. Wymer, L.L. Tavlarides, J.H. Flack, H.G. Larson
Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
In February 2006, the Commission directed the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials (ACNW&M) to remain abreast of developments in the area of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, and to be ready to provide advice should the need arise. A white paper was prepared in response to that direction and focuses on three major areas: (1) historical approaches to development, design, and operation of spent nuclear fuel recycle facilities, (2) recent advances in spent nuclear fuel recycle technologies, and (3) technical and regulatory issues that will need to be addressed if advanced spent nuclear fuel recycle is to be implemented. This white paper was sent to the Commission by the ACNW&M as an attachment to a letter dated October 11, 2007 (ML072840119). In addition to being useful to the ACNW&M in advising the Commission, the authors believe that the white paper could be useful to a broad audience, including the NRC staff, the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors, and other organizations interested in understanding the nuclear fuel cycle. | <urn:uuid:03b1c11f-a968-47ec-ae30-e21072a65e1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1909/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931896 | 360 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Sinces its inception, television as an entertainment medium has been in a state of constant evolution, from the early live broadcasts to the birth of scripted drama – TV has seen a variety of vogues over its lifetime.
One of the most controversial of these has to be the genre now known as reality TV. Starting its life as an attempt for true to life documentation of a situation, the reality format has since metamorphosed into something that, at its exremes, many now consider to be either grotesque or exploitative.
Reality TV is a general term that is used to describe any programming that takes as its main feature the unscripted action of a set of subjects. While at the tamer end of the scale the reality TV genre offers up documentaries that provide an insight into worlds that the view may not otherwise see, the genre also includes a number of offerings that are much less worthy.
With the prolifeation of cable and satellite television channels, there is more and more demand for programming to fill in schedule slots – and reality TV offers a relatively inexpesive way for producers to create shows to fill these spaces.
Low level reality TV production often involves the placement of subject in situations where the darkest areas of their lives and emotions are held up to the scrutiny and ridicule of audiences. With chat shows offering participants an opportunity to air their dirty laundry in public under the guise of providing guidance, and reality based gameshows tempting people to air the least appealing sides of their nature with the lure of a desirable prize.
Love it or hate it – reality TV looks set to stay. | <urn:uuid:8f396640-0cc2-4fff-a41d-79dad1cf5844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cct-assn.org/tag/talk-show | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967103 | 325 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Head of German: Julia Sassen email@example.com
The German Department
The German department is a small but thriving department within Modern Languages. The emphasis lies on enabling our pupils to become competent and self-reliant speakers of German. Bucking the national trend, the take-up of German at Sevenoaks School is firmly on the up.
There are four highly committed and enthusiastic teachers of German as well as an excellent German assistant for conversation lessons. Class sizes are smaller than average, and the classroom atmosphere is very friendly. Luckily for us, there are a number of native speakers of German in the school who act as brilliant ambassadors for their country and provide our learners of German with a valuable opportunity to practise their German outside the classroom.
The German department regularly organises cinema and theatre trips, an annual Christmas market trip, and puts on German plays. There is also a German cinema club, convening once a week, where German language films are projected.
We firmly believe in the broader educational value of school exchanges and run a highly successful exchange programme. We are particularly proud of our unique Year 10 link with our partner school in Ibbenbüren, which has been running for over 25 years. Initially designed to foster greater language competence and cultural awareness, it has over the years evolved into a multi-layered link, encompassing both the Music and the Drama departments. Equally popular is our Lower Sixth exchange with the Helene-Lange-Gymnasium in Hamburg.
Currently there is no provision for German in Year 7.
German has been offered as an option in Year 8 since September 2011. They are making fantastic progress and have the opportunity to try out their first words of German during the Christmas Market trip to Monschau and Aachen, which is always a highlight of the festive season. Especially the trip to Charlemagne’s town of Aachen and the Lindt factory outlet which is a firm favourite for chocolate lovers.
Due to a recent increase in the take-up of German in Year 9 we are in a position to offer Beginners German as well as German for those who have previously studied the language. The language is taught with a strong focus on oral expression in view of the fact that we want to see our pupils in a position to gain the most from, and feel absolutely comfortable about, their exchange stay in Germany half way through Year 10. The classroom language is German, and there are regular sessions in the state-of-the-art language laboratory. The myth about German being a difficult language to learn is usually dispelled within the first few weeks of term.
Years 10 & 11
We currently use the OCR board for our GCSE course, but deliver Year 10 and Year 11 German teaching at a level that aims a long way beyond the OCR requirements. Our goal is to put all our Germanists in a position where they can freely express their every thought and idea without having to have recourse to bite-size GCSE speak. It is this level of proficiency reached by the end of Year 11 which guarantees a smooth transition into the Sixth Form IB courses, and a large proportion of our GCSE cohort happily take this step. The highly successful Year 10 exchange with the Goethe-Gymnasium in Ibbenbüren forms an integral part of our Year 10 curriculum. The pupils are hosted by extremely Anglophile local families and enjoy a very varied 2-week programme of lessons, excursions, day trips to Bremen and Osnabrück, as well as cultural outings.
Click here to see examination results | <urn:uuid:ae8f55d5-75a0-4842-9926-ba2cc9039198> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sevenoaksschool.org/german | 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 | 0.967628 | 739 | 2.375 | 2 |
Well, everyone knows about the two data recorders in airplanes. But cars? Really?
Ostensibly, it’s the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) which is recommending this for cars, and if they have their way, we might see them in cars by 2014.
This rulemaking proposal is called:
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
National Highway Traffic Safety
49 CFR Part 571
[Docket No. NHTSA–2012–0177]
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety
Standards; Event Data Recorders
AGENCY: National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA),
Department of Transportation.
ACTION: Notice of proposed rulemaking
Their motives as outlined here:
sound pure enough. All they want is a few seconds before, during and after the crash to aid in making cars more reliable.
So… sounds like a good idea, no? There won’t be a voice recorder. Yet. It wouldn’t be hard to add, though.
What would they record? Well, obviously speed, throttle voltage, brake lights, ignition, number of passengers, seat belt status, and what would all that be worth without location, right? After all, speed without location isn’t very helpful. It would be triggered to record (actually, to keep what it already is keeping in its buffer) by a sharp turn, braking, and hard bumps as well as any collision. What’s proposed is 30 seconds of data. At this point.
Well, if there’s an accident the insurance company is sure to get the data… and be able to find a reason (any reason) to deny your claim. Already they are offering lower rates for folks who voluntarily plug in a data recorder of sorts which transmits data to them. That’s the negative.
It could be so much more: It could save lives.
I’d rather see an effort to have data recorded which would really tell an operator what’s going on in his engine and with the other systems in his car. All that’s really needed is a large buffer (not necessarily in the car itself) and a diagnostic algorithm. The Cloud might be a good place (if location is rigorously encrypted) for such a buffer. It wouldn’t have to be going 24/7/365…it could record only in cases of significant problems, and then alert the operator immediately along with a report for the mechanic.
Legal aspects shouldn’t be ignored. It might also help in finding the guilty party/ies and help in assessing liability but I don’t believe that should be the primary function. It could save many lives if someone listens. | <urn:uuid:bd7c7070-5ced-4256-9674-d900bdb964bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.wincustomize.com/438853 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951069 | 566 | 2.078125 | 2 |
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Calls for a New Low-Carbon Paradigm
15 October 2012: Addressing the 16th Annual Chatham House Conference on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), provided an overview of progress made in the climate negotiations and outlined the way forward, elaborating upon proposed approaches for enhancing ambition and mobilizing the private sector.
Figueres stressed that climate change compounds global challenges and called for a new low-carbon paradigm. Stating that the "climate process has made more progress in the past two years than over the past ten," she highlighted three key achievements following the UN Climate Change Conference held in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011. First she said governments now had specific objectives to "usher in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol by January 2013," which would close the regulatory gap. Second, she noted agreement on the finalization of the negotiation stage of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) and move towards implementation. Third, she underlined commitment to adopt "a new, universally-inclusive and legally-based agreement by 2015 to start from 2020," stressing that this would close the ambition gap on reducing emissions and support to developing countries.
Figueres indicated that the UNFCCC Secretariat has received proposals from governments, intergovernmental organization, NGOs and business groups on how mitigation ambition could be enhanced, adding that these proposals reflect the following three general approaches: increasing the ambition of existing mitigation pledges; increasing the number of countries making pledges; and recognizing additional supplementary actions and initiatives taken at all levels.
Figueres then emphasized that despite these encouraging developments, more "concrete results" were necessary, in particular in mobilizing the private sector. She noted growing momentum for change, highlighting examples such as: reductions in clean energy costs, leading to increased renewable energy use; investments in clean energy; and recognition by major companies that climate change is "the biggest medium- to long-term risk to opportunity." However, she called for additional action to achieve a low carbon tipping point, stressing the need for: fiscal, monetary and regulatory policy coordination; clear policy frameworks; new thinking on climate-related long-term debt financing to attract large institutional investors; and a clearer carbon price signal.
Figueres also discussed how the low carbon paradigm is perceived through different development lenses, and concluded by urging to "accelerate the energy revolution," "produce cleaner and more efficiently," and "consume more consciously."
The Conference was held around the theme "Climate Change: Security, Resilience and Diplomacy" in London, UK. [UNFCCC Executive Secretary Speech] | <urn:uuid:9e5815a4-0b62-4d5a-8ba8-437bd7367429> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://climate-l.iisd.org/news/unfccc-executive-secretary-calls-for-a-new-low-carbon-paradigm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949373 | 561 | 1.804688 | 2 |
My name is Becky and I am an expert in breaking down socially constructed barriers of race, class, gender, and sexuality because of my hands on activist work, encouraging and educating people on how to love and know and advocate for themselves.
Should there be a stand out Latina public intellectual? Or do we need a group of Latina public intellectuals? Or none at all?
This summer, I attended Feminist Summer Camp with Soapbox Inc. The essence of this program was meeting fellow feminists and hearing their grassroots stories-- from the spark of an idea, to obstacles and challenges met, to networking and being resourceful. I learned that everyone starts from a place, and that there is never ending, unforeseen growth in the work that we set out to do. Although I have heard this message before, it is important for me to be reminded and to hear it from a community of people to whom I can relate.
This message is an important lesson in every aspect of life, as it does not just pertain to being a public activist. We have to learn to practice activism in our own lives, which I believe is a particularly deeply rooted shortfall within the Latin community as far as valuing and encouraging personal activism. Strong culturally constructed barriers leave Latinas to consider ourselves last, from our health to our personal intellect. From this extends the shortfall of self-proclaimed leaders to offer mentorship, encouragement, and set examples for our community. This leadership goes for anything, from helping to fill out medicaid papers to taking the forefront in leading edge biochemical engineering research, which is why YES, there most definitely needs to be a diverse group of Latina public intellectuals who are proud to define their personal area of expertise.
Becky is a rising junior studying Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies & Pre-Medicine
Summer of Feminista 2011 is a project where Latinas are sharing their thoughts on Latinas as Public Intellectuals. Liberal. Conservative. Academic statements. Personal stories. Learn more or how you can join the Summer of Feminista. This is a project of Viva la Feminista. Link and quote, but do not repost without written permission. | <urn:uuid:8cf163c0-74e2-4cb4-928c-b683e75576dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vivalafeminista.com/2011/07/summer-of-feminista-practicing-activism.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95178 | 438 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Pomp and Suspicious Circumstance
College grads are struggling in this post-recession economyAugust 2011
Jaleesa Suell overcame a difficult past, but today the 21-year-old George Washington University student’s greatest challenge is one that threatens her future: child identity theft.
She recently applied for a credit card to establish a credit history—and was denied. Suell spent a good part of her childhood in foster care, living in six different homes and occasionally with relatives until she became an adult. One of her guardians opened a credit card in her name and then defaulted on the payments.
The discovery was devastating. "As a youth in the system, I often worried if I was going to have a place to live the next day or have food," said Suell, who has ambitions to be a child advocacy lawyer. "I’ve worked so hard to ensure that won’t happen. But I was considered a liability because a family member stole my identity."
Like Suell, many child identity theft victims first detect the crime when they’re in their 20s, in college, and applying for credit for the first time. They find themselves burdened with someone else’s debt and often unable to secure financing for their education and, later in life, mortgages and auto loans.
Children are tempting targets for identity thieves because they have pristine credit histories and no reason to check a credit report. Foster children like Suell are even more vulnerable because they move around and have various legal guardians who have access to their personal information.
The Federal Trade Commission reports that victims ages 19 and younger comprised 8 percent of all identity theft complaints in 2010, a 7 percent increase over the previous year. A recent Carnegie Mellon study found that Social Security numbers of 10.2 percent of children studied had been misused—more than 50 times the rate for the adults studied.
But experts believe those numbers don’t accurately reflect the severity of the problem for children because many perpetrators are related to their victims—and many people are either afraid or hesitant to pursue legal action against a member of their own family.
There is disagreement over the best way to protect minors from identity theft, though all agree that something must be done. The Identity Theft Resource Center has proposed the 17-10 Solution, a registry containing the names, birth dates and SSNs of everyone under the age of 17 years and 10 months. Potential creditors or employers would be required to check all applicants against the database, and, if there is a match, to investigate further before granting credit or hiring.
Privacy experts debate the safety of such a vast store of information. But as Suell and tens of thousands of others like her can attest, any solution is better than allowing the problem to continue at its current pace.
At first Suell tried to remove the bad debt from her credit report on her own until she was referred to Identity Theft 911 for help.
Mark Fullbright, an Identity Theft 911 fraud investigator assigned to her case, immediately took steps to restore Suell’s good name and credit. He placed a fraud alert on her credit report and enrolled her in Identity Theft 911’s fraud and credit monitoring program.
"Mark has been a great help," said Suell, who was thankful for his help with coordinating communication with the credit bureaus, banks and collection agencies involved. "He’s offered advice on how to build my credit once the dispute is resolved," she said. "Identity Theft 911 has been nothing but helpful." | <urn:uuid:bbcaeb5c-336d-4fe9-9d2e-0f3a2e49d701> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.idtheft-encompassinsurance.com/articles/article.ext?sp=11973 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973269 | 727 | 2.078125 | 2 |
When you see me in wrapped up in my cheetah print scarf what do you see? Do you see oppression? Do you see liberation?
How about I show you what I want you to see?
The day that I decided to wear my scarf, was the day I accepted I was a feminist. Now you must be asking yourself "How could that be?" or "Isn't the hijab the universal symbol of oppression?"
Wikipedia defines Feminism as:
...a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment.
I am of South Asian decent; I came to Canada at the age of seven. Before coming to Canada, though I may have been young I was still able to understand and feel the intense struggle of women in a country that didn't allow women to flourish to their full potential. I understood that my move to Canada would be towards freedom and independence. I took my freedom very seriously. I made sure I did what boys did in school. I fought with my family to have equal freedom and rights as the male counterparts in my family. I won some battles, but lost a lot too. I was sheltered, and made to believe that there was some things men could do that a woman just couldn't. I tried to defy that with every fibre of my being. Because I believed women could do everything and it was men who were limited.
As I became a teenager, I struggled with trying to fit in, because though I was a little feminist at heart, I was still a girl. I had the desire to be pretty, a desire to be liked for my looks. I tried very hard for many years, but I always wondered why girls had to wear less clothing to be attractive while men looked their finest in a three piece suit.
My journey as a feminist eventually took me to explore my faith. Negative media helped me look for answers for the Muslim woman dilemma. Was a simple piece of cloth a symbol of oppression? I found that women were mistreated all over the world, scarf or no scarf. I did a lot of research and found that the veil in Islam was encouraged to elevate women to a symbol of respect. I was fascinated by that, because I found as a teen, self-respect was something a lot of girls struggled with. Being raised around a lot of boys and having mostly male friends I recognized that I didn't want to be objectified as sexual object.
So at 16, I began my journey to covering my body. I was afraid of what people would think. But I realized, the world would judged me no matter what I did, so I better do what I feel is right. And I felt very strongly about what I believed in. I believed, a man should respect me for my mind. I believed that inner beauty should be showcased because outer beauty would fade.
Women's bodies are used as a canvas for advertising. The machine that is marketing and the men behind it use their creative paintbrush to objectify and sexualize women. I chose to take back the paintbrush. The irony is that one of my favourite ads was by Dove, I loved their "Evolution of Beauty" video.
Contrary to what most people think, I had to fight my family to wear hijab. They were completely against it. I still get asked if I really need to wear it. Do I waver and question my commitment sometimes? Yes I do. Just as a person who may question their commitment to their marriage. You can call it long-term buyer's remorse -- just kidding. But seriously sometimes it's hard, but majority of the time I am extremely comfortable with my decision to wear the hijab.
My feminism still remains while I wear the hijab, because for me it was the greatest symbol of choice. The expression "she wears the pants in the house," was changed by my husband to, "She wears the hijab in the house." In our home hijab is a symbol of power and respect. My 16-year-old feminist self would be proud of me for sticking to my guns. She would be proud for never giving in to peer pressure, media pressure, and social pressure. My body is my own; I can do to it whatever I please.
To get a better understanding of hijab, I leave you with the words of Naomi Wolf, a feminist;
"It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channeling"
Amber - @amberzcorner
Originally posted on www.fatekeep.com
Follow Amber Rehman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amberzcorner | <urn:uuid:cc3da75f-7ed4-4b71-9443-10e7725eaa71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/amber-rehman/feminism-hijab-canada_b_2808850.html?ir=Canada%20Alberta | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987544 | 971 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Laura Klein of OrganicAuthority and does NOT necessarily represent the opinions of DiseaseProof or Dr. Fuhrman.
Ok, I’m addicted to organic foods and am a self proclaimed organic foodie! I guess you could say I’m a big fan of organic everything, especially organic food. That's why I founded my own website!
As I studied to be a professionally trained chef in culinary school, it was the tasty flavor of organic foods that got me hooked on the organic movement. Before culinary school, I could have cared less about organic foods and “green” what? I simply couldn’t believe how much better organic foods tasted when compared to the other normal stuff.
As a chef-in-training, all I cared about was what produced the best tasting food products. And what I discovered was the critical secret behind high-end chefs and five-star restaurants. Organic food! You can have all the culinary training in the world, but if you start with low quality ingredients, you get a low quality result.
I also discovered that organic foods are simply more nutritious and a powerful healing tool for the human body. I look at organic food as the most delicious type of preventive medicine available to us! But don’t just take it from me. Other vetted resources agree that organic food is nutrient-rich and fantastic for your health.
In a study published in March 2008 by The Organic Center, scientific evidence settled the lingering question. Are organic foods really more nutritious? And the answer is a resounding YES! Consider the following:
- Organic plant-based foods (fruits, vegetables, grains) contain higher levels of eight of 11 nutrients studied, including significantly greater concentrations of health-promoting polyphenols and antioxidants.
- Organically grown plant-based foods are 25% more nutrient dense, on average, than their conventional food counterparts. That means they deliver more essential nutrients per serving or calorie consumed than conventionally-grown foods.
- Nutrients present in organic foods are “in a more biologically active form,” according to Neal Davies, a professor at Washington State University (WSU) and a co-author of the center’s report. A+ for Organic Farming!
In another recent study entitled “Living Soil, Food Quality, and the Future of Food", presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), several inspiring conclusions were offered about the health benefits of organic farming and its nutritional impact in food:
- Higher levels of fertilizer negatively impact the density of certain nutrients in harvested foodstuffs, which is called the "dilution [of nutrients] effect." Organic farming can, under some circumstances, delay the onset of the "dilution effect."
- Compared to typical conventional farms, the nitrogen cycle on organic farms is rooted in substantially more complex biological processes and soil-plant interactions; for this reason, organic farming offers great promise in consistently producing nutrient-enriched foods.
Clearly, organic food equals healthier food. It’s that simple. And that tasty too!
Image credit: theshuttersounds | <urn:uuid:ce36f34e-6942-457e-8814-ed7492a12db5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-discover-the-delicious-health-benefits-of-organic-food.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94371 | 658 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Challenging the Mind
The desire to live up to our highest inner potential is probably the single most motivating force behind transformation of every kind; and transformation was what Yogi Bhajan was all about. From the first Kundalini Yoga class, to the most recent Summer Solstice, every part of the knowledge and technology he shared with us was for sole purpose of self-transformation.
Yoga, breathing, meditation, mantra, prayer – every physical and mental activity done with the focus on the Infinite is a transformative process of self-growth, because each activity challenges the mind. When the mind is challenged for its subconscious beliefs, we grow. “I can’t do that exercise for 31 minutes, no way!,” the mind says, and yet by practicing it, we prove the mind wrong. The monkey-mind jabbers on while we try to sit still and meditate, and we think, “Will this never end?,” but, of course, with time and practice, even the worst and most active monkey-mind will quiet itself, until the rushing silence of Infinity whispers in our ears. We sometimes feel fear in changing any part of our life where we feel a sense of routine and complacency, but there are times when it is right to upset the apple cart, to take a risk, and to shift ourselves into a challenge that will inevitably lead to self-transformation and higher consciousness.
Giving is another such opportunity for transformation. The mind says, “I can’t afford it,” or “There’s no way I can give,” and yet the principle of prosperity is to give, so that the vacuum will be filled. To give in faith, is to receive ten-fold. Challenge the mind by just starting. At our course during Summer solstice, one woman shared her story of how after 9-11-2001 her business was having trouble thriving, and she commanded herself to give anyway. She started a tithing program with just $25 a month and simply trusted. No matter what her mind said, she persevered and the result? Her business is booming!
This could be anyone’s story; it could be your story, by taking the leap. Initiate a tithing program and nurture it with your willingness to persevere, your faith, and your desire for transformation. As your prosperity increases, challenge yourself again by stretching and increasing your contributions bit by bit. We were given so many valuable tools to transform ourselves, such an incredible gift and opportunity to grow. All we need to do is participate. “Life is a flow of love, only your participation is required.” | <urn:uuid:5cc0a659-fed4-4972-bdc0-be8b53da3c73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dasvandh.org/articles/challenging-mind | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958645 | 552 | 1.710938 | 2 |
It’s the most overused cliché in election politics: It’ll all come down to turnout. A declaration made so often that it feels like it’s lost all meaning. I hate saying it. I hated typing it just now. The aphorism was true in 2008, too, but the difference this year is that at the moment Mitt Romney is in a much better position than John McCain four years ago.
There are nine current national polls out — Romney leads in five of them, they are tied in one, and Obama leads in the other three. If you look at the following picture of Romney’s lead compared to the advantage of Democrats in the polling sample, it paints a pretty simple picture (numbers from October 30, but they are mostly unchanged):
Turnout will indeed decide the election, but the playing field is very different than it was in 2008. Obama won the 2008 election by 7.2 points, based in large part to the incredible turnout by Democrats, a wave-like D+7 advantage (39–32). But he also won independents by 8 points, padding his lead (especially helpful because the Republican candidate has pulled more Democratic votes in the past two elections than vice versa).
This year Romney is in a great position to win independents, and could possibly win them by a larger margin than Obama did in 2008. If that were to happen, Obama would need to maintain close to 2008′s level of Democratic turnout to still win the popular vote — based on the above national polls, Obama would need to have a Democratic turnout advantage of five points to win the popular vote. Outside of 2008, that has not happened since the midterm elections of 1986. If that’s not enough, Gallup’s and Rasmussen’s party-ID surveys over the last month suggest that it will be Republicans who have stronger turnout this year. If that were to happen, there is no chance Romney loses the election, barring a massive swing among independents in the final week.
So as much as I hate to repeat it, this election will come down to turnout. There is thus no time for complacency among Republicans, because every vote is going to matter for Romney to combat what will likely be a formidable get-out-the-vote effort by Team Obama. Furthermore, for Romney to win the Electoral College safely, he would likely need a win by two points or more in the popular vote. Anything below that will leave some battleground states too close for comfort.
With one week to go, things are looking better for Romney than at any other point in this entire campaign. His path to victory is through an electorate that looks like any of the last six presidential elections except 2008, while Obama has to find a way to recreate the magic that propelled him to victory four years ago. While nothing is certain next Tuesday, Romney is in a strong position to finish a comeback that no one thought possible a month ago. If that happens, the size of Romney’s victory could be the biggest surprise of all. | <urn:uuid:a68559e7-819a-4841-8660-3b10481b0468> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nationalreview.com/corner/332170/turnout-game-josh-jordan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97462 | 620 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Give Bad Breath the Brush-Off
It happens to the best of us. At one time or another, we suffer from bad breath, also called halitosis. While it's rarely a sign of a major medical problem, bad breath can cause embarrassment, low self-esteem and even social isolation.
The American Dental Association (ADA) says most bad breath starts in the mouth, home to millions of bacteria that live mainly at the back of the tongue. When these microbes process debris from food, saliva, postnasal drip and other sources, the result is a foul-smelling sulfur compound.
Failing to brush and floss regularly is the primary reason for bad breath. Brushing and flossing at least once a day will help prevent tooth decay. Brushing more frequently than that may help keep breath fresher. The tongue should be brushed, too, since many bacteria collect there.
Bacteria and gum disease
Bits of food left in your mouth from poor dental hygiene encourage bacteria to grow. These bacteria can cause gum disease. Visit your dentist every six months or as directed for routine cleaning and to rule out or treat gum disease. Other illnesses can cause bad breath, too, including ailments of the esophagus and stomach.
Certain foods such as garlic and onions can cause bad breath, as can certain highly spiced foods such as pastrami and kimchee. Alcoholic beverages can cause bad breath. Using tobacco products also causes bad breath.
Another bad-breath culprit is a dry mouth. Saliva aids digestion and helps wash away excess food and bacteria. Without enough saliva, a smelly mouth can get smellier. Stress, alcohol, tobacco, breathing through the mouth, some medications (for example, many anti-depressants) and not drinking enough water can cause or worsen dry mouth.
If your mouth is dry, the ADA says, your dentist can recommend over-the-counter saliva substitutes. While some folks use mouthwash, gum or mints to help a dry mouth -- or bad breath, in general -- most of these products just mask the odor for a while and do little to solve the problem.
It is important to know that trying to fight bad breath with gum or mints can greatly increase the risk for getting tooth decay, unless "sugar-free" chewing gums and/or mints are used. Keep in mind, however, that many of these products are sugar-free only in the sense that they don't contain refined sugar, the kind that causes tooth decay. Many products typically contain complex sugars, for example, fructose, which has about the same amount of calories as sucrose-containing ordinary gums and mints. So, if you use sugar-free gum and mints, you could still be consuming the same calories, even as you significantly lower your risk for tooth decay. An alternative is to use gums and mints that contain artificial sweeteners, which are essentially non-caloric.
The best remedy is to maintain a clean mouth through careful brushing and flossing.
What to do
How to minimize bad breath:
1. Brush your teeth and tongue, and floss regularly, especially after meals.
2. Drink plenty of water to keep your mouth from getting dry.
3. Avoid tobacco, which tends to dry the mouth and produce a foul smell.
4. Visit your dentist every six months or as directed for cleaning.
5. When using a mouthwash, keep it in your mouth for 30 seconds for it to be most effective. However, if the mouthwash contains alcohol, it could irritate the tissues if held in the mouth too long.
6. If you have dentures or braces, follow your dentist's instructions on how to keep them clean. | <urn:uuid:0778acc4-ee5b-43cd-aa2f-bfcabec8c430> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/Encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=2492 | 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 | 0.940098 | 775 | 3.296875 | 3 |
DLTK's Crafts for Kids
LEARNING WITH YOUR CHILDREN - part 3
Parents and caregivers can make a significant contribution to a child's
progress in reading by listening to and reading with them on a regular
basis. Home reading reinforces important aspects of the school reading
program and promotes and interest in reading for pleasure. It also offers
an opportunity to spend time with the children!
Ten Keys to Reading with Children
- Talk about the book first
- What do you think the book will be about?
- Talk about the author and the illustrator and what their roles are.
- Model reading with the child
- Point to the words as you read, but keep your reading smooth.
- Show reading beginning on the left side of the page (point!)
- Talk about challenging words and how they might figure them out
(use pictures on the page, context and other clues)
- Regardless of the child's age, have them chime in when they know the words
Say the first couple of words slowly to clue them in that it's time for
a repetitive phrase, then pause and look at them to finish the phrase (then
- Read the book with your child after you have read it to them
Have your child use the picture clues to figure out words.
Allow your child to read the book over and over if they wish...
repetition is part of a child's learning process
Memorization is a legitimate and important progression in the reading
process... Don't belittle them by saying, "you didn't really read that,
you just remembered it.
- Look at the book cover. Imagine together what the book
might be about. Talk about the pictures and the story as you
Ask questions like:
- I wonder what this story will be about?
- I wonder what will happen next?
- How does that person feel?
- Could this happen in real life?
- What would you do if that happened to you?
- Read Together
The adult and the child both read the words in unison. When you
come to a word that your child knows, wait and let the child read it or read
it softly with them. Sometimes your voice will be loud, sometimes you
will fade to a whisper as your child reads confidently.
- Echo Reading
Read one sentence, putting your finger under each word. Then the
child reads that same sentence.
- Word Hunts
Choose a word that is repeated many times in the book. Print that
word on a card and hunt for it together.
- Sounding Out:
Have your child sound out the words that he is ready for. Show
your child how to do this. Don't struggle though... keep the story
moving or the child will become bored and frustrated. Don't get stuck
on a single word!
Pay attention to the mood the author is trying to set and show proper
emotions. If you look and sound bored, your child is not going to get
the impression from you that reading is fun!
Point out drawings that are funny, silly, ugly, messy or beautiful.
Talk about why the illustrator made the drawings that way. Talk about
how it might make the feeling of the story different if the drawings were
done differently (what if Spot were a big drooling bulldog with sharp
Get scared when it's scary, giggle when it's funny, get sad when it's
sad. Talk about how the story is making you feel. Ask how it's
making your child feel.
We want to encourage fluency and understanding of the message (after all, the
point of reading is to understand the message!). Don't worry if meaningful
substitutions are made - e.g. "kitty" for
"kitten". After reading, ask questions to encourage your
child to verbalize about what he has been doing (ex: how did you
know that word is cat? Children might respond by saying there is a picture
of a cat on the page and/or that the word starts with the letter C)
Tips for an enjoyable reading experience:
- Be aware of your child's mood... notice when they begin to tire or become
- Set aside a special reading time for home reading everyday (but at the
same time, be flexible enough that you can choose to skip it a day if they
are bored or you can choose to read extra if they are really excited about a
- Try to avoid times when your child would rather be doing something else
(in the middle of their favorite TV show, or when all the other kid on the
block are outside your window riding their bikes)
- Make the reading time as pleasurable as possible so that your child
develops warm feelings for books and readings (snuggle with your child, wear
cozy clothes, have a nice drink like hot chocolate, sit near a sunny window,
- Have the child sit close beside you or on your lap.
Ideas you can use to expand on the book reading
Some children are ready to go beyond reading the book. These ideas are recommended for those children. | <urn:uuid:4af0e647-97b2-4cd7-ac65-e82054e0ee63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dltk-kids.com/articles/learning3.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948584 | 1,077 | 4.21875 | 4 |
The average homeowner in the city of San Antonio is expected to pay an additional $4.93 on their monthly water bills if the city approves the new net rate increase.
San Antonio Water System announced a net rate increase of 9.9 percent is needed for water bills in 2013 to meet the basic needs of its sewer system.
SAWS said the net rate is also necessary to reduce sanitary sewer overflows and bring new water supplies to the city.
Even with this increase, SAWS said the city's rates would remain among the lowest in Texas.
Since the announcement of the new rate, the department has provided a website that allows residents to calculate how much their bills will increase. | <urn:uuid:3bc242f0-deca-4e62-8212-23558ca9d468> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksat.com/news/Water-bills-expected-to-increase-for-SAWS-users/-/478452/18043936/-/13vtx41z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966789 | 141 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Any device connected to the internet such as a computer, smartphone or tablet could soon have its web history logged and retained for up to two years by telecommunications companies for law enforcement purposes under reforms being proposed by the Gillard government.
Attorney-General Nicola Roxon announced last Friday that the federal government would review national security legislation, part of which concerns preserving telecommunications data.
Roxon said she had asked the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to consider the potential reforms through public hearings and emphasised that referring them to the committee was the beginning of the review process, adding that the government would "be seeking diverse views" before determining which reforms to pursue.
A terms of reference for the committee is yet to be released, but a draft copy circulating around parliament which Fairfax, publisher of IT Pro, has seen indicates that the committee will be asked to look at a controversial data retention proposal for telcos. A spokesman for Nicola Roxon said it would be released when it was finalised by the committee.
The spokesman added that it was important to note that the government had "made no decisions" about data retention and said many of IT Pro's questions regarding what exactly telcos would need to potentially log were up "for consideration" of the committee in the first instance, not the government.
The draft terms of reference states the committee will be tasked with looking at a tailored data retention period "for up to 2 years for parts of a data set". It doesn't define what the data set will consist of but some fear it will include any data telcos can log and store on customers, including their web browsing history.
Plans to force telcos like Telstra and Optus to log and retain the internet activities of every internet connection - regardless of whether a customer has been suspected of any wrongdoing - were first revealed in June 2010 when telco industry sources disclosed that they were involved in secret discussions with government officials.
A data retention scheme already exists in the European Union and has been adopted by certain member states. In Romania and the Czech Republic, however, it was ruled to be unconstitutional while in Germany a court ordered the records be deleted.
Where internet access is concerned, telcos in European Union member states must retain for a period of between six months and 2 years the necessary data as specified in the Data Retention Directive. The directive specifies the categories of data to be retained, namely data necessary for identifying:
(a) the source of a communication;
(b) the destination of a communication;
(c) the date, time and duration of a communication;
(d) the type of a communication;
(e) users' communication equipment or what purports to be their equipment; and
(f) the location of mobile communication equipment.
The EU directive doesn't indicate that telcos store the content of a communication but telco sources in Australia said in 2010 that the data that they were being asked to log and keep for law enforcement did include web browsing history, a claim which was rejected by the spokesman for the then Attorney-General, Robert McClelland.
Telco sources fired back, with one of them saying the spokesman's claims were "not accurate". Another said the spokesman was being "a bit cute" to say web browsing history wasn't included.
Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said on Friday that he didn't support the data retention proposal and believed it was "premised on the unjustified paranoia that all Australians are potential criminal suspects". He believes its introduction would be based on "an ambit claim for surveillance overkill".
In a telephone interview yesterday, he said the data retention proposal would be similar to government proposing Australia Post start opening every single envelope and item that is transacted through the postal network, making a quick photocopy, and sticking it in a filing cabinet "just in case you turned out to be a terrorist down the track".
"Now that is effectively what is being proposed over much more intimate and wide-raging sets of data than what the postal service carries," Ludlam said.
Telstra said it did not generally comment on law enforcement and national security issues but referred IT Pro to a submission it supported to an inquiry by the Communications Alliance on data retention.
That inquiry came about in 2010 when Senator Ludlam raised his concerns in parliament regarding data retention and wanted the government to answer questions about it publicly.
The Communications Alliance submission said that any capture and storage of data generated by customers using a telecommunications service raised "issues of data access, protection and privacy".
It added that storing such data became "complex and difficult" when the storage became "mandated by government on every citizen of Australia on a 'just in case' basis".
The exact details of the web browsing data the government was proposing ISPs collect is contained in a document that was released under freedom of information laws in 2010.
But from the highly censored document released (of which about 90 per cent was blacked out with a permanent marker) it was impossible to know how far the government was planning to take the policy.
The idea behind making telcos keep customer data - which they wouldn't normally store as they have no use for it - is believed to have been primarily driven by law enforcement. The Australian Federal Police, for example, has been pressuring the government to implement the data retention scheme and has made it clear that it wants web searches and history stored by telcos.
"It is important that we have the ability to retain the data," AFP assistant commissioner and national manager of high tech crime operations Neil Gaughan was quoted to have told reporters in Sydney in 2010. "We don't want to see what people are watching on TV, we want to see what people are looking at on the internet."
The AFP said in a statement today that as the data retention proposal was a policy currently under consideration by federal government, it would not be appropriate to comment. | <urn:uuid:8637edeb-593c-46ec-8d5f-fb788f5a4c1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sexparty.org.au/Aust-News-Feed/web-snooping-plan-a-step-closer-to-reality.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972495 | 1,201 | 2 | 2 |
Wed, 12/31/1997 – Cannabis Hemp really can provide all the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing and medicine. It has been said that, “anything made from a hydrocarbon can be made from a carbohydrate.”
Hemp is the cousin of marijuana. They are from the same plant – Cannabis sativa L. There are over 400 strains of Cannabis Hemp bred for various uses. The term, “Hemp” refers to the industrial use of the stalk and seed. “Cannabis”, or “marijuana”, refers to the smoking of the flowers. Intoxication requires high levels of THC TetraHydroCannabinol. Industrial hemp contains only .3%-1.5% THC. By contrast, cannabis contains 5%-10% or more THC.
The plant itself is easy to grow in temperate climates, and requires good soil, fertilizer and water, but no pesticides nor herbicides. A hemp crop is usually harvested in 120 days after reaching a height of 10-15 feet. At that point one can make it into whatever suits their needs.
The hempseed is the only source of food from the hemp plant. It is not really a seed, but an achene- a nut covered with a hard shell. Hempseed is used for people and animal food, medicinal preparations, and industrial use.
The whole seed contains roughly 25% protein, 30% carbohydrates, 15% insoluble fiber, carotene, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, iron and zinc, as well as vitamins E, C, B1, B2, B3, B6. Hempseed is one of the best sources of Essential Fatty Acids with a perfect 3:1 ratio of Omega-3 linolenic Acid, and Omega-6 linoleic Acid, good for strengthening the immune system. It is also a good source of Gamma linoleic Acid (GLA) which is otherwise available only from specialty oils like evening primrose oil or borage oils. Whole seeds are made into: snack bars, cookies, burgers and porridge, or they may be roasted and consumed alone or in a trail mix. Wild and domestic birds love hempseeds.
Hempseed is 30% oil, and is one of lowest in saturated fats making it good for lowering cholesterol levels and strengthening cardiovascular systems. The oil has a pleasantly nutty flavor. Among the foods made with hempseed oil are: sauces, butter, condiments and pesto.
Processing of hempseed oil starts with drying the seeds to prevent sprouting. Hempseeds imported to the United States or Canada must be steam sterilized at 180F for 15 minutes to prevent further sprouting. The seeds are then pressed and bottled immediately under oxygen-free conditions. hempseed oil is very fragile, is not suitable for cooking, and must be kept refrigerated in dark, air tight containers.
Seed Meal and Cake
The meat of the seed is also highly nutritious and versatile as a seed “meal” and may be made into hemp milk and cheese, ice cream, and burgers. Left over from pressing the oil is press “cake” – high in amino acids and edistin protein. It can be crushed for animal feed or pulverized for flour to make breads, pastas, and cookies.
Throughout history, hemp has provided a nourishing food supply to many cultures around the world. In Asia, roasted hempseed is eaten as a snack, like popcorn. In Russia, hemp butter was used as a condiment by the peasants. In Poland, seeds are used for holiday sweets. Hempseed was eaten by Australians during two famines in the nineteenth century. The most famous hempseed consumer was Buddha himself, who ate them during his fast of enlightenment.
Other nonfood uses for hempseed oil are: lamp lighting, printing, lubrication, and household detergents, stain removers, varnishes, resins and paints. In this area, hempseed oil is similar to linseed oil.
One of the most valuable parts of the hemp plant is the fiber, commonly referred to as “bast,” meaning that it grows as a stalk from the ground. Other fibers such as sisal, manila hemp and jute are mistakenly referred to as, hemp, yet only Cannabis sativa is considered “true hemp.” Among the characteristics of hemp fiber are its superior strength and durability, and its stunning resistance to rot, attributes that made hemp integral to the shipping industry. The strong, woody bast fiber is extracted from the stalk by
a process known as decortication. Hemp fiber contains a low amount of lignin, the organic glue that binds plant cells, which allows for environmentally friendly bleaching without the use of chlorine. In composite form, hemp is twice as strong as wood. All products made with hemp fiber are biodegradable.
Extracted from the bark of the stalk, this type of fiber is called “long” because it
stretches the entire length of the plant. The length of the fiber enhances the strength and durability of the finished goods. Hemp can grow to 15 feet or more, making it excellent for textile production. Hemp is most similar to flax, the fiber of linen products. By contrast, cotton fibers are approximately 1-2 mm in length and are prone to faster wear. Hemp fiber also has insulative qualities that allow clothing wearers to stay cool in summer and warm in the winter. Long hemp fiber is used in twine, cordage, textiles, paper, webbing and household goods.
The short fibers, or “tow,” are the secondary hemp fibers .. While not as strong as the long fibers, the tow is still superior to many other fibers. Tow is extracted from the long fibers during a process called “hackling,” a method of combing and separating the fiber from hurd. Short fibers are used to make textiles, non-woven matting, paper, caulking, auto bodies, building materials and household goods.
Also known as shives, the hurd is the woody material found in the center of the hemp stalk. The hurd is rich in cellulose, a carbohydrate that can be made into paper, packaging and building materials, as well as plastic composites for making skate boards and auto bodies.
As long ago as 450 BC the Scythians and Thracians made hemp linens. The Chinese first used hemp for paper making in 100 AD. Hempen sails, caulking and rigging launched a thousand ships during the Age of Discovery in the 15th Century. Drafts of the American Declaration of Independence were printed on rag papers that undoubtedly contained hemp. The USDA calculated in 1914 that hemp hurds could make four times as much paper per acre as trees.
Hemp biomass as a source of fuel is the most under exploited, yet potentially the biggest industrial use of the plant. Hemp stalks are rich in fiber and cellulose with potential for use in the generation of energy. The hemp stalk can be converted to a charcoal-like substance through a process called pyrolysis, and used for power generation and to produce industrial feed stocks. Auto giant Henry Ford was a pioneer in the pyrolysis process, and operated a biomass pyrolytic plant at Iron Mountain in northern Michigan.
Hemp as an auto fuel is another potential use. Almost any biomass material can be converted to create methanol or ethanol, and these fuels burn cleanly with less carbon monoxide and higher octane than fossil fuels. In fact, the diesel engine was invented to burn fuel from agriculture waste yet ended up burning unrefined petroleum. Hempseed oil can be refined to produce a type of hemp gasoline.
The medicinal use of cannabis hemp is only now being understood and applied in spite of the fact that the herb has been a folk remedy for thousands of years.
The consumption of high- THC cannabis flowers, or buds, through smoking or eating is used to treat a number of ailments:
* Nausea- for cancer patients while undergoing chemotherapy and AIDS patients, smoking cannabis is preferred over taking THC in pill form because it acts faster and patients are able to dose themselves more accurately.
* Intraocular pressure- for glaucoma suffers, cannabis relieves the pressure in their eyes that leads to blindness.
* Seizures- the cannabidiol in cannabis improves the condition of grand mal and partial seizure sufferers and allows them to reduce or dispense with conventional medications.
* Pain- for sufferers of migraine headaches, post-menstrual cramps, labor pains, multiple sclerosis, and cerebral palsy, cannabis reduces muscle spasms and tremors and allows them to avoid conventional medications with serious side-effects.
* Depression- for patients who do not respond to or who want to avoid the side-effects of other medications.
* Asthma- cannabis smoke dilates the bronchial passages.
Historically, Indian doctors have used bhang (a preparation of cannabis, honey and milk) for the treatment of all kinds of ailments. In the mid-19th century, Or. William O’Shaughnessy helped introduce cannabis, or bhang, to western culture. This spawned a whole slew of over-the-counter cannabis medications marketed by Squibb, Parke-Davis, and Eli lilly. Queen Victoria herself used cannabis medicine for menstrual cramps.
One of the most enduring characteristics of cannabis as medicine is its inherent lack of toxicity. There has never been a recorded case of death from cannabis overdose in the thousands of years it has been used by mankind.
Seed and Seed Oil
Hemp has been a part of the Chinese pharmacopoeia for the past 4,000 years. Ancient Chinese folk remedies call for hempseed use to improve the “chi” or stamina of the body; to cure neurologic impairment due to stroke, urinary disorders, and blood deficiency.
Externally, hempseed preparations promote the healing of sores and dry skin. Traditional hemp oil formulas were applied topically to treat abscesses, boils, pimples and swellings. Currently marketed products include lip balm, moisturizers, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, salves, perfumes, liniments. These hempseed oil mixtures do the same for the skin and hair that the oil does for the diet when taken internally. Full article here. | <urn:uuid:ca005155-d1f3-4d95-b9ab-1585e78ac856> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hempnewstv.wordpress.com/1997/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946803 | 2,169 | 2.8125 | 3 |
2012-02-09 / Editorials
Debit cards: blessing and curse
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being robbed.
It’s a blend of anger, disbelief, confusion, anxiety and fear. But mostly anger.
Those unfortunate enough to experience the theft of their personal property—whether through a home burglary or a pickpocket—will no longer be as trusting of society.
Even the eternal optimist is forced to wonder why there are those among us who find it okay to profit at the expense of others. Yet they’re out there, everywhere, and they have more tools than ever to do their shameful thievery.
Before the Digital Age it actually required some work to be a thief; today, millions of dollars can disappear in a fraction of a second with nothing more than the click of a button. But it isn’t only the Internet that’s being used to touch the accounts we thought were untouchable—it’s our beloved debit cards.
Praised for the access they give customers to their money, socalled check cards also give thieves access to bank accounts—if they’re willing to go to the trouble of stealing a target’s information and PIN.
Apparently some people are.
Last week, two men were arrested and accused of wiring a Chase ATM vestibule on Moorpark Road so they could capture customers’ account information using a “skimming” device and record the customers entering their PINs (see related story on page 3).
If they hadn’t been stopped, the two men would have had access to more than 90 bank accounts and possibly thousands of dollars, police said.
In 2008 banks lost a record $788 million from debit-card fraud, according to the latest estimates from the American Bankers Association, due mostly to stolen and counterfeit debit cards. That number has undoubtedly increased as we begin 2012.
So it’s time for card users to stop treating their debit cards like their cellphones and pulling them out every chance they get.
It also means taking those extra precautions to protect your information, even at the risk of seeming paranoid. Try covering your hand when you’re entering your PIN (even at the ATM), for example. The alleged criminals in the T.O. case didn’t look over anyone’s shoulders; they attached a tiny camera directly to the cash dispenser.
To learn more about protecting your debit card information, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm. | <urn:uuid:0c7fb341-5c65-47d7-b5cb-ab5438d1de02> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toacorn.com/news/2012-02-09/Editorials/Debit_cards_blessing_and_curse.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940835 | 552 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Cavapoo Breed Information
Breed Group: Not AKC Recognized
Weight: 6-20 lbs
Height: 11-15 inches
Color(s): Red, apricot, black, cream, white, gray; may be patterned or blended.
The Cavapoo, also known as the Cavadoodle, is created by the crossing of two breeds: Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Poodle. They are often referred to as "designer dogs" and have become popular family companions.
One of the most distinctive features of the Cavapoo are the long ears. They are compact, small to medium in size, and possess a round, expressive face. They are typically well-proportioned, agile, and sturdy.
The Cavapoo is affectionate, loyal, and friendly. They are good-natured, playful, and social. They do best with older, considerate children. They do well with dogs and non-canine pets. Cavapoo's will bark to announce visitors and out of the ordinary sounds. They are very family oriented and do not do well if ignored or left alone for extended periods of time.
Depending on coat type, the Cavapoo requires regular brushing to prevent matting and tangling or professional clipping. It is important to keep the ears clean and the nails trimmed. They may be prone to such health issues as hip dysplasia, eye disease, luxating patella, PRA, skin problems, and epilepsy.
The coat of the Cavapoo may be curly or soft, silky, and slightly wavy.
Early socialization and obedience are recommended. The Cavapoo may be difficult to housetrain. The crate training method works best. They will not respond to harsh or heavy-handed methods. Training must be done with firmness, fairness, patience, and consistency.
The Cavapoo is well suited to apartment living provided they are sufficiently exercised. They thrive on daily securely leashed walks, off-lead play in a securely fenced yard, and family play sessions.
If you are looking for Cavapoo puppies for sale from reputable Cavapoo breeders or to adopt Cavapoos from a Cavapoo rescue then make sure you understand as much about the dog breeds you are interested in as you can. Every puppy breed is different. Begin your research by reading the breed information about the Cavapoo puppy above. Search our dog breeds section to find Cavapoo puppies that make great pets.
Rate this Breed Information - Provided by Next Day Pets
4.1 out of 5 based on 9 ratings for the Cavapoo puppy breed profile. | <urn:uuid:f9b2664c-8373-4f56-aba5-929e502f23ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nextdaypets.com/Cavapoo.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950943 | 548 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Contaminated federal facilities like Department of Defense (DoD) military bases and Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear reactor, processing and research centers are complex sites that require extensive inter-agency coordination. The Federal Facilities Branch in Region 4 works closely with the states and other federal agencies to provide oversight, technical support, regulatory guidance, and assistance in the cleanup of the hazardous waste areas at federal facilities. A major portion of Superfund assistance at federal facilities focuses on assisting DoD and DOE with cleanups at their facilities on the National Priorities List (NPL). The Federal Facilities Branch 4 also provides support for cleanup activities at DoD installations which are slated for closure under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program.
The Federal Facilities Branch consists of three Federal Oversight Sections: North Carolina/South Carolina/Georgia; Kentucky/Tennessee; and Florida/Alabama/Mississippi. Each section is responsible for cleanup oversight activities at federal facilities in their assigned Region 4 states. Examples of key activities performed by each of these sections include:
- Initiation of technical overviews of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Corrective Action activities;
- Technical oversight of remedial investigation/feasibility studies and remedial design/actions at federal facility NPL sites;
- Negotiation of Interagency Agreements mandated under the Superfund law for federal facilities on the NPL list, integrating RCRA interim status requirements as appropriate;
- Overseeing the implementation of all activities under the Interagency Agreements;
- Participation in the Technical Review Committee and Restoration Advisory Meetings, and public participation activities to assure conformance with policy and guidance; and
- Participation in removal actions at facilities by review and consultation on Engineering Evaluations/Cost Analysis and Action Memoranda to integrate short term cleanup actions into an efficient long-term cleanup program | <urn:uuid:40c681c8-528a-45f7-b29e-db0aa6413cf0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.epa.gov/region4/superfund/programs/sitecleanup/fedfacs/federalfac.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917688 | 375 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Mountains and Hills in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray
The most prominent mountain on Deeside, with spectacular northern cliffs, it was climbed by Queen Victoria on a cold, wet,...
This conical hill to the north of Ballater offers excellent views over lower Aberdeenshire and the Howe of Cromar. It is...
Popular and much-loved by locals, the iconic Bennachie has several tops. The most conspicuous, the ‘Mither Tap’ has a...
This prominent dome shaped hill with forested lower slopes has an easy path to its summit with superb views in all...
This prominent hill, with its massive hill fort, offers superb views over the Aberdeenshire countryside. It is accessed...
Scotland’s most easterly Munro is an isolated peak rising out of the Mounth plateau. It can be reached from either Glen...
With its great granite tor this is one of the most distinctive and popular of Aberdeenshire’s lower hills. There is a...
|1||Lochnagar 1155m (3789ft)||Scotland, UK|
|2||Morven 872m (2861ft)||Scotland, UK|
|3||Bennachie 518m (1699ft)||Scotland, UK|
|4||Bin Hill of Cullen 331m (1086ft)||Scotland, UK|
|5||Tap o’ Noth 563m (1847ft)||Scotland, UK|
|6||Mount Keen 939m (3081ft)||Scotland, UK|
|7||Corryhabbie Hill 781m (2562ft)||Scotland, UK|
|8||Clachnaben 589m (1932ft)||Scotland, UK|
|9||Ben Rinnes 840m (2756ft)||Scotland, UK|
Click the map pins to view more information. | <urn:uuid:fe96a4d6-2178-4f46-9f93-a87a7195ab70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.welcometoscotland.com/things-to-do/attractions/mountains-hills/aberdeen-grampian | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902803 | 414 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Sail-World.com : Shackleton's legendary open boat voyage: the re-enactment
Shackleton's legendary open boat voyage: the re-enactment
Almost a hundred years ago Ernest Shackleton, leader of a 1916 sailing expedition to Antarctica, whose sailing vessel was crushed by the ice and the crew had made their way to Elephant Island, made one of the most inspirational journeys by sailing boat in the history of the world to rescue his crew.
In January next year Tim Jarvis, environmental scientist, adventurer and author as well as sailor, with five crew, will attempt to recreate the mammoth sail from Elephant Island to South Georgia in an open boat to ask for the rescue of his men left behind on Elephant Island.
Tim Jarvis AM - .. .
The 22.d’ (6.9m) replica vessel, The Alexandra Shackleton, named for Sir Ernest’s granddaughter and patron of the Shackleton Epic was launched in Weymouth, UK on 19 March this year. The six men, including Jarvis, will depart from Elephant Island in January to attempt the voyage and the mountain crossing of South Georgia in tribute to Shackleton, a feat that has never been successfully recreated.
'This expedition marks the centenary of Shackleton’s voyage and honours his legacy. The message of individuals putting differences aside and working collectively to overcome insurmountable problems has continuing resonance today, whether tackling climate change or other global issues,' Tim Jarvis, environmental scientist, said.
James Caird - the original - .. .
The expedition will use 1916 technology, food and equipment to recreate Shackleton’s legendary journey, which has
never been successfully repeated. The only concession to the use of period equipment will be the storage of modern
emergency equipment on board. A support vessel similar to Shackleton’s Endurance will follow the voyage and the
expedition will be filmed for a documentary as part of the Shackleton centenary activities.
Sail training vessel TS Pelican has been selected as the support vessel for the re-enactment.
TS Pelican of London - to act as support vessel - .. .
Tim Jarvis said that he was extremely pleased that TS Pelican would form part of the historic recreation event:
'TS Pelican is almost identical in size to The Endurance and the ship will provide exceptional communications, safety and filming platform for the Shackleton Epic expedition. We envisage that TS Pelican will ‘shadow’ our boat, a replica of the James Caird, as we sail from Elephant Island to South Georgia in January next year.'
'It is the perfect sail training vessel to form part of the expedition and its presence in the Southern Ocean will provide a level of security that Shackleton and his men would have welcomed.'
Sponsors and supporters:
The Shackleton Epic has been supported to date by global engineering and environment firm, Arup, Aurora Expeditions, James Caird Asset Management, Dean and Reddyhoff Marinas and other donors.
The Shackleton Epic aims to generate awareness of the importance of preserving Antarctica’s marine environment. The crew will film the ice melt in the region and Jarvis, who works with Arup Australasia, will compare climactic conditions faced by his crew with those Shackleton and his men experienced 100 years ago.
'Whereas Shackleton’s goal was to save his men from Antarctica, we now find ourselves trying to save Antarctica from man - a very unfortunate irony,' Jarvis said.
About Tim Jarvis:
Cast in the mould of an explorer from the heroic age, Jarvis possesses an extraordinary adventure and leadership
resume. In 2007 he completed a re-enactment of Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1912 trek across Antarctica, using the same
clothing, equipment and starvation rations to test the theory of whether Mawson had to cannibalise his fallen colleague
to survive. Among other achievements Jarvis also holds records for the fastest unsupported journey to the South Pole
and the longest unsupported journey in Antarctica in 1999. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 for services to conservation and the environment and as an explorer.
by Sail-World Cruising
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Customised news feeds -Marine Industry companies, Clubs and Associations have their own customised version of our news feed on their website. | <urn:uuid:25499344-e64a-4d77-870c-43388d6dbd98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sail-world.com/USA/Shackletons-legendary-open-boat-voyage%3A-the-re-enactment/97694 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9362 | 1,126 | 2.0625 | 2 |
One Million New Books In School Libraries
McGuinty Government Investing In Literacy, Supporting Ontario Businesses
Ministry of Education
Elementary students started the school year with more than one million new books in school libraries, and there are more on the way.
School libraries play an important role in encouraging young students to develop strong literacy skills and a love of reading. It is essential that those libraries have up-to-date collections for all students.
Over one million library books were delivered to schools this summer, while about 700,000 more are expected before the end of this school year.
Last January, the government selected 72 Ontario-based vendors, and negotiated discounts up to 50 per cent for school boards. To date, this has saved boards about $3 million and allowed them to purchase 175,000 more books. More savings and additional books are expected during the school year.
- School boards received an initial investment of $15 million in February and an additional $10 million in May, for a total investment of $25 million to purchase library books.
- Ninety-nine per cent of the initial investment went to businesses in 37 Ontario cities.
- Over 40,000 additional Grade 3, 6 and 9 students are meeting or exceeding the provincial standard in reading, writing and math, compared to six years ago.
Strong literacy skills are crucial for future success. By ensuring that our elementary school libraries are stocked with up-to-date and affordable books and resources, we're giving young students more tools to succeed."
We knew that our library needed updating to reflect new curriculum needs and materials for our diverse school community. This funding provides valuable resources for students and for teachers to continue delivering effective instruction. Thanks to the significant discounts, we received more value for our money. Our students are definitely benefiting from a more current and exciting library collection."
As an independent company, the business that this funding brought to us was wonderful. It gave us - and other small retailers and distributors from Ontario - the opportunity to build strong relationships with new clients and to expand our market." | <urn:uuid:ce69e3a7-baae-4435-bc29-272845914e0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.ontario.ca/edu/en/2009/09/one-million-new-books-in-school-libraries.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959997 | 423 | 3.109375 | 3 |
""Everything starts from prayer. Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others. Just as people today are speaking so much about the poor but they do not know the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray." Mother Teresa "
"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the end, it is between you and HIM not you and them."
This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book | <urn:uuid:dbaa6d6f-b9a0-4497-88c6-1db3722075b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://quotationsbook.com/book/shawnee/page=4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975031 | 189 | 1.851563 | 2 |
As nuclear workers in Japan struggle to contain radiation from the Fukushima reactor, world attention is turning back to Chernobyl, Ukraine. There, people prepare to mark the 25th anniversary of the explosion that blew the roof off Reactor Number 4.
Soviet planners designed Chernobyl in the 1960s to become the largest nuclear power station in Europe.
Instead, Chernobyl is remembered today as the site of the largest nuclear disaster in the world.
Late on the night of April 25, 1986, Yuri Andreyev left his shift as an engineer at Nuclear Reactor No. 4. Ninety minutes later, a safety experiment went awry. The fuel rods melted down, an explosion blew the roof off, and a raspberry-colored light spewed into the night sky.
When Andreyev returned to work, he saw a scene of devastation. After stepping over the discarded boots, jacket and helmets of fire fighters, he stood in the ruined computer control room and looking up saw blue sky.
Twenty-five years later, Andreyev runs Chernobyl Forum, a political lobby for Ukraine’s 100,000 surviving "liquidators" or clean-up men and women. After weeks of heroic work, the liquidators had succeeded in sealing the plant in an improvised steel and cement "sarcophagus."
But that was not before Chernobyl leaked 10 times the radiation of the Hiroshima atom bomb into the environment.
Authorities mapped out the area of the highest contamination - and closed it to human habitation. About 350,000 were forcibly evacuated from a largely rural area slightly larger than the American state of Rhode Island. Still living in this area are sprinkled about 300 largely elderly holdouts, now called ‘forest people.’
After a quarter century, biologists call this zone "Europe’s largest wildlife refuge." With the presence of humans gone, the new colonists are thriving populations of gray wolves, brown bear, elk and wild boar.
In January, Ukraine opened the area to short, controlled visits by tourist buses.
Twenty five years ago, a convoy of 1,000 buses evacuated the entire population of Pripyat. A bedroom community for nuclear power workers, it had once been a Soviet model city - home to 50,000 people.
On a recent afternoon, a lone tour bus made the reverse commute, moving slowly down a deserted Lenin Avenue. A recording of the original evacuation order played to a bus filled with Russian and Ukrainian tourists.
Dense forest covered what once were neatly tended playgrounds. Sturdy trees grew up between rusting swing sets. Bushes and trees made driving down side streets impossible. Through the branches, visitors could make out fading communist slogans - hailing the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union and calling for ‘Atoms for Peace.’
Alexander Sirota lived in Pripyat, until he was 10. Now, as a 35-year-old tour guide equipped with a walkie-talkie and digital Geiger counter, he shows tourists - some wearing face masks - his old apartment.
Surrounded by peeling paint, sagging strips of wall paper and light fixtures dissolving in rust, he said he is happy to visit his old home, a place where he spent "the happiest days of my childhood."
Boots crunching over broken glass, Sirota later takes tourists to the gutted cafeteria where he and his mother used to go for breakfast. Then, we go to his elementary school. There, 25 summers and 25 winters have taken their toll, causing a front wall to collapse, exposing old Soviet classroom murals.
For these tourists turned archeologists, the walk takes us below a rusting hammer and sickle sign atop the old administration building and then on to a frozen Ferris wheel - the centerpiece of an amusement park built for May Day festivities that never came.
Maxim, a young man from Donetsk, drops his face mask long enough to say Chernobyl tourism is ‘cool.' But he admits that none of his friends would join him. They said he was crazy to come here: "Insane. They are afraid. Afraid of radiation."
The tour bus rolls on to Chernobyl nuclear power station, stopping 200 yards from Reactor Number 4. Due to high levels of ambient radiation, we have only 20 minutes to pose for souvenir pictures in front of the old sarcophagus of decaying cement and rusting steel.
Laurin Dodd, an American engineer, has come to the site to talk to VOA. He is directing an American-led project to build a new, modern sarcophagus.
"The structure itself is almost a house of cards," says Dodd. "It was built with some robotics and under extreme conditions. And there are large gaping holes. If you go inside, you will see holes the size of picture windows with small mammals going in and out, birds flying in and out."
As scaffolding props up the old ventilation stack, Dodd races to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle.
"There is almost 200 tons of radioactive material still inside the old sarcophagus," said Dodd, who has worked here off and on since 1995. "And the existing sarcophagus was built in six months in 1986 under, I should say, fairly heroic conditions and it had a design life of 10 years - that’s almost 25 years ago."
Built on rails and rising high enough to cover the Statue of Liberty, the new containment structure is to be the largest moveable structure in the world. On April 19, Ukraine officials will hold a donor conference in Kyiv to raise $1 billion to build a structure designed to contain Chernobyl’s nuclear mess for another century.
As authorities in Japan may soon discover, big nuclear accidents have a defined beginning. It is unclear when they ever end. | <urn:uuid:af2ec6e5-1892-486a-aeed-d412bbe635d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/articleprintview/137314.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952776 | 1,198 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Wi-Fi Names Reveal Political Beliefs, Map Shows
Obama sentiments around the Great Lakes region of the U.S., as revealed by wireless router names. Offensive words have been blacked out.
CREDIT: Screenshot from OpenSignalMaps
Search for a Wi-Fi connection anywhere and you'll probably find a range of names, including everything from the obvious ("linksys," "BluesCoffeehouse WiFi") to the revealing ("Marys Apt"). Some Wi-Fi router names are more politically pointed, however: "Obamasux," for example, or "ILoVeObAma!!" Developers at one mobile app company decided they would map the political allegiance of people who declare those opinions using their Wi-Fi names. The resulting maps don't represent the world's opinion on U.S. President Barack Obama, as the sampling is too biased, but they're a funny, human glimpse into people's thoughts.
OpenSignalMaps has a database of the locations of 75 million routers around the world, according to the developers' blog post. The developers searched those routers' names for "Obama" in any combination of upper- and lowercase letters and found 1,140 different router names.
They then marked each "Obama" router as positive, negative or not sure. Simply naming a router "Obama" counted as positive, while odd-sounding names such as "AIR_FORCE_ONE_OBAMA_EDITION" rated as not sure. The negative names were pretty clear ("I dont like Obama"), as were some positive names ("I LOVE OBAMA!").
The developers rated each router by hand. A computer program would find it too difficult to read and understand names such as "ObamaPrezNaaaaw" or "ObamaDaClown," they wrote in a blog post about the project.
Lastly, the developers put each router name on a map. The names are printed on small rectangles that are outlined in blue for positive, red for negative, or yellow for not sure. The final project has the feel of a crowd of people holding up homemade signs.
Router names are a surprisingly effective way of getting a message out, the developers wrote. They only give you 32 characters to work with, but their messages last much longer than a 140-character tweet's top lifespan of a few hours. They also are able to reach anyone looking at a list of available Wi-Fi networks within about 100 feet of the router. Could this small act of ownership be more effective than social media? "Your SSID – the name of your Wi-Fi router – may have more reach than your Twitter account," the developers wrote. | <urn:uuid:62b259f5-b208-4a4e-805e-23fa1b0ff733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.technewsdaily.com/4382-wi-fi-names-reveal-political-beliefs-map-shows.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957904 | 546 | 2.109375 | 2 |
The mirror of the sea
Almería is located in southeast Spain and the area around Almeria has long been an important Mediterranean vacation resort.
Port average temperature
Almeria has one of the sunniest, warmest and driest climates in Europe. Almeria enjoys about 3000 hours of sunshine annually with around 320 sunny days a year on average. Almeria has an average annual temperature of around 19°C and only 25-30 wet days a year on average. During the winter, daily maximum temperatures tend to stay around 14–20°C. At night, the temperature rarely drops below 8°C. precipitation falls in short heavy bursts.
During the warmest month there are clear sunny skies and no rainfall. The typical daily temperatures range from 28–34°C and on occasion climb higher. The minimum temperatures stay well above 20°C. The temperature of the sea stays around 17°C during the winter and 26°C during the summer. This makes a swim an inviting prospect during any time of the year.
The temperate figures shown are based on monthly average weather conditions for the selected port. Weather data is not real-time, and sometimes no data is shown for a specific date, month or port in general. | <urn:uuid:0cf6513b-a6df-460a-832f-e9402ccfb099> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.msccruisesusa.com/us_en/Cruise-Destinations/Mediterranean/Spain/Ceuta.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927985 | 256 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Several state enterprises, including Thai Airways International (THAI) and Mass Communications Organization of Thailand (MCOT) are inviting candidates for the top Chief Executive Officer post.
They aren’t going to get any really professionally qualified managers to apply. In other words, the best and the brightest would not want to work for them.
That’s not because there aren’t enough qualified people who are keen to try their hands at running major state enterprises that should be made competitive against their peers in the regional scene.
Neither is it because the financial and prestige aren’t there.
The most obvious and recurring problem is the “selection committees” assigned to pick the most qualified person to become the CEO just aren’t qualified from the very outset.
The rotten system begins at the process of picking members of the screening committee. They would have to follow the instructions, direct or otherwise, from “the boss up above.”
The more prestigious position, the higher the rank of the person giving the order of who must get the CEO’s post.
Therefore, lobbying starts at the selection of the “selection committee members.” They would have to be ready to play the game, meaning that whatever the requirements published in advertisements calling for candidates, the selection process will just have to end up with just one person in mind. Other candidates are eagerly sought just so that the whole exercise could claim to be “fair and transparent.”
When the selection committee is “orchestrated,” what do you expect the final outcome of the choice of the CEO to be? In the end, while the process of picking the next manager of the state enterprise may appears to be “open and fair,” the heavy political manipulation inherent in the system will produce only mediocre CEOs at best and political cronies or lackeys at worst.
From time to time, we got a professional executive into the post by default. He or she set about overhauling the organization, trying to “de-politicize” the enterprise and getting the staff to stick to KPI (key performance index) rather than PPI (Please Politicians Index). That promised to make his term a short-lived one. But he or she did leave some marks or professionalism, only to be wiped out by the next CEO picked by the strenuous screening of the selection committee. The “typical guy” was finally back in office.
Piyasavasti Amaranand was one of the few “professionals” who got in to a leading state enterprise (THAI) and unceremoniously kicked out. The board checked his KPI and he got a nice pass of over 80% but he was told to leave anyway.
His crime? The board’s official reason given to the public: “Lack of proper communications with the board of directors.” That suggests that the board of directors would only tolerate a CEO who is ready to obey its orders and not someone who can challenge the board’s line of thinking.
The real question therefore lies not with the CEO but with the board of directors of state enterprises. How is the board selected? Ah, that’s the real question. It’s neither transparent nor fair.
Boards of directors of state enterprises are usually picked by Cabinet members whose only yardsticks are whether the directors can serve their interests or not. It is therefore small wonder that we can’t expect a professional CEO to last in any state enterprise considering the fact that we don’t get a professional board of directors in the first place.
Directors don’t get sacked for not being able to communicate well with the CEO. That’s because they are supposed to keep a CEO who can follow the instructions from the board who gets the marching orders from the Cabinet members who have to follow their bosses’ instructions in the first place anyway | <urn:uuid:ff34c955-1d6a-4804-b098-f3f994c4aa78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://suthichaiyoon.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-we-will-never-get-qualified.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968892 | 819 | 1.507813 | 2 |
As I am sure you have heard, your proclamation that, “If you are a woman, there is no way you can vote Republican” didn’t go over well in Colorado. Have you taken a look at women’s unemployment numbers in Colorado since Obama took office? We have had an increase in unemployment from 4.3% in 2008 to 7.8%. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that women are benefiting from the nearly $1T stimulus that went to his unsuccessful business friends instead of to the small business owners, who create jobs and produce goods that are in demand and will help to stimulate the economy?
Your assertion that women can’t vote for Republicans flies in the face of the freedoms that differentiate America from other countries.
Women have forced abortions!
Women have no right to a career.
Women have no right to play sports in public.
Women have no right to education. In Afghanastan, only 12.5% are literate and can not understand the natural rights they posses to even fight for them! What a great way to hold a woman captive, cut off or ban her education.
Women have no right to chose where their children are educated.
Women have no right to vote.
Women have no right to chose their own clothes nor show any skin or hair outside of their house. Much less the stylish and risqué clothes discussed on your blog and worn in Desperate Housewives and Hollywood Boulevard.
Women are forced to stay in abusive marriages.
Women can not be treated by male doctors, leave the house without a male chaperone, gather for festive occasions, travel on the same bus as men, ride bicycles, be seen from outside their house through a door or window. Women may not laugh loudly!!!
Telling women to entrust their rights to chose better financial security, to choose how they and/or their children are educated and more to a group of bureaucrats they don’t know and will never meet means they hand over their individual rights to make the best possible decisions for their unique personal and family situations.
Surrendering our rights to the U.S. government is not why our great-grandmothers and other women before us fought for the right to vote. I’m writing this piece for the women across the world who have never and may never see a free or independent day in their lives.
Eva, I don’t think you say these things meaning to harm women. but, when you tell women that the choice is made for them, thou minimize our rights to choose our own destiny. Maybe you didn’t know how the rights of women are violated every day in foreign countries. But, you do now. And I have faith, Eva, in your womanly intuition as a sister, a mother, a friend, to go public again and tell your fellow sizers that a bigger government means fewer individual rights here in America. Commit your time and energy to expounding and preserving women’s rights. Women need a free market, individual rights and control of their own finances. We must stick together, Eva.
Stand with us, please. | <urn:uuid:2780eb45-6da3-41bb-8b4b-6ec65db5012f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mycoloradoview.com/dear-eva/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963985 | 649 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Created -- Washington State Historical Society as managing agency.
- A women's history consortium is created with the Washington state historical society as the managing agency. To ensure geographic, demographic, and subject matter diversity, the consortium shall be managed by a board of advisors representing a range of perspectives, including private citizens, business, labor, historical societies, colleges and universities, educators, tribes, and public officials. Appointment of the board of advisors must be completed by September 30, 2005.
- The consortium is attached to the Washington state historical society as the managing agency. Accordingly, the agency shall:
- Direct and supervise the budgeting, recordkeeping, recording, and related administrative and clerical functions of the consortium;
- Include the consortium's budgetary requests in the society's departmental budget;
- Collect all nonappropriated revenues for the consortium and deposit them in the proper fund or account;
- Provide staff support for the consortium;
- Print and disseminate for the consortium any required notices, rules, or orders adopted by the consortium; and
- Allocate or otherwise provide office space for the consortium as may be necessary.
[2005 c 391 § 2.]
Finding -- Intent -- 2005 c 391: "The legislature finds that Washington state is widely recognized as being a steady
leader in advancing rights and opportunities for women in all spheres of life. The legislature declares its intent to
initiate the establishment of a Washington women's history consortium. This will improve the availability of historical
information about the many actions taken by Washingtonians which have resulted in such notable and influential achievements
for women and girls, for use by citizens, educators, researchers, and historians." [2005 c 391 § 1.] | <urn:uuid:8ff52bc4-50a5-4f82-af5e-11db97a17a21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonwomenshistory.org/about/governance/rcw2734360.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918355 | 351 | 1.78125 | 2 |
To give a new thing an old or rather an antique feel is basically called “distressing”. Distress can be added easily to give any item the vintage look. One of the best and easiest things to distress at home is kitchen cabinets. They can add a bit of dash to your kitchen and without having to change anything palpable, give a warm touch to it. So here is all you need to know about making distressed kitchen cabinets.
A few things you should assemble to start distressing kitchen cabinets:
- Some paint of your choice.
- A fork.
- A pen.
- A set of keys.
- A crackling medium.
How to distress kitchen cabinets
1. The first step to getting distressed kitchen cabinets is to unhinge the required cabinet. This can be easily done by regular screwdrivers. Once you have taken them off, make sure to keep the screws safely lest they get lost and then instead of a distressed cabinet there will be a distressed you! (Note - it is a good idea to take off all the doors in one go rather than one by one.)
2. Next with the help of sandpaper slowly remove the top finish of the cabinet. It should not be hard to take the finish off with medium-grade sandpaper. However, a note of caution here, if you rub it very hard you can cause damage to the surface. So make sure you do it gently and firmly so that the work gets done without leading to any damage. Also do not use a sander while sanding the cupboards.
3. Here is when the set of keys come in handy. Pick out two or three and with them make lines across the cabinet surface. Once again these need to be done very gently otherwise instead of getting the vintage look, you will end up with just an old cabinet. Make lines randomly and with different sized keys to give a natural feel to your distressed kitchen cabinets.
4. An ice pick is the next thing to put to use. This will help you make small holes on the surface. Chains too should be employed for similar effects. A chain will create nicks here and there. These holes and nicks should only be clearly visible in close up. Only the overall look should be clear from afar.
5. After the overall look has been created more or less, get cracking with the crackling medium. Open it up and put it all around the cabinet surface. Do not apply too much that it starts to drip. Just apply enough to cover the entire surface. It is best to use a brush for application of the same. Also small strokes should be employed. After that leave it on for around two or three minutes before removing it. Now you will be able to see lines on the cabinet surface. This is a sure shot way to give your kitchen cabinets a rugged with use look.
6. Last of all, to keep this finish use either paint or stain. All you need to do is to daub the chemicals over your newly made distressed cabinet. This will ensure longevity of your effort and make your dull cabinet into hot, vintage property.
7. Now all you have to do is to put the cabinets securely back in place. Using the same screwdriver, screw the cabinets back to enjoy the visual effect of the distressed kitchen cabinets. Just double check the doors after attaching them for safety.
Distressed kitchen cabinets are not just very simple but also very re-doable. In case something goes wrong or in the end you are not happy with it, it is always possible to redo it. Something called “wood putty” will come in useful at this juncture. Fill up all the holes you have made with the wood putty and once that is done you can begin from scratch (literally!).
So next time you think you kitchen needs re-doing but do not have the cash, this is what you should do! | <urn:uuid:a279d6d0-cb80-43ce-9937-eee858c5f1eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.helpful-kitchen-tips.com/kitchen-blog/2010/10/02/distressed-kitchen-cabinets-tips-to-achieve-this-antiquing-effect/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953122 | 800 | 1.632813 | 2 |
September 1998 | Volume 49, Issue 5
The Novel of the Century
In William Faulkner’s greatest work, a bitter epic of violence and despair resolves itself on a note of love and longing
William Faulkner, the troubled alcoholic son of the poorest state in the Union, a Mississippi so obsessed by race that it refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, is the greatest American novelist of the twentieth century. He is also the one Southern writer who by his imaginative fervor most completely and deeply put the South back into the Union.
The lasting figures in literature come not from the successes and fashions of a season but from the depths in which the unpopular, the neglected, the outwardly defeated find the real life of their time and the characters who for all time embody it. That fine Southern novelist Walker Percy began his career with an existential novel, The Moviegoer (1951), which coolly communicated his dread of glittering society in the “New South.” When asked why there were now so many significant Southern writers, Percy replied, “Because we got beat.”
Faulkner never forgot that the South “got beat.” Light in August (published 1932, in the depths of a depression that hit the South hard) is my favorite Faulkner novel, one that will never be forgotten so long as Americans have the guts to face the resentment and hatred of blacks. The final irony in the lifelong agony of Joe Christmas, a possibly white man who is finally murdered and castrated as a black by a superpatriotic racist (Faulkner was later astonished to find that he had created a premature American Nazi), is that it was Joe’s own grandfather old Doc Hines who declared Joe a black because his mother had run off with a “Mexican.”
There is no end to the folly and horror enveloping Joe’s life because his grandfather has stigmatized the newborn as having “black blood.” On Christmas Day Doc Hines leaves the infant on the steps of an orphanage. This is not the first association with the Christ born in a stable of uncertain parentage who was also mockingly put to death in the crudest way. The orphanage staff, giddily celebrating the holiday, laughingly names the foundling Joe Christmas. Doc Hines is such a racist madman that not content with abandoning his grandson, he becomes a janitor in the orphanage so as “to keep his eye on him.” Black is evil. To be condemned from birth as black is to be derogated and suspected all one’s life long.
As a child Joe Christmas is punished for unwittingly observing sex between two members of the orphanage staff. As a boy he is apprenticed to an obsessively Calvinist farmer, McEachern, who beats him for the smallest infraction. Joe robs him and runs off to be with his lover, a prostitute. After her gangster friends beat him up, there follows one of the most vivid passages in modern American writing. It communicates the just-leashed violence of American life of which Joe is helplessly the creature.
“He stepped from the dark porch, into the moonlight, and with his bloody head and his empty stomach hot, savage, and courageous with whiskey, he entered the street which was to run for fifteen years.
“The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene, broken by intervals of begged and stolen rides, on trains and trucks, and on country wagons with he at twenty and twentyfive and thirty sitting on the seat with his still, hard face and the clothes (even when soiled and worn) of a city man and the driver of the wagon not knowing who or what the passenger was and not daring to ask.”
Joe winds up in “Jefferson,” the pivotal Southern town in Faulkner’s work. Here Joanna Burden, who is the descendant of Northern abolitionists who settled in the South to befriend blacks but who has long withdrawn from the hostility of her neighbors, falls madly in love with Joe Christmas after he has confided that he may be a Negro. Faulkner the Southerner thinks Joanna a helpless, useless do-gooder on the eternal race question. With understandable irony directed at Joanna’s missionary attempts to “save” the Negro, Faulkner portrays Joe chafing against his sexual bondage to Joanna. He cannot bear her constantly praying over him between her sexual transports. Outraged that for her he is just another symbol of his supposed blackness, not an individual in his own right, he can get away only by murdering her. He runs and runs in a circle that resembles his own life—asleep from exhaustion even as he runs—until he is finally mutilated and murdered by Faulkner’s “premature Nazi,” who holds up the bloody knife and cries, “Now you’ll let white women alone, even in hell.”
But that is not the end of this great work. The peaceful, loving world Joe Christmas has never known as an everlasting victim, the Christ symbol “things are done to,” comes back to end the book with Lena Grove, who began it. Light in August opens unforgettably with Lena, a pregnant young woman from Alabama sitting beside a road in Mississippi, her feet in a ditch, her shoes in her hand, watching a wagon that is mounting the hill toward her with a noise that carries for a half-mile “across the hot still pinewiney silence of the August afternoon.”
In Paris at the end of the war, I heard Albert Camus praise this as full of “the dust and heat” that, as “another Southerner” from Algeria, he loved most in Faulkner. Lena has been on the road for a month, riding in a long succession of farm wagons or walking the hot, dusty roads with her shoes in her hand, trying to get to Jefferson. There, she firmly expects, she will find her lover working in a planing mill and ready to marry her, and there#8212;Jefferson for her is the big city—she will put her shoes on at last.
The lover of course runs away, but Lena is so wonderful, loving, and pure that another man at the planing mill turns out to be the one her heart really needs. All ends in a spirit of love and longing, after everything poor Joe Christmas has been put through, that is exalting. When Lena has her baby, Joe Christmas’s grandmother, who never really knew what her mad husband had done with his own grandson, imagines that the infant is her great-grandson and pitifully hopes for a second chance for Joe.
“I am not saying he never did what they say he did. Ought not to suffer for it like he made them that loved and lost suffer. But if folks could maybe just let him for one day. Like it hadn’t happened yet. Then it could be like he had just went on a trip and grew man grown and come back. If it could be like that for just one day.”
Faulkner’s knowledge of the human heart was equaled only by the range and depth of his imagination. How lucky we were to have him! | <urn:uuid:8a3a75c2-1ec6-4f2b-ae74-5aeda410b113> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanheritage.com/print/59717 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980045 | 1,577 | 2.578125 | 3 |
For this project you will need:
- Jumbo Craft Sticks
- Washi Tape (in the color and pattern of your choice)
- Baker’s Twine (in the color of your choice)
- Craft paints (in the colors of your choice)
- Boiling water
- Cup to use as a form
- Heavy duty hole punch (I used a Crop-a-dile)
My supplies were provided by Consumer Crafts but the project and words are my own.
Carefully remove them from the water, one by one. As soon as you can handle them with your hands, shove them down inside of a cup. The cup needs to be approximately the size you want for your napkin rings. As you can see from the final picture, we will be using baker’s twine to hold them together so the size does not have to be exact. I put as many in each cup as I could. Sometimes the craft sticks will break or splinter. Don’t get discouraged — you will have some that will form up nicely and be perfect.
Allow them to dry in your cup for at least 24 hours. The longer they stay in the cup the better. Remove them from the cup and paint them the color of your choice. When dry, add washi tape to the outside of the rings. At this point, my napkin rings were looking like the below picture. They were inconsistent in size and shape.
But we are going to fix that. Punch a hole in both ends of your napkin ring. You will need a heavy duty hole punch to do this, or you can use a drill with a small drill bit.
Next thread through bakers twine in the color of your choice and pull to close the napkin rings. Tie the baker’s twine and your napkin rings are done. On some of mine, I added a bow and others I just knotted.
I ended up doing a wide variety of styles while playing with this method of making napkin rings. This way you could have enough for lots of holidays and dinner parties.
So how would they look on your table? Here is an orange one that would be great for Thanksgiving.
Love this sheet music version! I think it would be great for any occasion.
This ruler one is my favorite I think. It would also really work on a Thanksgiving table.
This striped one is really great as well. I think this one would look really lovely for a spring or summer event.
We can't forget Christmas? (It will be here before you know it!) So I added a red one in the bunch for y'all.
Five different options for your holiday tables. Which ones are your favorite? Are you ready to boil some craft sticks yet? | <urn:uuid:9d99f769-d7b5-4f30-8c5d-eef75167c317> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecountrychiccottage.net/2012/11/washi-tape-napkin-rings-from-popsicle.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972319 | 578 | 1.65625 | 2 |
I use Photoshop and it’s quite an old version. Nothing special. Well, I don’t know well how to use Imageready so I’ll try to explain with Photoshop. Is Imageready similar to it, or a part of it? I don’t remember now. Anyway, to make a gif size small, I make a layer for the unmoving background.
This is my gif. Look closer, and you can see the curtains, the door and the pillow don’t move at all. They don’t have to move, the only thing in the gif moves is Benedict’s body(oh yeah) and the letter. So make a layer with unmoving part of the picture like this.
The place where Benedict is has to be transparent. And put this layer on top of other layers like this. The layer covers the non-Benedict parts of the other layers.
Less moving parts means smaller size. But you know, you can use this unmoving layer only when the entire frames are the same angle.
Sorry, my English is not so fluent that I’m afraid you might have trouble to understand what I want to say. But I really hope this could help. And you know, this is not my own unique thing, it’s being used by almost every gif makers. :) | <urn:uuid:25d4aa41-9eb3-4cf1-98d3-774873a18b52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sherlockspeare.tumblr.com/post/44377447718/how-do-you-make-your-gif-size-so-small-the-last-gif | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906802 | 281 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Local Green Wood
The journey of sustainably harvested wood for Middlebury's campus began with Bicentennial Hall, where 125,000 board feet (b.f.) of green certified wood were used. Seven species of wood common to the northern hardwood forest (red oak, hard maple, soft maple, birch, beech, cherry, and white ash) were used throughout the six-story science facility. Specifications were expanded from the traditional uniform standard in top quality wood to feature a broader standard that highlighted natural characteristics of the wood such as grain patterns, coloring and sound knots.
The college developed a partnership with Vermont Family Forests (VFF), a non-profit organization based in nearby Bristol (VT) that promotes the cultivation of local family forests for economic and social benefits while protecting ecological integrity of the forest community as a whole. Seventy percent of the wood for Bicentennial Hall came from VFF member woodlots within thirty-three miles of campus. The certified wood for Bicentennial Hall was VFF's first project. In addition to following VFF's eco-forestry program, the wood was certified by an independent third-party organization, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
The next benchmark was the enrollment of 388 acres of Middlebury College's own forest land at its nearby Bread Loaf campus in VFF's certified eco-forestry program and receiving FSC certification in 2000. According to College Forester Steve Weber, when land is enrolled in Vermont Family Forests' certification a commitment is made to create a comprehensive forest management plan, a natural community map, a stable access network, and marked property boundaries. A forest management plan for additional college forest land is currently under development in preparation for expanding the acreage under VFF's green certification program.
Sixty percent of the certified wood used in the Ross Dining Commons and adjacent LaForce Hall (a sixty-seven bed residence hall that opened in the fall of 2002) was harvested from the newly-certified parcel at Bread Loaf. This harvest, plus that from four local VFF member woodlots, produced 58,000 b.f. of beech and birch that comprise approximately 95% of the architectural wood in the buildings. Beech and birch were selected, despite the architects original plans for clear cherry, because they were the two locally available species in readily available yields.
For the Ross/LaForce facilities, the College also set a goal of using local services wherever possible. Two foresters, three loggers, four sawmills, four kiln drying operations and six truckers—all from Vermont and most from Addison County—cut, moved, milled and dried the lumber that accentuates the walls, ceilings and floors throughout Ross and LaForce. Three local woodcraft businesses added value to the lumber by shaping it into a thousand sets of ceiling panels, radial display cabinets for the food service islands in the dining hall, and a strikingly unique ambiance of horizontally sequenced panels for the Commons Lounge, in which one can actually trace the internal pattern of individual trees around the perimeter of the room.
Next, the College furthered its growing network within the local wood industry to include furniture and cabinet manufacturers. Beeken-Parsons, Pompanoosuc Mills and Neudorfer (all Vermont furniture manufacturers) crafted tables, chairs, couches and sideboards for the library, lounge, seminar room, residential suites and dining hall, all highlighting the beauty of character wood from green certified sources. Student Andrew Savage '04 designed a winter term independent study in January 2003 that resulted in the crafting of a table from this beech and a reflection of the meaning of this wood in an article "Lessons from a Beech Table" published in Northern Woodlands (Autumn '02).
In the same harvest from the Bread Loaf woodlot, 16,000 b.f. of spruce were cut to be used as rough-sawn board and batten siding for the exterior of the College's Recycling Center that opened in May 2002. This smaller project moved from purchase order to paint contractor in just six weeks. The kiln-dried siding was pre-primed in southern Vermont before being installed.
The College has openly shared its learning curve with such entities as the Cornerstone Project, a formal group of Vermont-based institutions gathered together under the vision of Senator Leahy to collectively explore opportunities for steering institutional buying power towards the purchase of environmentally-sound Vermont goods and services. The use of sustainably harvested certified wood from Vermont forests, based on Middlebury's success, has been Cornerstone's first major initiative. Both Fletcher Allen Health Care, and the State of Vermont are incorporating certified wood into current building projects. In addition, there are on-going inquiries from and tours with universities, colleges and private companies about the use of certified wood. In the fall of 2003, Professor Glenn Andres of the Art, History of Art and Architecture department hosted the Vermont chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for a day-long conference that included highlighting Middlebury's commitment to green certified wood.
On Earth Day 2003, the College received an Environmental Merit Award in Boston from the US Environmental Protection Agency honoring Middlebury's institutional leadership and commitment to creating environmentally and economically sustainable communities in Vermont based on the College's role as a catalyst in the use of local, green certified wood. Two weeks later, the College invited an extensive network of individuals and businesses who had worked with the College to launch a green certified wood industry in Vermont. From woodlot owners and loggers to truckers, sawmill and kiln operators, architects, building material and furniture manufacturers, the College honored these wood-related individuals and restated its commitment to the Vermont community, celebrating the outcomes of investing in locally-based ecological forestry.
The evolution of certified wood continues. Awarding a $509,000 contract for study carrels and bookends for the College's new library to a group of former employees striving to reopen a woodworking cooperative business in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont after the closing of an Ethan Allen furniture plant, this work order from the College leveraged other funds to allow Island Pond Woodworkers to receive the financing they needed to begin operation. | <urn:uuid:9c07fdef-c9da-4037-b995-e72f7ac1c759> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.middlebury.edu/sustainability/design/wood | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950781 | 1,280 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Bill Curry: Unsung hero of the northland
GARY HOWARD - SLAM! Wrestling
|Bill Curry. Photo courtesy North Bay Sports Hall of Fame
Among the many wrestlers who crisscrossed North America after World War II on their way to fame and fortune, North Bay's Bill Curry remains one of the game's truly unsung heroes.
After years on the road, Curry chose to put family first as he ended his career in the early 1960s to remain in his home town in Northern Ontario to raise his family. If winning a championship belt requires sacrifice and dedication, Curry could just as easily take pride in the fact that providing for a young family requires an equally Herculean effort. Today, he reflects back on a life that has been truly rewarding both in and outside the ring.
Born in Windsor, ON, in 1929, he also has deep roots in the Ottawa Valley where he resided with his parents at an early age in Deux Rivieres, a small bush town between North Bay and Pembroke. While there as an adolescent, he worked in the lumber camps and on the river drives.
But he was drawn back to North Bay where he resided as an infant. It was there that Curry not only flirted with the idea of following a career in boxing but actually developed into a promising light-heavyweight prospect on the Canadian scene in the late 1940s. While he was developing his boxing skills, he fell in with the wrestling crowd on Lakeshore Drive where veteran wrestler Herb Parks operated a tourist camp.
Promoter Larry Kasaboski was just getting Northland Wrestling Enterprises off the ground and he and his veteran wrestlers were always on the lookout for new talent. It was the beginning of the 1950s and the game was quickly drawing a loyal following in Eastern Ontario towns such as Renfrew, Smiths Falls and Pembroke and in the rugged northern mining towns of Sudbury and Timmins.
Curry formed a strong bond with Parks and under his tutelage, the tall, skinny boxer was gradually transformed into a wrestler after becoming discouraged with the boxing profession.
"In boxing, everyone wanted a piece of you," Curry recalled, "or at least a piece of your earnings. Too many people would tell you how good you were or tell you anything you wanted to hear just to keep you going and get their share of your purse."
But working out with Parks and hanging around with wrestlers, he developed a respect for what these athletes were trying to achieve. Herb Parks was a sound technical wrestler and one of the most respected men in the game. He was also grooming his younger brother Dinty for a mat career but found time to spend with the tall, gangling Curry who grew a strong attachment to the older man, regarding him as a mentor and father figure. Under Herb's watchful eye, the young boxer was slowly transformed into an accomplished wrestler.
"Herb and I would go at it pretty seriously in the ring, and I usually found myself on the short end when we finished," Curry said. "I was always amazed at the way he could handle me with ease even at his age. I found myself on my backside more often than not. Herb always said I had the toughness and determination to make it and confided in others that he wished his brother Dinty would go at it the same way I did."
Bill "Dinty" Parks, tall, tanned and muscular developed a large fan following wherever he appeared and became a star in his own right across North America.
Curry's transition from boxer to wrestler did not happen overnight as he paid his dues. In his early twenties, the young wrestler served his apprenticeship in a promotion that boasted stars such as Dr. Jerry Graham, Chris Belkas, Rocco Colombo, Louis Papineau (Gino Nicolini) and Dave Sims not to mention the Parks Brothers and Kasaboski himself.
As a carpenter or jobber, Curry often found himself absorbing punishment from the likes of Roy Shire, Don and Whitey (Whittler) Evans, Tor Yamata, Jack O'Reilly, Maurice Vachon and Wild Bill Zim. He gained a healthy respect for veterans such as Leo "The Lion" Wallick and rugged Rebel Bob Russell as he acquired much needed and valuable ring experience. His first match was against the ring savvy Wallick and the outcome was not in his favour, as was expected.
But Curry persevered and became one of Kasaboski's regular foot soldiers, dependable and loyal. He was well liked by the wrestling fraternity and in the early days spent as much time driving a carload of wrestlers or getting a feel for the ring as a referee, often taking his bumps in the process. He started getting some fan recognition when teaming with Papineau or Kasaboski and Dinty Parks.
When Northlands rolled up the mat each fall, the practice was for everyone to head for other promotions in the U.S. and Canada and Curry was no exception. While working in a lumber camp in Latchford, ON, he met his future wife Anita and the two would share Bill's early career on the road. Like many other wrestlers it wasn't long before the Currys became familiar with what could be characterized as "rasslin's revolving door" traveling from territory to territory, sometimes only staying for as long as it took for your laundry to dry.
For starters, Curry worked for Cliff Maupin in Toledo, Ohio, where he established his credentials by answering a challenge from the local Navy amateur champion. Bill pinned the sailor in 30 seconds and never looked back After a stint with Al Haft in Columbus, Ohio, and Bert Ruby in Detroit, his travels eventually took him out to Portland, Ore., where he worked for Don and Elton Owens. The Currys lived in close proximity to their friend Louis Papineau and his young family. Luigi Macera was another close friend.
There were many ups and downs on the road for the next decade but Curry has some fond memories of the good times. On one occasion he was heading out to Spokane, Wash., to work for Tex Hager when he decided to stop over night in Missoula, Mont.
Herb Parks Memorial Trophy winners Dinty Parks and Bill Curry. Photo courtesy Peter Handley.
"There was a match at the arena that night so I decided to wander over to see what was happening," Curry reminisced. "When I got to the arena I bumped into Hager who recognized me from my advance photos. He told me they were a man short and if I had my toolbox I could fill in as a replacement. Primo Carnera
was headlining the card that night and there was a big crowd in attendance. Luckily I had my gear with me and they put me on the card."
At the end of the night Curry was paid off in an unique way.
"Tex paid me with 710 silver dollars," Curry laughed. "I put them all in my toolbox. At the hotel, Anita and I spread them out on the bed. We had never seen that much money before."
But not all promoters possessed Hager's largesse. Nick Gulas in Tennessee had a reputation for poor payoffs and Curry's experience in that territory was less than satisfactory.
"First he shortchanged Dinty Parks and me when we were operating as a Canadian tag team, never giving us a payoff that we thought reflected the size of the crowd. If you were not in good favour, they sent you on some long-ass hauls to little towns for low paying jobs, hoping you would become fed up and leave."
The fact was that while some promoters played fair, others had a hand on your wallet. But regardless of the reception he received in some territories, Bill established a solid reputation in the game. He became known as Herb Parks' protégé and his reputation usually preceded him.
But each year, he returned to North Bay to work for Kasaboski in Northland Wrestling Enterprises. He became a fixture on the circuit and a close friend and ally to the veteran promoter. Curry identified easily with the fan base in the Ottawa Valley and Northern Ontario. A plain, plaid jacket became his trademark ring attire as the farmers and miners and blue collar workers endorsed his work ethic and sense of fair play.
It was left to Maurice Vachon, Tony Morelli, Len Rossi and Dinty Parks to wear the coveted Labatts' North American Jr. Heavyweight Championship belt. Curry gradually assumed the unofficial role in the territory as policeman, a role previously filled by his mentor Herb Parks, after the veteran wrestler died in a hunting accident on Lake Nipissing. He also started booking for the promotion.
"Each promotion had a policeman," Curry explained. "It was usually a veteran who took care of troublemakers and subtly resolved problems among the rest of the guys. Herb had always filled that role. I just fell into it when he was no longer around."
His stature in the ring also rose and soon he was facing the likes of Tony Borne, Reggie Siki and Wild Bill Savage. When heavyweights such as Pat Flanagan, Tiger Tasker and Mike Valentino (Baron Sicluna) from the Frank Tunney promotion in Toronto came up north, it was Curry who answered the bell as their opponent.
"Toughest big guy I ever faced was Fred Atkins," he reflected. "The toughest little guy was Herb Parks. And George Gordienko out in Calgary was probably the toughest of all."
While Bill and Anita Curry followed the carefree wrestling lifestyle, they also started a family and soon the Currys had three children. It was then time for some serious soul searching. At the outset, both had agreed that when the children became school age, Bill would come off the road and the children would receive a proper education.
By the early 1960s the game plan was put into action and Bill wound up his career. A match in Smiths Falls against Cowboy Len Hughes and a grudge match against a young upstart named Ronnie Garvin were Bill's swan song matches.
The Garvin match was orchestrated among Terry and Ronnie Garvin and Kasaboski and Curry to raise money for the West Ferris Minor Hockey Association of which Bill was one of the founders.
Although wrestling fans in other areas often confused Bill Curry with the more rambunctious Wild Bull Curry, they were not related. But Bill never had an identity problem in North Bay even when the promo ads spelled his name Currie instead of Curry. After retiring from the ring he eased into a position with an insurance company. Later he took a job as a car salesman, quickly rose to sales manager and finally bought the business. All the while he was coaching minor hockey and teaching wrestling at Scollard Hall in North Bay.
Bill Curry and author Gary Howard at a book signing at the North Bay Museum.
Just as he carefully crafted a ring career with Anita by his side, the pair also was successful in their family life. Today, their son Bill Jr. is employed in a senior management position with General Motors in Saginaw, Mich., while daughters Veronica and Kathaleen are nurses. Grandchildren are much in evidence as the Currys split their time between North Bay and Florida enjoying the fruits of their labour.
Curry is still remembered and respected in the city that has become known as the Gateway of the North. Along with Herb and Dinty Parks, he has been inducted into the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame. The sporting fraternity has a special place in their hearts for one of the last warriors of wrestling's glory days.
He may never have worn the belt but as he travelled across the heartland of Ontario, he was always everyone's choice as one of the truly good guys from the northland.
Gary Howard is the author of The Rassler From Renfrew and invites dialogue from all spectrums of the wrestling world both past and present. He can be reached at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:d6b70b0a-99e5-4e01-b209-9e9bcb0e3c2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2008/11/14/7417021.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987548 | 2,496 | 1.796875 | 2 |
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G.P. Mills (1867-1945)
by Tim Dawson vintagebicycle.wordpress.com
Bordeaux-Paris is one of cycling’s lost classics. Once regarded as the toughest one-day race in France, the ‘Derby of the Road’ saw the peloton roll out during the night, making the tough, near-600km parcours more gruelling still. Last staged in 1988, the sight of the world’s finest riders heading into the darkness in the early hours was once a highlight of the racing calendar. Among my collection of original cycling photographs is this beautiful image of George Pilkington Mills, winner, in 1891, of the first edition of the race.
Pictured here in 1893, Mills is my ultimate cycling hero, a phenomenal rider who accumulated records as if his life depended on it. During the years 1886 to 1893, for example, the English-born Mills collected no fewer than six records for the ‘End-to-End’, the name given to cycling from one end of Britain to the other; from Land’s End, at the most south-western point of England, to John O’Groats, the most north-westerly point of the Scottish mainland, a distance, on the roads of the time, of approximately 900 miles.
His first record, on a solid-tyred, 53-inch ‘ordinary’ (a penny-farthing), was made at the tender age of 19. Despite poor weather and winds so strong that, at one point, Mills and his pacing companions were blown clean off their bicycles, Mills rode the distance in 5 days 1hr 45mins.
The portrait above shows Mills on the Humber tricycle on which he claimed his End-to-End record of 1893. His other records for the End-to-End were:
- 1891 Bicycle (pneumatic tyres) 4 days 11hrs 17mins
- 1893 Tricycle (pneumatic tyres) 3 days 16hrs 47mins
- 1894 Bicycle (pneumatic tyres) 3 days 5hrs 49mins
- 1886 Tricycle (solid tyres) 5 days 10hrs
- 1895 Tandem bicycle (with T.A. Edge) 3 days 4hrs 46mins
When considering these feats one must bear in mind the road conditions during this period. Road surfaces were loose, often heavily rutted by horse and carriage traffic; dusty when dry and a quagmire when wet. Mills was further encumbered by bicycles that were much heavier than today’s machines. The 1891 record was made on a bicycle weighing about 50lbs – more than twice the weight of the average road bike today – and fitted with low-pressure, balloon-like pneumatic tyres which suffered countless punctures. In many ways, his 1886 tricycle record is the most remarkable of all, achieved on a solid-tyred, Cripper-type machine topping the scales at a whopping 75lbs. Carried out in dreadful weather once again, Mills knocked 29 hours off the record set by T.R. Marriott the previous year.
The record Mills set in 1891, on an early version of a ‘safety’ bicycle, the direct forerunner of the modern bike, was also memorable. ‘Safeties’ earned their named because, unlike the penny farthing, they had two wheels of the same size and thus tended not to catapult riders into the road surface from a great height. Mills covered 256 miles in the first 24 hours; when it started raining heavily, he took his first sleep, of 30 minutes, at Penrith but not until he had clocked 456 miles. With less than 20 miles to go to the finish, Mills collapsed, seemingly with exhaustion. He slept for 7 hours before finishing the final stage, going on to beat the previous record by 14 1/2 hours..
Later, it was established that when Mills was flagging on the last day, one of his helpers gave him dose of cocaine large enough to have killed a normal person. His doctor concluded that Mills was saved only by his massive exertions prior to his collapse. The story is often cited as an early example of drug taking in sport but it is important to remember that, at that time, cocaine was considered little more than a stimulant and was also used as an appetite suppressant. As late as 1910, Captain Robert Falcon Scott used widely available cocaine tablets to aid him on his expedition to the South Pole.
As well as his End-to-End efforts, Mills held numerous other records, including a 24-hour time-trial, and 50-mile titles on both bicycle and tricycle. He was a member of the Anfield Bicycle Club and a founder member of the North Road Cycling Club, both of which had a reputation for producing record breakers.
Mills’ victory at the first Bordeaux-Paris, came in a finishing time of 26 hours for the 355-mile distance and while he was the first Briton to win the race he was by no means the last. That honour falls to the legendary Tommy Simpson, who won the race 50 years ago this year, in the rather speedier time of 14 hours.
To mark the occasion, this September Rapha is recreating the lost classic of Bordeaux-Paris in the shape of the Bordeaux-Paris 2013 Challenge. A team cycling event run over the famous Bordeaux-Paris route, the aim of the ride is to raise £250,000 for Ambitious about Autism.
- RT @IonaNiDhalaigh: Yahhh mountain jersey in the bag!!! Nice one @mike_cuming!!! @raphacondor http://t.co/GrGqSL0Kgl
- RT @CondorWarehouse: Nice to see the @raphacondor JLT team bike on display @campagnolosrl HQ with so many top pro teams http://t.co/5CgE0tY…
- RT @anpostras: GC after Stage 4: Bialoblocki,, McConvey, Guldhammer, Handley, Pelletier-Roy, Hunal, Simon Yates, Fodor, Roger Aiken, Archbo…
- Spare a thought for @Porterelliott who punctured out of the yellow jersey group, when will he get some luck!
- Took the @anpostras on today. Didn't quite pull it off. @RichHandley90 4th on GC and @mike_cuming in the KoM jersey.
- Tour series update from Stoke up on the site http://t.co/aVdcnGnkOX
- RT @elstopbanana: Here's Kristian House @raphacondor at last night's @TourSeries picture by Sue Howlett Great racing! @SoTCityCouncil http:…
- RT @sticky_bottle: Meant to say, to be eligible for the @raphacondor team car compeition you have to be a stickybottle twitter follower!
- RT @sticky_bottle: OK folks; nice morning for it. To win a day in the Rapha Condor JLT team car on the Rás last stage, Sunday, just retweet…
- Third team overall for the Men in Black at Stoke last night in the @TourSeries | <urn:uuid:f6c96878-b634-4244-a56f-ea74fe91045f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rapha.cc/gp-mills-1867-1945 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956364 | 1,563 | 2.203125 | 2 |
(IBTimes) - China has expanded the number of rare earths it
will export to the global market, from 10,546 metric tonnes to
21,226 metric tonnes, the country's Ministry of Commerce (
) announced on Thursday.
This developed after the Ministry of Environmental Protection
approved the export licences of 12 companies that recently passed
the required environmental tests.
Of the additional 10,680 metric tonnes, 9,490 metric tonnes
were light rare earths, while medium and heavy rare earths were
1,190 metric tonnes, a statement on the MOC Web site said.
China, the world's stronghold of rare earth elements, said in
2011 that Chinese exporters of rare earths elements will be
allowed to sell 10,546 metric tonnes of in the first six months
of 2012, a 27 per cent reduction from the quota set for the first
half of 2011.
Back then, the MOC said the first-round quotas already account
for 80 per cent of the full-year volume for 2012, which included
9,095 metric tonnes of light rare earths and 1,451 metric tonnes
of heavy rare earths.
But the country had implied it is probable to increase its
export quotas on the precious elements pending the approval of
environmental inspections of its other rare earths producers.
However, as early as last year, China had made it clear that
overall export quotas for the whole of 2012 would remain flat
from 2011 to guarantee international market demand and keep rare
earth supplies basically stable.
A group of 17 elements, rare earths
are metals widely used in high-tech products
ranging from flat-screen televisions to lasers and hybrid cars.
Based on earlier calculations by Bloomberg News, China's
full-year quota for 2012 may hit about 31,130 metric tonnes.
Beijing imposed an export quota of 30,184 metric tonnes for
2011 and 30,258 metric tonnes in 2010.
China imposed export limits on its rare earths along with
other mining products such as silver, minor metals and coke to
conserve resources and protect the environment. But this created
tensions between China and its trading partners including the
U.S., the EU and Japan which claimed the world's
second-largest economy practices unfair commerce and currency
The three economic giants ultimately filed a complaint against
China before the World Trade Organization in March.
Rare earth deposits exist all over the globe but China is so
far the only country that is actively mining and exporting any
Other rare earths players, such as Australian Lynas Corp. and
American Molycorp have yet to make its first produce.
Earlier this week, China said it intends to merge its various
rare earths producers into one large company and upgrade the
sector within two years.
Operating Licence on Lynas Rare Earths Plant in
Malaysia Still Hangs
China Mulls Unifying Its Many Rare Earths
Rare Earths Miner Molycorp Makes $650 M Debt
Offering to Push Neo Material Takeover Bid
For more information, go to | <urn:uuid:4af53c61-75d5-4bb1-9e54-2b00a3ed6d21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nasdaq.com/article/china-expands-export-quota-of-rare-earths-cm142256 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900479 | 649 | 1.640625 | 2 |
I've been listening to recorded oral histories on the Sound and Story website (thanks to Gayle Livecchia for pointing that one out). It's like StoryCorps but just for the Hudson Valley in New York. It's fascinating to listen to people tell their personal stories or to describe how things were done in the past.
Sometimes we get thinking about what wasn't recorded, what wasn't explained and left behind. Last week I recorded an interview with Kathleen Wall, Foodways Culinarian at Plimoth Plantation. As I asked her questions sometimes she would respond "They just didn't write it down." Some things are lost because they are perhaps too mundane to mention.
Imagine this. You take the time to write down an entire day of your life. In infinite detail you jot down everything you do and perhaps think. But all the same you will leave out details. It will be incomplete. The people of the future will again say "they didn't write that down." You will have tried so hard yet to no avail. Some things are so mundane that you don't even realize you are leaving them out.
Such is the way of history.
The exercise is good though. Try to leave the details behind. Even if you can't anticipate the questions of the future you will do a great service by providing them with a great deal of information.
There's no way for us to know what will be forgotten with the past. | <urn:uuid:ffe21653-c5bc-4a1f-97b0-d45686530a5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rootsandrambles.blogspot.com/2012/11/random-thought-what-we-dont-leave-behind.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975535 | 296 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Considering my love for soccer and interest in renewable energy, this story about the 2014 World Cup caught my eye (and reinforced my decision to make the trip in two years). Using solar technology as the lynchpin, Brazil has set a goal of meeting minimum LEED sustainability standards in all 12 of their venues for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Professional athletics and renewable energy appear to be on a collision course for the greater good. Large solar and renewable energy companies are beginning to invest large amounts of money into athletic team sponsorships and advertising. On the other side, professional athletic clubs have seen the public relations benefits and money saving potential in adopting renewable energy and sustainable building.
This seemingly match made in heaven will benefit us all. Millions of people each year attend sporting events and watch on TV (people watch the Super Bowl just to see the ads). What better way to spread renewable energy technologies and sustainable living practices than through professional sports teams and large sporting venues.
Brazil will be taking sustainable building and renewable energy to a whole new level in 2014. The World Cup is already the largest sporting event in the world – according to FIFA.com over 3.2 billion people watched at least one minute of the 2010 World Cup – and now they aim to make it the most sustainable event yet. Of the twelve stadiums that plan to meet minimum LEED sustainable standards, 7 plan to integrate solar into the design. The highlight will be the Mane Garrincha (pictured above) in Brasilia – this venue will hopefully be the first football(soccer) stadium in the world to achieve LEED Platinum status, the highest level available. A 2.5 MW solar array installed on the tensioned canvas roof will help get it there. This system will cover more than 50% of the electricity needed during peak tournament times and will produce more than enough during normal operation, allowing the stadium to feed the excess into the grid.
Other highlights of stadium construction in Brazil include: the Maracanã in Rio, the host of the final, which will feature a ring of solar panels in the roof, the Mineirão in Belo Horizonte will have around 1.5 MWp of solar installed on its roof, and the Pernambuco Arena in Recife will install solar heating to supply the hot water in changing rooms, restrooms, and restaurants.
One of the largest drivers of renewable energy at the World Cup and sport in general is Yingli Solar. “In 2010, Yingli Solar became the first renewable energy company to sponsor the FIFA World Cup.” (FIFA.com) As a result of this partnership, Yingli agreed to install PV Solar technology at 20 Football for Hope centers developed in Africa during the 2010 World Cup. Yingli has also partnered with some other very prominent sporting organizations in order to spread “green” awareness and build their brand. They are currently the official sponsors of the 2014 World Cup, the United States Men’s, Women’s, and Youth Soccer Teams, FC Bayern Munich Soccer, and the New York Jets. Yingli provided the Jets with more than 3000 solar panels for an installation on their practice facility. The 690 kWp system is the largest installation at an NFL team headquarters.
These are just a few examples of professional athletics “going green” and the trend seems to be catching on around the country (and world). However, considering that nearly half of the Earth’s population will see some of the World Cup, the fact that Brazil has committed to renewable energy will have a great impact on how the people of the world view sustainability. Read more here about Brazil’s efforts to adopt PV solar technology by 2014. | <urn:uuid:244b751d-1635-4562-b600-7990797701b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pnsenergy.wordpress.com/tag/futbol/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945915 | 748 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Raging waves damage homes in Gloucester and Salisbury
In coastal communities north of Boston, the roiling sea from the Blizzard of 2013 crashed into homes in Gloucester and Salisbury, forcing some people to flee. Others left their homes voluntarily — to witness the power of Mother Nature.
A giant wave crashed through the second floor of a Gloucester home near Good Harbor Beach, ripping off the ocean-facing front and roof, Police Chief Leonard Campanello said.
“We anticipated possible flooding,” Campanello said shortly after noon on Saturday. “I don’t know as though we anticipated a wave reaching the second floor of a house.”
The home on Salt Island Road overlooks the beach. A second home next door was also damaged, as waves battered the coast, and winds of 45 to 50 miles per hour swept through the North Shore city.
Police closed the roads along the back shore of Gloucester, where 1,000 people were out of power as of late morning, Campanello said.
Farther up the coast in Salisbury, storm surge of at least 20 feet rolled over a seawall, damaging at least two homes and prompting police to issue a mandatory evacuation call to 1,000 households along the beach, Police Chief Thomas Fowler said.
Only about 41 people were evacuated, although it’s unclear how many people left on their own. “We can’t make them leave,” Fowler said this afternoon.
Police ordered the evacuation at about 9 a.m., after responding to a 911 call around 9 a.m. from a couple living on North End Avenue, which runs along Salisbury Beach toward New Hampshire.
“They said the ocean was inside their house, and they were right,” said Police Lieutenant Steve Sforza, who responded to the call. “There was sand everywhere.”
The home, a duplex, was occupied by four adults and two dogs.
Buses were transporting people to a shelter set up at a town elementary school on Route 1, Sforza said.
“We can’t force people out of their houses, but we’re telling people to leave for safety reasons,” he said.
Despite the damage to the two homes, no building collapses or injuries were reported, Sforza said.
The storm surge, which came about an hour before the 10 a.m. high tide, surprised officials in this beach town on the New Hampshire border, Sforza said.
“We had no idea the surf would be that high,” he said. “It wasn’t even high tide.”
In Newbury, a short way down the coast, high tide brought more beach erosion on Plum Island. Six homes were determined to be unsafe for occupancy after the storm had passed, Town Administrator Tracy Blais said in an e-mail.
“They cannot be occupied, pending further review,” she wrote.
Five of the homes are on Anapolis Way, a one is on Dartmouth Avenue. All are in stretch of the beach where decades of beach erosion has left many homes at risk of falling into the cold Atlantic.
“Public safety officials will be on the island, monitoring the situation through the next high tide,” Blais wrote.
Farther down the coast toward Boston, in Revere, high tide this morning brought crashing waves, but no major flooding, Fire Chief Eugene Doherty said.
“I think we were fortunate,” Doherty said by telephone at about 10:30 a.m., just after high tide. “The wind shifted. That helped us.”
Waves as high as 40 feet crashed over the seawall, flooding Revere Beach Boulevard. No homes or businesses were damaged, Doherty said.
Small pockets of flooding were confined largely to the shoreline neighborhoods of Riverside and Point of Pines, Doherty said.
“It was just localized to streets in that area,” he said. “We’re actually over the worst part.”
High tide in Manchester-by-the-Sea brought Gary Swayze to Singing Beach, with camera in hand.
“I was curious to see how far the water was going to come up,” said Swayze, who has lived in town since 1990. Just then a wave crashed over the rock seawall near him on the street. He certainly got a taste of it and definitely got his feet wet.
Timothy Girian and his 13-yr-old son, Sam, jumped aboard a Gator, a golf-cart type contraption with industrial wheels, to get a loaf of bread. Timothy said he’s used the John Deere machine in several storms. He thought the snow would be deeper in the North Shore town. Still, he was stunned by the high tide in the harbor downtown.
“It’s the highest I have ever seen it, and I have been here 15 years” he said.Kathy McCabe can be reached at email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter@GlobeKMcCabe. Kay Lazar can be reached at KLazar@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKayLazar.
On the beat
Columnist Adrian Walker says UMass Dartmouth is shaken after revelations that one of the Marathon bomb suspects was a student there. Read more | <urn:uuid:37f19f4a-b058-4c96-b80d-721457264e5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boston.com/metrodesk/2013/02/09/evacuated-sea-rages-salisbury/BYFddnWQdmOpQlPqaZpTHI/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970652 | 1,141 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Oregon Zoo elephant gives birth to 300-pound baby girl
Friday, November 30, 2012
Oregon Zoo elephant Rose-Tu gave birth to a 300-pound female calf Friday morning just before 2:30 a.m.
“We’re all delighted at the arrival of Rose-Tu’s new calf,” zoo director Kim Smith said in a release. “The calf is beautiful, healthy, tall and very vigorous. As soon as she hit the ground — before she was even out of the amniotic sac — she was wiggling. And she’s vocalizing loudly. The first time we heard her, the sound was so deep and loud that we thought it was Shine. She’s definitely got a great set of pipes, and it looks like she’s going to be a real pistol.”
Rose-Tu is doing well after 30 hours of labor, according to the zoo.
Staff will select a list of possible names and give people a chance to vote online.
For more information, visit the Oregon Zoo website. | <urn:uuid:2fb859cc-f200-4727-8408-eefee5ed1254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbian.com/news/2012/nov/30/oregon-zoo-elephant-baby/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957151 | 224 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Taxes may have to be raised to pay for benefits for older people if Scotland gets new controls over welfare, a report has warned.
Economics expert Professor David Bell said consistent economic growth would be needed to pay for benefits for older people "if increases in the tax burden are to be avoided".
Prof Bell issued the warning in a new paper looking at spending on welfare in Scotland. He will also address the issue in a seminar organised by the David Hume Institute think tank in Edinburgh.
In his paper, the Stirling University professor said: "If Scotland acquires new fiscal responsibilities, including control over welfare benefits, there will be a need to raise revenues to meet the increased costs of state pensions. These will have to be derived from the economic activity of the working-age population."
While he said retirement ages were to increase gradually over the next 20 years, he added: "Nevertheless, meeting the costs of welfare entitlements for older people will require a return to consistent patterns of economic growth if increases in the tax burden are to be avoided."
Prof Bell said the number of pensioners in Scotland is expected to increase by 80% between 2010 and 2060. In 2010-11 Department for Work and Pensions payments on welfare and state pensions in Scotland totalled £15.6 billion, with councils spending a further £5.2 billion on support for groups such as older people, children and the homeless.
Overall spending on "social protection" - welfare benefits and state pensions - was higher in Scotland than the UK as whole, at £3,972 per head of population compared with £3,658 for the UK.
Prof Bell explained that higher spending north of the border was "largely driven by having a higher share of pensioners and disabled people in the population". He said no clear, costed vision of a welfare system in Scotland under either independence or an enhanced devolution settlement had yet been set out.
He argued the political costs of bringing in means-testing for universal benefits - such as concessionary travel for the elderly - were "likely to be higher" than introducing a tougher assessment on benefits that are already means-tested.
Prof Bell said benefit payments played "a vital role in supporting the incomes of types of household" - such as pensioners - who often have "limited alternative sources of income". This, he added, showed the difficulties "that a Scottish Parliament with enhanced powers would have in making significant alterations to the existing structure of welfare benefits". | <urn:uuid:9bbf23ec-c0d0-48f1-90cd-17b171b4cb75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irvineherald.co.uk/ayrshire-news/scottish-news/2013/02/18/tax-warning-over-benefit-changes-75485-32831509/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973952 | 503 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Need to find a new home for old computers, toys your kids have outgrown, or paint you're not going to use? Here is our guide to getting stuff out of your basement and into all the right places—that is, everywhere but the landfill.
Find out how to recycle everything from cereal box tops to soda tabs in Stamford.
Clothing & Toys: Cleaning out your closet gives you the opportunity to help others in need or maybe even make some extra cash. Here's where to donate, sell and recycle unwanted items from your wardrobe, as well as your children's clothes and toys:
Electronics, Computers, Cellphones: Even though that old computer and last year's iPhone seem outdated, there are plenty of people who could put them to good use. For example, many women’s shelters collect working cellphones for women in domestic abuse situations so they can call 911 if needed, explains HowStuffWorks.com. Staples will recycle the electronics on this list. Stamford residents can also bring cellphones to Keep Stamford Beautiful, according to Stamford's recycling brochure.
Household Goods & Furniture: Ever go through your garage and wonder why you have so many flyswatters, toasters and gardening gloves? Consider bartering them online on Craigslist or Freecycle or donating to the following local organizations.
Scale House at 105 Harborview Ave.
Paint: It's safe to dry out your leftover latex paint with kitty litter, dump it in the garbage and recycle the can. But, oil-based paints are actually considered hazardous, according to TheDailyGreen.com. Safely discard your paint during Stamford's Household Hazardous Waste Collection day, currently scheduled for July 13, 2013, at Rippowam Middle School, 381 High Ridge Rd.
Paper, Glass & Plastic: According to environment.about.com, recycling one ton of paper can save 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 380 gallons of oil, 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4,000 kilowatts of energy. Besides curbside pick-up you can take your recyclables to the Kartrina Mygatt Recycling Center at 130 Magee Ave., Scofieldtown Road Recycling Center at Scofieldtown Rd. and Rockrimmon Rd. or the Transfer Station at 1 Harborview Ave.
Recycling for Charities & Schools:
Many charitable organizations such as Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) collect soda pop tabs in fund raising efforts. After the tabs are collected, they bring them to local recycling centers where they are weighed to determine their value. The recycling center then sends the local RMHC chapter a check for the total value.
Locally, the Ferguson Library accepts all book donations.
What did we miss? Tell us where you're recycling, reselling and donating your gently used items. | <urn:uuid:4353ebf4-c663-40b6-8710-f47a9489bcb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stamford.patch.com/groups/going-green/p/where-to-recycle-all-your-stuff-in-stamford | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920437 | 587 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is an independent regulator securities firms doing business in the United States. Securities are financial instruments, such as stocks or bonds, that can be traded freely on the open market.
FINRA exists to protect those who are considering investing in securities, or those who have already invested in them, by educating them on how the securities market works and how the market is changing.
As a regulatory body, FINRA acts as the licensor for companies looking to enter the securities markets, as well as the legislator of the functions of those admitted bodies. It also has the authority granted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to discipline non-compliant members. FINRA was founded in July 2007 as a consolidation of the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc. (NASD) and the regulatory functions of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
On Apr. 14, 2010, FINRA fined a Montana-based brokerage firm that failed to protect its investors' information from SQL injection attacks. | <urn:uuid:ab70f2fb-26ef-4f12-b819-281bc0f77ac8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchcompliance.techtarget.com/definition/Financial-Industry-Regulatory-Authority-FINRA | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961472 | 211 | 2.0625 | 2 |