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Submitted by goossun • February 17, 2004
What’s the difference between “irrepresentablity” and “unrepresentablity”? I saw these two in a translation of Jacques Derrida’s and he has a very careful language. So he must meant two different things.
February 17, 2004, 2:35pm
This is somewhat off-topic and irrelevant, but the interesting thing about Derrida's use of language is that, though he is "careful", he is deliberately imprecise, because he wants to convey the idea that no word can precisely be fixed to a specific definition. In this sense, those two words you refer to (by the way, which book are they from?) may actually mean the same thing, just as he invented so many different words for "differance".
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February 18, 2004, 11:59am
...blows up laughing at the mere thought of anyone trying to make sense of Derrida...
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- February, 20 2012
- Comments Off
- About Italy, Culture, Curiosity, Events, Exhibitions, Fun, History, Itineraries, Leisure, To see, Turin
- Tags: events 2012 italy, events 2012 turin, events in italy, events in Turin, exhibitions 2012 italy, exhibitions 2012 turin, exhibitions in Italy, exhibitions in turin, museums in Turin, steve jobs exhibition, steve jobs exhibition in italy, steve jobs exhibition in turin, Turin
The first exhibition dedicated to the founder of Apple Steve Jobs, ongoing at the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali (Regional Museum of Natural Science) in Turin, will be held until 15th April 2012.
This exhibition has been extended for being a success with critics and having popular appeal. Devoted to the Californian businessman, inventor and co-founder of Apple Inc, the exhibition boasts of one of the largest collections of | <urn:uuid:2bdfd411-0cf5-4cd0-aa3e-01e4e520be69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsblog.aboutitaly.net/tag/exhibitions-2012-italy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94581 | 202 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Matsui supports much of the work the Corps does. But she is a fierce critic of a controversial post hurricane Katrina policy that calls for the removal of most trees and vegetation on levees.
(MATSUI) "California is much different from the mid-west. Historically we have had vegetation and trees on the levees, that was really for habitat. So we believe that tearing out trees may not be the best situation."
Darcy says the corps is listening to concerns about the policy.
(DARCY) "I think it' s fair to say that we are looking at being flexible in terms of how we would look at the policy here in California. We have been working with the state in terms of establishing a framework, which we haven't done in any other state."
The argument against the tree removal policy got a recent boost from a surprising place. A study funded by the corps found that in most instances, trees don't weaken levees and in some cases they may actually strengthen them. | <urn:uuid:ac6eb4db-953f-4ff4-a4f1-f219af99a209> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capradio.org/165310 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976539 | 207 | 2.28125 | 2 |
"Nationally, Americans made 10.7 billion trips on public transit in 2008, a 4% increase over 2007, according to data released yesterday by the American Public Transportation Association." Then, APTA suggested that America's transit usage reached a new 50 year high.
This is in the same class of misinformation like the Hannemann administration’s propaganda for the "benefits" of the proposed rail from Kapolei to Aiea. Aiea is right because it will take a miracle to reach downtown and Ala Moana Center. Basically no one east of Aloha Stadium is in favor of elevated rail, even if they are in favor of rail transit. It is too expensive, too noisy and too ugly for the communities to allow it to go through.
Headlines also showed up in the local press about the booming transit ridership. But what do these numbers really mean?
Remember that public transit in America serves only a tiny portion of people and most of them are served by buses. So, these numbers mean that in 1956 the average American took 0.26 trips per work day in a public transit system. In 2008, the average American took 0.14 trips per work day in a public transit system. Note that the average American takes more than three trips per day, and basically all of them are done on a road system paid with gas taxes and other user taxes, but not by general taxes.
Although the gas prices and the beginning of a recession boosted public transit ridership from 2007 to 2008, these statements are true:
(1) Most transit agencies expect a decline in 2009, largely due to general workforce reductions (larger unemployment), and transit service reductions due to budget cuts.
(2) Americans used public transit way less in 2008 than in 1956. The rate of usage is about half and the overall tend is declining. Similar decline applies to TheBus.
(3) Rail transit carries a tiny proportion of commuters in the nation. Something in the order of 2% commute by rail, counting all streetcar systems too.
(4) The nation has a huge backlog of maintenance of existing rail systems and cannot afford any "New Starts." In the last few months the U.S. taxpayers were saddled with an extra two trillion in spending, which is roughly an extra $4,000 taken from every American worker.
(5) Now more than ever Oahu cannot afford a multibillion dollar tax bill with phantom benefits for our general economy.
As you know, the excise tax went up and property taxes will go up, zoo entry fee and other fees will go up. Not to improve city services or to get more lions or to fix our terrible roads or to pay for the billion dollar EPA sewage treatment requirement. But to pay for the proposed Kapolei Choo Choo! Lucky we live Hawaii? For how much longer? | <urn:uuid:33fab1b4-6609-48b2-8ace-41017849e0ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fixoahu.blogspot.com/2009_03_12_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950215 | 584 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Ready When You Are: Flexible, Online Programs
A conversation about flexible, online programs with William E. Carter, Vice Chancellor, Information Technology, Houston Community College
Campus Technology: I’d like to begin by asking you about a program at Houston Community College that offers students a very flexible online program. Can you describe how HCC’s Ready When You Are program works?
Bill Carter: The Ready When You Are program provides core curriculum courses--such as English, History, Government--online in eight-week durations, beginning the first Monday of each month during the Fall and Spring semesters. The classes are intended for students who have good computer proficiencies and are also very highly motivated and self-disciplined. These courses are taught by Houston Community College certified business education instructors with the goal of getting students the courses that are required in Texas--and accepted at every state institution, whether two-year or four-year. Students can get them in their own timeframe, from their own home, at their convenience.
CT: So the program gives students the option to take core courses online if that’s more convenient for them and they are able to handle an online course. Is there a means of testing students’ readiness for online courses ahead of time?
Carter: Yes, there is a READI Assessment Tool--READI stands for Readiness for Education at a Distance Indicator. It doesn’t block you from a course, but it is an indicator of potential success.
CT: This is a relatively new program at HCC--established in the fall of 2008--do you see it as having a lot of potential for growth?
Carter: So far this spring, we have 2,000 students registered in these courses. The initiative, I think, will grow dramatically because more students are having a difficult time getting to campus. We have a lot of students who are working full time or who have children to care for. This program gives them the ability to work on their degree plan at their convenience.
CT: How does this impact enrollments at the four-year colleges? Is part of the Ready When You Are strategy to take some of the pressure off the universities in the state?
Carter: Four-year colleges and universities in Texas are flooded right now. For example, enrollments at the University of Houston and the University of Texas at Austin are getting very large, and getting to the point of saturation. So, community colleges are the best avenue for people needing to get their core curriculum, or their first two years of college. And the Ready When You Are program supports this.
CT: What is the typical timeline for a student taking advantage of Ready When You Are?
Carter: The courses are set up so that you can complete your entire core curriculum in the normal time of a year and a half to two years for the average student. These courses have flexibility but do have set start and end times: They are eight-week courses, which is not unusual for community colleges.
CT: Are there other advantages?
Carter: The nice thing about these courses in a lot of ways is the cost. The cost of the Ready When You Are courses, and in fact, all the courses at our community colleges is far below what you would pay at a university. This allows people who would not normally be able to afford an education to move forward in their lives.
CT: I also noted that HCC has a separate iPhone pilot. Are you getting interest from faculty in teaching on a mobile platform?
Carter: Yes, and I think the most intriguing thing about the pilot is that you are getting a number of faculty together who are starting to think about mobile learning: starting to discuss how to present information and how to provide it.
CT: Are students bringing their mobile devices into the picture--and maybe furthering the adoption of a mobile learning framework at HCC?
Carter: Yes, and the idea, too, is that whenever faculty put their syllabi online--or on our “Learning Web” that allows faculty to post syllabi or information about their classes--students are accessing all this information with their iPhones, their Google phones, or whatever type of devices. You can almost say therefore that many courses, if not all courses, have some kind of online or mobile component. We don’t have a choice in this; they are accessing the information with all different kinds of mobile devices. | <urn:uuid:5ff5f551-d2c2-41eb-a22c-a92716c57734> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/03/24/ready-when-you-are.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955014 | 911 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Homily – 3rd Sunday Easter MMXXII 4/22/12
About a month ago, the School had a lock-in on a Friday night, and so I went over to visit the kids who were having fun playing games in the cafeteria and gym.
The school has in the cafeteria about four new Foosball tables, and I never really paid much attention to them since they were purchased, but I went up to a group of kids playing at one of the tables and noticed that instead of little soccer players, they were star wars characters – Jedi Nights and Storm troopers I think.
I said to the kids “Wow, a Star Wars Foosball Table.
The Foose be with you!”
And one of the kids answered and said “And with your Spirit!”
Luke Skywalker knows the New Translation of the Mass!
In the New English Translation of the Creed, we now all say “I believe . . . . Jesus . . . rose again on the Third Day
in accordance with the Scriptures”
The old translation was
“He rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures.”
While we certainly believe Jesus rose again in fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures, that the Old Testament predicted the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, the Latin word secundum doesn’t mean that. It means “in accordance with” or better yet: “according to”.
Its actually the same exact word as when the priest says A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
So in the Creed when you and I say “I believe He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures” we are saying that Jesus Rose again just as the Scriptures say He did, not only in accordance with the Old Testament prophets, but also in accordance with, according to, the New Testament writers.
And so in that part of the Creed, we are professing not only our belief in the Resurrection, but also our belief in the Scriptures as telling us the truth about the bodily Resurrection of Jesus.
The Tomb was really empty on Easter Sunday, just as the Scriptures say it was, and Jesus of Nazareth was truly seen, Risen Body and Soul from the Dead, by his disciples, just as the Scriptures say.
In looking over today’s Gospel, and all of the other appearances of the Risen Jesus mentioned in the Four Gospels, one similarity about all of them jumped out at me that I had never noticed before until this Easter: I noticed for the first time that the Risen Lord Jesus asks the disciples a heck of a lot of questions.
In almost every one of his appearances to them, Jesus is posing questions to His disciples. The first recorded words out of the Risen Lord’s mouth are “Why are you crying? Who are seeking?”
The first words out of His mouth at His second appearance on the Road to Emmaus: “What are you guys talking so excitedly about? What’s been happening around here anyway?” “Don’t you realize Christ had to suffer so as to enter into his Glory?”
And in today’s Gospel, after saying “Shalom – Peace” to them, the Risen Jesus says: “Why are you afraid? Why do doubts, questions, arise in your hearts?” “Got anything to eat?”
And finally, at the Third appearance to the Apostles early in the morning at the Sea of Galilee, he says “You guys catch anything the last eight hours? No?” and then when they get on shore, the Risen Jesus says “Peter, do you love me more than these? Do you love me? Do you at least like me?”
Before His Passion and Resurrection, Jesus gave them many teachings. But after His Passion, Jesus became Socratic, drawing out of them the seeds He had planted in them.
And the Risen Lord Jesus does the same with us, asking us the same questions so that we might come to an awareness of His presence in our lives. (Perhaps He does so even more after we have experienced the Cross in our lives.)
Why are you sad? Its all right if you are, but tell me why?
Who are you seeking, deep down inside?
What are you excited, passionate about? Do you understand why you are passionate about that, that it is pointing to me, to my passion and resurrection, that I wish to purify and fulfill those passions and desires?
Why are you afraid (to give yourself to me)?
Why do doubts arise in your heart? I’m not upset that they arise, I just want you to think about why you doubt – to make vocal your doubts, bring them to the light.
Do you got anything to eat? Will you eat and drink with me, at the table of the Eucharist, and we can have a nice long talk over candlelight dinner?
Have you been at it for a real long time and have nothing to show for it again? Do you feel like giving up? Tell me about it.
And one last question: Do you love me more than these?
Do you love me?
Do you at least like me?
May we mull over and over those questions that the Risen Lord asks us. Maybe in our prayer time this Easter, we can verbally answer some of those questions, or write our answers to them in our prayer journal.
In every one of the his appearances in the Gospels, the disciples didn’t at first realize the Risen Jesus was with them, until he started posing questions.
And as they thought over the Lord’s questions, and started answering them, they began to realize: It is Jesus asking these things to me, He is Risen, and with me always, alive in my life, making my heart burn with love as He reveals His Word to me. | <urn:uuid:8b8a00fa-8bb4-45e1-ac13-7ab7ee7e8df4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fatherwoolley.com/content/?m=201204 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970686 | 1,241 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Quite a Day Indeed
Yesterday was quite an amazing day. First off, I would just like to acknowledge that yesterday, May 22, was National Maritime Day where in the US we honor those who are dedicated to promoting commerce and protecting our freedom.
Secondly, the company SpaceX launched its first commercial space craft, carrying cargo to the international space station, taking a huge step towards regular space travel post NASA's Shuttle Program.
In other news, THE BEAR IS IN THE IGLOO!!!! Yesterday morning at about 11am Canary time, Silbo was picked out of the water thus completing the mission he set forth on nearly 11 months ago. Although there were some complications near the Azores which led to a hiatus as we waited upon new batteries, Silbo spent 238 days at sea covering 5555km as he bravely made the journey from the arctic waters of Iceland to the subtropical waters of the Canaries.
The morning started when we all (Antonio (ULPGC), Lauren(TWR), Alvaro(PLOCAN, and myself (Rutgers) ) met at the marina at 7:30.
We then met with the crew, Jose Blanco and Juan Carlos Gacia, and talked with the captain, Patricio Morenes and he described the strategy of how they wanted to pull Silbo on board when we got on site. After we went and grabbed some coffee, we left port aboard the "patrullera SALVAMAR -NUNKI" by a little past 9am.
On our way out the seas were a little rough, with waves of 2.5 m (~8.5 feet) but with little wind. The boat we were on was very fast, capable of traveling over 35 knots, however we stayed around that speed except when the Captain would cut the engine when we hit waves that were too big.
After a little over an hour of sailing out, it was time to set up the recovery station.
After the freewave and computer were set up, the waiting commenced as Silbo was set to surface somewhere near 11am. So we waited...
Until finally, the computer chirped indicating Silbo was finally calling in! We got an updated gps point from Chris back on shore in the US (thanks again for being up with us so early!) and we adjusted our position a little until Juan made the first sighting!
After sighting, the captain slowly approached the little droid, bringing it to the starboard side. The strategy: lasso Silbo to drag him to the stern where there was a platform where we could easily pull him aboard. On the first attempt, we didn't even have a chance to throw the rope as Silbo zipped by the ship just narrowly missing the hull.
On the second try however, we roped him!
Juan and Jose moved Silbo around back making sure he kept a safe distance from the ship as they prepared to pull him on board.
And then, shortly after 11am on May 22, 2012, THE BEAR was officially IN THE IGLOO!!!
So finally, after crossing through subarctic waters, the Gulf Stream, Azores Front, Mediterranean subsurface eddies, investigated the effects of two powerfull storms (Irene and Katia) over the North Atlantic, and finally touched the Antarctic Intermediate Waters, Silbo is safe on shore. Truly Silbo has shown the capabilities of the glider for future ocean exploration.
Lastly, today Silbo received a warm welcoming as a press conference was held at the University of Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.
The Next: We had a small amount of biofouling, the dreaded Gooseneck Barnacles again! What I plan to do is to measure the length of the barnacles and Antonio will use his algorithm to predict when and where they latched on.
This will give us valuable information of what conditions we will need to keep an eye on for future missions as we then cross track the estimated date with the data collected from the CTD and any archived ocean model data we have. However, Silbo's siesta will not last very long.
Next on our agenda, is to take Silbo from Gran Canaria, and pass by Cape Verde on our way to Brazil and beyond! The new battery packs will arrive in Gran Canaria shortly, so once they are through customs, Chris DeCollibus from TWR will make his way out to re-battery and redeploy!
But as for now,
Force Wind Sea and Honor
Nilsen, Antonio & Lauren
Articles Celebrating Silbo's Success (en Espanol):
- Silbo Media Press (pdf)
Tags: Nilsen Strandskov | <urn:uuid:149caf80-bf94-40fc-b598-f9b4bfd17440> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.i-cool.org/?p=11955 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918221 | 979 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Environmental awareness has become an important strategic focus in the business world.
In today's global economy, leading businesses recognize that corporate environmental strategy contributes to competitiveness and shareholder value.
The Yale Center for Business and the Environment provides a focal point for research, education, and outreach to advance business solutions to global environmental problems.
The Center joins the strengths of two world-renowned graduate schools - the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies - together with a network of internal and external thought leaders at the business-environment interface.
Professors, students, alumni, guest scholars, and affiliates of each school contribute to the Center's mission through an integrated set of activities that address business approaches to the world's most significant environmental issues. Our work connects students, executives, academics, and policy-makers, and spans issues from environmental finance to corporate social responsibility. We provide visibility to experts and catalyze the innovative, pragmatic ideas that will shape the future of both business and the environment.
We invite you to learn more, or to contact us with any questions. | <urn:uuid:548733b3-7a8e-432a-afc0-701140241ff1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cbey.yale.edu/overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931226 | 217 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The exposure really are the same. Only whitebalance was changed in camera raw. Perhaps it's because of the very unregular illumination in my room (it's a small but long room and there are spotlights in it pointing at my desk, leaving the rest of the room dark. It was also becoming dark when I took the pics, so no daylight illumination was apparent.
Just one more thing...
According to this table the entrance pupil of the nikkor 10.5 fisheye is located at +/- 46mm from the lens base. If I measured that correctly it should be in front of the golden circle, leaving the upper rail setting at about 90mm...
Do you have any idea what the distance change is of the entrance pupil of a (this) fisheye when the light is coming in straight or at a 90 (well almost) degrees angle?
I have read the entrance pupil changes with the change of the aperture as well, do you know if this is true/has any notable influence?
Thank you again for all the great advice! | <urn:uuid:a9ec1738-d611-4b0e-8977-aa05842c9eee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nodalninja.com/forum/showthread.php?2963-D300-Nikon-10.5-fisheye&p=25055&viewfull=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969415 | 219 | 1.703125 | 2 |
There are a lot of rumors floating around that it wasn't until Julian Assange announced he was targeting the banks that servers started to get attacked and blocked finally forcing Wikileaks off US soil and into another domain name. While I wouldn't be stunned to find one day that the banks did pressure the government on this, I think a more credible conspiracy theory would be that Assange wanted to get his site booted from U.S. servers to bring even more attention to himself.
Let's be real: if Wikileaks wants to dump information it will get out, even if they have to report from a .ch site instead of an .org. Even if U.S. papers didn't detail a future information dump, European papers certainly would—and Der Spiegel has been one of the papers working closest with Wikileaks to report on the material. So if there was truly some threatening information, this is hardly the way to try and prevent it.
Furthermore, what information could Assange have that would be worse than what we already know about the banks?
- We already know that a Treasury secretary forced a bank to take a $20+ billion loss in a merger of another bank
- We already know that the U.S. government continues to own banks, including 11 percent of Citi
- We already know that banks danced around the law during the past decade (i.e. Foreclosuregate and Lehman's Repo 105 scandal)
- We already know that banks felt fine with mediating a trade they knew would cause a client money (i.e. Goldman/Abacus saga), though this was legal
- We know that lenders like Countrywide were far from ethical
- We know that the GSEs contributed heavily to Congressmen—like Barney Frank and Spencer Bachus—to keep Congressional favors coming their way and avoid reform
- We know that regulators have set loose laws for firms and then jumped into the private sector to take advantage
- We know the Fed was engaged in some serious back room dealing to keep banks afloat during the 2008 nightmare
- We know that Goldman got a lot of cash in the AIG bailout
- We know that European banks got a lot of cash in the Fed's unorthodox monetary programs
Even if the Wikileak papers reveal other unethical practices, unless Assange can prove Bank of America financed the 9/11 attacks, the banks will survive. If allegations and scandals of the past two years haven't killed the banks, this won't
So are the banks behind this? Probably not, though they certainly don't want to be embarrassed again. More likely that the White House finally was Fed up with the embarrassing leaks and decided to pounce. They have not been known for having swift responses to anything. That would make this more of a timing coincidence than anything else. But it still could be that this was a straw breaking announcement, since the U.S. government is heavily invested in ensuring the stability of the banking sector, the bank targeting might have been enough to put them over the edge on their own. | <urn:uuid:cb0fed04-5e04-4eb0-8459-3ca17cf3d5a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/news/printer/wikileaks-and-the-banks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977491 | 614 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Re: State Environmental Quality Review Act Requires Additional Comprehensive Environmental Review Before Permitting Liquified Petroleum Gas (Propane) Fracturing.
Published: April 12, 2012
ADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN CLUB · CATSKILL MOUNTAINKEEPER · CITIZENS CAMPAIGN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT · DELAWARE RIVERKEEPER NETWORK · EARTHJUSTICE · EARTHWORKS OIL & GAS ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT · ENVIRONMENT AMERICA · ENVIRONMENT NEW YORK · ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES OF NEW YORK · NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL · NEW YORK PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP · RIVERKEEPER, INC. · SIERRA CLUB · SIERRA CLUB ATLANTIC CHAPTER · THEODORE GORDON FLYFISHERS
BY EMAIL AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
April 11, 2012
New York Department of Environmental Conservation
Albany, NY 12233-1011
Re: State Environmental Quality Review Act Requires Additional Comprehensive
Environmental Review Before Permitting Liquified Petroleum Gas (Propane) Fracturing.
Dear Commissioner Martens:
We are writing to you with respect to reports regarding potential applications to conduct shale fracturing using liquefied petroleum gas (“LPG”) in New York. Several newspapers have reported that the Canadian gas company, GasFrac Energy Services, Inc. (“GasFrac”), recently reached a preliminary agreement with the Tioga County Landowners Association to employ Houston-based driller, eCORP in drilling several gas wells in Tioga County using the unconventional technique of fracturing with LPG.1 These articles further suggest that the coalition’s strategy is to bypass the current de facto moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing (“HVHF”) through use of an alternative fracturing agent. New York law does not permit shale fracturing with LPG at this time. Shale fracturing using LPG has not been previously evaluated by the Department. Given both the unique and significant risks of this activity, as well as the potential for significant adverse environmental impacts, an application to perform LPG fracturing would plainly necessitate the preparation of either a supplementalgeneric or site-specific environmental impact statement (“EIS”) prior to well permitting.
The State Environmental Quality Review Act (“SEQRA”) requires all state agencies, including DEC, to prepare or cause to be prepared an EIS for “any action…which may have a significant effect on the environment.”2 This includes actions subject to discretionary agencydecisions, such as departmental permitting of natural gas wells.3 In circumstances where the impacts from separate actions are common and predictable, a generic EIS may be prepared analyzing the impacts of all such actions generally and cumulatively in lieu of preparing an individual EIS for each such action.4 A generic EIS, however, only covers those actions which are adequately addressed within scope of the EIS. Subsequent proposed actions which may significantly affect the environment, but which are not adequately addressed, require preparation of a supplemental generic EIS,5 or else site-specific environmental review.6
Pursuant to this mandate, DEC completed a generic EIS in 1992 (“GEIS”) addressing environmental impacts associated with conventional oil and gas exploration.7 In 2008, however, recognizing that the GEIS failed to adequately consider a number of hazards newly posed by proposed HVHF activities in the state, then-Governor Paterson directed the DEC to prepare a supplemental GEIS (“SGEIS”) to study “all potential new impacts” from HVHF.8 The Department additionally recognized that both the scale of anticipated HVHF activities and the potential for new significant impacts – such as those associated with the high-pressure injection of large quantities of then-unknown chemical additives below groundwater aquifers – were such that permitting HVHF statewide presented significant issues needing to be “addressed comprehensively and publicly.”9
Likewise, LPG fracturing presents considerable known risks which are distinct from those posed by either HVHF or conventional drilling, likely to significantly impact the environment, and not adequately addressed in either the GEIS or the revised draft SGEIS for HVHF. The main component of LPG used in fracturing, propane gas, is itself highly flammable, and because it is heavier than air, it naturally pools on the ground when leaked, creating a clear and substantial threat of explosion10 – a risk highlighted by two major explosions last year at GasFrac well sites that injured fifteen workers and caused the company to suspend all of its operations for two weeks.11 Additional hazards will no doubt result from trucking thousands of gallons of LPG to the well site,12 compressing and re-condensing the LPG for reuse, and mixing the LPG with chemicals for use in fracturing.13
While LPG fracturing has been presented as more environmentally benign than waterbased HVHF, both require the addition of toxic chemicals. In LPG fracturing, additives include gelling agents, breakers and crosslinkers, and may contain chemicals such as surfactants, amines, iron salts, and other contaminants.14 According to Ronald Bishop, Ph.D., Chemistry and Biochemistry Department of State University of New York, an early GasFrac promotional brochure listed an aluminum sulfate complex of tributylphosphate, which has been used as a nerve gas stimulant, as one of the chemical agents used in the process.15 In addition, as with HVHF, LPG fracturing returns polluting products to the surface that must be properly handled and disposed; in this case, flammable gases that would have to be collected in pressurized tanks or flared16 – a step generating air emissions and leaks that can harm public health and safety.
Even more alarming than the known risks are the unknown and potentially numerous hazards associated with LPG fracturing. Because the use of LPG fracturing is recent and it employs a proprietary method owned by GasFrac, there is little publicly-available information on the process.17 GasFrac has multiple patents for its LPG fracturing system, often with slightly different descriptions of chemical additives.18 Because GasFrac considers the actual chemical recipes as “trade secrets,”19 it is difficult to know exactly what chemicals are actually being used as gelling agents or for other purposes. To date, there has been no independent empirical analysis of the complete life cycle of LPG fracturing.
Neither the known nor the unknown risks from LPG fracking have ever been adequately addressed in any EIS. By its own terms, the revised draft SGEIS is limited to the study of HVHF, defined as horizontal or vertical wells “using 300,000 gallons of water or more per well.”20 Furthermore, it frankly acknowledges that LPG fracturing was not considered within the scope of the study,21 noting that “at the current time, this technology is not mature enough to support development of the Marcellus Shale and other low-permeability gas reservoirs.”22 LPG fracturing is likewise well outside of the scope of the 1992 GEIS. LPG itself is discussed only in the context of underground storage of the gas, and reference to LPG constituents used in fracturing, such as “propane” and “butane,” appears only once in the entire document.23 Bearing all of this in mind, we write to remind the Department not only of the importance of comprehensive environmental review (either generic or site-specific) before permitting any LPG fracturing wells in New York State, but also of its mandatory nature. As you have said in reference to the environmental review process for permitting HVHF – “The goal of the process all along has been to identify the risks associated with [HVHF], to see if they can be mitigated in a way that protects the environment.”24 We ask that the Department give the same consideration to the unique hazards of LPG fracturing, as required by SEQRA.
Wes Gillingham, Program Director
Kate Hudson, Watershed Program Director
Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper
Delaware Riverkeeper Network
Roger Downs, Conservation Director
Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter
David VanLuven, Director
Environment New York
John Rumpler, Senior Attorney
Katherine Nadeau, Water & Natural Resources Program Director
Environmental Advocates of New York
Sarah Eckel, Legislative & Policy Director
Citizens Campaign for the Environment
Cathleen Breen, Clean Water Program Director
New York Public Interest Research Group
John L. Barone, Vice-President of Conservation
Theodore Gordon Flyfishers, Inc.
cc: Steven Russo, Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel | <urn:uuid:c337920d-2518-4529-a5a8-c0bc5f5161cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.earthworksaction.org/library/detail/re_state_environmental_quality_review_act_requires_additional_comprehensive | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919159 | 1,839 | 1.617188 | 2 |
"The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places: yea, I have a goodly heritage."
Psalm 16:5, 6
King James Version
EXPLORATION "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle"
Lessons from Sarah's Legacy
"There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby - chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person."
Is there a person in my life who has left an imprint of their legacy on my world and if so, what is that legacy and how has it affected me?
"God could not be everywhere so He created mothers."
INSPIRATION "What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin."
Henry Ward Beecher
My father's mother died of measles meningitis when he was only 6 months old. Left with a neighbor by his father who never returned to pick him up, my dad grew up feeling unloved and unwanted. When he was seven-years-old he contracted pneumonia, probably due to the fact that his bedroom was an outdoor screened porch. The cold winter days took their toll on my young dad's health. Finally after being admitted to the small local hospital repeatedly, a dear Christian woman took this orphan boy under her wing of care. Like a mother hen she sheltered him and for the first time in his life, someone helped my dad understand that he had value. And my dad wasn't the only young person this kind lady opened her heart to. There were always a group of needy kids she looked out for.
On one particular day, "Mom Pohle" as she was called, took the youngsters in her care to sing for a shut-in neighbor who was the very influential wife of the local college president. This woman asked each child to tell her their name, and when she got to my dad he said, "My name is Jimmy Hardin." The woman's eyes lit up as she asked, "Aren't' you Dot Hardin's boy?" It was one of the first times my dad had heard anyone speak of his mother.
"Yes," my dad replied.
And then something happened that was one of those moments when life changes in a dramatic fashion.
This prominent woman, in front of everyone in the room said, "Jimmy, your mother was the most wonderful woman I ever met. She worked for me. She was so kind and sweet. She was happy all the time and loved singing as she worked."
Many years later my dad confided that on that day, he vowed he would live the rest of his life making his mother proud of him. Even though my father never knew his mother, when he married "Mom Pohle's" daughter, and they had their first child, they named her Dorothy (yes, it is I!) after a grandmother I never knew but whose sweet, kind Christ-like legacy I pray daily I will never let flicker out in my life.
Several years ago, my husband, Jim, took me to Arlington, Arizona where there is a tiny white frame church and behind it a cemetery where I found the grave of my grandmother, Dorothy Irene Hardin. A dear woman taken way too early but whose legacy still lives on today.
When my dad died over 20 years ago, I asked for only one thing -- my grandma's old worn Scofield Bible. Someone found this Bible and gave it to my father. And now when I come to Transformation Garden and share the Scripture with you, the legacy of Dot Hardin lives on as I read God's word from the same Bible my grandma held in her hands.
Webster's dictionary calls a "legacy" a gift bequeathed by a will, something handed down from an ancestor.
In the lives of Abraham and Sarah, the promised son received the inheritance - the family property and wealth. So often in a world driven by the power associated with material possessions, we think in terms of what one "wills" to future generations as gold and silver, houses and lands.
But of immeasurable importance is the "legacy" of love we leave that plants seeds in the hearts of those we call family.
If we look at the qualities exhibited in the life of Isaac we find him giving unyielding obedience to his father on Mount Moriah; we find him giving honor and love to his mother; and when he finally met his bride Rebekah, he was, as the Bible tells us, out in the field praying.
While we recognize that Sarah made more than her share of mistakes along the way, the legacy of love she planted in the heart of her son Isaac lived as a beacon of light. For even at a time when polygamy, incest and adultery ran rampant, Isaac was faithful to his one wife Rebekah and found her to be a "comfort" after the death of the mother he loved and admired.
Virginia Satir wrote, "Parents teach in the toughest school in the world - The School of Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, the classroom teacher, and the janitor."
The legacy of Sarah is a "will" filled with the love of a mother for a child. A legacy that like Dot Hardin's, lives on for generations, even in the lives of those we have never met.
"The most important things we can give our kids are our time, our lives, and our values - and values are caught more than they are taught."
"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you."
King James Version
"Thank you, God,
that you are tender as a mother,
as well as strong as a father.
You give us life,
And care for us.
Like a mother who will not forsake her children.
we pray for our mothers today,
putting them into your hands
for time and for eternity;
and we ask your blessing on all our relationships
in the families of our homes,
and our communities."
Dorothy Valcarcel, Author
When A Woman Meets Jesus
For more from Dorothy, please visit transformationgarden.com. | <urn:uuid:eda0a9c4-edfb-4fe9-be40-187eb7597a81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oneplace.com/devotionals/transformation-garden/transformation-garden-jan-31-2011-11644878.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979199 | 1,307 | 1.507813 | 2 |
In traditional libraries, it doesn't make sense to browse the stacks; it's faster to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for by using the electronic card catalog. Law libraries are different: they become a hundred times more useful when you browse the stacks--using your feet, not a computer--to see what's available.
Until you browse, you can't get a good idea of what you might be missing. For litigators, a half hour spent among the trial practice shelves can yield a wealth of tips and ideas. In the law library beneath the Madison County courthouse, for example, you can find the following multi-volume treatises, among many others: Trial Handbook for Illinois Lawyers; Nichols Illinois Civil Practice; The Attorneys' Dictionary of Medicine; Federal Trial Handbook; Weinstein's Federal Evidence; and AmJur Trials.
Until you see these treatises spread out in front of you on a shelf, you won't get a sense for how much useful information might be contained inside their covers. Using a computer do this? Forget it . . . | <urn:uuid:20dc503e-20f1-44c0-a1f2-a8f63376ac44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.illinoistrialpractice.com/2006/03/need_trial_prac.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923875 | 213 | 1.703125 | 2 |
National Coming Out Day
An internationally observed civil awareness day celebrating individuals who publicly identify as bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender. Observed annually on October 11, the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
Queer Community Reception
The other Homecoming dance where all are always welcome.
Trans Week of Remembrance
A week memorializing those who have been killed as a result of transphobia, or the hatred or fear of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
KINK on Campus
National Day of Silence
The Day of Silence is a national event that brings attention to bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT.
Night of Noise
After the Day of Silence, the Night of Noise is the time to break the silence, release tension, and celebrate. | <urn:uuid:3abf0b93-bd2a-42e8-b6ba-e25c870052b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://humboldt.edu/erc/events-workshops | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91339 | 190 | 3.140625 | 3 |
These days, announcements of Leonardo discoveries are rather routine. Details surrounding two of the latest cases however-the sudden cooperation of the notorious Italian bureacracy on a long delayed Leonardo excavation, and the use of forensic technology to confirm a previously dubious claim, continue to have us expecting the unexpected.
In 1563, the painter Giorgio Vasari included the cryptic message of “Cerca Trova”, a “Seek and You Shall Find” type detail in his large scale battle mural for one of the central rooms of the newly remodeled Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. Those words may finally be getting the follow up they deserve, as Matteo Renzi, Florence’s newly elected Mayor, is on the verge of giving the go-ahead for tests to explore the long-standing suspicion that Vasari’s mural is covering something up.
What’s hidden underneath? Leonardo’s most legendary mishap, “The Battle of Anghiari,” a work ordered by the newly restored Florentine Republic to adorn the walls of the Room of Five Hundred, then a central setting for Florentine political discussions. While the work’s size was grandiose-nearly three times the size of “The Last Supper,” its circumstances were more compelling. Its counterpart on the opposing wall, “The Battle of Cascina” was to be painted by Leonardo’s hated rival, Michelangelo.
This greatest of showdowns in art history, however, was not to be, as Leonardo abandoned the work due to the disastrous results of an experimental mix for the mural’s underpainting, which ended up dripping down to the floor. Nevertheless, the draft sketches that remained were hailed for decades as unsurpassed studies of anatomy and visceral motion, and faithfully copied by artists like Raphael and Rubens. Its pretty amazing to think of how high Leonardo was regarded, when guys like these were worshipping his screw ups.
Following a story reported by OMNP last Summer, a diminutive portrait previously doubted as a possible Leonardo is also on the verge of being authenticated. Peter Paul Biro, a forensic art expert who has pioneered the use of fingerprint technology to help settle art attribution disputes, confirmed the trace of Leonardo’s fingerprint last week, on the top left corner of a small Renaissance portrait of a woman- now believed to Bianca Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan.
The painting, which had sold as an Anonymous “German School” work of the “Early 19th Century” for $19,000 at Christie’s in 1998, now has estimates peaking at around $150 million. The Da-Vinci Code type hype behind these types of scenarios always focuses on the sensational, yet has anyone considered other possibilities? Leonardo, for one, had a sprawling studio, with several pupils who went on to become renowned painters in their own right. Just because Leonardo’s hand appears on this work, does not mean it is by his hand. | <urn:uuid:52561c9c-0e72-44e4-81b3-7e5c6dc182e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://omnparts.com/2009/10/19/uncovering-the-lost-leonardos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965536 | 640 | 2.90625 | 3 |
For many years John le Carre -- real name, David Cornwell -- was the pre-eminent author of spy novels about the cold war. With the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the cold war, people predicted that he would have nothing more to write about. In effect, he said in a recent interview in New York, ''I read my own obituary.''
Instead he has never been short of material, writing in various novels about conflicts and corruption wherever he finds them, in governments and also in corporations that are the equivalent of mini-nations. It might be said that he is the spy novelist who came in from the cold war.
His new novel, his 18th, ''The Constant Gardener,'' deals with continuing le Carre themes: the insularity and treachery of the British Foreign Office and secret services and the amorality of political regimes. At the same time he moves into less familiar territory. This is his first book to be based in Africa, and only his second to have a woman as a heroic character (the first was ''The Little Drummer Girl'').
In other works he has dealt with the drug trade. This time he is concerned with pharmaceutical companies that, through the dispensing of products that have been inadequately tested, have a stranglehold on the health of citizens in emerging countries.
''The Constant Gardener'' was published with surprising speed. He finished it last summer, and his publisher, Scribner, decided to rush it into print in December. The move was so swift that Scribner sent out advance copies of the original manuscript with revisions in the novelist's handwriting instead of bound galleys as is customary.
Over breakfast at his hotel Mr. le Carre, a dignified, congenial and forthcoming man of 69, seemed the opposite of what might be expected in a former secret agent and master spy novelist, which, of course, may be the most appropriate profile for such a figure.
At the center of the book is a woman named Tessa Quayle, born into privilege, who devotes her life to helping refugees and other victims of oppression. In the opening pages the reader discovers that Tessa has been murdered while on a mission of mercy. Gradually the novel becomes a chronicle (with flashbacks) about the rise to activism of Tessa's seemingly passive husband, Justin, an official with the British High Commission in Kenya. Justin, an archetypal le Carre character, is obsessed with finding out the truth about his wife's death.
The book is dedicated to Yvette Pierpaoli, a greatly admired French aid worker who died in a car accident last year while traveling over a mountain pass to help refugees in Albania. ''Insofar as any character is really modeled on somebody,'' Mr. le Carre said, Tessa was based on Ms. Pierpaoli, on her ''self-sacrifice, zeal and infuriating determination'' to be of service.
When Ms. Pierpaoli was killed, he was in Kenya doing research and had already decided that Tessa would die in the book. He was confronted by ''the guilty, egomaniacal feeling that I had willed Yvette's death.'' After going to her funeral he returned to the novel, thinking of it as a tribute to her life.
The book was also inspired by his own conversion from a ''very orthodox good soldier'' to dissenter. That transformation is represented by Justin Quayle. As he said, ''I always try to identify with one character in a book and appoint him my secret sharer.''
Speaking about his post-cold-war novels, he said: ''If there is a common factor, it is trying to document this mysterious search for identity that we're all going through. For me, of course, it's through the British looking glass.'' What links the novels is ''a fascination with what will happen to capitalism now that there's no opponent.'' | <urn:uuid:c0d3dbe8-a474-4f6a-80fa-d1cd5e705b7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/19/books/in-a-plot-far-from-the-cold-le-carre-sums-up-the-past.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979665 | 812 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Pigs are omnivorous cloven-footed mammals, members of the family Suidae. Their bodies are characterized by long snouts, with heavy, sparsely bristled bodies, short legs and a small tail. In the United States, the term pig refers to young animals who have not yet reached market weight, while mature animals are referred to as swine or hogs.
It is believed that pigs were domesticated either in China or in the Middle East as early as 9,000 years ago and most domestic pigs are descended from the European wild boar. The species spread throughout the world traveling along wherever humans carried them. Columbus introduced pigs to the Americas on his second voyage in 1492 and more were shipped from England to colonists in Jamestown. Pigs are unique in that they are one of the only large mammal species that are found in some genetic variation all over the world.
Pigs have a reputation for being overweight, lazy and not particularly smart. Pigs are actually very intelligent creatures with a highly developed vocabulary of sounds and problem-solving abilities greater than a dog. Pigs are naturally very clean animals, preferring not to excrete near their living and eating areas, and only become overweight when overfed by their human caretakers. Pigs are often thought of as dirty animals because they wallow in mud. This behavior is due to the fact that pigs do not have sweat glands and thus are unable to sweat to regulate their body temperature. Wallowing in mud keeps pigs cool and protects their skin against sunburn and bug bites. Pigs are also great swimmers and will swim to cool themselves down.
Pigs are curious animals and when given the opportunity spend much of their time exploring, foraging, and rooting in the soil. The pig’s snout is a very sensitive organ, with tactile reception comparable to that of a human hand. This, coupled with the pig’s highly developed sense of smell, allows the pig to use its snout to explore its environment and to find food beneath the surface of the ground. A pig’s sense of smell and capacity to unearth items in the soil has led to their use in France to find truffles and have been used by police to help search for drugs.
Pigs are highly social animals, often living in small groups of three to five adult sows and their young. Pigs living together form close social bonds and work cooperatively. Social interactions among pigs also include bodily contact and resting pigs often lie in close proximity to one another.
Pigs also communicate vocally and demonstrate a wide range of audible communications. Vocalization is part of the mating ritual between male and female pigs and piglets become acquainted with and learn to identify their mother’s voice because she “sings” to them while nursing.
Approximately 24 hours prior to giving birth, a pregnant sow will leave the group, hollow out a hole in the ground and will build a nest out of soft natural material so that she may give birth in privacy. She will stay will her babies at the nest site for approximately one week and then will return to the social group. Piglets are weaned at approximately three months of age and will continue to live in the group with their mother and the other sows.
TERMINOLOGY & PRODUCTION PHASES
Barrow: a male hog that has been castrated prior to the onset of sexual maturation
Boar: an uncastrated male hog used for breeding purposes
Farrow: used to describe the process of giving birth to piglets.
Farrow-to-finish: hog operations where piglets are farrowed, weaned and fed until they reach slaughter weight, typically 225-250 pounds.
Farow-to-feeder: hog operations where pigs are farrowed and sold after they have reached a weight of 30-80 pounds.
Feeder-to-finish: hog operations where weaned pigs are purchased from a separate operation and fed until they reach market weight.
Feeder pig: a weaned pig that weighs between 30-80 pounds.
Finish: the act of feeding a pig until it reaches market weight.
Gilt: a young female who will be used for breeding purposed who has not yet farrowed her first litter.
Nursing pig: a piglet that has not been weaned.
Sow: an adult female used for breeding that has farrowed at least one litter. | <urn:uuid:6477c7cb-c59f-41b1-a520-76ebde492e05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.animallaw.info/articles/biushog.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974876 | 915 | 3.96875 | 4 |
In case you couldn’t make this year’s StoryWorld Conference in San Francisco, I’ll be offering a few short re-caps of key talks and themes throughout the next three days. Here we go.
DAY 1 – Morning
- The story remains crucial to transmedia. A transmedia project should not originate from the desire to make use of new technology, but from the desire to tell a captivating story.
- After centuries of ‘broadcasting’ (radio, TV, film, publishing, etc. – offering mass content to isolated consumers) storytelling now returns to its social roots, particularly due to new media’s possibilities to share content.
- The audience now expects more content, and audience participation is a) inevitable/an indicator that you are doing everything right, and b) necessary to keep a storyworld alive whilst trying to keep pace with audience’s insatiable demand for additional content.
- Opportunities for audience participation should ideally be planned right from the inception of a transmedia project.
- Creators need to have a clear vision of their storyworld, and engage in active and careful brand management throughout their transmedia enterprise.
- The more touch points are offered to audiences, the more invested audiences get into a transmedia project.
Jordan Weisman: The New Power of Story
Challenges ahead for transmedia and entertainment in general:
- Distribution – interactivity of content creates new distribution bottle-necks
- Discoverability – infinite amount of content drives up cost of exposing content while cost of producing content decreases; it is very hard to be seen but once an audience is built it is easier to lead them from one platform to another
- Creation flow – creation becomes a shared process; one content owner is replaced by multiple co-creators.
Panel Discussion: From Stories to Storyworlds
Brian Seth Hurst (moderator): There are four levels of audience relations -
- Broadcasting: Generating content flow towards audiences with little or no interaction between producers and the audience
- Listening: Producers listen to audience’s points of views and may or may not incorporate these into their work
- “Welcome to my world:” Welcoming audience engagement and opinion and incorporating it into production
- “Take it, it’s yours:” Actively inviting audience participation and user generated content
- Producers must start with the story, then consider the platforms involved, and must always manage the entire storyworld on all of its different platforms to ensure the narratives stay consistent.
- Audience relations must be actively managed and cannot and should not be ignored. Must also take UGC into account and must NOT suppress it – keeps the story alive.
Will content creators ever share their revenue with creators of UGC?
- Zak Kadison: Not any time soon in Hollywood; studios are unlikely to let go of their revenues and rights.
- Liz Rosenthal: They will eventually but it takes time, and it will probably start out with independent productions.
DAY 1 – Afternoon
Panel Discussion: C0nvergence Culture in Business – Franchising and Product Integration
- You need to understand the audience you are trying to reach with your content.
- Your content and a possible product/brand partnership or integration must be a good fit – same personality, features, characteristic, vision.
- If you are aiming to collaborate with a particular brand, find out which agencies it uses and pitch to them. Also be sure you pitch to the right type of agency depending on the nature of your project (advertising/digital/promotional/etc.).
- Make sure your entire team works on the transmedia project early on, including technologists and marketing, for example.
- If you own a trademark or a brand, you need to manage it actively and foster it. Have clear guidelines what uses are acceptable for your brand and which ones aren’t. Otherwise it gets inceasingly harder to defend your copyright (which you should get asap if you haven’t done so yet).
- Also have a clear system of rights management outlining which terms and names can be used in what types of context.
- One of the problems of revenue-sharing between UGC and PGC are the trademark rights, amongst other things. If you let others use your trademark/brand AND make money of it, you will find it harder to defend your rights to the trademark in front of a legal jury against other producers.
- As a transmedia consultant you have to accept and prepare for cases where your client changes their mind about a project rapidly, or drops the entire project altogether.
- Each transmedia poject requires its own way of measuring success. Define what success means for your project, including target demographic reach etc. Also, don’t be afraid to leverage data about your consumers; knowing which platforms they are coming from, and where they are heading next is incredibly valuable.
- Google’s Zero Moment of Truth is a free ebook that the panelists can recommend on getting started with evaluating online data about your users.
Panel Discussion: The Distribution Dilemma – Paywalls, Piracy & Subscription
- When pricing your individual content units you need to consider how expensive it is to produce one more extra unit. If this cost is low, it may be better to start with a freemium approach; if it is high, you might be dependent on subscriptions or larger single payments.
- One problem we are facing is that as the cost of producing content goes down the quality of the content we are producing does not necessarily increase.
- In freemium models – which have worked extremely well for social games like Farmville – only a very small amount of users (1-2%) will actually be willing to pay a large amount of money (several hundred dollars) for more access and more play. Most other consumers will be more likely to make several micro-payments. Because the micro-paying consumers make up such a great proportion of the market, it is more profitable to primarily cater to them rather than the big-payers.
- Points-systems tied in with e-commerce are a great way to repay user loyalty.
- If consumers want something badly enough, they WILL pay for it. You just have to make sure that your content is good enough for users to really want it.
- You have to make it easy to pay – frictionless. Find a way around your users having to put in their credit card details again and again.
- The first time paying is the crucial one. Afterwards consumers are a lot more likely to pay again.
- Piracy is a great problem for mobile-based games.
- When dealing with teens & tweens, subscription models maybe best as they only require parents to enter their payment details once and decrease the probability that youths will use their parents’ credit cards unauthorized.
Panel: Co-Managing in Collaboration with Stakeholders
- There is currently no standard practice to handle the rights management of transmedia properties, and many lawyers are still inexperienced in this field.
- You should ALWAYS get an attorney, even if you are on a budget.
- If you are on a budget, try to do as much research as possible before getting an attorney, and begin to draft your own ideas on how the rights should be handled.
- Large entertainment companies always want the most profitable rights (film, TV, etc.). If you are the content owner and want to retain certain rights you must demonstrate that you are able to exercise the rights you want to keep.
- Tread extremely carefully when it comes to rights management and licensing, and ALWAYS draw up documents stating the rights/licensing situation, even if you really can’t afford a lawyer. If you can’t afford a lawyer, draft the document yourself but do so extremely detailed and extremely carefully.
- If you invest in lawyers once you have the possibility to set a company precedent, which in turn will save you money and effort in the long run when it comes to drafting licensing/rights documents.
- One aspect that is currently not covered by rights or licensing is the data acquired from monitoring consumer behavior. These can be worth a fortune, so consider the use of these data wisely. | <urn:uuid:9193ef02-457c-4d12-9c18-dd907293e7ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://christineweitbrecht.com/2011/10/storyworld-2011-in-san-francisco-day-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927641 | 1,712 | 1.867188 | 2 |
An Oxmoor Valley couple told a federal judge on Friday that a proposed settlement that would end a longstanding desegregation order is unfair to families with young children who may lose out on the chance to attend Vestavia Hills schools.
Dwight and Zonja Coleman, who have an 18-month old child, were the only two residents of Oxmoor Valley to speak during a public hearing on the settlement in U.S. District Court in Birmingham.
The Vestavia Hills Board of Education filed a request last fall to end the desegregation order, under which the school system has for more than three decades bused students from a designated portion of Oxmoor Valley.
Lawyers representing Oxmoor Valley families reached a settlement with the school board in July that would enable current Oxmoor Valley students and their siblings to continue to enroll in Vestavia Hills schools and would create 30 tuition-paying slots for new children over the next six years.
If more than 30 children apply for those slots, students will be selected by lottery.
No ruling was made in the case. | <urn:uuid:9a3c8b89-0bac-4300-84f5-de14875fe8a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2007/10/ending_desegregation_order_unf.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972406 | 222 | 1.5 | 2 |
Joseph Reed (1741-1785)
- A.M. (Honorary) 1766
- Trustee 1778-1785
- President of the Board of Trustees 1779-1781
- Aide-de-Camp to General Washington
- Signer of Pennsylvania's Articles of Confederation
- Member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly
- Governor of Pennsylvania
Joseph Reed was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Theodosia Bowes and Andrew Reed, a merchant and minor officeholder. While the family lived briefly in Philadelphia, young Reed was enrolled in Francis Alison's class at the Academy of Philadelphia. However, after the family returned to Trenton, he attended the College of New Jersey (Princeton), graduating in 1757. Joseph Reed then studied law in Princeton under the direction of Richard Stockton. After his admission to the New Jersey bar in 1763, Reed traveled to London for further legal studies at the Middle Temple.
Upon his return to the colonies in 1765, Reed was faced with the bankruptcy of his father and the need to support his family. He began the practice of law in Huntingdon County; two years later he was named deputy secretary of New Jersey and clerk of the council and also became assistant to Dennys De Berdt, the former London agent for his father's firm and now colonial agent for Massachusetts. In 1770 Reed made another trip to England in 1770 to marry De Berdt's daughter Esther, whom he had met during his earlier stay in England. Reed and his wife settled in Philadelphia. A decade later, he had become a leading lawyer, a land speculator, the father of four children, the owner of two slaves and a member of the American Philosophical Society.
During the American Revolution, Reed served on Philadelphia's Committee of Correspondence in 1774, as President of Pennsylvania's second Provincial Congress in 1775, and as a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1776. In the Continental Army Reed became secretary to Commander-in-Chief George Washington and then as the army's adjutant general, eventually rising to the rank of colonel. He saw service at the battles of Long Island, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth. In 1777 he rejected an offer to serve as chief justice of Pennsylvania, but briefly served in Congress, signing the Articles of Confederation for Pennsylvania during his term.
A political moderate, Reed's beliefs fell between those of fiery radicals responsible for the state's unicameral constitution and those of the anti-democratic republicans who, Reed felt, were too quick to welcome former Loyalists to their ranks. In 1778 Reed agreed to assist the Pennsylvania Assembly in the prosecution of treason cases. Later that year, Reed proved to be a good compromise candidate, was elected President of the state's Supreme Executive Council (the equivalent of governor). During his tenure, Reed was unhappy with both the radicals' use of mob action and also the Republicans' apparent preference for bringing down state government over defeating the British. As governor, he worked to moderate extremes on both sides and to bring about conciliation.
As governor from 1778 to 1781, Reed served in an ex-officio capacity as a a member and as president of the board of trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pennsylvania). After his term as governor, Reed continued as an elected trustee until his death four years later.
After he stepped down as governor in 1781, Reed was one of the lawyers who successfully defended Pennsylvania's claims on the Wyoming Valley against a challenge from Connecticut. He also defended himself in a bitter public dispute with John Cadwalader over a charge, largely disproved, that Reed had contemplated abandoning the Revolution in 1776. Reed was elected to a congressional seat in 1784, but he was in poor health and declined to serve. He died the following year. | <urn:uuid:9640eb6b-bfae-4ac6-b69a-12ec3b452580> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/reed_jos.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981805 | 800 | 2.53125 | 3 |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To contract to sell more of (a stock or commodity) than can be delivered.
- v. To be too eager or insistent in attempting to sell something to.
- v. To present with excessive or unwarranted enthusiasm; overpraise.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To sell at too high a price.
- To sell more than can he delivered or more than is in existence; to “sell short”: as, to oversell a stock.
- v. transitive To agree to sell more of something than one can supply.
- v. transitive To be too eager in attempting to sell something.
- v. transitive To praise something to excess.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To sell for a higher price than; to exceed in selling price.
- v. Brokers' Cant To sell beyond means of delivery.
- From over- + sell. (Wiktionary)
“HARVEY LEVIN, MANAGING EDITOR, TMZ. COM: So many times when I get wind of a video, or somebody here gets wind of one, a lot of times they - people kind of oversell, and it ` s not as much as what it ` s cracked it up to be.”
“LEVIN: Yes, I mean, I have to tell you, Brooke: so many times when I get wind of a video, or somebody here gets wind of one, a lot of times they - people kind of oversell, and it ` s not as much as what it ` s cracked it up to be.”
“I'd like the think that scientists who are well-trained and open-minded will be convinced by the data, so long as I don't, as one person put it, "oversell" the model.”
“The backpedaling makes me think that the Administration must have also lost confidence in finding WMD's and that the whole thing was a cynical oversell which is now being revised like a movie after a test audience.”
“- Unlike so many other genre conventions, Creation Entertainment has a strict company policy not to "oversell" our conventions.”
“- CONVENTION SEATING & THE CREATION ENTERTAINMENT DIFFERENCE: Unlike so many other genre conventions, Creation Entertainment has a strict company policy not to "oversell" our conventions.”
“We will not 'oversell' nor over-claim about our readership.”
“Alistair Darling warned Gordon Brown not to 'oversell' his G20 summit deal yesterday as he admitted it would not stop unemployment spiralling.”
“Perhaps in his next edition he can include the term "oversell," but it might not need explanation.”
“If you oversell yourself it may come back at you on the job.”
‘oversell’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
Looking for tweets for oversell. | <urn:uuid:f9610e35-e1b6-4e87-96fa-c1f87f50823c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/oversell | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95003 | 655 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Immigrants take tertiary education
Many immigrants are in tertiary education. There is a significant difference between people who have migrated to Norway and people who were born in Norway to immigrant parents.
7 500 students with immigrant background were registered at Norwegian universities and colleges in 2003. This represents 3.6 per cent of the student population. The majority were first generation immigrants. However, the proportion of first generation immigrants in tertiary education is much lower than for people born in Norway to immigrant parents. 27 per cent of all 19-24 year olds born in Norway to immigrant parents were in tertiary education, compared with 18 per cent for first generation immigrants. The corresponding figure for all 19-24 year olds in Norway irrespective of background was 29 per cent.
First generation immigrants in education statistics
The statistics have been produced on the basis of information on individuals and parents' country of birth. A first generation immigrant is defined as a person born abroad to parents who were also born abroad. Statistics Norway does not produce statistics on immigrants and their reason for residence. This means that foreigners who are here to study are treated as first generation immigrants.
Stable student numbers
At 1 October 2003 the number of students in tertiary education was 210 000, up by almost 1 000 from 2002. The universities recorded a decline in student numbers from 2002 to 2003, however this was offset by a small increase in student numbers at university colleges. The gender distribution of students is almost the same as in the previous three years. There are approximately 60 per cent women and 40 per cent men in tertiary education. 70 per cent of the men were aged between 19 and 24, while 63 per cent of the women were in this age group. About 26 per cent of the women and 18 per cent of the men were aged over 35.
Australia - most popular country of study
A total of 14 1001Norwegian students were studying abroad in 2003. This is almost double the figure in 1993, when 7 200 Norwegian students were abroad. About 55 per cent of the students are women. Almost1 than 3 500 students from Norway are registered at education institutions in Australia. Other popular study countries are the United Kingdom, Denmark and the USA. There has been a significant increase in the number of Norwegian students in Australia, the United Kingdom, Poland and other European countries, while there has been a decline in the number of students in the USA and Germany.
Upper secondary education almost "compulsory"
Approximately 90 per cent of 16-18 year olds were in upper secondary education in 2003, and about 95 per cent of all 16 year olds continued their education after completing lower secondary education.
Vocational and general areas of study equally popular
Approximately 179 000 pupils were registered in upper secondary education in 2003, an increase of more than 8 500 compared with 2002. This increase is higher than the increase between 2001 and 2002, partly because more pupils in specialised adult education programmes are included in the figures. The pupils are equally distributed between vocational and general studies, however vocational studies are becoming more popular. The proportion of pupils in vocational studies was 43 per cent in 2001 and 47 per cent in 2002.
There are still differences between men and women when it comes to type of study. Approximately 46 per cent of women and 52 per cent of men chose vocational studies. The corresponding figures in 2002 were 44 and 50 per cent respectively.
The number of apprentices fell by 760, or almost 3 per cent, from 2002 to 2003.
Many adults in upper secondary education
The right to upper secondary education for adults was introduced in 2000. Approximately 36 000 adult pupils were registered in upper secondary education, 27 000 pupils were in ordinary programmes and 9 000 were in specialised courses for adults. About 42 per cent of the adults were 25 or older and women were in the majority, at 64 per cent.
|1||Corrected 20 September 2004.|
- Table 1 Pupils and students, by age, gender and type of school/institution. 1 October 2003
- Table 2 Pupils and students, by type of school and age. 1 October 2003. Percentage of registered cohort
- Table 3 Pupils and students by immigrant category, type of school1. Per cent
- Table 4 Apprentices and pupils in upper secondary education, by age and county of residence. Percentage of registered cohorts. 1 October 2003
- Table 5 Pupils in upper secondary education, by type of education and gender. 1 October 2003
- Table 6 Adult pupils in upper secondary education, by age and gender. 1 October 2003
- Table 7 Pupils in folk high schools and pupils in upper secondary education, by gender, type of school and ownership. 1 October 2003
- Table 8 Students, by gender, type of institution, ownership and name of institution. 1 October 2001-2003
- Table 9 Students, by age and type of institution. 1 October 2003. Absolute figures and per cent
- Table 10 Norwegian students in tertiary education abroad, by country. 1 October 1993, 1998 and 2003. Percentage of women. (The table was corrected 20 September 2004)
The statistics is publised with Upper secondary education. | <urn:uuid:e11c1898-64be-4d52-9d4a-8c7713247558> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ssb.no/en/utelstud | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977701 | 1,054 | 2.5625 | 3 |
8. Glass, Cut: VII
In the realm of eternal sight, there is always song.
Singing by the silver light, singing by the gold,
One soaring note by one, seven notes all told.
One for each son, laughs an irresponsible father,
But they know it is a joke, and grin.
A choir exults unto Ilúvatar (and itself) upon the green mound,
It’s voices fair as other worlds, matching swell
and dip. Tinkling voices, magic voices,
certain, positive, exactly voices.
Fingon listens, and his tears dry.
Which elf would not feel an epiphany
And Fingon is tired. His burden began
as a humming ‘please, Maitimo, please’ that transmuted
into ‘Eru told me’,
‘Eru asked me’.
Gospel sung as blind love.
Perhaps this is your song, Fingon.
Fingon is growing up,too, his valiance coming afore,
Seeking out his missing everywhere that he may go,
which is upto the borders of dusk
though not beyond,
Somehow, he is to be a saviour.
Through the magic drying tears,
there sounds a voice above voices.
A slow soft voice,
an unlikely voice,
a bloodful, smoking,
making blind love into gospel, the voice of,
the voice of
The voice of another saviour
With dark hair and dark eyes
Who sings to save Fingon’s falling world
-- not falling per se, it’s still paradise – but praying a prayer
that will live when all else dies
A prayer for amazing grace
that finds what is lost
and shows what is blind
(Melkor fears that song and voice, although he laughs yet at it, wondering
what little Makalaurë would know of blindness
It’s true; he doesn’t, it’s the herb talking.
But the song will live as long as he, Darkness,
who dimly knows this.)
So sing, Maglor, mighty bard,
of what happened next.
He laughs throatily out of the haze.
he came to me
and I knew what was and what wasn’t.
Bloody difficult to remember clearly, though.
Haven’t I said? Those were heady days,
The Leaflight made you real – warm. Slow.
Maitimo was ill like an echo then,
weak and worried,
and nervy when he wasn’t staring the ceiling into spots.
(Nervy! he snorted, years later. Nervy!
Whoever heard of a stunning bundle of nerves?)
When you first love, you realise, don’t you, every part of your body anew
And it is not your neck or your leg, but simply what the other touched.
It must have seemed like such a curse to him,
like some disease laid spawn in his flesh. Young lust is quite destroying.
The only thing worse must be old lust, though We, of course --
Mother was just tired, Father was wild,
And along comes this child.
Good family, moral background, Vanya Pride, we used to call them
in private political incorrectness,
My cousin Finny – chuckle – knight-errant.
Varda, but he was serious. He never did laugh too much.
I used to think he didn’t get our jokes.
I used to think a lot of things.
I used to be amused at those two,
but it’s really only God who can afford to laugh at things like that.
We’re all Fingon and we’re all Maedhros, in a way.’
Maglor gets ahead of himself
wanders into the nearest cloud,
singing scat, then soaring,
seeming to think everything futile, which it is
But Maglor, Maglor,
perhaps you don’t belong in your brothers’ songs,
because forget your madness and junkenness
and blindness and lost-ness, Maglor
golden minstrel, lasting lament
and eternal aria
crier for the Great Impresario In The Sky --
About what happened:
Fingon walked to Maglor in a daze,
(they were both in a daze)
knowing his mangled purity, and told him simply, ‘I must see Maitimo’.
Maglor of his mother’s spirit, smiled,
Wordless, led him home like a brother,
by the hand, and left him at the door.
Fingon turned the knob,
the smell changed
from vegetable dye and rolled leaf to
sheer, fastidious cleanliness
smelt utter white, too incomplete for joy.
He was sitting on his bed, looking out of the empty window.
He did not raise his brow this time,
he did not say I saw you come, nor
I was waiting for you
Instead again, out of the now-troubled depths, almost in sorrow
asked, ‘Why are you here?’
And Fingon did not run away.
His head did not spin,
his heart did not beat
when with the calm of a messiah he said,
‘To save you.’
On high, Himself squeezed His eyes shut
and made a mental note about the Literal Interpretation Of Prophecy;
but Maedhros believed it,
and fell to doom in his clear grey eyes.
‘God’, Maglor rasps suddenly,
‘has as many ways as He does children.
A Rúmil way, a Fingon way,
a Maglor way,
and the way of Fëanáro. Strangest, yet strongest. He,’
in danger of incoherence, but only just faint,
‘hated Fingon. But he had sharp eyes.
Never said a word.’
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author. | <urn:uuid:140ca9e2-8a72-4175-99d7-0a7faa8fefb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henneth-annun.net/stories/chapter_view.cfm?stid=2317&spordinal=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93605 | 1,458 | 1.554688 | 2 |
New York Times best-selling author Stephen Mansfield's latest book is "Lincoln's Battle With God." A former pastor and radio show host, he's written biographies on Winston Churchill, George Whitefield, President Obama, President George W. Bush and Booker T. Washington. Mansfield describes himself as a Christian and lives in both Nashville, Tenn., and Alexandria.
Your book describes Abraham Lincoln as a young atheist who eventually becomes a believer in God and an author of some of the most poetic theological statements we have in American political speeches. What were the key turning points in that transformation?
He was raised by parents who were very much caught up in the revivals of the Second Great Awakening, and he was kind of turned off by what we wouldn't even call Pentecostal -- it was more extreme than that. And he had a terrible relationship with his father. He started that process of self-education, and he began to devour books; some of what he devoured was religious skepticism. Authors like Edward Gibbon, Thomas Paine -- he really drank it in. He spent about a decade as the village atheist, writing tracts and pamphlets.
What really turned him back on the pursuit of God was years later, in 1850, his child Tad died. Lincoln had always suffered from depression -- he had tried to commit suicide a couple times -- and he really needed some help. So he reached out to a Presbyterian pastor in town, and this guy did two things: He comforted him in his grief, and he answered all of his intellectual questions. That's what turned him on to the journey of faith he was on the rest of his life. We know one of the last things he ever said was that he wanted to walk in the Holy Land "in the footsteps of the Savior." I don't paint him as an evangelical Christian, but he was a believer in God, and thought of the Civil War as judgment of the nation, and things like that.
You've written several books on the faith of leaders -- Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, George W. Bush. What have you found in the lives of these men to inspire your own?
All of them had seasons of really seeking God or trying to find out if there was a God or spiritually pursuing that were very moving. None of them came to faith easily, not Bush, not Obama, not Lincoln. They all had good questions and good intellects and were taught by somebody at some point to doubt religion, and they all had to dig their way back. I think what's most inspiring to me is they didn't put up with easy answers. And the other thing is that their faith shaped their policies. Even though they were different men with different theologies, each of them was doing things dictated by his faith. Lincoln certainly did. Even the Emancipation Proclamation was based on a covenant he made with God -- he told his Cabinet that.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
All men and women of every color and nationality and type are made in the image of God, and they have "eternity in their hearts." That's a quote from Ecclesiastes. In other words, they have a dynamo in their hearts that's drawing them to faith and God. | <urn:uuid:fbc24e91-232f-46b5-a956-583d6f01a269> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2515351 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993476 | 671 | 2.09375 | 2 |
May 2, 2012: The U.S. recently revealed that two Taiwanese smugglers of Chinese counterfeit consumer goods and drugs told American undercover agents that their contacts in Chinese intelligence would also pay big for technical details on American UAVs and military aircraft (especially the E-2C carrier based radar aircraft and the F-22 stealth fighter). Once the pair were arrested the prospect of life in prison on drug smuggling charges apparently resulted in a lot of details about how Chinese intelligence works with criminal gangs. American intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies have long known about the extensive Chinese intelligence efforts to steal American technology, and the revelations about the use of criminals was not a big surprise.
China sees this kind of broad-spectrum intelligence gathering as a major operation and one they intend to keep going as long as possible. Thus, during the last four years China has established eight National Intelligence Colleges in major universities. In effect, each of these is an "Espionage Department" at these universities, where, each year, about 300 carefully selected applicants are accepted, to be trained as spies and intelligence operatives. The college trained operatives expect to make a career out of stealing Western technology. China has found that espionage is an enormously profitable way to steal military and commercial secrets. While Chinese Cyber War operations in this area get a lot of publicity, the more conventional spying brings in a lot of stuff that is not reachable on the Internet.
One indicator of this effort is the fact that American counter-intelligence efforts are snagging more Chinese spies. But this is largely due to increased spying efforts by China, rather than more success by the FBI and CIA. This use of industrial espionage has played a large part in turning China into the mightiest industrial and military power on the planet.
For over two decades China has been attempting to do what the Soviet Union never accomplished: steal Western technology, then use it to move ahead of the West. The Soviets lacked the many essential supporting industries found in the West (most founded and run by entrepreneurs) and was never able to get all the many pieces needed to match Western technical accomplishments. Soviet copies of American computers, for example, were crude, less reliable, and less powerful. It was the same with their jet fighters, tanks, and warships.
China gets around this by making it profitable for Western firms to set up factories in China, where Chinese managers and workers can be taught how to make things right. At the same time China allows thousands of their best students to go to the United States to study. While most of these students will stay in America, where there are better jobs and more opportunities, some will come back to China and bring American business and technical skills with them. Finally, China energetically uses the "thousand grains of sand" approach to espionage. This involves China trying to get all Chinese going overseas, and those of Chinese ancestry living outside the motherland, to spy for China, if only a tiny bit.
This approach to espionage is nothing new. Other nations have used similar systems for centuries. What is unusual is the scale of the Chinese effort. Backing it all up is a Chinese intelligence bureaucracy back home that is huge, with nearly 100,000 people working just to keep track of the many Chinese overseas, and what they could or should, be trying to grab for the motherland. This is where many of the graduates of the National Intelligence College program will work.
It begins when Chinese intelligence officials examine who is going overseas and for what purpose. Chinese citizens cannot leave the country legally without the state security organizations being notified. The intel people are not being asked to give permission. They are being alerted in case they want to have a talk with students, tourists, or business people before they leave the country. Interviews are often held when these people come back as well.
Those who might be coming in contact with useful information are asked to remember what they saw or bring back souvenirs. Over 100,000 Chinese students go off to foreign universities each year. Even more go abroad as tourists or on business. Most of these people were not asked to actually act as spies but simply to share, with Chinese government officials (who are not always identified as intelligence personnel) whatever information they obtained. The more ambitious of these people are getting caught and prosecuted. But the majority are quite casual and, individually, bring back relatively little but are almost impossible to catch.
Like the Russians, the Chinese are also employing the traditional methods, using people with diplomatic immunity to recruit spies, and offering cash, or whatever, to get people to sell them information. This is still effective and when combined with the "thousand grains of sand" methods, brings in lots of secrets. The final ingredient is a shadowy venture capital operation, sometimes called Project 863, that offers money for Chinese entrepreneurs who will turn the stolen technology into something real. No questions asked. If you can get back to China with the secrets you are home free and potentially very rich.
But there are some legal problems. When the Chinese steal some technology, and produce something that the Western victims can prove was stolen (via patents and prior use of the technology), legal action can make it impossible, or very difficult, to sell anything using the stolen tech outside of China. For that reason the Chinese like to steal military technology. This kind of stuff rarely leaves China. And in some cases, like manufacturing technology, there's an advantage to not selling it outside of China. Because China is still a communist dictatorship the courts do as they are told and they are rarely told to honor foreign patent claims. | <urn:uuid:f2d8eaaf-9e40-4e83-ad5f-d49e3d2fee47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20120502.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96907 | 1,128 | 2.25 | 2 |
NEW DELHI: The human resource development ministry has watered down its ambitious plans of setting up 14 new "innovation universities". Not only has it dropped the numerical target, it has now reworked its concept to allow existing universities to be classified as innovation universities after a change in their governance structure. The reworked proposal is likely to be taken up by the Cabinet at its next meeting.
Universities will not only have knowledge clusters, but also build linkages with research institutions and industry. These universities will focus on research-oriented innovations in design, development and delivery.
The Planning Commission, which is also working on some restructuring of the higher education sector as part of the 12th Plan process, suggested the change in the proposal. It now allows for existing universities and institutes to be upgraded to the status of universities for research and innovation after changes in governance structure. The Plan panel had raised objections to the idea of thematic universities, arguing that there are almost no world-class universities set up on a thematic basis. The HRD ministry has made it clear that even the theme-based universities will need to promote inter-disciplinary learning and research.
Over the last two years, there had been talk of setting up innovation universities focused on environment and ecology, culture and sports. However, none of these discussions progressed, even though several universities in the US and the UK expressed an interest in setting up innovation universities. There were apprehensions that resources would flow to the proposed innovation universities while the existing ones would not be helped to perform better. These apprehensions prompted the change in the concept of innovation universities.
The Sam Pitroda-headed National Knowledge Commission had suggested that each of the 14 varsities be earmarked 200 crore annually. | <urn:uuid:34d09880-8436-4e59-a4ef-1423c6bbfe2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-04-23/news/31387109_1_world-class-universities-innovation-universities-thematic-basis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965699 | 352 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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A deposit in transit or DIT is money that you have deposited in your bank account, but that doesn’t show up yet as received or credited by the bank. There are a number of reasons why a deposit in transit may not show up yet on a bank statement. It’s important to bear these different reasons in mind when you claim money the bank may not yet have recorded.
Sometimes deposit in transit refers to personal checks that the bank will hold until it receives money from another bank. Some banks have policies regarding holding personal checks, and not crediting you with their amount until funds are verified. Under these circumstances, it’s important to record the money, but not to count it as what you currently possess. This will help you avoid bank overdrafts.
Other times banks immediately accept all deposits, especially for businesses. However on weekends when deposits are made, your deposit may not be recorded until the next business-banking day. If this is the case, your access to the money will be limited or nonexistent until the DIT is recorded.
When you’re reconciling personal checking or small business checking accounts, and you have a low balance, you will really want to verify that the bank has recorded any deposit in transit. Even if you have deposited money into the bank, if the bank has rules about recording the money or when they will credit it, you could very easily bounce checks or overdraw your account. If you’ve made a deposit via ATM for instance, it may not be credited until the next business day, so you’ll want to be sure you have adequate funds in your account not including the deposit before you make any purchases.
Another way in which deposit in transit is used in business terms, is when people claim sales or payments at the end of a fiscal year. Even if not all your checks have cleared for a fiscal year, the money is usually still considered income for that year. If you make some deposits right before the end of a fiscal period or year, and they haven’t shown up in your bank account yet, they are still part of the income or profits you would claim on your taxes.
Similarly, people filing their taxes in the US would claim all money made during the year (1 January - 31 December). A bank may not have recorded a paycheck or it could still be in deposit in transit status. Yet because the check or payment was for work done during the tax year, it would still count as part of your income, even if the bank hasn’t recorded it yet. All forms of payment should show up on your bank statement within a few days. You should check with your bank if this is not the case. | <urn:uuid:121918d4-ae5b-4821-b8be-53fbc12d1ae1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-deposit-in-transit.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969036 | 565 | 2.0625 | 2 |
You know the solar industry is hurting when a startup with a promising cell manufacturing technology turns to systems integration to stay afloat. That’s the recent story of Blue Square Energy, which was launched to develop and manufacture low-cost solar cells using upgraded metallurgical-grade (UMG) silicon but has now shifted into a “survival plan” focused on being a systems integrator. Chief Executive Joseph Babin tells us that the North East, Md.-based startup now is generating business by designing and selling small-scale solar arrays and energy-efficient lighting programs for residential and commercial customers.
The company has customers in Delaware and New Jersey, and Babin said he expects to generate revenue of between $3 million and $8 million this year. But why the systems integration business, even if it is temporary? Babin responded: “We have an established business network in this region that is driving inbound opportunity.”
In many ways, Blue Square is a victim of the times. The startup, which had raised about $5 million in funding from individual investors and had intellectual property to boot, was hunting for about $25 million in venture capital in late 2008 when markets for financing largely shut down and the weakening economy and other factors reduced demand for solar products. There were no takers, Babin said. Nor could he find strategic partners to merge with or buy his company. By January 2009, the company had shrunk from a high of 75 employees to just five including Babin, its current size today.
But it should be said that the company’s woes aren’t solely because of difficult economic times. As the Gunther Portfolio blog has well-documented, even in mid-2008, Blue Square failed to raise money largely as a result of concerns surrounding then-CEO Allen Barnett’s leadership abilities. During the summer of 2008, Barnett and his father, Dr. Allen Barnett, who was a consultant for the firm, were asked to tender their resignations.
Still, Babin, who refused to comment on the Barnetts’ ouster and who was a board member before taking the helm, believes that the company’s solar cell Bright Point technology has enormous promise and that the startup’s inability to raise money in late 2008 was a result of a “perfect storm” of market pressures. “We missed our timeline by eight months on a pilot production machine,” Babin said. “That put us behind, and then we ran into the wall of the economy.” Despite the setbacks, Babin hasn’t given up on the company’s initial vision of being a solar cell developer and manufacturer. Once financing becomes more available, he plans to look again for venture capital backing, and in the meantime, he’s talking to unnamed European equipment manufacturers for partnerships.
In November 2008, Blue Square announced that it had produced a solar cell with a 14.6 percent efficiency. The company said it was one of the highest-recorded efficiencies using UMG silicon, a less pure, lower-cost version of silicon than is typically used in solar cells. With further development, Blue Square believes it can produce a high-performance, low-cost solar cell for use in homes and businesses.
But even when venture capital starts flowing more readily to cleantech startups (the turnaround may already be occurring), Blue Square could have a hard sell. UMG-based solar cells were an attractive value proposition when purer silicon was trading for $400 per kilogram in mid-2008. Now it’s plummeted to below $50 per kilogram, and the cost of conventional solar cells has declined along with it. Any company — thin-film solar included — that is developing an alternative technology to conventional silicon cells now has a significantly harder market to penetrate. | <urn:uuid:1c439edf-44ee-4f4c-b332-06b34f2c80da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gigaom.com/2009/07/03/blue-square-energy-turns-to-%E2%80%9Csurvival-plan%E2%80%9D-to-stay-afloat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968786 | 785 | 2.09375 | 2 |
I often talk, or write, about developing the value of selfless service or giving back in our Scouts.
In our Troop we have a couple Scouts that are in the process of earning their Eagle Award.
If you look at the requirements for earning the Eagle Award you will find that it requires the Scout to lead. And lead in a way in which he serves.
While a Life Scout, plan, develop, and give leadership to others in a service project helpful to any religious institution, school, or community. (The project should benefit an organization other than Boy Scouting.) The project idea must be approved by the organization benefiting from the effort, your Scoutmaster and troop committee and the council or district before you start. You must use the Eagle Scout Leadership Service Project Workbook, BSA publication No. 18-927, in meeting this requirement.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the term “Eagleing Out”. There is no such thing as a Scout earning his Eagle and out he goes. The purpose of earning the Eagle Award is learn, grow, develop and give back. If a Scout does not understand what the Eagle award represents than he just earned another patch.
Giving back is the essence of Scouting. The be helpful, to be kind, to be become a leader in our community it is all about giving back.
Have a Great Scouting Day! | <urn:uuid:77e64894-5c4e-4325-aacd-75a855f6bc1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thescoutmasterminute.net/2009/02/05/giving-back/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=1630920375 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96045 | 284 | 2.234375 | 2 |
The first project updated was the bicycle trail, located on the south end of the Greenstrip downtown.
"We are about 96 percent complete with this project," said Korb. "All of the lights and paving has been done and we are waiting to seed the turf and put the park benches down."
Korb added that concrete would be poured today; weather permitting, in an attempt to complete the handicap ramp leading to the park from the parking lot.
The bicycle trail was made possible by a $713,107 grant from the Mississippi Department of Transportation.
Earlier this year the board of aldermen allocated $991,781 in the budget to complete the project.
The next project updated by Korb is the construction of the storm water pumping plant located in the Southeast part of the city.
"It is about 80 percent complete at this time," said Korb. "The main structure is done. The discharge structure is done. We still have some piping and the pump itself should be in next week."
The storm water pumping plant project was made possible by an approximate $505,000 grant from the Mississippi Development Authority.
"Basically the grant came on the heels of Hurricane Katrina when money was spread around the state to help communities alleviate flooding," said Korb.
The pumping plant will help standing water drain off of streets at times of high water in southeast Cleveland.
"If you haven't been done MLK extended across from Amzie Moore Park you should really go down there and see it," said Korb. "It’s a big structure so you can't miss it."
The next project update came on the Cleveland Municipal Airport's runway extension project.
"Basically we are on hold as far as the paving is concerned," said Korb
Korb explained that asphalt could only be laid in warmer temperature so that portion of the project will not resume until the spring.
"The electricians are on-site and working on the wiring for the runway and taxi lighting," he said.
The runway extension project came to fruition through grant money from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Association.
U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and Sen. Roger Wicker reported in 2010 that more than 30 Mississippi airport facilities would benefit from the $8.6 million in federal Airport Improvement Program grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The final update came on the progress of replacing all the city's water meters.
"We are about four and a half months into the water meter project and have already replaced approximately 1,000 meters," said Korb. "Of that number, we have only had about two or three percent where we have had to go back and tighten a bolt or something minor like that."
Siemens is the general contractor for the project and they have contracted out work to local plumbers.
The work is related to an almost $3.267 million dollar project to upgrade the city's aging system, approved by the board earlier this year.
"By law, we get to look at that figure over a 15 year term,” said Siemens representative Chris McNeil of the initial investment at that meeting. “The way the MDA guidelines read is that the system must be able to pay for itself over a 15-year period."
McNeil added that this new system should net the city, at a minimum, $620,000 in positive cash flow over the term of the loan and that money is guaranteed.
"Working with the MDA, by law we have to guarantee that figure," McNeil explained. "If the city decides that this is something that they want to do, then we (Siemens) are on the hook for the next 15 years. If the revenues do not match what is in that study over that period of time then we have to write a check back to the city to cover the difference."
Korb said that the process of replacing the meters would cause a short interruption in service and a minimal inconvenience as possible but that the work had to be done.
"The contractors will continue placing door hangers at residences telling them when they will be performing the work at that location," said Korb. "Most of the work will just require replacing the meter in the box and some may require more work if the box is an old cast iron box or if it is in concrete."
In those situations, the radio signal from the box to the reader's transmitter cannot be received and the cast iron box must be replaced with plastic.
Korb said that during the process all boxes have been brought up to ground level, or as close as possible, and property has been returned to its previous condition.
"Upon completion of the installation at a location, the contractors are returning yards and concrete back to its original condition," he said.
Korb said that the process is a necessary improvement to the system and asks that all residents continue to be patient.
"We ask that residents give the contractors time to complete this task," said Korb. "If anyone should have any questions please feel free to contact the city engineer's office at 846-5706." | <urn:uuid:18fa6b85-207d-4101-93b5-2e1d5e122728> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bolivarcom.com/view/full_story/21035104/article-Engineer-presents-update-on-projects?instance=most_popular | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973865 | 1,061 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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How is latent TB infection treated?
Latent TB infection is treated with isoniazid, which is one of the first-line anti-TB drugs. The recommended length of treatment is nine months for adults and children. Shorter courses of treatment with other first-line drugs may be used for special circumstances, such as exposure to someone who has TB that is resistant to isoniazid.
Sometimes people are given preventive therapy even if their skin test reaction is not positive. This is often done with infants, children, and HIV-infected people who have recently spent time with someone with infectious TB disease. This is because they are at very high risk of developing TB disease soon after they become infected with TB bacteria.
It is important that you take all the pills prescribed for you so that your preventive therapy is effective. If you start taking INH, you will need to see your doctor or nurse on a regular schedule. He or she will check on how you are doing. Very few people have serious side effects to INH. However, if you have any of the following side effects, call your doctor or nurse right away:
yellowish skin or eyes
fever for more than 3 days
tingling in the fingers and toes
|Warning: Drinking alcoholic beverages (wine, beer, and liquor) while taking INH can be dangerous. Check with your doctor or nurse for more information.|
There is good news for people with TB disease! TB disease can almost always be cured with medicine. But the medicine must be taken as the doctor or nurse tells you.
The most common drugs used to fight TB are:
If you have TB disease, you will need to take several different drugs. This is because the bacteria can quickly become resistant if only one drug is given. Taking several drugs will do a better job of killing all of the bacteria and preventing them from becoming resistant to the drugs.
If you have TB of the lungs or throat, you are probably infectious. You need to stay home from work or school so that you don't spread TB bacteria to other people. After taking your medicine for a few weeks, you will feel better and you may no longer be infectious to others. Your doctor or nurse will tell you when you can return to work or school.
Having TB should not stop you from leading a normal life. When you are no longer infectious or feeling sick, you can do the same things you did before you had TB. The medicine that you are taking should not affect your strength, sexual function, or ability to work. If you take your medicine as your doctor or nurse tells you, the medicine will kill all the TB bacteria. This will keep you from becoming sick again.
TB bacteria die very slowly. It takes at least 6 months for the medicine to kill all the TB bacteria. You will probably start feeling well after only a few weeks of treatment. But beware! The TB bacteria are still alive in your body. You must continue to take your medicine until all the TB bacteria are dead, even though you may feel better and have no more symptoms of TB disease.
If you don't continue taking your medicine after you feel better or you aren't taking your medicine regularly, this can be very dangerous. The TB bacteria will grow again and you will remain sick for a longer time. The bacteria may also become resistant to the drugs you are taking. You may need new, different drugs to kill the TB bacteria if the old drugs no longer work. These new drugs must be taken for a longer time and usually have more serious side effects.
If you become infectious again, you could give TB bacteria to your family, friends, or anyone else who spends time with you. It is very important to take your medicine the way your doctor or nurse tells you.
The only way to get well is to take your medicine exactly as your doctor or nurse tells you. You will be taking your medicine for a long time (6 months or longer), so you should get into a routine. Here are some ways to remember to take your medicine:
Participate in the directly observed therapy (DOT) program at your county health department.
Take your pills at the same time every day -- for example, you can take them before eating breakfast, during a coffee break, or after brushing your teeth.
Ask a family member or a friend to remind you to take your pills.
Mark off each day on a calendar as your take your medicine.
Put your pills in a weekly pill dispenser. Keep it by your bed or in your purse or pocket.
The best way to remember to take your medicine is to get directly observed therapy (DOT). If you get DOT, you will meet with a health care worker every day or 2 or 3 times a week. You will meet at a place you both agree on. This can be the TB clinic, your home or work, or any other convenient location. The health care worker will watch you take your medicine.
DOT helps in several ways. The health care worker can help you remember to take your medicine and complete your treatment. This means you will get well as soon as possible. With DOT, you may need to take medicine only 2 or 3 times each week instead of every day. The health care worker will make sure that the medicine is working as it should. This person will also watch for side effects and answer questions you have about TB.
Even if you are not getting DOT, you must be checked at different times to make sure everything is going well. You should see your doctor or nurse regularly while you are taking your medicine. This will continue until you are cured.
If you forget to take your pills one day, skip that dose and take the next scheduled dose. Tell your doctor or nurse that you missed a dose. You may also call your doctor or nurse for instructions. | <urn:uuid:199694f1-5219-4ba3-8a01-2830689f3ee0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://in.gov/isdh/19677.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962723 | 1,230 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.
Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.
While the global market for natural goods is booming, millions of small producers who dream of accessing it are shut out.
Willy Foote is an American banker who has spent the past decade answering this question. In the early 1990s, Foote worked for Lehman Brothers doing corporate finance in Latin America, where he fell in love with the culture and learned to play dozens of revolutionary songs on guitar. In 1996, he left Lehman to pursue a business journalism fellowship in Mexico, and he and his wife spent two years traveling around the country in an old pickup truck, interviewing villagers. What he found was that the missing link between small producers in the developing world and middle-class consumers who like to buy their morning coffee at Starbucks is a special kind of banker. That’s why, in 1999, Foote founded Root Capital, a not-for-profit organization that helps environmentally sustainable grassroots businesses gain access to capital, skills and markets.
Of the 2.6 billion people who live on $2 a day or less, three quarters live in rural areas, and many are small producers — which is why the World Bank says agricultural businesses are the most effective vehicles to reduce global poverty. The problem is that their businesses, even when they form associations, are too small and risky to be served by banks and too big for Grameen Bank-style microfinance. To succeed, they typically need access to loans between $10,000 and $1 million. This is a banking no-man’s land — often called the “missing middle.” While the global market for natural goods is booming, millions of small producers who dream of accessing it are shut out. Every day, we hear politicians trumpet free-market solutions as a cure for economic ills, but few have worked out the messy details to make the slogans real — especially for people in the countryside.
That’s what Root Capital does. Consider the example of Rolando Lazo, a coffee producer who lives in the Jinotega region of Nicaragua, in the densely forested mountains about 100 miles northeast of Managua, where the country’s best coffee is grown. Jinotega was the location of some of the worst violence during Nicaragua’s civil war in the late 1970s. When Lazo was a boy, his parents were killed and he grew up in extreme poverty, often sleeping under trees. He eked out a living as a migrant farm worker, barely earning enough to cover his basic needs, let alone save for the future.
Today, Lazo and his family have a small plot of land and a house — plus electricity, TV and access to potable water. How did this happen?
Lazo joined a coffee farmers’ cooperative that linked up with a larger association of 19 cooperatives called SOPPEXCCA. Over the past six years, after struggling financially, the association received nine loans from Root Capital ranging from $70,000 to $450,000 to build an export business that would benefit all its members.
Most of the credit went to cover costs between the time when the association’s 700 farmers harvest their coffee and the payments come in from buyers. This ensured that farmers wouldn’t be forced to sell at fire-sale prices to middlemen. Some of the loans were extended to Lazo and others to buy their own land. And $280,000 was used to purchase a warehouse and a dry mill with machines for hulling, sorting and packing, which ensure consistent quality coffee. The investments reduced processing and transportation costs and allowed SOPPEXCCA to earn profits that would otherwise have gone to private millers.
As a result, SOPPEXCCA now sells much of its coffee at specialty-grade prices to retailers in Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United States, where Peet’s Coffee carries its beans. According to the association, sales have increased from $531,000 in 2003 to $1.7 million this year.
While traveling through Mexico, Foote had met hundreds of farmers who had good products to sell. “I came across leaders wherever I went,” Foote said. But hardly any could get access to credit. Without opportunities, many resorted to illegal logging or slash-and-burn agriculture, practices that eroded the soil, destroyed biodiversity, and made their communities vulnerable to flooding — all of which deepened poverty.
One day Foote found himself in the Chimalapas jungle surrounded by 100 vanilla farmers in cowboy hats. The farmers had organized themselves and taken back their land from narco-ganaderos (narco-ranchers) who grew marijuana and poppies for the drug trade. “ ‘We’re organized now,’ ” Foote recalled a young leader declare. “‘We have our cooperative. We will find markets for our vanilla and we will make money!’”
They didn’t. The cooperative failed. Foote returned to the United States. He had planned to attend business school, but he never went. Instead, he started EcoLogic Finance (later renamed Root Capital). If farmers were courageous enough to resist the drug trade, he said, the least the world owed them was a decent shot at building honest businesses.
His timing was good. At the time, high profile companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and The Body Shop were looking to source more of their products from small producers, a trend that has accelerated — and will continue to accelerate the more customers pay attention to ethical and environmental considerations.
But a big bottleneck is the banking sector, which has yet to adjust its business practices to make markets work the way they could — and should. Only a quarter of the world’s bank branches are located in rural areas. “Nobody has figured out how to get commercial banks to focus on these rural markets,” said Foote. Even when they do, traditional banks are uncomfortable lending to people who lack hard collateral. The rural poor often have no land, buildings or legal titles. And government rural credit schemes have been riddled with corruption and waste.
Against this backdrop, Root Capital has lent $235 million to 305 rural businesses in 35 countries, with a 99 percent repayment rate, and it is poised to triple its annual lending by 2013. The businesses that Root Capital has financed — producers of such things as coffee, cocoa, nuts, cotton, fruit, timber and artisan goods —support 400,000 households, or well over a million people.
How has it achieved such success? Root Capital’s investment officers spend a third to half their time visiting clients, walking along dirt roads, discussing harvests, inquiring about whether farmers’ kids are attending school. Their intimate knowledge of their clients allows them to approve new loan applications in four to six weeks and renewals often in days. The organization raises money from investors at 2.5 percent interest — Starbucks is one of its biggest investors — and lends it out at 9.5 to 12 percent interest. This year, it expects to cover 73 percent of lending costs with interest income. Foote says the lending business will break even in three years.
Typically, in agricultural trade, small producers bear most of the risk while export companies and retailers reap most of the profits. What is most innovative about Root Capital is the way it has “derisked” an inherently risky business while shifting some of the profits from the big guys in the supply chain to the little guys. In addition to helping small producers add value, which boosts their revenues, the organization secures its loans by arranging fixed-price forward contracts from buyers. This insulates small farmers from the risk of price drops. And to further stabilize its borrowers, the organization works with companies like Green Mountain Coffee Roasters which provides grants to train leaders of rural associations in things like managing cash flow, account reconciliation, and financial decision making.
Root Capital also gets paid back directly from importers and retailers, rather than from its borrowers. “We think we have a very compelling risk mitigation strategy,” Foote said. “As long as product ships we get paid back. So we get very good at asking ‘Why wouldn’t product ship?’”
There are lots of reasons: droughts, frosts, labor strikes at port, civil wars. But that’s not usually what goes wrong in rural credit. What usually goes wrong is what caused the mortgage crisis in the United States: bankers make loans without getting to know their borrowers.
Root Capital can’t afford to make that mistake; it is trying to prove that rural producers represent a serious “asset class” for lenders. “If we lose a lot of money in the early days then the whole thing is over,” Foote said. So they have gotten good at finding bankers who are motivated to redeploy their skills to attack poverty. And they have no shortage of applicants.
Read previous contributions to this series.
Root Capital is now expanding into new market segments — seed companies, agricultural processors, staple foods, like sorghum, beans, and maize, and high-nutrient foods like plumpy’nut. It is helping farmers invest in “leap frog” technologies like drip irrigation, which can multiply crop yields and efficiencies.
In the coming years, Foote plans to standardize Root Capital’s work — to turn it into a “plug and play business” so other lenders can adopt its model. Some of its borrowers have already “graduated” to mainstream banks, a mark of success. But Foote is not expecting commercial banks to dive in anytime soon. Rather, he envisions something similar to what occurred in micro-finance over the past 15 years.
“I think we’re going to see the catalyzing of an entirely new industry of specialized financial institutions that are 100 percent dedicated to this market,” he said. “Because it’s such a massive opportunity — and it’s so grossly underserved right now.”
David Bornstein is the author of “How to Change the World,” which has been published in 20 languages, and “The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank,” and is co-author of “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is the founder of dowser.org, a media site that reports on social innovation. | <urn:uuid:e4c9c6ce-397c-48a6-bf38-ab7910bc6b4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/filling-the-gap-between-farm-and-fair-trade/?hp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969179 | 2,204 | 2.375 | 2 |
Samsung bid to block iPhone feature for the blind denied in German court
By Hayley Tsukayama,
A German court has denied Samsung’s request to block an iPhone text-to-voice feature that the company said infringed on one of its patents.
The companies have been locked in a bitter worldwide battle over intellectual property, but the German case drew particular attention because it involved an iPhone feature that’s been highly praised by advocates for the blind and visually impaired.
Apple’s VoiceOver feature reads a screen’s content aloud when users click an iPhone’s home button three times in a row. Samsung claimed, however, that it has patented using a button to launch this kind of feature, and asked for an iPhone ban.
That drew concerns from disability advocates, who said forcing Apple to change the way the feature works would have a harmful impact on smartphone users who rely on audio cues to operate their phones. It is possible to turn on the feature using Apple’s standard menus, but that’s very difficult for those who can’t use the device’s screen.
“If Samsung had been successful, would have been a hardship for blind people,” said National Federation for the Blind spokesman Chris Danielson. He suggested that Samsung could have asked for monetary compensation. That way, he said, the company could still air its grievances without making any device more difficult to use.
“I don’t want to take away anybody’s right to protect their patents ... but hope it would be done in a way that would negatively affect accessibility,” he said.
When asked for comment on the case, Samsung did not specifically address the VoiceOver feature or the concerns of disability advocates.
“For decades, we have heavily invested in pioneering the development of technological innovations in the mobile industry, which have been constantly reflected in our products,” the company said in a press statement. “We continue to believe that Apple has infringed our patented mobile technologies, and we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights.”
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling declined to comment on an ongoing legal matter.
Related stories: Judge hands rebel Apple shareholder a win, blocking vote on company proposal at annual meeting Apple victory in Google patent case to be reviewed by U.S. trade agency Sign up today to receive #thecircuit, a daily roundup of the latest tech policy news from Washington and how it is shaping business, entertainment and science. | <urn:uuid:d358c2a7-40f2-43ad-a139-e1dc08157017> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/samsung-bid-to-block-iphone-feature-for-the-blind-denied-in-german-court/2013/02/22/be61757e-7d3a-11e2-82e8-61a46c2cde3d_print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944707 | 520 | 1.632813 | 2 |
You can learn how to communicate and express better starting today. Research has proven that the brain acts just like a muscle, physically growing as learners actively engage with it. Just like physical exercise, students can make the most of the time they spend "working out" their minds if they have a guide, coach, and trainer. I would like to be all of these things for you or your student.
I believe in teaching and tutoring skills rather than topics. Every lesson I do and every example I provide will help my students feel immediately as though they have a new tool at their disposal that they can use to reach new heights of understanding and new depths of expression. While I do aim to help all students become immediately successful in the course or concept they are currently studying, my true objective is to foster an understanding and proficiency that will stay with them throughout their lives. My students don't simply make better grades - they become better learners.
I have taught Pre-AP English at the 9th grade level and provided writing coaching and tutoring for all levels of undergraduate college writing. I have a tremendous amounts of various resources which enable me to quickly diagnose and address individual needs for individual students; no two lessons are the same. I have a tremendous interest in all types of literature and an expert understanding of difficult grammar and mechanics issues many students struggle with.
I look forward to helping you become the strongest you can be!
While I may be new to Wyzant, I am not new to tutoring. Hear what previous students have had to say about working with me!
"Ryan M. is a phenomenal tutor. The main reason I say that is because he does not tell you 'no, you're wrong' he inquires you about your work asking questions like 'what do you think needs to be fixed here? Does something look odd to you? Explain to me what you mean by that.' He has you thinking about how you can improve your work, not on how he can improve it for you. Ryan is a wonderful guide in the adventure of learning."
"Mr. Ryan is a very helpful professor and he also motivates me a lot to study. As an international student, I have several grammar, spelling and punctuation problems. Professor Ryan doesn’t fix my mistakes. He teaches me how to see them, and fix them by myself. I enjoy asking him for help because I always learn a lot from him. I would extremely recommend him as a professor to any of my friends."
back to top | <urn:uuid:da4c24bb-129c-4c9f-98b4-a53410bb3da0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyzant.com/Tutors/TX/Richardson/7807390/?g=3MG | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978054 | 511 | 1.585938 | 2 |
(NewsUSA) - Once known as "that place you park your car," garages now serve as work rooms, craft corners, and entertaining and recreation spaces. In short, garages have become an extension of the home.
Most people prepare their home for the changing seasons, but many do not give their garages a second thought. Yet, updating garages can make them more functional while also improving the home's security and safety.
The Chamberlain Group, the manufacturer of LiftMaster (www.LiftMaster.com), a brand of professionally installed garage door openers and access solutions, offers tips for improving garages this fall:
* Create more storage space. As school begins, kids start to bring home sports equipment, so finding storage space may become an issue. But it's easy to create additional storage space -- just look to the ceiling! Installing an innovative, yet powerful, side-mounted garage door opener, such as the LiftMaster Side-Mounted Opener, opens up space on the ceiling for storing bikes, sports equipment and kayaks that need to be put away until next summer.
* Secure the entrance to your home. More than 70 percent of homeowners use the garage as the primary entrance to their homes, and many children let themselves in when they get home from school. Installing a fingerprint-activated keyless entry means that you won't have to worry about lost keys or kids telling their friends the access code.
* Kids may accidentally leave doors half-open. Keep your house from becoming vulnerable by installing a garage door monitoring system. The monitor, which can sit anywhere in your home, alerts you when the garage door has been left ajar.
* Always have a back-up plan. If you store your car in the garage and there's a power outage, you could find yourself stranded. Luckily, some garage door openers are capable of functioning even if the rest of the house has no power. For example, LiftMaster garage door openers with the EverCharge Standby Power System will open and close the door for up to two days without power. | <urn:uuid:61ccde1e-c2ce-4e97-bc89-82095e765065> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmtw.com/Garage-upgrades-can-help-your-kids/-/8792672/4703036/-/numrwx/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949153 | 426 | 1.578125 | 2 |
About Downtown Spartanburg
Established as a village in 1831 and then as a city in 1880, Spartanburg has a rich and vibrant history. Though it has frequently changed its physical form, from hamlet, to village to a small but growing city (it had 3,200 citizens in 1880) the downtown has functioned over time much as it did from its earliest days, providing the hub for social interaction, religious observance, institutional care and governance for the area. And, at the center of it all, lies Morgan Square, the oldest and most prominent public space in the city.
Yet, the Morgan Square area represents but a small fraction of downtown. The core area can count among its numerous assets businesses both old and new, two nationally-recognized colleges, a busy performance hall and auditorium, a first-class conference hotel, churches with large and growing congregations, a new central library, a variety of well situated parks, public art and a well connected transportation system. These assets are coupled with an active and energetic citizenry, a diverse arts community, visionary leadership, and a strong philanthropic base. | <urn:uuid:c409330a-9fe7-484a-b4b2-48d1d1a1da07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.downtownspartanburg.org/about-downtown.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968919 | 228 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Most people would probably prefer if traces of dairy cows' vaccinations don't show up in their milk, but one research team is looking into deliberately adding antibodies to milk as a way to help malnourished children in developing countries.
Seven years ago Alan Cross, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, published the results of a successful phase I clinical trial of a vaccine against sepsis he had developed. His next step, however, is to vaccinate dairy cows, not people. The cows will then produce an antibody-rich colostrum—the first milk mammals make after giving birth that transfers immunity to newborn animals—which organizations can give to malnourished children as a nutritional supplement.
Malnutrition causes the interior walls of the intestines to break down, allowing bacteria to move from the gut into the bloodstream, which leads to sepsis and a weakened immune system. For a child who has been malnourished for awhile, starting back on food is often insufficient to prevent illness and diarrhea, says Zeil Rosenberg, CEO of Bali Biosciences, LLC. The company has a license agreement with the University of Maryland, Baltimore, to produce the sepsis antibody colostrum. Rosenberg hopes that the milk, used along with food aid, will help break the "viscous cycle of malnutrition." In the past Rosenberg worked with Indonesia's Ministry of Health in Jakarta as a U.S. Agency for International Development advisor.
Once a child takes the colostrum, sepsis antibodies should enter his or her digestive system where they can bind to the toxins produced by sepsis-causing gram-negative bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Rosenberg says. The antibody-neutralized toxins might then leave the body via the feces, although researchers are not yet sure exactly how the colostrum will promote such evacuation.
Cross and Rosenberg also hope the antibody-rich milk will help trauma and burn patients, who are especially vulnerable to sepsis, but the first target audience for their product are malnourished children.
"It's an absolutely fascinating idea and completely original," says William Schaffner, a physician who researches infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Charles Arntzen, an Arizona State University School of Life Sciences biologist who studies vaccine development, says the idea sounds feasible as a way to block the onset of blood infection from the gut.
The colostrum should cost far less than conventional vaccine shots or intravenous treatment, making it less of a financial burden for developing nations. Rosenberg couldn't guess how much the final product might cost, but Arntzen notes that dairy cows make great quantities of colostrum, and immunizing cows is a common and inexpensive procedure.
Experts also expect the treatment to be very safe. Bali Biosciences will remove some of the lactose in the colostrum to make it more digestible for people who are lactose-intolerant, says Rosenberg. "As far as I can tell, they're not going to have any safety issues," Schaffner says. "This is like drinking [regular] cow's milk." The expected safety of the colostrum will help keep its test costs down.
Bali Biosciences continues to seek an organization to help distribute their product if it works, Cross says. Meanwhile, he'll be immunizing pregnant cows and testing their colostrum for the antibodies he's interested in. If the antibodies show up, he'll test the milk in animal models. He received a yearlong Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance grant last week to run his experiments.
In spite of billions of dollars spent in food aid, more than three million children die of malnutrition every year, according to the World Health Organization. Part of that mortality comes from infections that cross from the children's digestive systems into their blood, Rosenberg says. "We don't think there's one solution," he says, "but we think we can be part of a package of solutions." | <urn:uuid:3d9d9bf3-8607-4600-8a6e-fad82acea444> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=milk-of-life-dairy-cows-i | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957013 | 820 | 3.25 | 3 |
This is a book that speaks of the self and the world in objective terms.
Nahal's detailed accounts of his life as a scholar and a teacher make engrossing reading because of his sheer passion for life.
Silent Life: Memoirs of a Writer, Chaman Nahal, Roli Books, 2005, p.286, Rs. 295.
SILENT LIFE is the literary autobiography of Chaman Nahal, the eminent teacher of English, academic, globe-trotter and renowned Indian English fiction writer who is widely acclaimed for his Partition novel, Azadi. As far as autobiographies go, they fall into facile classifications like "egocentric" because the author has to speak about himself/ herself all the time. But there are also autobiographies, rarely though, that speak of the self and the world objectively, and the present volume is one of them.
As a literary autobiography, it is a rarity because even renowned writers nowadays produce self-important autobiographies that dwell on meaningless personal exploits. Here is a writer giving us details about how he went about doing his work, with the obsessive precision of an inveterate craftsman. When you think of the writing of Nahal, the picture of a filigree work of art comes to mind. He is so exquisite in the craftsmanship using words. Plus, his is a burning, all-engrossing spirit. Such a vibrant writer. And it is not purely accidental Nahal was born into a goldsmith family and here is what he says about it: "I believe I owe the gift (of being a writer) partly to my class origins. Every gold ornament has to be cut, moulded, soldered, set with precious stones, washed and polished with absolute precision. ... If gold is precious, a gold ornament is even more so, for it is altogether the brainchild of the artisan. Isn't that what a work of art is, too?"
Sialkot-born Nahal was 20 when Partition threw asunder the peaceful existence in Punjab, through the heart of which a border had taken shape. He lost his sister in the ensuing riots, and his views on the theme of organised violence (to which he devoted an entire chapter) are born of observations made during those trying times. Nahal believes that large-scale violence that erupts as knee-jerk reaction to socially disturbing events can be contained once the passions cool down. It can be ascribed to mob fury that explodes on the spur of the moment. But the violence that went on for months together in different parts of the country before and after Partition, the massacre of the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 following Indira Gandhi's assassination, and the post-Godhra Gujarat carnage, he terms as organised violence: meticulously planned and executed by people to gain certain ends.
Nahal, who believes that a writer cannot change society, but can only affirm life, survived Partition in the same spirit. He is like the fictional characters he created: "men and women who had the capacity to face their own contradictions and still forge ahead." His life as an academic and literary artist went on to blossom to the full extent, bringing him laurels from home and abroad: Turin University conferred upon him a Medal of Honour in 1987, Cambridge University elected him an Overseas Fellow in 1991, East West Centre in Hawaii honoured him with its Distinguished Service Award in 1997 and his last academic position abroad was as Dai Ho Chum Distinguished Chair at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu from 1997-98. He had won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Azadi much earlier, in 1977. Now, in his late seventies, he is as active as he was in his twenties, heading the Chaman Nahal Foundation.
The book is full of interesting details that will keep the curious literary buff absorbed. Here are but a few. His brief encounter with Gandhiji is one such. The young Nahal was of the opinion that Gandhiji was responsible for Partition and the misery it entailed. So, one day in 1947, he walked up to Gandhiji during one of the prayer meetings at Birla House and told him bluntly that he had suffered much. Strangely, the Mahatma said he too had suffered much. Next he told Nahal something that deeply influenced him: about the ability of a person to face any threat to his integrity through an inner strength. This steered Nahal into eventually writing the four long novels of The Gandhi Quartet (The Crown and the Loincloth, The Salt of Life, The Triumph of the Tricolour, and Azadi) about India's freedom struggle, a project on which he was to spend 25 years of his life. Another fascinating account is that of his close relationship with J. Krishnamurti, which led to the writing of A Conversation with J. Krihsnamurti, and the description of how he was under the spell of the master until Radha Rajagopal Sloss's revelation in her book, Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti, of JK cuckolding his best friend D. Rajagopal for nearly 30 years put him off.
History and fiction
The description of his interview of E.M. Forster, during which the English literary legend admitted that Britain had triggered the Partition riots by irresponsibly leaving the country earlier than planned, would remind one of a recent article in The Hindu by Ramachandra Guha in which he advances the argument of Andrew Roberts to this effect. His detailed accounts of his life as a scholar and a teacher in Universities in the U.K., the U.S., Australia, Italy which could turn out drab in the hands of a lesser writer make engrossing reading because of his sheer passion for life that grabs the attention of the reader.
For Chaman Nahal, history is the real story, fiction the projection of things the way he would want them to be. "The study of history is a study of the alternative choices open to a people at a particular time," says he. But, for a writer of fiction, choices are endless. What he could not change in real life, he changed through his creative imagination!
Send this article to Friends by | <urn:uuid:a218ae3d-5252-483f-b406-38818c8f2c48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/11/06/stories/2005110600270600.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97742 | 1,293 | 2.0625 | 2 |
The lower half of the engraving shows the Nativity scene. It is miniaturized to reflect that by now the birth of Christ is an event of the past. The message, though, remains unchanged, "Today a Savior is born to you." Though as child depicted, this Savior is present, with his mother, in a medallion marked by a crown of thorns and the many instruments of Christ's passion (Arma Christi), from the purse with the thirty shillings to the ladder serving for Christ's deposition from the cross. In fact, the medallion with Mother and Child is hanging on the cross, the same cross Christ is pointing to with his right hand. The caption above Mary's head highlights that she is not only the Mother of the Savior, but in a more intimate way "my mother," which could refer to the Christ child as well as point to each one of us. Christ is destined or called to be the Savior of the world (Genesis 41).
Mary is the one of whom it is said, "She
will bear a Son and name him Jesus, and he will save his people" | <urn:uuid:1cce32f7-7458-40f1-89e5-ee202b6681ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/prayers/matersalvatoris.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982517 | 232 | 2.296875 | 2 |
What do you get when you combine a small village, blue droplets of water, fire, and a BlackBerry Z10? Well, you get a very addictive video game. Sprinkle is a game that relies on the physics of water, and the users skills to put out fires. Continue reading for the full rundown of how Sprinkle will flood itself into your home and on to your BlackBerry smartphone.
One of my all time favorite style of games on BlackBerry devices are strategy games. Whether it be a tower defence game like Radiant Defence, Plants Vs Zombies, or a hardcore game like Shadow Gun. They all test your ability to come up with strategies to eliminate the enemy, and sprinkle is no different. Sprinkle is a game that has you guessing every move, because one wrong move will cause you to lose a whole village.
The game starts out very simple, you’ve got one fire, tons of water, and an abundance of time. The completion of that level is filled with self satisfaction, but don’t expect each level to be that easy. The third level is where your skills are beginning to be challenged. On the third level of Sprinkle for the BlackBerry Z10, you are introduced to a new part of the game mechanics, which are buttons. At this stage you will need to use your surroundings to open doors that will allow you to extinguish hard to reach fires.
One thing that is worth a note, is that after the third level you are limited in both time and the amount of water you have at your disposal. So, while you’re attempting to create a well thought out strategy your village is burning to the ground. Don’t hesitate, put out those fires!
Get to work putting out the fires in Sprinkle for the BlackBerry Z10. Sprinkle is available in BlackBerry World and can be bought for $1.99.
Download/get more information on Sprinkle for the BlackBerry Z10 | <urn:uuid:24938853-e95b-41d8-8de6-3a6e4dc014c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crackberry.com/keep-fire-bay-sprinkle-blackberry-z10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938712 | 397 | 1.5625 | 2 |
In many respects, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is a groundbreaking institution. Founded in The Hague by the United Nations 16 years ago to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity during the brutal civil war in the Balkans, the ICTY was the first war-crimes panel to be created since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals some 60 years ago. But now it's breaking more sinister ground. In a move that has dismayed even some fervent supporters, the tribunal is prosecuting a French journalist it accuses of publishing unauthorized information about its own proceedings. If convicted, Florence Hartmann, 46, faces a possible prison sentence of seven years and a maximum fine of €100,000—about $126,000 at current exchange rates.
Hartmann is no ordinary journalist. She covered the civil war for the French daily Le Monde and served from 2000 to 2006 as the spokesperson for the tribunal's then–chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte. By all accounts, she has been an energetic champion of the tribunal's mandate to bring war criminals to justice. Last August, however, it indicted her on two counts of "contempt" for "knowingly and willfully" revealing "confidential information to the public" relating to the tribunal's case against Slobodan Milošević, the former Serbian leader who died in his cell in 2006 before the end of his trial for war crimes and genocide.
Why would the tribunal turn so vengefully on one of its own? Its website posts the terse indictment without elaboration. Many of the facts and motions in the case against Hartmann are secret. Nerma Jelačić, a tribunal spokeswoman, told me via e-mail that she would not discuss what precisely Hartmann allegedly disclosed, referring me to the indictment, which cites Hartmann's discussion of two confidential tribunal decisions in three offending pages of her 2007 book Peace and Punishment and an article she wrote in early 2008 for the Bosnian Institute. "The tribunal must take such alleged breaches of confidentiality seriously in order to deter persons from interfering with justice and to safeguard the rule of law," Jelačić said.
Jelačić noted that the tribunal had previously indicted four journalists—all of them from the former Yugoslavia—for "knowingly and willfully" disclosing confidential information. But none of them had worked for the tribunal. And these journalists had disclosed the names of protected witnesses or aspects of their testimony in closed sessions, information that clearly endangered the witnesses and hampered the tribunal's ability to find additional witnesses willing to cooperate. Jelačić said that three of the four journalists received fines ranging from €7,000 to €20,000; one spent three months in the tribunal's detention facility at The Hague.
In her defense, Hartmann's lawyers, friends, and associates claim, first, that the information she published was already available to the public, and second, that the public had a right to know about how the tribunal had handled the case against Milošević, one of 161 people it has indicted. Hartmann's real "crime," they assert, was embarrassing the tribunal by writing about how and why its judges decided to withhold evidence from the International Court of Justice (a permanent court also located at The Hague) that might have linked Serbia to numerous wartime atrocities, including the infamous massacre of 7,500 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995.
In her book and her article, Hartmann criticizes the tribunal's decision to accept military documents from Belgrade in exchange for a pledge that some of the material would not be turned over to the International Court of Justice without being redacted. Bosnia had sued Serbia for genocide in the International Court, which ruled in February 2007 that while the Srebrenica massacre qualified as genocide, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Serbia was guilty of the crime. But the court's judges never saw the uncensored copies of the documents that the tribunal had obtained from Serbia. The ruling, which caused an uproar, effectively absolved the Serbs of having to pay enormous damages to the families of Bosnian Muslim victims that had brought the suit.
In an interview with me, Hartmann stressed that neither her book nor her article disclosed the contents of any of the material that Serbia had turned over to the tribunal. What she appeared to have disclosed, she said, was how Serbia successfully argued that concerns about its "national security interests" should prevent the tribunal from sharing this material with the International Court of Justice and the public.
The tribunal's defenders say that no international court can function effectively if those who work for it and agree to keep information about its proceedings secret violate their confidentiality pledges. Indeed, in a court appearance earlier this year, presiding judge Carmel Agius of Malta rebuked Hartmann for suggesting that her alleged offense was less serious than those of the war criminals whom the tribunal was prosecuting. "I suggest," the judge said, "that you do not underestimate even for a second the gravity of the crime of contempt." A defiant Hartmann has refused to yield or cut a deal. "For me," she explained, "this is a question of whether freedom of the press and free expression will prevail on a subject of intense public interest and importance."
Critics of the tribunal, among them former prosecutor Del Ponte, complain about its slow work pace, lack of transparency, and inability to convict some of the most prominent defendants. Milošević, for instance, died in the middle of his four-year trial, and though Radovan Karadžić, his military chief, has been arrested, another major culprit, Ratko Mladić, remains at large. But Richard Dicker, head of the Human Rights Watch's international justice program, calls some of the criticism unfair. "The tribunal has no police force," he says. "It had to rely on highly polarized police forces often reluctant to arrest their own." And because it was new, the tribunal had to "invent things as it went along." Prosecuting "tough cases of systematic abuse at a vast distance is not easy," he says, despite a staff of 1,200 and an annual budget from UN members of $120 million. Others note that the tribunal had to keep some evidence secret to protect the identities of endangered witnesses, its sources and methods of inquiry, and other diplomatically sensitive information.
The tribunal's indictment of Hartmann, however, has stirred outrage. "Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the tribunal set up to punish war criminals would be prosecuting a journalist who was part of the effort to bring justice to those responsible for terrible crimes," said Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the UN who helped create the ICTY. In fact, Hartmann's defenders say, the notion of such a tribunal's expanding its prosecutorial authority to issues of free speech is breathtaking. "She will be standing on the exact spot where Milošević stood!" said Dominique Dupuy, a French activist who campaigned for the creation of a war-crimes tribunal and is now helping run a website in support of Hartmann. "We all wanted the tribunal, but this has nothing to do with justice. It has to do with keeping the truth from victims and the public." More than 2,500 people have already signed protest petitions, and several journalists and human rights groups—among them, the London-based Article 19 and the Paris-based European Journalists Association—have urged the tribunal to drop the charges.
Mohammed Sacirbey, the former Bosnian foreign minister, called Hartmann's indictment "an effort to intimidate her." Meanwhile, her lawyers have challenged the impartiality of a special panel of judges formed to try her case.
In late March, the tribunal agreed to disqualify two of the judges who were to hear the case, including Agius of Malta, but there is still no indication of when Hartmann's trial might start. The tribunal, which has convicted 60 people so far, is scheduled to complete its trials by 2010 and hear all appeals by the end of 2011. Its action against Hartmann suggests that freedom of expression might best be protected by advancing that schedule.
A fabulous selection of dresses at vicyc.com. | <urn:uuid:6f109b60-e042-4fd1-85ce-93ede8b058b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.judithmiller.com/5654/no-justice | 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 | 0.973012 | 1,690 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Economic and climate crises raise global opportunity, as well as risks
- 08 January 2013
LONDON: A weak global economy is hindering our efforts to tackle climate challenges, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks 2013 report which was published today – but these risks also present global opportunities for a more prosperous future.
Based on a survey of over 1000 industry, government and academia experts, the Global Risks Report 2013 studies 50 global risks in terms of impact, likelihood and interconnections. It includes breakdowns for China, the Middle East and Latin America.
Continuously rising greenhouse gas emissions follow widening income inequality and government debt as the third most likely global risk, according to the respondents’ ranking.
Lee Howell, Editor of the report and Managing Director at the World Economic Forum, said: “These global risks are essentially a health warning regarding our most critical systems.”
The report makes it clear that if we do not assign resources to tackle climate change now, economic prosperity for current and future generations around the world is at risk.
Axel P. Lehmann, Chief Risk Officer at Zurich Insurance Group, commented: “With the growing cost of events like Superstorm Sandy, huge threats to island nations and coastal communities, and no resolution to greenhouse gas emissions, the writing is on the wall. It is time to act.”
David Cole, Group Chief Risk Officer, Swiss Re, which is a member of The Climate Group, said: “Coping with the economic and climate-change crises is unfortunately no longer seen as a continuum, but as opposing choices. The idea has gained ground that we can't have solutions to both. But we need to go beyond this thinking-in-boxes approach. So because smart risk management is about taking a holistic stance on situations, we should do the same when it comes to the economic and climate-change challenges we're facing.”
Mark Kenber, CEO, The Climate Group, states the clean revolution as a global solution to managing these risks. He said: “In the same way risks are interdependent, so too are opportunities. The clean revolution looks to harness this interdependence by recognizing that without a stable climate and without efficient resource-use, there can be no growth and no prosperity.
“It is therefore essential that a clean revolution happens at local, national and international levels – and that synergies between them are maximized.”
The report findings will be the focus of the “Resilient Dynamism” sessions at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2013 which takes place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland on January 23-27. The Climate Group will be at WEF again this year, providing tweets and news stories from next week.
Read the Global Risks 2013 report. | <urn:uuid:d174410d-b3c5-4ad4-8166-6583a1d2081d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecleanrevolution.org/news-and-events/news/economic-and-climate-crises-raise-global-opportunity-as-well-as-risks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943216 | 582 | 1.960938 | 2 |
China has completed construction of the main wall of the Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest hydro-electric project.
Builders marked the occasion with a colourful celebration ceremony
The controversial dam in central Hubei province will not be fully operational until 2009, once all its generators are installed.
China says it will provide electricity for its booming economy and help control flooding on the Yangtze River.
Critics say over a million people were moved from the area, and the reservoir behind the dam is already polluted.
On Saturday, builders poured the last amount of concrete to complete the construction of the 185m (607ft) high, 2,309m (1.4 mile) long wall.
A senior Chinese official said the event marked a "landmark progress" in the dam's construction, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
"However, tasks such as building of power houses of the dam, the ship lock and shiplift are still formidable," said Pu Haiqing, deputy director of the dam's construction committee.
When its 26 turbines become operational in 2009, the dam will have a capacity of more than 18,000 megawatts.
Already the world's second-largest consumer of oil, China says it needs alternative energy sources to combat widespread power shortages and keep its booming economy powering along.
LARGEST HYDRO-ELECTRIC DAMS
Three Gorges Dam, China - 18,200 megawatts
Itaipu, Brazil/Paraguay - 12,600 megawatts
Guri, Venezuela - 10,000 megawatts
Grand Coulee, US - 6,494 megawatts
Sayano-Shushensk, Russia - 6,400 megawatts
Krasnoyarsk, Russia - 6,000 megawatts
Churchill Falls, Canada - 5,428 megawatts
La Grande, Canada - 5,328 megawatts
Source: International Hydropower Association, UK
The authorities also hope the dam will help control flooding on the Yangtze River, which in the past has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Shanghai reports.
But campaigners say the dam comes at too high a cost.
Over a million people have been moved from their homes to make way for the project and more than 1,200 towns and villages will disappear under its rising waters.
Environmentalists say the water behind the dam is already heavily polluted.
China says the whole project will cost about $25bn (£13bn), but environmentalists estimate it to be several times higher.
THE THREE GORGES DAM
Type: Concrete Gravity Dam
Cost: Official cost $25bn - actual cost believed to be much higher
Work began: 1993
Due for completion: 2009
Power generation: 26 turbines on left and right sides of dam. Six underground turbines planned for 2010
Power capacity: 18,000 megawatts
Reservoir: 660km long, submerging 632 sq km of land. When fully flooded, water will be 175m above sea level
Navigation: Two-way lock system became operational in 2004. One-step ship elevator due to open in 2009. | <urn:uuid:8163ba14-6c7c-4d6e-81ff-e9f81f689e70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5000092.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909089 | 656 | 2.53125 | 3 |
D. Schreckenghost, C. Martin, P. Bonasso, D. Kortenkamp, T. Milam, and C. Thronesbery
An important aspect of interaction among groups of humans and software agents is supporting collaboration among these heterogeneous agents while they operate remotely and communicate asynchronously. We are developing an architecture that supports multiple humans interacting with multiple automated control agents in such a manner. We are evaluating this architecture with a group consisting of the crew of a space-based vehicle and the automated software agents controlling the vehicle systems. Such agent interaction is modeled as a loosely coordinated group because this model minimizes agent commitment to group goals and constraints while addressing a significant portion of crew and control agent group behaviors. In this paper we give background on human interaction with space-based automation. We identify related research in multi-agent autonomous architectures and single agent human-computer interaction systems. We describe our architecture design for human-software agent groups. And we identify research issues in loosely coordinated human-software groups. | <urn:uuid:a8ccc525-9c1b-4a2b-84dc-21201612ddaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aaai.org/Library/Workshops/2002/ws02-03-012.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902321 | 206 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Sam Washington processes blood samples for a drug study before putting them in the freezer at the Greenville (S.C.) Hospital System Cancer Treatment Center on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012. / Heidi Heilbrunn, The Greenville (S.C.) News
GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Conflicting research reports on eggs, hormone therapy, Omega-3 fatty acid supplements and other health issues have left many a bit suspicious about the claims. Even experts say consumers are right to take some research with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Fay Hart, of Greer, S.C., has an egg for breakfast every morning with her grits.
Even though a new study says yolks may be as bad as smoking for the cardiovascular system, she says that doesn't make sense to her.
"I just don't buy their conclusions," she says. "I know people going on 100 years old and have eaten eggs all their lives. There are a lot of question marks to all of this."
Indeed. Over the years, research has alternately painted eggs as a healthy source of protein or a heart attack in a shell.
Hormone therapy was supposed to protect women from heart disease. Then researchers said it doesn't.
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements were thought to reduce the risk of heart attacks. But according to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an analysis of existing research concludes that they don't.
And after years of reports that gum disease can lead to cardiovascular problems comes new research from the American Heart Association that refutes that claim.
There are different types of studies and they are of varying quality, says Bill Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
And, he adds, quoting scientist and author Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
In general, says Dr. Jerry Youkey, dean of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine-Greenville, there are epidemiological studies and clinical trials.
In epidemiological studies, researchers look for common factors to explain why one group of patients has some kind of condition and another group doesn't, he says. Like eggs and heart disease.
Clinical trials typically compare different therapies, or a therapy against a placebo, in two groups of patients with a common disease to see which works better, he says.
Though there can be problems with both, Youkey says, the real culprit confusing the public is epidemiological studies.
"The amount of stock people put in them is sometimes unfortunate," he said. "I've told medical students here to try and remember everything they can, but to recognize that probably half the things that are dogma now will be proven ineffective in the next decade."
Sample size, or the number of participants in a study, is important, says Dr. Hal Croswell, director of clinical research at Bon Secours St. Francis Health System. And more is generally better when trying to prove a drug is effective or not.
Using a biased group is also problematic, says Hanage, citing the yolk study.
Published in the August issue of the journal Atherosclerosis, it concluded egg consumption had about two-thirds the risk of smoking in development of clogged arteries, and suggested people with a risk of cardiovascular disease avoid eating egg yolks.
But Hanage says it focused on people over 60 with cardiovascular risk factors.
"That is already a very biased sample," he says. "This doesn't mean the work is completely wrong or they haven't found out anything interesting. But you have to think about the reason they did that ... and you need to be careful about applying that to different age groups."
Other forms of bias include how the study population is defined, how a drug or device is used, and the statistics used to measure the response, all of which can impact the validity of the research, Croswell says. And studies often have variations in all of those aspects, he says.
"You need to realize there are other factors going on that they've not taken into consideration that are probably just as likely to be responsible for the differences as what they've chosen," says Youkey.
Who's funding the study is something else to look for.
Hart says that's something she always takes into account.
"People who are putting studies out believe it, and want you to believe it," she says. "But there's a bottom line called money. And I read something discriminately and question ... who funded the research."
Few studies are perfect, says Croswell, and most findings need to be validated and examined in the appropriate context.
"Drawing conclusions from a lot of these epidemiological studies, with all the variables involved, gets confusing for everybody," he says.
But some research is inherently better than others, says Hanage. A meta-analysis, for example, looks at all the existing studies, ranks their validity, and draws a conclusion based on that evidence, he says.
Some studies look to find effects over many years, or go toward providing evidence that will further secure earlier findings, Croswell says.
And the holy grail of studies -- randomized double-blind controlled trials in which a therapy is given to only some study participants and no one knows who they are -- require a lot of funding and broad scientific thinking, he says, but have more significant weight.
"If you have a double-blind randomized multi-site clinical trial, it oftentimes can settle a question, such as whether to use cholesterol medicine or not," adds Diller. "But those things are expensive and rare."
A piece of the puzzle
But while the public tends to look at one study as the definitive work, scientists think of it as one more piece of the puzzle, says Diller.
Youkey says physicians and scientists typically view study findings more contextually. And he advises consumers to ask themselves if what they're reading passes the common-sense test.
"Read them. Find them interesting," he says. "And realize that there are some things that over time have proven absolutely legitimate and some that haven't."
Hanage says the most useful thing for the public to remember is to think about how many people are in the study, what ax the researchers may have to grind, and whether it's biased in any way and controlled for confounding factors.
"And once you're pretty sure they've done all those things and been responsible," he says, "you can start paying it heed."
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Research studies often leave consumers confused | <urn:uuid:14f334f2-6452-4ab4-a603-c932847949f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecalifornian.com/usatoday/article/1741543?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969148 | 1,361 | 2.203125 | 2 |
02.10.2009Interview with Joumana Haddad"Eroticism is the Pulse of Life"With her erotic cultural magazine "Jasad" ("Body"), Lebanese poet and journalist Joumana Haddad deliberately breaks taboos in a society that likes to draw a veil over the human body – both literally and figuratively. Susanne Schanda spoke with the woman behind the magazine
Joumana Haddad: "Our 9th and 10th-century cultural heritage contains a wealth of sensuality, eroticism and bluntness. Today, a double standard and schizophrenia prevail" Why do you choose to provoke the Arab world with the subject of the body?
Joumana Haddad: The first time I read a poem, it felt like someone was scratching me with their fingernails. I was 12 at the time and I knew that this was exactly the effect I wanted to achieve with my writing.
My body is the universe in which my poetic expression unfolds. For me, writing is a very physical process. I always say that I write with my fingernails, on my own skin, on my body. I want to scratch away the surface. To do so, I use my nails and my body – those are my tools. Eroticism is the pulse of life and is what most gives me the feeling of being alive. Even though eroticism is very closely related to the experience of death.
Does the close connection you feel between eroticism and death have anything to do with your life in Lebanon – a country that is marked by war and violence and yet on the other is extraordinarily vital, energetic and creative?
Haddad: When the civil war began in Lebanon, I was four years old; when it ended, I was 21. Violence is still present to this day. I don't know if it's appropriate to say that I'm grateful for all the horrible things I experienced and saw, but they did make me the person I am today.
Social taboos that are widespread in the Islamic world include homosexuality, violence between men and women, nymphomania and honour killings. These are the kinds of themes addressed in "Jasad" I never give up. I keep trying new things, seeking to move forward, to really live. And all of that has something to do with seeing and experiencing death. I always seek out new challenges; it's like an addiction.
Your latest challenge is "Jasad", the erotic magazine that first came out in December 2008. How did this magazine come about?
Haddad: I had always written about the body and eroticism, causing myself plenty of problems. So why not push the boundaries even further and publish a cultural magazine about the body? I founded my own small publishing house in order to remain independent, developed the concept and looked for freelance staff for the first issue.
How do you finance the magazine?
Haddad: Unfortunately, I can't pay very high fees, but I do pay the freelancers for their contributions. Anyone writing for this magazine must write in Arabic and under his or her own name. I invested my own money in the magazine and sales are going very well. The magazine costs ten dollars. I started with a print run of 3,000 and today the circulation is 6,000.
How is the magazine sold?
Haddad: It can be purchased all over Lebanon. It comes in a sealed plastic wrapper marked "For adults only". In the rest of the world it is sent by mail to subscribers. In Europe it is available at one bookstore in Paris and one in London.
Normally, erotic magazines are for men. Do you take a female, or a feminist, approach?
Lebanon is the only Arab country where the magazine is sold openly. But even there, it's controversial Haddad: "Jasad" is a magazine about the body. Eroticism naturally exerts a strong presence. But the magazine treats more than just erotic themes. It is a cultural magazine that also touches on eroticism in philosophy, religion and all its other forms. It is not "Playboy". I'm not the Hugh Hefner (founder of "Playboy") of the Arab world. I'm much more dangerous.
In what way?
Haddad: Because I'm a woman and an Arab and because I don't put out a magazine designed for men to masturbate to. My magazine contributes to reflecting on the many taboos we have today in the Arab world – and which we didn't have 1,000 years ago.
What was different back then?
Haddad: In our cultural legacy from the 9th and 10th centuries one finds immense freedom of expression, displaying sensuousness, eroticism and bluntness on a scale that has now disappeared.
Why is that?
Haddad: There are many reasons. One of them is religious extremism. Another is our defensive reaction to anything that could be construed as the invasion of Western values. The Arabs are trying to protect their own values. But the more one tries to protect what one has, the more introverted, close-minded, insular and frustrated one becomes. That is sad.
How have the religious authorities reacted to "Jasad"?
Haddad: Religious and non-religious authorities alike are annoyed by the magazine and are trying to stop it. Fortunately, two key figures in the government, the information minister and the minister of the interior, are open-minded, sensible intellectuals. They have the power to ban the magazine, and I would be able to do nothing to stop them. But both have stood up to the pressure so far.
Your magazine asks women and men to tell about their first sexual experience. Isn't it difficult to find people willing to write openly about this, signing with their own name?
Haddad: It's hard work persuading people to write about these things under their own name. A month ago I received a beautiful erotic story from a woman about a couple who filmed each other during sex. But the author wanted to publish it under a pseudonym.
I refused. Then I kept writing her emails every few days challenging her to take a risk, to muster her courage for this lovely story. Finally, she agreed to have the story published under her name. That's a major triumph for me. I believe in taking small steps toward changing society.
Then you still have quite a few steps ahead of you. In the West we see ourselves confronted today with growing Muslim communities that cut themselves off from society with their backward-looking religious ideologies. Where does this tendency come from?
Haddad: I've just written a book about the clichés circulating in the West regarding Arab women. The frustrated, veiled, subservient woman. The majority of Arab women are in fact like that.
But what makes me angry and sad is that the minority of Arab women who are not like that, and who deserve to be seen, recognised and discussed because they embody the hope for change, are ignored.
An Arab woman who looks and dresses like a Western one is no longer perceived as Arab. That's why the traditional model is the only one present in the Western mind. It's a vicious circle. The more Europeans see these defensive radical immigrants, the more they tend to be fearful of and hostile to Arabs. And the more hostile they are to Arabs, the more radical the Arabs become.
Conservative Muslims cover even little girls' heads with scarves to shield them from the ostensibly lustful male gaze. Why is the body regarded as so dangerous?
Haddad: It didn't used to be that way. The Arabs once wrote about sexuality and eroticism in a spontaneous, natural way – without inhibitions and shame.
Today, a double standard and a kind of schizophrenia prevail. On the one hand, girls are taught to behave decently, but on the other, 13-year-old girls are married off. That is institutionalised paedophilia. There are even laws that allow a man to marry a baby.
Can a magazine like "Jasad" resolve this schizophrenia?
Haddad: It can help. But it is only one small step of many that still need to be taken. I decided to focus on the theme of the body. Others fight in other arenas. If we all stand up for what we believe in, we can change things and make the world a better place for all of us.
© Qantara.de 2009
Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese poet, journalist and culture editor of the daily paper "An-Nahar" in Beirut. With "Jasad" (Arabic for "Body"), she is now publishing the Arab world's first erotic glossy. The magazine debuted in December 2008 and is published quarterly. Joumana Haddad has written five volumes of poetry, which have been translated into numerous languages, including English. The author speaks seven languages and has translated several books. In 2006 she received the "Arab Press Prize". | <urn:uuid:9b148fda-ee94-4438-a7aa-54e45bb7e0c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.qantara.de/Eroticism-is-the-Pulse-of-Life/8243c163/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967701 | 1,861 | 1.695313 | 2 |
A troubling development of the brutal century recently passed has been the growing use of children for war. Before the twentieth century children may have served as valets or messengers. They may have played with war toys, or dreamed of becoming soldiers someday. Sometimes they may have actually fought, lying about their age to reach the battlefields. But children were not generally expected to participate in any organized way. As the Great War of 1914–1918 changed world societies in so many ways, it also changed expectations for children during wartime. World War I was the first "total war," so designated by the belligerent nations. "Total" was determined to mean that everyone needed to be involved, not only those in the armies. In total war, war on an immense, world-wide scale, everyone worked. Including children of all ages.
But we have often ignored the wartime contributions of children. What were they expected to do? How did it contribute to the war? How did it affect their lives? This history attempts to respond to these questions, by examining activities of children in the United States during World Wars I and II. Modern propaganda helped to draw children into those wars. A variety of authorities participated, in the school, on the playground, at work or at home. They promoted military ideals and activities in hopes these might reduce fear, build character, prepare for service, and even tangibly help the war effort. In doing so, authorities brought war themes to children on a day to day basis, a militarization of American childhood. This research takes a look at how they did that.
Chapter one considers methods used to encourage the transformation, the development of propaganda. The idea of propaganda had been debated in some detail throughout the last century, both as a negative and positive force in modern society. Also considered here is how United States Government propaganda offices operated in both world wars.
Chapter two examines the many methods authorities used to militarize American childhood through both wars, and the challenges they faced. Children were encouraged to accept war values as a way to virtuous character, both physical and mental. Paid war work could be a viable alternative to school work, while children could show their patriotism in many volunteer activities.
Chapter three considers the single most important focus of authorities working to militarize childhood, the schools. Schools could serve as clearinghouses for a child's war education and activities. Children could also be counted on to bring wartime messages from the classroom to their parents at home. If parents were away doing war work or in the service, the schools could help children take on wartime roles to avoid delinquency.
Chapter four describes the most significant jobs children were expected to undertake for war services, and how those jobs were coordinated. Food production in particular would be a focus for children, as well as scavenging for material of use on the battlefields, and selling war bonds. The High School Victory Corps was the largest of many formal programs governments relied on to coordinate children's war work.
Chapter five considers the non-governmental groups interested in bringing children into war. These ranged from private values-building groups such as the Boy Scouts and the Red Cross, to marketing appeals and war toys.
Chapter six devotes attention to the juvenile press, editors of quality children's publications interested in presenting the war to their readers and parents.
Chapter seven examines how American children responded to war, and how they responded as later adults. It considers the role of children in war around the world, and how that role has changed since World War II. It concludes that child participation in war has evolved through the century from a militarized home life to actual combat.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, nearly one-quarter of the world's armies recruited adolescents; almost one-fifth drafted children under twelve. Two million children died in wars during the last decade of the twentieth century. War of the new millennium was not only being fought for the children; it was being fought by the children. This seemed to be a logical progression after it became acceptable to recruit children for wartime needs. As the world seems to be more and more indifferent to mass death, war becomes a natural part of everyday life.
© 2011 by Ross F. Collins. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:33e750be-79e0-4fa6-9d8f-70db17ca2f6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childrenwarandpropaganda.com/preface.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976719 | 856 | 4 | 4 |
Josh Goodman is a former staff writer for GOVERNING..E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org
Rasmussen Reports, this election cycle's most prolific pollster, tends to show results that are more favorable to Republicans than other survey firms. But, that doesn't necessarily mean Rasmussen is wrong. Polling guru Nate Silver has made a strong case (here and here) that Rasmussen's house effect likely reflects the pollster's methodological decisions -- decisions that might or might not be the best way to measure the electorate's preferences.
As a result, Rasmussen's numbers can be viewed as reflecting the best case scenario this cycle for Republicans and the worst case scenario for Democrats. So, what would that result look like?
Here are the general election results of the most recent Rasmussen poll for every race for governor:
As you can see, I have "presumed" the results in places where I don't think Rasmussen has polled yet, but where the gubernatorial race don't currently seem to be competitive. Also, I've assumed that both parties nominate the person who is currently their strongest general election candidate (according to Rasmussen). That's a questionable assumption in a few cases such as Georgia (where Democrat Roy Barnes is tied with John Oxendine, the actual Republican frontrunner, but trails other Republican candidates), but it was a lot simpler than trying to figure out who was ahead in every primary.
Under this scenario, Republicans would win 23 races, Democrats would win 9, independent Lincoln Chafee would win in Rhode Island, two races are tied and two others lack any current polling. Republicans would end up with eight more governorships than they have right now. Democrats would have nine fewer.
Those results would be similar to the Republican landslide of 1994. That year, Republican won 24 governors' races, Democrats won 11 and independent Angus King won in Maine. Republicans picked up a net total of 10 offices.
So, perhaps this isn't any great revelation. The worst case scenario for Democrats is roughly 1994 all over again.
GOVERNING Politics is the place for news and analysis on campaigns and elections. If there's a ballot measure in California, a legislative election in Alabama, a mayoral election in Anchorage or a governor's race in Rhode Island, GOVERNING Politics probably is writing about it. We love everything about state and local politics, from polls and campaign ads to policy debates and demographic trends. | <urn:uuid:2da02525-1e67-4407-8fa2-454c703cd1e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.governing.com/blogs/politics/Governors-Democrats-Worst-Case.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962405 | 488 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of Iranian-Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi’s death in detention.
Those responsible for her death have enjoyed complete impunity for the past seven years, thanks in part to the silence and passivity of the international bodies that are supposed to protect human rights. Mistreatment, rape and torture are common in Iranian prisons. Those behind the murders of prisoners, such as former Tehran prosecutor general Sayeed Mortazavi, continue to hold important posts within the political apparatus.
A resident of Canada, Kazemi, 54, was arrested on 23 June 2003 while photographing the families of detainees waiting outside Evin prison in north Tehran. She was badly beaten during detention and died on 10 July 2003 from the injuries she had received. The Iranian authorities issued a report 10 days later recognising her death was the result of a blow but failing to explain how it was inflicted.
Under duress, Kazemi’s mother, an Iranian resident, agreed to a hasty burial on 22 July 2003. Ever since then, Kazemi’s son, Stephan Hashemi, who lives in Canada, has been asking for the body to be exhumed and repatriated to Canada so that an independent autopsy can be carried out.
The Kazemi family’s lawyers have repeatedly condemned all the judicial proceedings in Iran as a sham. Their requests for senior judicial officials to appear in court have never been satisfied, depriving them of key witnesses. Above all, Mortazavi, who ordered Kazemi’s arrest and was present when she was interrogated in Evin prison, has never been questioned in court.
Reporters Without Borders supported the civil lawsuit that Hashemi brought against the Iranian government before the Quebec high court claiming damages for his mother’s arrest, detention, torture and death. The press freedom organisation urges Canada and the European Union to support this legal action, in order to end the impunity in this case.
Meanwhile, the family of Abdolreza Tajik, a journalist and member of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, has still not been told why he was arrested on 12 June or where he is being held.
Cases of activists or journalists disappearing following their arbitrary arrest and detention are still frequent and are even tending to become the norm. Tajik could become another victim of the Iranian judicial system.
Reporters Without Borders points out that cases of detainees being held incommunicado can be regarded as forced disappearances and as crimes against humanity. They constitute violations of international law. What is the international community doing about it? | <urn:uuid:e2b384b2-91d1-4346-8f0a-0ceebe5ef771> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.rsf.org/iran-impunity-continues-seven-years-09-07-2010,37908.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975127 | 526 | 1.875 | 2 |
1970 - A pan-European company
Systematic, far-sighted development laid the groundwork for Scania's triumphs during the 1970s. Scania became a pan-European company with a dense network of service points in Europe.
To a greater extent than most competitors, Scania evolved into a pan-European company during the 1970s, with large market shares in nearly all western European countries. Above all, Scania created a strong foothold in the long-haulage segment, very much due to its turbocharged 14-litre, 350-hp, V8 engine, which had the highest output of any truck engine in the European market in the early 1970s.
The new engine was introduced in 1969, when European truckmakers began an intense horsepower race. Behind the demand for higher output were higher gross weights and axle pressures as highway networks expanded. But public authorities were also increasingly demanding that heavy trucks should blend into the rhythm of traffic. Especially on Germany's Autobahn, where acceleration and cruising speeds had to meet higher standards.
"On random load analysis"
Largely thanks to Scania's powerful engines, in a few years its sales skyrocketed in major continental markets such as Germany and France. Nor was output bought at the price of high operating costs. On the contrary, the engines featured low fuel consumption, long service life and good low-speed pulling power that also improved driving comfort and lowered noise levels.
During the 1960s, Sverker Sjöström, who became the company's first technical director in 1961, was in charge of development work. An expert on strength of materials, he was recruited to Scania-Vabis in 1947 to help solve quality problems. He worked methodically and far-sightedly. As early as the 1950s, he carried out a long series of measurements of stresses on various vehicle parts while operating on test tracks and roads. He analysed the findings using statistical methods and correlated them with material fatigue data. In 1961, he presented his conclusions in a doctoral dissertation entitled: "On random load analysis".
Thanks to Sjöström's assiduous research work, Scania-Vabis built up systematised knowledge of the stresses affecting various vehicle components. Such knowledge was invaluable when developing new components for various market needs. Scania was able to introduce larger vehicles with higher payload capacities and higher axle weights without encountering problems in load-bearing components - i.e. frames and axles.
The turbocharged V8
Under his leadership, Scania-Vabis designers also increased the strength and torque capacity of transmissions. After systematic development work and extensive analyses of stresses associated with various engine outputs, vehicle weights and driving conditions, the company introduced lighter, cheaper, stronger types of transmissions that fulfilled the highest standards in Scania's tough market segment.
As early as 1958, Scania-Vabis had introduced a turbocharged diesel engine with a 10-litre swept volume, which initially developed 205 hp. The company then relinquished the principles behind its unitary engine programme. Straight 4- and 8-cylinder engines gave way to straight 6-cylinder engines with varying stroke and swept volumes.
Engineers then began development of a turbocharged V8 engine without any pressure from the market or support from management. Scania-Vabis' engine experts developed a compact, high-output, low-rev type of engine, since they were convinced that high output would enable more economical operation due to lower engine speeds, longer service life and less noise. This low-rev philosophy would also reduce gear-changing to a minimum. As it turned out, the engineers' backstage efforts were a major success. The engine was introduced in the market without any real quality problems. | <urn:uuid:e9d05bdf-6acb-4bbc-9ae8-6abfeff7ad50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scania.com/scania-group/history-of-scania/1970/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969417 | 760 | 2.25 | 2 |
AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to millions of articles from top publications available through your library.
(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)
Text of report by Pakistan's PTV World television on 18 July
The National Security Council, which met in Islamabad, discussed in depth internal and external security environment and initiatives aimed at improving the socioeconomic condition of the people of FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and Baluchistan. President Gen Pervez Musharraf, in his capacity as chairman of the council, presided over the meeting. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Senate chairman, speaker [of] National Assembly; chief ministers of Punjab, Sindh, NWFP [North-West Frontier Province], and Baluchistan; chairman [of] Joint Chiefs of Staff … | <urn:uuid:ec58613f-d51d-4c3b-8664-1d022f002e4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-148351793/pakistan-president-comments-pakistan.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913866 | 158 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Out of Their Shell
Kyrsten Mate drives like a snail. No surprise, though.
After all, her car is a snail. Dubbed the Golden Mean,
it debuted at this year’s Burning Man festival, where
revelers eagerly rode in its glowing shell, or hugged
the head with its flamethrower eyes. Every afternoon,
Mate’s 2-year-old daughter, Zolie, commandeered
the cushioned interior for story time.
“Several years ago, I dreamt that I saw a car in
the desert but the car was a giant snail,” says Mate,
a sound designer for films like The Incredibles.
Photography by Branca Nitzsche
And those are the kinds of dreams that stuff is
made of. Fortunately, Mate and her husband, blacksmith Jon Sarriugarte, are well versed in weird
rides. Their last collaboration was the SS Alpha Fox,
a civil service vehicle converted into a fire-spewing
spaceship straight out of 1960s science fiction.
The Golden Mean began life as a 60s-era
Volkswagen Beetle — inexpensive and easy to transform with their “oil punk” aesthetic. Early plans
for the shell called for fiberglass construction, but
Sarriugarte wasn’t eager to deal with the mess.
Fortunately, the scrap pile at Sarriugarte’s hand-
forged furniture company, Form & Reform, was heaping with possibility. They made an exoskeleton from
steel, skinning it in sheet metal and perforated steel
to allow a view of the outside world.
Midway through the build, the couple learned about
the golden ratio of mathematics, sometimes called
the golden mean. The number is found throughout
nature, including the proportions of a snail’s shell.
They soon took a tape measure to their creation.
“We realized that we had unconsciously already
been following the proportion a lot,” Sarriugarte says.
“That revelation has given me a whole new insight
into how I’d like to make stuff inspired by nature.”
The biomechanical buggy does seem alive. It
boasts an air ride suspension that can pump the
shell up and down. Other lively mods are in the works.
“We can’t forget the snail trail,” Mate reminds
him. That would be a trickle of graywater collected
from campsites when the Golden Mean hits the
open road. —David Pescovitz
>> Golden Mean and More: | <urn:uuid:24ff27f8-fe64-46ac-b9b1-f69f83271607> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol16?pg=21 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936877 | 560 | 1.734375 | 2 |
A Tribally Owned and Operated Hunting Magazine Aims to Reconnect Past to Present
If optimism and hard work are the determining criteria for success, some dedicated Chippewa Cree members from the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation in Montana may just make things work for their fledgling magazine, Hunting The Rez.
“Hunting reconnects us to the wild places from whence we came, to regain a role in the drama between predator and prey,” says editor Jason Belcourt. “Hunting ties us to our land and our elders…it’s a quest to get back to ourselves, back to our roots as native people, and a chance to remember what the world was like --- what we were like --- before modernization and urbanization separated us from Mother Earth.”
Plus, it’s not a bad business sector to be in considering an Indian Country marketplace estimated to be worth $76 billion with revenue-generating hunting and fishing opportunities to be found in the 55 million acres of woods and waters found on reservation land.
Entrepreneurs Jason Belcourt, his father, Robert, cousin Jerry, and business partner James “Midge” The Boy grew up together, hunted together, and wanted to build a company --- hopefully, an empire --- to ensure their future.
They saw a unique niche and acted to fill the need with a 100% Indian-owned firm that publishes a quarterly outdoor recreation magazine whose masthead touts --- The ONLY source for Hunting Indian Country. The quarterly, 10,000 copy, high-quality magazine is building a large following not only in Indian Country, but growing in appeal to the higher-income, non-enrolled sportsman hunter.
“Indian Country is the biggest best little secret hot spot for sportsmen all across the globe,” Belcourt says. “There’s plentiful game, little hunting pressure, and beautiful vistas. Some of God’s most beautiful country is on Indian acreage. One of our goals is to inspire sportsmen and women to plan hunting or fishing adventures on tribal land where there are specific advantages over the states --- like extended seasons for non-enrolled hunters and rifle seasons during bugling periods.
“There’s nobody else out there doing what we’re doing and that comes with both pros and cons,” says the editor. “There’s no existing game plan, no guidelines. We’ve had to invent the wheel and the learning curve has been pretty damned sharp.”
Now becoming accustomed to the ups and downs of today’s publishing world where staff spends more time behind a desk and less time in the field, they have three issues in print (with a fourth on the way) and some big plans for the future. Although new at the game, they’re learning rapidly and some of the dominoes are starting to fall in their favor.
They facilitated an online big horn ram hunt auction on behalf of the Rocky Boy Fish & Game Department where the tag brought in a record $78,100 for the fully-guided hunt (the first big horn sheep to come from Rocky Boy in over a hundred years, according to the magazine’s editor). They’ve entered into talks with established outdoor television networks to run a 13-episode Hunting The Rez TV series. “We shot the pilot program, a buffalo hunt on Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in northern Montana in January --- howling winds and temperatures 50 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor,” Belcourt says.
“Of the 224 large land-based tribes, not all are set up and ready to entertain visitors, but some have moved ahead and set the bar high. They’ve managed their fish and game efforts well to generate revenue from these renewable resources where non-members pay for tags and guides, stay at tribal hotels, eat at Indian-owned restaurants, fill their gas tanks at Native-owned stations --- lots of revenue spin-off opportunities.”
One of the largest to-date coups is a newly-announced partnership with International Sportsmen’s Exposition and the February 2012 show in Phoenix, Arizona, with a planned reservation-themed Gathering of the Tribes Outdoor Expo in the Hunting the Rez Pavilion. Tribes will exhibit a united front in selling a variety of hunting/fishing/outdoor adventure packages.
“We have 18 tribes committed or pending already,” says Belcourt, “with an estimated 25-30 hunt packages valued at close to half a million dollars worth of tags. It took a leap of faith for ISE to include us as a brand new, somewhat unproven partner, but we’ve come out swinging and should help put money into tribal coffers.”
The path forward is exciting with opportunities for more innovative --- bad pun coming --- CREE8tive ideas --- and the hard workers at Hunting The Rez are looking for long-term partners. Says Belcourt: “Tribes have a lot to offer sportsmen and our love of the outdoors, respect for nature, and the responsibility it carries motivated us to try and do something beneficial. Anybody out there that feels the same is invited to join us in working toward that goal.” | <urn:uuid:8f23a553-3139-4816-8877-b8b7e6b72ef4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/a-tribally-owned-and-operated-hunting-magazine-aims-to-reconnect-past-to-present-62108 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946568 | 1,087 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request from Sandra Cano, the Georgia woman who was used as the plaintiff in the 1973 ruling that created a “health” exception for abortions, to reconsider the case.
Cano had sought the review because she said she was bullied by American Civil Liberties Union lawyers into participating in the case and argued science and medicine have changed dramatically from three decades ago.
Her case, Doe vs. Bolton, along with the more famous Roe vs. Wade, established the legal basis for the abortion industry in the U.S. Roe struck down state bans on abortion procedures, but Doe created the health exception, which allows pro-abortion doctors to provide abortion on demand for virtually any reason, at any stage of pregnancy.
Norma McCorvey, the original “Jane Roe” of Roe vs. Wade, also had sought a rehearing on her case, only to be rebuffed earlier this year by the Supreme Court justices.
Repeated polls show only about one in four Americans agree with unfettered abortion on demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
Jan LaRue, the chief counsel with Concerned Women for America, said she was not surprised by the development, but the battle is far from over.
“We’re looking this year to what the Supreme Court will do with the federal ban on partial-birth abortions, and we’re very hopeful we’ll have a good ruling there,” she said. “Then we think the state (abortion) bans, such as in South Dakota and Louisiana, eventually will wind up before the court.”
“Of course it will be later rather than earlier that we see the court ruling on those,” she told WND.
Cano, who at the time of the case was a pregnant, 22-year-old wife of an abusive husband with all three of her children in foster care, was just looking for a way to get her children back and leave her husband, she says. At no time was she interested in abortion, she adds, but insists she was pressured to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit by an aggressive ACLU attorney.
Cano said the justices have ignored vast advances in scientific and medical knowledge in the last three decades and have “frozen abortion law based on obsolete 1973 assumptions and prevented the normal regulation of the practice of medicine.”
This week the high court decided, without issuing any comment or noting any dissent, against hearing new arguments on the issue, which had been advanced after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in January it did not have the authority to reverse the original ruling.
The Doe decision said the health of the mother includes: “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age. …” And that means an abortion done for “health” reasons essentially opens the door to any abortion for any reason, according to GodandScience.org.
“The particularly chilling aspect of the 1973 decisions was that the humanity of the preborn child was purposefully ignored,” the reference site said. “The Court held that the preborn human is not a person, therefore not deserving of any protection from the government.”
The theology behind the two cases was affirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey when the court said a woman has a right to end pregnancy for any reason in early stages and also that a total ban on abortion would be found by the justices to be unconstitutional.
That 5-4 decision, however, did allow for an “undue burden” test for reviewing legislation limiting abortion. The provision allows courts to look to see whether the abortion regulation’s “purpose or effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”
The Casey decision also affirmed much of the Pennsylvania Control Act, which has requirements for Informed Consent, 24-hour Waiting Period, Parental Consent and Reporting Requirements.
Neither “Doe” nor “Roe” ultimately had the abortions for which their legal cases were launched.
According to a report in Insight magazine, Cano believes her case was based on fraud and lies coordinated by Margie Pitts Hames, Cano’s ACLU attorney.
In her affidavit to the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, reports Insight, Cano claims the case originated when she approached a legal aid office in Atlanta to help her divorce her abusive husband and regain custody of her three children. However, says the report, Cano says she was taken advantage of by an “aggressive self-serving attorney, Margie Pitts Hames, the legal-aid attorney.”
Cano, pregnant at the time, also says she never actually signed an affidavit saying she didn’t want or couldn’t care for another child. The affidavit even warned Cano might commit suicide.
“I am 99 percent certain that I did not sign this affidavit,” she said, according to the Insight report. “I do not believe it is my signature on the affidavit, and Margie either forged my signature or slipped this document in with other papers while I was signing divorce papers. I never told Margie that I wanted an abortion. The facts stated in the affidavit in Doe v. Bolton are not true.”
She testified before Congress is 2005 about her situation.
Here is her scathing testimony, in which she accused “wicked attorneys” of using her to advance a radical agenda:
… I am Sandra Cano, the former “Doe” of Doe v. Bolton. Doe v. Bolton is the companion case to Roe v. Wade. Using my name and life, Doe v. Bolton falsely created the health exception that led to abortion on demand and partial birth abortion. How it got there is still pretty much a mystery to me. I only sought legal assistance to get a divorce from my husband and to get my children from foster care.
I was very vulnerable: poor and pregnant with my fourth child, but abortion never crossed my mind. Although it apparently was utmost in the mind of the attorney from whom I sought help. At one point during the legal proceedings, it was necessary for me to flee to Oklahoma to avoid the pressure being applied to have the abortion scheduled for me by this same attorney. Please understand even though I have lived what many would consider an unstable life and overcome many devastating circumstances, at no time did I ever have an abortion. I did not seek an abortion nor do I believe in abortion. Yet my name and life is now forever linked with the slaughter of 40-50 million babies.
I have tried to understand how it all happened. How did my divorce and child custody case become the basis by which bloody murder is done on infants thriving in the wombs of their mothers? How can cunning, wicked lawyers use an uneducated, defenseless pregnant woman to twist the American court system in such a fraudulent way? Doe has been a nightmare. Over the last 32 years, I have become a prisoner of the case. It took me until 1988 to get my records unsealed in order for me to try and find the answer to those questions and to join in the movement to stop abortion in America. When pro abortion advocates found out about my efforts; my car was vandalized on one occasion and at another time, someone shot at me while I was on my front porch holding my grandbaby.
I am angry. I feel like my name, life, and identity have been stolen and put on this case without my knowledge and against my wishes. How dare they use my name and my life this way! One of the Justices of the Supreme Court said during oral argument in my case “What does it matter if she is real or not.” Well I am real and it does matter. I was in court under a false name and lies. I was never cross-examined in court. Doe v. Bolton is based on a lie and deceit. It needs to be retried or overturned. Doe v. Bolton is against my wishes. Abortion is wrong. I love children. I would never harm a child and yet because of this case I feel like I bear the guilt of over 46 million innocent children being killed. The Supreme Court is also guilty.
The bottom line is I want abortion stopped in my name. I want the case which was supposedly to benefit me, be either overturned or retried. If it is retried, at least I will have an opportunity to speak for myself in court, something that never happened before. My lawyers at The Justice Foundation have collected affidavits from over one thousand women hurt by abortion. We have filed those affidavits and a Rule 60 Motion to reverse Doe which is now on its way to the Supreme Court through the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. I am also giving you a copy of my affidavit in the case. Millions of babies have been killed. Millions of women have been hurt horribly. It is time to get my name and life out of this case and its time to stop the killing.
Pro-life interests had hoped for a better result from the court, with the addition lately of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, who both appeared to have a more conservative approach to interpreting the constitution.
Related special offers: | <urn:uuid:0be38b78-e122-40ac-82e5-38d8623bcea7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wnd.com/2006/10/38330/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975552 | 1,939 | 1.90625 | 2 |
just a quick reminder for SF peninsula residents who may not be aware of this yet: Palo Alto is hosting a public workshop on HSR implementation in the SF peninsula on behalf of the Peninsula Cities Consortium. This body also includes Menlo Park, Atherton, San Mateo and Belmont.
Among the topics that will be discussed are:
• What are the myths and realities about the Peninsula project?
• What are best practices from around the world?
• What have other cities experienced during construction of a major railroad in an urban setting?
• Why can’t it be tunneled all the way?
• What impact will eminent domain have on backyards and grade crossings?
Location: Palo Alto City Hall, 250 Hamilton Street, Palo Alto
Date: Saturday, September 12
Time: 9am - 3:30pm
Admission: Free, but space is limited
Add'l info: http://www.peninsularail.com, 650-323-5590
Parking: underneath City Hall and at Ramona between Hamilton and University.
Caltrain: University station, less than 10min walk away
Addendum: Independently, CHSRA will be hosting a regular project-level scoping workshop for University City in San Diego county. The format of the meeting will be a workshop or fair, with displays, staff on hand to answer questions, and handouts, but no scheduled presentations. From 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. the meeting will be tailored to public agencies, and from 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. the meeting will be tailored to members of the public, although anyone can come and go at any time.
Location: University Town Center Forum Hall (4315 La Jolla Village Drive, in the northwest parking lot, above the Wells Fargo Bank)
Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Time: 3 p.m. - 7 p.m. | <urn:uuid:6c24f07c-b6db-4404-b4e8-ce4f74b862d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cahsr.blogspot.com/2009/08/hsr-workshop-in-palo-alto.html?showComment=1251284812031 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907923 | 402 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The best part of any superhuman story is when our fledgling hero, having recently discovered his or her powers, totally has fun with them. Think of Iron Man tinkering with his ever-evolving Mark suit, or Spider-Man figuring out how to web-sling. This morning, in the crystalline blue heavens, Swiss airline pilot Yves Rossy felt a similar rush when he strapped only a jet-powered wing to his back and navigated his bad-ass self in the air from France to England. Crossing the 22-mile English Channel in a mere 13 minutes, the 48-year-old Rossy is said to have simply moved his head and back to steer the gizmo—made of eight-foot carbon-composite wings and kerosene-fuelled jet turbines—and landed by parachute. Wearing only a heat-resistant suit and helmet, he was moving at upwards of 125 mph. Remarked the sky captain, who took a similar, if shorter, joy ride above the Alps four months ago:
I was under tension. But fear? The day I fear, I don’t go.
If you’d like to watch the record-making flight in action, MSNBC has handily provided some footage, with a Matt Lauer play-by-play at no extra charge. (Alternately, you can turn down the volume and space-out to William Shatner’s vintage cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”) Next up for the real-life Rocket Man: soaring above Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Talk about flying like an eagle. Photo courtesy of ducaduca. | <urn:uuid:5ce7d790-81db-471b-86df-ca0039f7f8d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://io9.com/5055472/real+life-rocket-man-takes-flight-over-english-channel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947594 | 347 | 1.789063 | 2 |
With planting season just around the corner, you're probably raring to get to the field. No matter how meticulous you may be, a reminder of some planting strategies can't hurt.
You've no doubt fine-tuned your planting equipment to achieve good seed-to-soil contact and uniform seed placement. But you also need to make sure the planter is placing the seed at the proper depth, says Stephen Smith, Agronomy Services Manager, Mycogen Seeds.
"Planting conditions change with every field. Crop rotation, previous tillage operations, residue amounts, moisture conditions, soil types, soil structure, field uniformity and compaction are just a few of the variables that will change from field to field. Because of these, seed planting depth can vary greatly, even within the same field," he explains.
Proper corn seed planting depth is between 1.5 and 2 inches. "Seed planted less than 1 inch deep may have root establishment problems which can lead to increased herbicide injury, lack of root mass and increased root lodging. Seed planted more than 2.5 inches deep will potentially take longer to emerge and will be placed in a more hostile growing environment," he explains.
You need to stop often and check seed location, he adds. When planting into a new field, planting depth should be checked frequently because it may vary an inch or more by location within the field.
"Check planting depth in an area that is representative of the field. Field margins that are exposed to heavy traffic from previous years and areas where soil has been recently disturbed are not good areas to check. If residue conditions change greatly across the field or tillage practices are not uniform, then seed depth should be rechecked in areas where field conditions change," he recommends. "At the very least, be alert to changing planting conditions, and take a moment to review activity behind the planter. A few well-spent minutes can result in a better, healthier stand and may prevent a disaster resulting from improper seed depth." | <urn:uuid:25565246-b02d-4569-85f0-591cc4ac75d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://farmprogress.com/story-planting-tips-for-a-new-season-0-841 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951718 | 415 | 2.34375 | 2 |
An adj. used by certain african tribes to describe the smell of their offspring. Also a phrase used by warriors when running into battle, to confuse their enemy.
Tribal Leader: "Why that stench certainly rankles. Whatever could it be?
Town Bicycle pointing to her newest child: "Poopakunga"
Tribal Leader: "Poopakunga!"
Apposing Forces: Looking around, "Heavenly God, did I step in it?!" | <urn:uuid:7a016f79-6067-4525-afb2-677a711ac731> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=poopakunga&defid=2120558 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91934 | 102 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Coincidental with the 4th European on Non-Lethal Weapons (agenda here), the British Medical Association has released a report titled The Use of Drugs as Weapons. Not surprisingly, their assessment is highly unfavorable towards so-called “tactical pharmacology.” The bottom line (edited for brevity):
The primary conclusion of this report is that the use of drugs as weapons is simply not feasible without generating a significant mortality among the target population…The agent whereby people could be incapacitated without risk of death in a tactical situation does not exist and is unlikely to in the foreseeable future. In such a situation, it is and will continue to be almost impossible to deliver the right agent to the right people in the right dose without exposing the wrong people, or delivering the wrong dose. Countermeasures may be easy to apply if such an attack is expected…
Ethical considerations aside, the BMA views the interest of governments in the use of drugs as weapons as dangerous for three reasons.
- The international legal norms which protect humanity from poison and the deliberate spread of disease which have been put in place by decades of negotiation risk being undermined.
- Widespread but responsible deployment of drugs as weapons would inevitably result in their reaching the hands of state or non-state actors for whom lethality among those targeted is not of concern. This would simply be chemical warfare with a medical label.
- Using existing drugs as weapons means knowingly moving towards the top of a ‘slippery slope’ at the bottom of which is the spectre of ‘militarization’ of biology; this could include intentional manipulation of peoples’ emotions, memories, immune responses or even fertility.
That’s a noble sentiment, but I’m pretty sure the militarization of biology is already well underway, and some surprises await us in the future. Major Western nations may choose not to slide down that slope, but others will definitely do so.
Here’s an older, related post: Militarization of biology: nonlethal weapons
BTW, a little bird tells me some of the taser guys were wearing a look of desperation at the NLW symposium. What, they’re not used to taking the heat (or shocks? – sorry, couldn’t resist) by now? | <urn:uuid:6ddeba2a-6666-41c1-ad29-397e0d44513c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bugsngasgal.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/uks-bma-incapacitating-drugs-never-nonlethal-weapons/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954133 | 476 | 2.15625 | 2 |
How to use the
netcat to have relays? Like following I tried but not working:
cd /tmp mknod backpipe p nc -l -p 7007 0<backpipe | nc 192.168.1.101 9001 | tee backpipe
I want to receive data on 7007 must be listening mode
$ another application is putting packets here
what ever comes to 7007 I need to move to 9001 (which is also a listening port)
$ telnet localhost 9001
will show 7007 packets?
Optional: will it be also possible that I can put some extra header packets? to simulate http headers as image content type? | <urn:uuid:92357ecb-920f-4649-8bf8-1831995f181f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/21981/how-to-do-netcat-relays-properly-so-that-i-have-more-control | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91023 | 142 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Latest news for mathematicians and members of the European Mathematical Society.
The President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Nils Christian Stenseth, will announce the winner of the 2012 Abel Prize on the 21st of March. The chair of the Abel committee, Ragni Piene, will then state the reasons for the awarding of the prize.
This will be followed by a popular science presentation of the prize winners’ work by Timothy Gowers, Professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. The announcement will be transmitted as a live webcast at 12 noon (GMT + 1) from the Academy in Oslo. To view the webcast, go to http://www.abelprize.no/en/
This call concerns popularization of mathematics, particularly around school activities and also for scientific subjects that involve or lead to knowing mathematics (computer science).
The call emanates from the French association animath which promotes mathematical activities for youth by means of workshops, competitions, clubs, in schools, high-schools, colleges, universities.
More informations can be found on http://www.animath.fr/ (in French).
CIMPA is a UNESCO centre located in Nice, France, with financial support from France, the
Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, Switzerland, Norway, Spain and UNESCO. Its aim is to promote
international cooperation in higher education and research in mathematics and their
interactions, as well as related subjects, for the benefit of developing countries.
CIMPA organizes research schools of about two weeks in developing countries. The purpose of
these schools is to contribute to the research training of the new generation of
mathematicians, women and men.
Several Humboldt Research Awards have been given to well-known mathematicians. Every award is valued at 60,000 EUR. Award winners are invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany.
A list of recent prize recipients, including a description of their research interests, and their host institutions in Germany can be found at http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/pls/web/pub_laudatio.main?p_lang=en&p_... .
Alan Schoenfeld (UC Berkeley, CA, USA) received the Felix Klein Medal for lifetime achievemnet.
Luis Radford (Université Laurentienne, Canada) received the Hans Freudenthal Medal for a major cumulative programme of research.
More information: http://creas.educ.usherbrooke.ca/Archives/Hans%20Freudenthal%20Medal%20-...
The Joint meeting of the Belgian, Royal Spanish and Luxembourg mathematical societies will take place at the University of Liege, Belgium, from June 6 to June 8. It will gather mathematicians around 7 plenary speakers and in 8 special sessions (Algebra, Algebraic and Symplectic geometry, Discrete
Mathematics, Functional and Harmonic Analysis, Mathematical Logic, Numerical Analysis, Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions, Statistics and Probability Theory).
More information: http://nalag.cs.kuleuven.be/research/workshops/BSL2012/
This summer school will focus on recent developments in combinatorial topology and discrete geometry, with an emphasis on the interaction with toric geometry and commutative algebra. A promising contemporary method for getting simple explicit descriptions of topological spaces is discrete Morse theory. Its applications range from real world problems, such as shape recognition, to theoretical studies of topological spaces, which encode important invariants from algebra, geometry and topology.
Professor Manfredo P. Do Carmo (IMPA, Brasil) will be awarded the honorary degree Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad de Murcia on the 10th of May 2012. The ceremony will take place at 12 noon in the Salón de Actos Facultad de Quimica in the Espinardo campus of the university.
The European Regional Committee of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, the community of Hungarian statisticians and probabilists and the organisers cordially invite their colleagues to participate in the 29th European Meeting of Statisticians, to be held in Budapest, Hungary, from 20 to 25 July 2013.
Individual members of the European are offered a discount on the registration fee.
More information: http://ems2013.eu/site/index.php
The Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) endeavors to support and broaden the relationship between mathematics and computation: specifically to expand the use of computational and experimental methods in mathematics, to support theoretical advances related to computation, and address problems posed by the existence and use of the computer through mathematical tools, research and innovation. This is done through a variety of semester programs, semester workshops, and summer programs.
On the 23rd of February the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India, will host an Abel symposium with all the Abel committee members as speakers. Professor M. S. Raghunathan has invited his fellow Abel Committee members to give lectures at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research ahead of the final committee meeting in Mumbai.The event will start with the Ramanujan Prize being presented to Professor Philibert Nang (44) from Gabon followed by his prize lecture.
More information: http://www.abelprisen.no/en/
More than 5,700 researchers have joined a boycott of Elsevier, a leading publisher of science journals. The protest grew out of a provocative blog post by the mathematician Timothy Gowers of Cambridge University, who announced on Jan. 21 that he would no longer publish papers in any of Elsevier’s journals or serve as a referee or editor for them.
Four summer schools presenting topics in different areas of applied mathematics will be run in 2012 under the auspices of the EMS Applied Mathematics Committee. Announcements of the first three are now available, the fourth will be held at the conference center in Bedlewo, Poland.
1. ESMTB-EMS Summer School : The Helsinki Summer School on Mathematical Ecology and Evolution 2012 (Turku, Finland; August 19-26)
2. 5th European Summer School in Financial Mathematics (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France; August 27-31)
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Gert-Martin Greuel has been appointed the new editor-in-chief of the mathematics publication database "Zentralblatt für Mathematik," or ZBMATH for short. Since the beginning of 2012, Greuel has taken over from Prof. Bernd Wegner, who directed the renowned publication database for 37 years. Greuel is a professor at the University of Kaiserslautern and the director of the Oberwolfach Mathematical Research Institute.
More information: http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/news_12.html?&cHash=5b9123cdfcdc4fe210989278ee2907fa&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1380
Luis A. Cordero has been Full Prof. of Geometry and Topology since 1976 at La Laguna Univ. and at Santiago de Compostela Univ. (USC, Spain) since 1979. The Institute of Math. of the USC in colaboration with Basque Country Univ. (UPV/EHU, Spain) and CSIC (Spain), is organising the "Differential Geometry Days" on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Current research topics in Differential Geometry will be treated during this conference.
Santiago de Compostela (Spain), June 27-29, 2012. | <urn:uuid:566fe278-cb44-44f8-9bc5-0a77df057d97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/news.html?page=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910953 | 1,632 | 1.554688 | 2 |
ABSTRACT: Congenital dyserythropoietic anemias (CDAs) are rare hereditary disorders characterized by ineffective erythropoiesis and striking abnormalities of erythroblast morphology. The mutated genes are known for the most frequent types, CDA I and II, but data about their frequency do not exist. The objective of this retrospective study was to estimate the frequency of CDA I and II, based on all cases reported in the last 42 yr in publications and identified registries or surveys. Reports were collected of 124 and 377 confirmed cases of CDA I and CDA II cases, respectively. The cumulated incidence of both types combined varied widely between European regions, with minimal values of 0.08 cases/million in Scandinavia and 2.60 cases/million in Italy. CDA II is more frequent than CDA I, with an overall ratio of approximately 3.2, but the ratio also varied between different regions. The most likely explanations for the differences are both differences in the availability of advanced diagnostic procedures and different levels of the awareness for the diagnosis of the CDAs. The estimations reported here are most probably below the true incidence rates, because of failure to make the correct diagnosis and to underreporting. Limited data do not suggest differing levels of risk in identified ethnic groups.
European Journal Of Haematology 07/2010; 85(1):20-5. · 2.61 Impact Factor | <urn:uuid:8970ea9c-c592-477d-a2c1-33b168f39971> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/29715289_Gabriela_Smolenska-Sym/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929931 | 292 | 2.34375 | 2 |
I am attempting to develop a "dxf2pdf" application (I guess I don't have to tell you what it does
It is being written under Linux, but will eventually be ported to Windows.Note on my background
: Luckily, back in school I took a Master's level CS course, called "Computer Graphics" (which I finally
get to put to good use!). The term project was an application that shifted, scaled, rotated and displayed a simple house, hopefully in real time. Due to the limited CPU power those days, it was mainly wireframe: since the hidden segment removal was too onerous, I ended up turning it off for a good show.
In short: I am familiar with the part about the 3 geometric transforms.
Having said that, we never covered things like "edges" or "extents". I am not fully clear on the concept of "polyline", as used in the DXF standard. In the textbook (authored by The Father of Computer Graphics himself), there was only one kind of entity: the line segment
(To be continued) | <urn:uuid:d4e4fefa-5b03-4ed2-b0ae-dc57a930cc71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?f=21&p=7245 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972689 | 224 | 2.28125 | 2 |
the time is at hand when a mechanical engineer, a manufacturer, has every
need and every inducement and every facility for obtaining all that makes
any man worthy of the esteem of his fellows, viz: Education, in its truest
M.P. Higgins, consultant and first shop foreman of the Georgia School of
Technology defined the vision and purpose behind the state's fledgling technical
school with these words. Then, on that October day in 1888, twelve year
old Nellie Inman pulled the switch that set a thousand wheels in motion.
The school's machinery throbbed, hissed and rumbled. The Georgia School
of Technology was open for business.
Georgia Tech had its first beginnings in a conversation between two former Confederate Officers--Major John Fletcher Hanson and Nathaniel Edwin Harris in May 1882. Hanson was then President of the Bibb Textile Company, managing editor of the Macon Telegraph and future president of the Central of Georgia Railroad. Harris was a Macon lawyer with many industrial clients. Both men, as Confederate Officers, were products of the "Old South"-a prosperous agrarian society that effectively vanished in 1861, when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Both men participated in a war that was lost at least in part because of the superior technology of the North. Both were ardent supporters of the "New South Creed"-a belief that the South could rise from the ashes of the dead past through industrial development and win the lost war by emulating, and then surpassing, the North on the battlefields of industry and commerce.
to Walter Drury, in his master's thesis, The Architectural Development
of Georgia Tech, Hanson described the need for a technical school
and Harris reportedly replied, "I would rather be the author of a
law establishing such a school than be Governor of Georgia."(2)
Harris ran for the legislature for Bibb County and was elected for the
term of 1882-1886. In 1882, Harris introduced a bill for the establishment
of a technical school in Georgia and was appointed to head a committee
"to investigate the question of technical education." (3)
The committee decided that the Georgia School of Technology would place equal emphasis on practical apprenticeship and academic pursuits. According to Drury, the Worcester Free School was selected as the model for the Georgia school because the committee felt it offered the best model "for moral as well as practical reasons." The Georgia School of Technology was expected to do more than teach academic subjects or a trade. The role of the school was also to develop in the state's youth "the character traits of industry, or diligent attention to work." (5) The committee was also impressed by the self-sufficiency of Worcester. "Items made in the shop by Worcester students were sold to produce income for the school." (6)
appropriated for grounds and buildings, tools and appliances, for school
operation for one year. Peters Park was selected, over competing sites
in Grant Park and on Boulevard, for reasons of cost and best proximity
to Atlanta business, railroads and industry. The first campus of the Georgia
School of Technology was nine acres and two buildings in the area bounded
by North Avenue, Fowler Avenue, and Cherry Street.
prestigious civic architectural firm in Atlanta--Bruce and Morgan--was
selected to design the first two buildings, an academic building containing
classrooms, laboratories and administrative offices and a shop building
containing a foundry, forge, boiler room and engine room, to support the
learning of wood work and metal work, with a view to designing and building
working engines. The Shop Building also served as the school's physical
According to Drury, both buildings were designed in the prevailing style of the times, High Victorian according to the tenets of John Ruskin. Ruskinian architecture, in revulsion against unprincipled labor practices and sordid urban factories, harkened back in its civic architecture to nobler ideals symbolized by towers and heroic ornamentation. The Academic and Shop Buildings were imbued in their designs with moral purpose. The focal point of each building was its tower.
The building's ornamentation was lofty and symbolic. Oak leaves on the Academic Building's capital represented endurance and strength. Religious ornamentation-fish containing a clove-like pattern of three dots-decorated the limestone spring line of the paired arches. The Gothic ornamentation emphasizes the school's belief in its noble vision and purpose: to inform the moral character of the student and thus participate, through the development of an educated, industrious managerial class, in the rebirth of a prosperous South. (10)
Building was designed in the same style, with a corresponding tower, reflecting
the balance between academic studies and practical apprenticeship. The
building materials used in both the Academic and the Shop Building reflect
the school's mission to develop Georgia's industry through the use of
its native resources: Chattahoochee brick, machine pressed brick, and
Georgia marble and granite. The building materials are a blend of high
art and craftsman's skill and thus also reflect the School's equal emphasis
on learning and practice. (11)
The Georgia School of Technology opened its doors the first Wednesday in October, 1888. The first faculty were Captain Lyman Hall, Mathematics, Rev. Charles Lane, English, R.B. Shepard, Mechanical and Free-hand Drawing, Dr. William H. Emerson, Chemistry and John S. Coons, Mechanical Engineering. M.P. Higgins, on loan from the Worcester Free Institute, served as the first superintendent of the school's shop. The only degree offered was the Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. The initial enrollment consisted of 95 young men, all but two from Georgia.
In the early hours of April 21, 1892, the Shop Building was destroyed by fire. In the interests of economy, it was decided that the new Shop Building would be built according to the original design, even re-using the same brick. According to Drury, the new building, substantially completed by the end of 1892, reflected a shift in architectural values. "The new building shed its Victorian ornament and tower and in its place a more harmonious, balanced and reposed classical spirit emanated." (12) The foundry and forge were placed in separate buildings to prevent recurrence of the fire. The building was reduced from three stories to two. Although many design considerations were dictated by cost, the new building also reflected the growing dominance of research and study over practical apprenticeship. The school came under increasing pressure to cease bidding on manufacturing projects, since the free labor provided by students gave the school a strong competitive edge. Enrollment dropped to an all time low after the fire.
Continue to the Hall Administration, 1895-1905 | <urn:uuid:b5e25110-04ec-47e6-a08a-f7bdf622a54c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.library.gatech.edu/gtbuildings/hopkins.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968974 | 1,399 | 2.921875 | 3 |
The United Kingdom is preparing to convert the London 2012 Olympics anti-doping center, which conducted more than 6,000 drug tests on athletes during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, into a facility that could help revolutionize 21st century health care. That new facility—the world's first national "phenome center"—is the topic of a story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
Alex Scott, C&EN senior editor in London, explains that a phenome describes a person's chemistry—all of the molecules in the urine, tissue and blood that result from a person's genetic makeup and environmental influences. Experts say measuring the phenome can provide scientists with more information about the causes of disease, and this could help significantly change the way a wide range of diseases is treated.
The article describes key objectives for the project. One is to create the world's first publicly and privately funded labs that will combine analytical science, epidemiology and clinical expertise to better understand the causes, mechanisms, treatment and monitoring of disease. Others are to develop the next generation of metabolic testing methods and make the U.K. the world leader in analytical chemistry with the first in a series of phenome centers that will share data from national populations.
Explore further: A new genre of diagnostic tests for the era of personalized medicine
More information: "A Phenome-nal Olympics Legacy" - cen.acs.org/articles/90/i36/Olympics-Antidoping-Labs-Become-UK.html | <urn:uuid:541900dc-1cd8-496a-8a24-7e452e29d38d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/news/2012-09-london-olympics-anti-doping-labs-first-of-a-kind.html | 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 | 0.906398 | 339 | 2.921875 | 3 |
We have a crisis of conversation in our democracy. People want to be heard and to have a voice in our future. It's time for citizens -- you and me, all of us -- to come in from the cold. Whether conservative, liberal, or independent, we are all citizens united with the same rights. Coming together for protest and mutual learning is important but, in addition to face-to-face gatherings in the parks and streets, it is essential to bring our conversations into the mainstream of society. Only a relatively few voices can be heard from the streets but tens of millions can be heard through the airwaves that we, the public, legally own. Many people, whatever their point of view, do not feel their voices are being heard. It's time to give citizens an authentic voice through a "Community Voice" movement that directly fulfills our Constitutional rights to be heard.
Power in a democracy is the power to freely communicate. A "Community Voice" movement could use our amazing array of powerful communication tools:
Our country and our future are in trouble: Our financial future. Our energy future. Our jobs future. Our climate future. Our kids' future. We are in the midst of a full-scale systems crisis. Whatever our differences may be in this country -- and there are plenty -- we all want a voice in our future. Importantly, we require a scale of civic conversation that is equal to the scale of challenges and solutions -- and often these are of regional, national, and global scale.
While there is no debating the power of the Internet, it is important to recognize that, at this critical time, the large-scale conversation of our democracy continues to be dominated by television. As American citizens, we legally own the airwaves in our local communities. In turn, we have a unique opportunity to coalesce the anxiety and frustration that permeates our society into a positive movement that can truly strengthen our participatory democracy. We can bring the conversations in the streets into our public life with one technology that connects with nearly every home in America -- television.
Here is the opportunity I see: Within the space of three months, the citizens of a major metropolitan area can take three, difficult but realistically doable steps (I've done them before), to awaken an entirely new level of civic conversation:
1. Community Voice Organization -- The first step is to create a simple, independent, non-profit organization -- a "Community Voice" organization to represent the communication rights and needs of a major metropolitan area served by television broadcasters that use our public airwaves. (In the 1980s, we called our San Francisco Bay Area organization "Bay Voice.") This organization must authentically represent the diverse constituencies of its community and it must be strictly trans-partisan -- able to stand above and embrace the full range of community views and concerns. A Community Voice organization has only two roles: to listen to the concerns of the community, and to present those concerns for dialogue before the community in the form of "Electronic Town Meetings," and then to "let the chips fall where they may." The organization itself is neutral and does no advocacy; rather, it serves as a vehicle for giving the community a voice in its own affairs and future.
2. Prime Time Access -- The second step is for the Community Voice organization to make a legal request for prime-time from local television broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX) for a series of ongoing Electronic Town Meetings that enable the community to air its views on issues of critical concern. Conversations about the most critical issues of our time cannot be relegated to the wastelands of viewership. Because the laws are unequivocal that broadcasters must serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" before their own profits, the community has every right to expect this trans-partisan request will be honored if the first step has been done well.
3. Electronic Town Meetings -- The third step is for the Community Voice organization to work in cooperation with one of the local TV broadcasters to produce an Electronic Town Meeting (or ETM) with feedback from a "scientific" or random sample of citizens from the community. This can be supplemented with feedback from specific groups (younger, older, ethnic, gender, etc.) that want to participate in non-random surveys via the Internet. The modern ETM process builds upon more than two centuries of experience with the New England Town Meetings, and is NOT controlled by the television stations or advertisers; rather, it is controlled by the community through its independent Community Voice organization.
From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, it is the major metropolitan areas that are the natural scale of organizing for legally effective work to take back the airwaves for a new level of citizen dialogue. If individual communities around the country were to form independent, trans-partisan Community Voice organizations to launch Electronic Town Meetings, it would revolutionize the conversation of democracy within a matter of months. The leadership of one community could inspire and catalyze other communities to create their own "Community Voice" organization and we could quickly have an entirely new layer of sustained and meaningful dialogue sweeping the country. Citizens could voice their concerns, propose and debate solutions, and help break through the gridlock at the state and national levels.
Many people recognize that we are immersed in a world of extraordinary communication technologies and that we now have the potential to raise the level of dialogue in our democracy dramatically. We are needlessly diminishing the richness and power of our democracy by not using these powerful tools to serve our needs as citizens. This is not an idealistic dream. A metropolitan-scale Electronic Town Meeting is the direct expression of our Constitutional rights -- and its workability was demonstrated nearly a quarter of a century ago! (See the following video clip.) By combining the broad reach of television with the penetrating depth of the Internet, we have the technologies for a revolution in civic communication. Television still offers the largest megaphone for local conversations; however, once underway, many could migrate to various Internet sites better suited to providing depth and perspective.
To meet the challenges of our times, we must transcend our partisan differences long enough to recognize our common need for a system of civic conversation that serves us all. In turn, each major community could create an independent, trans-partisan and non-profit organization that represents the legitimate communication needs of the community in relationship to broadcasters that use their airwaves.
We are all together in this time of great transition, and if we want a promising future it will be vital to pull together in cooperation. The human community has entered uncharted territory. We have never before had to come together like this as a nation and as a world. A perfect storm of global crises is growing in intensity and challenging us to make dramatic changes in our manner of living in the world. We can prepare by building a new level of civic dialogue that will be of invaluable service to us in our time of local-to-global transition. The foundation of a healthy democracy is a rich and vigorous conversation among its citizens, particularly during times of great transition such as we face today. A "Community Voice" movement that brings citizens and communities back into the conversation of democracy has the power to transform our pathway into the future.
Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and trans-partisan media activist. Previous blogs on media themes include, "Occupy the Airwaves," "Take Back the Airwaves," "The Last Taboo on Television," and "Can Television Help Awaken a Healthy World?" His website is: http://www.DuaneElgin.com/
Follow Duane Elgin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DuaneElgin | <urn:uuid:087bb6dd-738f-43de-8713-369349e658f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/duane-elgin/future-occupy-movement_b_1100549.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947754 | 1,561 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Pauline Newton, a lecturer in English who teaches “Critical Thinking and Argument: An Introduction to College Writing” to first-year students, encourages students to bring their laptops to class and take notes.
“They were born with fingers on the keyboard,” she says. “They are so used to computers, and they’ll be using them in the real world. I don’t fight technology; I embrace it.”
She finds that teaching students to write and communicate well really hasn’t changed much through the years.
In some ways, technology has made it easier, she says. For example, while helping students craft thesis statements, Newton shares the process with the entire group using the real-time collaboration capabilities of Google Docs, a free Web-based application offered by Google.
Students generally monitor their own use of technology in the classroom, she says. “They know that if I see them using their phone or Facebook during class,
I’ll consider that when factoring class participation in their grades.”
Laurie Campbell, director of Undergraduate Programs, Department of Teaching and Learning in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, exposes her students to “as much technology as possible so that when they go into the K-12 environment, they’ll be able to take advantage of all the technical tools available to them.”
Students in all of her classes also keep their computer use in check. In fact, they sign a contract that governs how they can use it and what the ramifications are for breaking the rules.
Boeke, who teaches a media and technology course, believes part of the modern university’s mission is to engage students in the latest technology so they’ll be competitive in the marketplace, he says.
“Even in my classroom, it’s annoying when everyone is on Facebook, looking at email and surfing,” Boeke says. “But those same students are often the first to find some new, useful information online.”
– Patricia Ward | <urn:uuid:47bd1439-5d75-4d17-884a-148470b583c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.smu.edu/smumagazine/2009/12/the-naked-truth-continued/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956982 | 435 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Anuj Purwar standing next to Varian Medical Systems' flagship "TrueBeam Edge" radiosurgery system
Anuj Purwar, who conducted research as a member of RHIC’s PHENIX collaboration to earn his Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics from Stony Brook University, now applies the knowledge and skills he gained to further R&D in using radiation to treat cancer. He’s a senior staff physicist at Varian Medical Systems, based in Palo Alto, CA.
“I use my knowledge of radiation detectors, linear accelerators, and nuclear physics that I got from RHIC to come up with innovative solutions to the problem of delivering high doses of ionizing radiation to cancerous tumors while minimizing collateral damage to normal tissues,” he said.
Specifically, he works on compact linear accelerators and gaseous ionizing radiation detectors to improve the steering and focusing of cancer-killing beams and ensure that optimized doses of radiation can be delivered precisely to tumors, as well as the design of radiation shielding.
“Although there are differences—e.g., RHIC is about 2.4 miles around, operates at 200 billion electron volts, and uses superconducting magnets for beam steering, while the Varian linacs are about 1 meter long, top out at 22 million electron volts, and use ordinary electromagnets—my experience at PHENIX with accelerator physics applies directly to what I do every day.”
Purwar’s postdoc work on silicon pixel detectors and data acquisition equipment at Los Alamos National Laboratory—still as a member of RHIC’s PHENIX experiment—also has a direct bearing on his current job, as do the types of computational simulations performed for analyzing nuclear physics experimental data.
“My experience at RHIC prepared me very well for R&D in medical physics.”
2012-3507 INT/EXT | Media & Communications Office | <urn:uuid:3db2efb7-4a37-439f-893d-0485108fe10e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=23507 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929191 | 398 | 1.851563 | 2 |
The Sorrows of Yamba or the Negro Woman’s Lamentation published 1795 and
sometimes attributed to Hannah More (1745-1833). However she may have derived it from William Cowper’s ‘The Negro’s Complaint’ or based it on a shorter poem by someone signing themselves "Eaglesfield Smith." It was one of the most popular and frequently reprinted antislavery poems of its time.
4th Sep 2007 by Diane Earl
Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, Key Stage 4+ | <urn:uuid:9f0527f8-4174-4364-8440-0ad92e30e335> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset72551_1136-abolition.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940141 | 118 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The dividing line between creative writing and climate science – sometimes thin – has been triumphantly dissolved. A new postgraduate course at the University of East Anglia hopes to bring together “researchers in the environmental sciences, philosophy, history and literature to develop new ways of thinking about environmental change and social transitions”.
The one-year MA/MSc in Environmental Sciences and Humanities also “aims to initiate and foster fundamental academic inquiry as well as encouraging practical and effective action.”
All stirring stuff.
UEA, the heart of the Climategate emails, already runs a project in “eco poetry” aimed at primary school children, intended to “stimulate and strengthen children’s environmental awareness”. You can see a leaf haiku here.
“The idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.”
He certainly has a way with words.
It isn’t cheap, though. The course costs £5,000 for UK students and £11,900 for overseas students. | <urn:uuid:43a29349-6410-472f-9f5b-1ceed47a4b3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sev.org.uk/are-you-an-eco-poet-climate-science-needs-you/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94098 | 240 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Master/slave replication is an important tool that gets used in many ways: distributing read loads among many slaves for performance, using a slave for backups so the master can handle live load, geographically distributed disaster recovery, etc. The Achilles’ Heal of slave performance is that slave workloads are single-threaded. The master can have many clients inserting, updating, querying, whereas the slave has only one insertion client: the master. InnoDB single-client performance is much slower than its multi-client performance, which means that the bottleneck in a master/slave system is often the rate at which a slave can keep up.
If the master has an average transactions per second (tps) that is higher than what the slave can handle, the slave will fall further and further behind. If the slaves are being used to distribute read workload, for example, the[Read more...] | <urn:uuid:3690b79a-543d-4c82-8815-95d96b99246a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://planet.mysql.com/?tag_search=12778 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951261 | 180 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Per guidance from my wife, I’m going to try really hard not to be sarcastic here. But I really do want to commit to the public record the promises Barack Obama made during his historic run to the White House. I do this for several reasons: 1) so that I can know what to expect for myself and my country with the election of Obama, and 2) so that I can have something to refer back to four years from now when Obama runs for re-election.
I scoured Barack Obama’s Web site this morning. I thought I should hurry and do this before he takes down his Web site and tries to erase from our memory all the promises he has made. What I found I divided into two categories: 1) promises to individuals and families, and 2) promises to and for the nation overall. Directly below, I summarize his promises in some quick bullet points; further below is more detailed quotes pulled directly from Barack Obama’s Web site this morning.
Promises to Individuals and Families:
- $1,000 per working family from a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit
- $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families
- Simplify tax filings so Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes
- A $500 Universal Mortgage Credit
- Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow parents up to 24 hours to participate in their children’s academic activities
- Guaranteed health coverage for every American
- Lower the cost of health care for the average American family by $2,500
- Raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour
- Completely eliminate taxes for seniors making under $50,000 per year
- Provide home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers
- Guaranteed seven paid sick days per year for low-wage workers
- A new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth $4,000 in exchange for community service, making community college tuition completely free for most students
- Protect Social Security, provide cheaper prescription drugs, and strengthen Medicare
- Reduce homelessness among veterans
Promises to the Nation Overall:
- Save more than 1 million jobs through a $25 billion State Growth Fund
- Create 5 million new “Green” jobs
- Create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will create two million new jobs and stimulate $35 billion per year in new economic activity
- Cut both taxes and government spending
- Lower the federal deficit by reducing wasteful spending
- Increase the supply of affordable housing
- Reduce crime recidivism (i.e. repeat offenders)
- Establish 20 Promise Neighborhoods which will provide early childhood education, violence prevention and after-school activities to entire neighborhoods from birth to college
- Put 1 million plug-in hybrid cars on the road that can get 150 miles per gallon
- Defeat terrorism worldwide
- Secure our borders
- Increase stability in Iraq and the Middle East
- Support small business development
- Put broadband Internet in every community in America
Now even Barack’s supporters must admit, this is a pretty tall order. But hey, I’m looking forward to it. I mean, we’re talking at least an additional $5,000 a year for me and my family due to his various tax credits and rebates. Government spending is going to be reduced. Terrorism will be defeated worldwide. Our borders will be secured. This is a conservative’s dream.
Okay, you can see that sacarism is starting to seep in. I just couldn’t resist. Below is the detail on each of our President Elect’s promises. It’s pretty lengthy, but again, I’m just putting it here for the record.
Barack Obama will provide a tax cut for working families: Obama and Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 95 percent of working Americans the tax relief they need. They will create a new “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family.
Provide tax relief for small businesses and startups: Obama and Biden will eliminate all capital gains taxes on startup and small businesses to encourage innovation and job creation.
Fight for fair trade: Obama and Biden will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. They will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world.
Jumpstart the Economy: Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.
Provide $50 billion to Jumpstart the Economy and Prevent 1 Million Americans from Losing Their Jobs: This relief would include a $25 billion State Growth Fund to prevent state and local cuts in health, education, housing, and heating assistance or counterproductive increases in property taxes, tolls or fees. The Obama-Biden relief plan will also include $25 billion in a Jobs and Growth Fund to prevent cutbacks in road and bridge maintenance and fund school repair – all to save more than 1 million jobs in danger of being cut.
Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama and Biden will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama and Biden will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama-Biden proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.
Invest In A Clean Energy Economy And Create 5 Million New Green Jobs: Obama and Biden will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, invest in low emissions coal plants, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid. The plan will also invest in America’s highly-skilled manufacturing workforce and manufacturing centers to ensure that American workers have the skills and tools they need to pioneer the first wave of green technologies that will be in high demand throughout the world.
Create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address the infrastructure challenge by creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation’s most challenging transportation infrastructure needs. The Bank will receive an infusion of federal money, $60 billion over 10 years, to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.
Create a Universal Mortgage Credit: Obama and Biden will create a 10 percent universal mortgage credit to provide homeowners who do not itemize tax relief. This credit will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year.
Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act: The FMLA covers only certain employees of employers with 50 or more employees. Obama and Biden will expand it to cover businesses with 25 or more employees. They will expand the FMLA to cover more purposes as well, including allowing workers to take leave for elder care needs; allowing parents up to 24 hours of leave each year to participate in their children’s academic activities; and expanding FMLA to cover leave for employees to address domestic violence.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/ on November 5, 2008
As President, Barack Obama will guarantee health coverage for every American and will lower the cost of health care for the average American family by up to $2,500.
Barack Obama will ease American’s burden at the pump, giving American families $1,000 in rebates. Barack will also create five million new jobs by investing in clean energy technologies.
Barack Obama will end tax breaks for companies that send American jobs overseas, and reward companies who create good jobs here at home.
Barack Obama will cut both taxes and spending, implementing a responsible budget that lowers the federal deficit by reducing wasteful spending.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/sidebyside.php on November 5, 2008
Barack Obama will expand access to jobs: Obama and Biden will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce.
Make work pay for all Americans: Obama and Biden will increase benefits for working parents, raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011, and provide tax relief to low- and middle-income workers.
Support rural and urban areas: Obama and Biden will invest in rural small businesses, improve rural schools, and attract more doctors to rural areas. And they will work with urban leaders to increase the supply of affordable housing and address the unique challenges of every metropolitan area.
Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Supports: Obama and Biden will work to ensure that ex-offenders have access to job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and employment opportunities. Obama and Biden will also create a prison-to-work incentive program and reduce barriers to employment.
Provide Tax Relief: Obama and Biden will provide all low and middle-income workers a $500 Making Work Pay tax credit to offset the payroll tax those workers pay in every paycheck. Obama and Biden will also eliminate taxes for seniors making under $50,000 per year.
Support Parents with Young Children: Obama and Biden will expand the highly-successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all 570,000 low-income, first-time mothers each year. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families.
Expand Paid Sick Days: Today, three-out-of-four low-wage workers have no paid sick days. Obama and Biden support guaranteeing workers seven paid sick days per year.
Establish 20 Promise Neighborhoods: Obama and Biden will create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in areas that have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement in cities across the nation. The Promise Neighborhoods will be modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities, to an entire neighborhood from birth to college.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/poverty/ on November 5, 2008
Obama and Biden will complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/defense/ on November 5, 2008
Make college affordable to all Americans: Obama and Biden will create a new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth $4,000 in exchange for community service. It will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/ on November 5, 2008
Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars — cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon — on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy on November 5, 2008
Restore Work-Family Balance: Obama and Biden will double funding for after-school programs, expand the Family Medical Leave Act, provide low-income families with a refundable tax credit to help with their child-care expenses, and encourage flexible work schedules.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/family/ on November 5, 2008
Barack Obama will defeat terrorism worldwide: Obama and Biden will find, disrupt, and destroy al Qaeda; prepare the military to meet 21st century threats;
Prevent nuclear terrorism: Obama and Biden will lead the effort to secure nuclear weapons materials at vulnerable sites within four years and help our allies stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction.
Strengthen American biosecurity: Obama and Biden will work to prevent bioterror attacks and mitigate consequences by improving U.S. intelligence collection and response management.
http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/homeland_security/ on November 5, 2008
Barack Obama will secure our borders: Obama and Biden want to preserve the integrity of our borders. They support additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology on the border and at our ports of entry.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/immigration/ on November 5, 2008
Increase stability in Iraq and the region: Obama and Biden will launch an aggressive diplomatic effort to reach a comprehensive compact on the stability of Iraq and the region. They also will address Iraq’s refugee crisis.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/ on November 5, 2008
Barack Obama will ensure economic opportunity for family farmers: Obama and Biden will fight for farm programs that provide family farmers with stability and predictability. They will implement a $250,000 payment limitation so that we help family farmers – not large corporate agribusiness.
Support small business development: Obama and Biden will provide capital for farmers to create value-added enterprises, like cooperative marketing initiatives and farmer-owned processing plants.
Improve rural quality of life: Obama and Biden will combat methamphetamine use, improve health care, improve education, and upgrade infrastructure in rural areas.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/rural/ on November 5, 2008
Integrate service into learning: Obama and Biden will set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year, and will establish a new tax credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/ on November 5, 2008
Barack Obama will protect Social Security: Obama and Biden are committed to ensuring Social Security is solvent and viable for the American people, now and in the future. They are strongly opposed to privatizing Social Security.
Provide cheaper prescription drugs: Obama and Biden will allow the federal government to negotiate for lower drug prices for the Medicare program. They also support allowing seniors to import safe prescription drugs from overseas.
Protect and strengthen Medicare: Obama and Biden are committed to the long-term strength of the Medicare program. They will reduce waste in the Medicare system and will tackle fundamental healthcare reform.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/seniors/ on November 5, 2008
Deploy a modern communications infrastructure: Obama and Biden believe we can get true broadband to every community in America.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/ on November 5, 2008
Help returning service members: Obama and Biden will improve the quality of health care for veterans, rebuild the VA’s broken benefits system, and combat homelessness among veterans.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/veterans/ on November 5, 2008 | <urn:uuid:9c093e46-976a-45f1-a594-de45c35b892c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jimmysinsights.com/2008-presidential-campaign/obamas-campaign-promises/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927639 | 3,255 | 1.601563 | 2 |
PHILADELPHIA – Four professors at the School of Medicine were elected as members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), one of the nation’s highest honors in biomedicine. The new members bring Penn’s total to 62, out of over 1600 worldwide. Overall, the IOM named 65 new members this year.
“Penn is privileged and proud that four of our most distinguished physician-scientists have been named to one of America’s premier institutions,” says Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh, Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and Dean of the School of Medicine.
The new Penn IOM members are:
- David A. Asch, MD, MBA, Robert D. Eilers Professor of Medicine and Health Care Management and Economics at the School of Medicine and the Wharton School; and Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
- Katherine A. High, MD, William H. Bennett Professor of Pediatrics, Penn; Director, Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
David Asch, MD, MBA, is Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the Robert D. Eilers Professor of Medicine and Health Care Management and Economics at the School of Medicine and the Wharton School. He teaches health policy at the Wharton School, and he practices internal medicine at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he is Co-director of the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion. He also co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Asch’s research aims to understand how physicians and patients make medical choices in clinical, financial, and ethically charged settings, and how health policies affect equity and quality.
Joel D. Cooper, MD, is Professor of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Chief, Division of Thoracic Surgery, of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Known for his pioneering contributions to the field of thoracic surgery, he is a recipient of the prestigious Jacobson Innovation Award from the American College of Surgeons and the Scientific Achievement Award from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Dr. Cooper’s special interests include general thoracic, esophageal and tracheal surgery, lung cancer and swallowing disorders. A past president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, he is recognized for his contributions in the field of airway surgery, esophageal surgery, pulmonary, physiology, lung transplantation and surgery for emphysema. Dr. Cooper is on the editorial board of Clinical Transplantation, the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Transplantation Proceedings and Transplantation Today. Dr. Cooper has published almost 400 scientific articles and is a co-editor of the Pearson Textbook of Thoracic Surgery.
Lee A. Fleisher, MD, is the Robert D. Dripps Professor and Chair of Anesthesia and Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is the Chair of the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Guidelines on Perioperative Cardiovascular Evaluation before Non-Cardiac Surgery. Dr. Fleisher has published more than 200 articles, chapters, books, and abstracts. He has edited several books and monographs, including Evidence Based Practice of Anesthesiology and the 5th edition of Anesthesia and Uncommon Diseases; he is also the co-editor of Essence of Anesthesia Practice and the forthcoming Perioperative Medicine: Managing for Outcomes, consulting editor for Anesthesia Clinics of North America, and associate editor of the 6th edition of Anesthesia. He is considered to be one of the world’s authorities on how the heart responds to the stress of surgery.
Katherine A. High, MD, is internationally prominent hematologist and researcher, She is the William H. Bennett Professor of Pediatrics at Penn, the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. She also is a past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy. Dr. High's studies of the molecular biology of the bleeding disorder hemophilia led to clinical trials of gene therapy for hemophilia at CHOP. She leads a National Institutes of Health-funded laboratory and has contributed scores of papers to the scientific literature.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to honor professional achievement in the health sciences and to serve as a national resource for independent analysis and recommendations on issues related to medicine, biomedical sciences, and health.
PENN Medicine is a $3.5 billion enterprise dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. PENN Medicine consists of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
Penn's School of Medicine is currently ranked #3 in the nation in U.S.News & World Report's survey of top research-oriented medical schools; and, according to most recent data from the National Institutes of Health, received over $379 million in NIH research funds in the 2006 fiscal year. Supporting 1,400 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System includes three hospitals — its flagship hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, rated one of the nation’s “Honor Roll” hospitals by U.S.News & World Report; Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital; and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center — a faculty practice plan; a primary-care provider network; two multispecialty satellite facilities; and home care and hospice. | <urn:uuid:d15d29f9-f68b-4c0d-a871-9c2dc7a231f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/oct07/IOM.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935473 | 1,220 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The issue is their new rule that makes particulate emissions illegal. Yes dust.
Ban trucks or make them so expensive that only major big box stores can use them…
Sens. Vitter and Sessions write: “Maybe the biggest reason to slow down [EPA's new PM2.5] rule is that the EPA is talking out of both sides of their mouth.
Media release and letter below. Click here for Senate EPW web site.
Vitter, Sessions Question EPA Air Regulation Rule Over Human Testing
February 5, 2013
Senator David Vitter (R-La.), top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and fellow Committee member Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in a letter today urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review the science behind an economically significant new rule tightening the national ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and to hold off on implementation and enforcement.
“Maybe the biggest reason to slow down the new rule is that the EPA is talking out of both sides of their mouth. On one side exposure to it is deadly, and on the other they say human exposure studies are not harmful,” said Vitter. “It’s alarming how the EPA is purposefully and blatantly ignoring an ongoing investigation of the legality and therefore scientific legitimacy of the use of human testing. This is another example of the EPA continuing to pick and choose scientific ‘facts’ to support their overreaching agenda.”
The exposure of human test subjects to diesel exhaust emissions and concentrated airborne particles may have been done without using required protocols and proper consent. In the letter, the Senators noted their concern over EPA’s finalizing the PM2.5 rule without the Agency using the “best available science,” in addition to ignoring an ongoing EPA Office of Inspector General investigation into whether EPA properly followed applicable laws and procedures in its testing programs.
BAN DIESELS trucks is the goal and this is how they want to do it. Cooked up science.
You do know that practically everything you buy comes on diesel trucks, don’t you. Yes that’s everything at Walmart. | <urn:uuid:958e9372-aa06-4c46-88f6-98e70b96c6aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tarpon.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/epa-talking-out-of-both-sides-of-their-mouth/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928225 | 449 | 1.757813 | 2 |
For the method, the incomplete factorization produces no nonzero elements beyond the sparsity structure of the original matrix, so that the preconditioner at worst takes exactly as much space to store as the original matrix. In a simplified version of , called - (Pommerell ), even less is needed. If not only we prohibit fill-in elements, but we also alter only the diagonal elements (that is, any alterations of off-diagonal elements are ignored), we have the following situation.
Splitting the coefficient matrix into its diagonal, lower triangular, and upper triangular parts as , the preconditioner can be written as where is the diagonal matrix containing the pivots generated. Generating this preconditioner is described in figure .
Figure: Construction of a - incomplete factorization preconditioner, storing the inverses of the pivots
Since we use the upper and lower triangle of the matrix unchanged, only storage space for is needed. In fact, in order to avoid division operations during the preconditioner solve stage we store rather than .
Remark: the resulting lower and upper factors of the preconditioner have only nonzero elements in the set , but this fact is in general not true for the preconditioner itself.
The fact that the - preconditioner contains the off-diagonal parts of the original matrix was used by Eisenstat to derive at a more efficient implementation of preconditioned CG. This new implementation merges the application of the tridiagonal factors of the matrix and the preconditioner, thereby saving a substantial number of operations per iteration. | <urn:uuid:5354d19d-3c56-4d13-9533-35d174ff798b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://netlib.org/linalg/html_templates/node64.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906186 | 335 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Hundreds participate in ‘Operation Thank the Troops’
Campus | Comments Off
Communications & Public Relations
December 23, 2009
Wake Forest University students wrote nearly 500 thank you cards to be hand-delivered to wounded soldiers fighting in Afghanistan over the holidays at the request of a third-year law student.
“I know these notes will be so meaningful to these brave men and women as they unselfishly risk their lives in service to our country,” said Ann Gibbs, law school associate dean of Administrative & Student Services.
Students from the School of Law and the Schools of Business said it was worth taking time out from studying for exams to write a note of thanks to the men and women serving their country.
“Soldiers are fighting when they should be home with their families during the holidays,” said Blake Hurt, a second-year law student and native of Greensboro. “I hope that a hand-written thank you will make their sacrifice a little easier to bear.”
Joe Maye, a first-year law student from South Carolina, added, “They sacrifice so much for us, all we can do is say thank you and in this small way, acknowledge what they do for us.”
They sacrifice so much for us, all we can do is say thank you and in this small way, acknowledge what they do for us.
Also contributing to the law school-sponsored project were the WFU Learning Assistance Center, and their tutors, the Human Resources department, and the Professional Development Center. In addition, Navy Moms, Hawley Middle School in Creedmoor, N.C., and Hanes Middle School in Winston-Salem also contributed thank you cards.
“It is a simple gesture to say thank you for all that these soldiers have and continue to sacrifice for our country,” said Andrea Ellis, associate director for Professional Development. | <urn:uuid:c95ca464-a67f-4230-8d95-3847eda74b9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.law.wfu.edu/2009/12/hundreds-participate-in-operation-thank-the-troops/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963023 | 398 | 1.59375 | 2 |
From hurricane drenches to rivers overflowing, flooding in your home is a very unfortunate disaster. Sometimes homeowners get fair warning that the flooding will occur, but it is never enough time to protect and remove everything in the house. Even if you get all your items removed, the house itself will sustain substantial damage to its walls and floors. In order to avoid cleaning the home twice, be sure that there is no possibility of more flooding by checking local reports from several different sources. Patience and teamwork will be the key for a successful cleaning.
The first step for a safe and effective flood cleaning is to take some time to gather a helpful team, sit down and discuss a plan with specific objectives. Before entering the house, inspect the exterior for structural damage so that you are confident it is safe to enter. Discontinue electrical power to the house by tripping the main circuit breaker. For basement homes that contain the main breaker, consult a professional utility electrician for assistance after all the floodwater has been pumped out of the lower level. The electrician knows how to properly remove breaker boxes, spray with a cleaner and check for ground faults. It is especially important when dealing with water that you are aware of any live wires and take proper precautions to reduce the chance of electrical shorts. Also, remember to switch off gas lines at the meter or tank on the outside and ventilate gas fumes from inside the home.
Once you are certain it is as safe as possible to enter the house, take pictures of the damage before beginning the cleaning process. Immediately contact your insurance company and leave your name, address and phone number so they may contact you in order to provide an adjuster to access the damage. Accurate records of the repair bills, item losses and flood-related living expenses should be supplied to your insurance agent as soon as possible.
There are a lot of supplies that you will need to properly clean the home. Large plastic tubs, plastic-lined cardboard boxes and sturdy garbage bags will be used to transport soggy belongings. Protective clothing, such as rubber gloves, hard sole shoes, a quality mask with filter and goggles, need to be worn when inside the house to safeguard against contaminated water. Microorganisms thrive in moist conditions and proper precautions need to be taken to avoid allergic reactions and other health hazards. If tools are required, use a generator or battery operated tools to avoid reactivating the power to the house. Essential cleaning equipment includes detergents, anti-microbial liquids, large sprayers, squeegees, pressure cleaners, scrubbing brooms, mops and buckets. Remember to use your common sense and keep children away from the contaminated areas as well as the cleaning supplies.
Now it is time for damage control. Everything in the home will have to be removed, packed into the bins and intensely scrubbed and cleaned. Begin by making a footpath through the home and pulling out items. Recruit a good friend with a non-contaminated space, washing machine and dishwasher to start cleaning household items. Even if it appears to be untouched from the flood, remove everything for proper cleaning with anti-microbial products. All kitchenware should be washed in a dishwasher as well as all fabrics, clothing, linens and shoes need to be sent through a washing machine. Hard surfaces that are non-porous, like plastics and metals, can be cleaned and allowed to dry. Hard furniture with wood surfaces need be scrubbed with mild detergent and then dried completely with dehumidifiers and fans. Upholstered furniture needs to have the contaminated water removed with a water extraction vacuum and allowed to dry. Then it should be intensely scrubbed with cleaning solution, dried once more and inspected to determine if it is still safe for use. Unfortunately, there will be a large amount of belongings that will just have to be discarded. Books, papers, soft toys, pillows, cushions, electronics and appliances are most likely included in this throw away pile. If you are questionable about an item’s safety, a professional can be called to test it for mold and other dangerous contaminants.
Once every single item has been removed from the home, you are ready to focus on the floors and walls. Pressure wash everything from inside the walls and framework to the carpet and floors. Add detergent to badly soiled carpet, and consider replacing if it is damaged beyond cleaning. Also, inspect plywood subfloors that may have separated and need to be replaced. If the floor consists of a porous material that is especially hard to completely clean, it is recommended that it should be removed and thrown away. Ceramic tile and linoleum that was placed over concrete can be cleaned. However, it will have to be removed if it was placed over wood flooring since the wood subfloor may warp causing tile breakage. Mop, towel dry and apply an anti-microbial cleanser to the floor and everything that has come into contact with the floodwater. To avoid mold, be sure the subfloor is completely dry before installing new carpeting, tile or other flooring.
Wallboard can be cleaned and dried in place if the seams are still intact and there is no noticeable swelling. Many people recommend completely removing the Gyprock, otherwise known as plasterboard used for lining internal walls, instead of trying to clean it. This removal is also beneficial for airing out the wall cavity and timber frames of the home. Insulation that has come into contact with the water will have to be discarded as well. Since it can feel and smell quite repulsive, be sure to use thick gloves and ample protective clothing when removing insulation. Additionally, circuit breakers that were waterlogged need to be replaced once the interior of the home has completely dried.
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The clean up process can take several weeks and even months, however, it must be done properly in order to live in a healthy home. After allowing everything to dry and installing new walls and floors, you are almost ready to get a new lease on life. Now is the time to pick new paint colors for the rooms and get a new perspective on this disaster. The hard work has paid off and you are ready to re-decorate and move back in to your home sweet home.
House Plans and More has over 17,000 house plans and project plans to choose from in a variety of styles and sizes. Start searching for your dream home now.
Here are some related articles:
- Keeping the Outside Out: Roofing Materials
- Lake House Maintenance
- Protecting Your Home From Storm Damage
- Safe Rooms
- Storm Preparedness: Before, During and After
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back to top | <urn:uuid:08887399-1306-41ba-abf0-7431ba69e13c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://houseplansandmore.com/resource_center/flood-clean-up.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956737 | 1,372 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Next You'll Have To Register Every Time You View A Website In China
from the we're-watching-you... dept
The "Great Firewall" of China and the issues concerning internet censorship are well known -- including the fact that for all the resources they've put into blocking "bad" content, the filters don't work very well. However, what's interesting is that in the last year or so, China has slowly been taking a different approach to fighting whatever it is they don't like online. Instead of just blocking it at the source, they're trying to more closely watch what each individual is doing. Basically, they're trying to completely do away with any kind of internet anonymity by requiring people to register for almost anything they do online. It started mainly by shutting down "unlicensed" cybercafes a few years ago, but picked up last year when the government forced everyone who runs a website to "register" with the government, so they can associate each site with someone to blame, should anything go wrong. Of course, the web is just one way to communicate, and apparently someone just realized that. So, the latest move is to require anyone who runs their own email server to get a "license" first. They claim its an anti-spam move, but given how often China announces plans to crackdown on spam and how little has actually been done, it's a bit difficult to take them seriously. It's also worth noting that the law has a data retention element to it, requiring those "licensed" email server owners to retain all email that passes through the server for 60 days. Based on this, the law appears to have made criminals out of just about any business that dares to run their own email server. Either way, with all this registration and licensing going on, just imagine the bureaucracy it will create. | <urn:uuid:083237e4-d6f0-4fc6-9723-4b7665c35a65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060414/1249203.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978288 | 375 | 1.875 | 2 |
UK George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer since May 12, 2010, following the loss of the country’s AAA credit rating, said the country needs to address its debt problem. He pledged to pursue his plan to cut the UK’s deficit and likewise further reduce tax for businesses, as reported by the Telegraph on February 23rd, Saturday.
Moody’s, the credit rating agency, which downgraded the UK one notch to Aa1 on February 22nd, Friday, pointed to “subdued” growth prospects and a “high and rising debt burden”, and expects the “period of sluggish growth to extend into the second half of the decade”, as reported on February 25th, Monday.
Credit ratings assess a government’s capability to repay its loans and instrumental to determine the interest rate to be applied on borrowings.
Osborne, facing calls from Labour to resign from his post, was forced to issue a statement saying “We will continue on the economic plan that has brought the deficit down by a quarter and the government will now re-double its efforts to overcome its debt”.
He accused Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, of being the “architect of the mistakes that gave Britain its debt problem”.
Ed Balls, describing the Moody’s downgrade as a humiliation for the government, retaliated by saying “Osborne made maintaining the AAA rating a key benchmark for his stewardship of the economy, but failed in the first economic test he set himself”.
Osborne is expected to utilize next month’s budget to assist hard-pressed businesses and further government cuts to be implemented, report said.
The main rate of corporation tax will be further reduced from 21p, the special rate for smaller enterprises would be decreased from its present level of 20p, and Osborne aims to achieve at least L.10 billion extra savings from welfare spending in 2015 – 16, the Telegraph reported.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, despite the downgrade, has insisted that “The government’s economy plan is working that is why we believe the economy is healing”.
For all the economic gloom around the world, the UK had the excellent news that the country has exited the recession after a 1.0% growth in the economy according to GDP over the last quarter. The news is should reflect positively for the coalition but it is a difficult good news story to judge. The Olympic effect was certainly partly responsible for the boost. The Office for National Statistics predicted that ticket sales added 0.2 percentage points but also said that the effect on Olympics on hotel activity and restaurant activity and employment agencies would also have contributed. So the last few months were a particularly remarkable period.
Add to this the fact that previous quarters were negatively affected by other remarkable events – the extra public holiday because of the Diamond Jubilee and particularly bad weather. This allowed a particularly low point from which the economy could grow. Improvement in Britain’s economic fortunes was therefore to a certain extent inevitable. It’s therefore easy to deride the government’s role in the improvement as being irrelevant to what was a result of particular circumstances, which is certainly the stance Ed Balls has taken. | <urn:uuid:9f83de92-9f00-4bd6-9913-7126463c647f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westminsterjournal.com/en/politics/middle-east/egypt/itemlist/tag/economy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97461 | 675 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Hundreds of firefighters and family members of rescue workers who died on September 11 packed the Tribeca Performing Arts Center on May 28, urging the members of the jury selecting a 9/11 memorial that the design must list the affiliations of rescue workers who died in the World Trade Center attacks. Some, holding up signs that said, "They went in together, let them stay together," said that the firefighters who died should be listed together with the members of their company, not listed alphabetically.
"If it wasn't for them, you would need twice as much space for a memorial because there would be twice as many victims," said Chris Ganci, whose father, Chief of the Fire Department Pete Ganci, died on 9/11.
Other victim's family members said the memorial should not show some victims as more worthy of recognition. "Please ensure that the truth of the day is told, honestly and equally," Julie Boryczewski, whose younger brother, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, died on 9/11, told the jury. "Once separations are made, integrity is lost within the whole."
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's guidelines say that the memorial should "honor the loss of life equally and the contributions of all without establishing any hierarchies," but the memorial competition's rules do not specifically bar designers from including a victim's job, rank or title.
Others at the hearing told jury members to use different criteria when chosing a design. Carl Weisbrod, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York and a development corporation board member, said that the jury should chose a design that brings Daniel Libeskind's plan for a sunken memorial space up to street level.
The deadline for registering to enter the design competition was May 29. Over 13,000 people registered, more than any design competition in history. They will have until June 30 to submit their designs, and the jury will spend the rest of the summer evaluating them.
"I would urge the jury to prefer designs that really go the extra mile in creating ways for future visitors to experience each of these individual people," said Michael Kuo, a victim's family member who works at Imagine New York, "so that they can know how special my father was, and how special everyone who was lost was."
Last Updated (Mar 22, 2012) | <urn:uuid:9bd2e695-8c3b-4374-a0cb-da8588183ea3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/city/archives/1035-the-memorial-hearing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976963 | 476 | 1.523438 | 2 |
On the evening of April 21, 2012, my 15-year-old son, Sam, gathered some of his friends at a parking lot in the center of town.
It was a cool evening, but they were properly attired and fully equipped. Carrying construction staplers and rolls of duct tape, they huddled in front of the hot dog carry-out store they often frequent after school.
Sam distributed another 50 flyers each to the boys, which they added to the 50 he had already distributed at school the day before. Since he’d made a little more money selling his used video games the night before, he was able to make more copies.
He’d clipped a memo to the front of each pack that explained that he’d already spoken to city hall about their plans.
“We need to be done by nightfall, home by curfew and serious about what we do,” he instructed his troops.
“If we are approached by police, don’t run. Explain what we are doing. If they say stop, just stop and go home.”
I sat in a parking space a couple dozen feet away, choked with emotion at the maturity of my son.
The group dispersed in all directions. Clutched in their hands were posters depicting the most notorious war criminal of Uganda, Joseph Kony–a man whose conscription and abuse of children had evoked a collective reaction across the physical and cyber-world last month.
The boys’ mission was to participate in a worldwide effort to expose Kony through a universal “Cover the Night” rally that would make his face and deeds so well-known that he would be caught and brought to justice.
In the time since the inspiring video was first posted, the organizers of this effort became the focus of press and public scrutiny and it seemed to be an absolute mission for the press to expose the whole thing as a fraud.
The primary organizer, who was initially motivated by the words of a Ugandan boy who explained that he went to bed every night hoping he would die rather than to fall into Kony’s clutches, succumbed to the pressures brought by sudden fame and lost his composure.
His over-the-top antics made as much press as his initial intention, but that’s when the real phenomenon began to occur for me.
Sam had seen that boy, who was around his age, tearfully say he wished he would die rather than live, and it touched him so deeply that he set his jaw firmly in place and decided to do something.
While the world went about reducing the credibility of the “Invisible Children” movement, Sam took on the job of defending it–because that boy said he wanted to die instead of live.
So while his friends told him he was a sucker and the news told him it was a farce, he pressed forward, made his copies, convinced his friends to believe and organized his event in his corner of the world.
Flying in the face of the juggernaut media is not so easy anymore, you know? That took some real mettle, and my respect for his resolve was set in stone that week.
At 9 p.m., I picked up the last of the team that had not already completed their distribution and dropped them at their homes.
Their parents had entrusted their kids to follow Sam, but understandably wanted some adult supervision involved; I obliged because of how lit up Sam got over this whole thing.
Your children will indicate what’s important to them; as a parent, I believe it is your job to engage that spirit.
As I dropped the kids off, I told them they should be proud of what they did on behalf of people they don’t even know. Each one smiled at that.
I asked Sam if I could take him for a burger as sort of a congratulations gesture. He happily obliged.
Sitting there in silence, his thoughts obviously racing through his head, he suddenly smiled. He idealistically said: “Wouldn’t it be great if tomorrow’s news said they found him and arrested him? Like it all worked?”
I nodded. “You bet Sam. That would be great.”
One day when I recount the moments of my life, that little video (in my mind) of Sam and I sitting there talking as two men will cue up. It’s reopened my embittered mind to the possibilities of optimism.
The morning news brought more negative reaction, and journalists and bloggers seemed to take special “told-you-so” pride in the lukewarm reaction the Kony mission evoked.
Once again, this blasted fast-food, remote-toting, news-in-a-flash world we now live in missed the whole message.
Whether the kids that chose to follow the “Saint Elmo’s Fire” of The Invisible Children movement were “taken in” by a fraudulent event is not the point.
That children here in hometown America can be touched so deeply that they reach out and organize for a “brother” they never met—that’s the impact message, for crying out loud.
Robert Duvall played a man named Hub in a movie I highly recommend called “Second Hand Lions.” One of his quotes in that movie expresses this notion well.
He said to his young nephew, “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love … true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.”
So today, I proudly have a son who understands that. I guess the collective world press would call him a fool. He has friends at school that have done so. They tell him to “get real” and then they play more “Angry Birds” on their I-Pod.
Who is the fool?
Ron Ciancutti is the Purchasing Manager for Cleveland Metroparks. He is not on Facebook, but he can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:d71b2749-1d8b-47a5-ac46-952ba5ccad69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northstarpubs.com/articles/cb/kony-and-the-real-mission | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982389 | 1,364 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The military schools in the US continue to strengthen its student population as it also accepts more recommendations from various counties.
In Washington, DC, a top official of the government announced nominations for Class 2013 of the US service academies. Congressman Maurice Hinchey said thorough processes were done so that they could come up with a final list of the nominated candidates from selected students from high schools.
Hinchey believes the nominated candidates would excel in service academies such as the Naval Academies, US Air Force, Military and Merchant Marine. He said having nominated at least 16 students from various schools is an honor as these young people have already a future ahead of them.
He said the country is known to be producing quality and finest leaders which come from military academies. The nominees, he said, have undergone tedious selection process which includes scholastic record, extracurricular activities, physical fitness, personal interviews and professional recommendations. The administration department said the process is competitive. It’s only after these various processes that the department solely determined the successful applicants. Just like the other military schools world wide, the US is also strengthening service academies to maintain its might.
Those successful nominees were identified as follows: For US Military Academy: Zachary Ciurzak, Andrew Galazzo, David Geer, Opeyemi Ifafore, Joseph Kulp III, Joy Palmer, Nicholas Peterson, Thomas Riley III, Jordan Smith, and Matthew Mulvihill; For US Naval Academy: Phoebe Kotlikoff, Richard Nagel, and Kyle Wise; For US Air Force: Sebastian Constable, and Joseph Hollway; For US Merchant Marine: Ursula Holm
It maybe recalled that the members of both the Senate and the House may appoint the candidates to the countries service academies. The representatives like Rep Hinchey, is allowed to nominate only from his district.
For the US military veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is really good news but only few of them can benefit. This means not all of them who had served the country against terrorist elements would be given this kind of benefit. This benefit would be given only for those joining the Florida Southern College in the nest school years. The “Yellow Ribbon Scholarships” is created for some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who would like to enroll at the said school in Florida. College officials announced this last week that those three yellow ribbons are intended to war veterans.
It provides supplemental assistance for the war veterans who want to continue their academic education in schools. This means the yellow ribbons will be awarded to lucky veterans from those conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Billy Healy, FSC director for financial help said three military students would qualify for the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. This is also identified across the country as the New G.I Bill. FSC President Anne Kerr and the board of trustees were instrumental in this scholarship funds.
Kerr said it is “our expression of gratitude for the men and women soldiers serving the country during the height of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. During war time the military soldiers of the US fought hard to defend the constitution of America against terror acts.
The New G.I. Bill covers the veteran’s tuition, housing and allowances. Those who also served for 36 months and were discharged because of disability that is service-related would also receive the same benefit equivalent to 100 percent. Like a boarding school, the war veterans would be accorded also with other benefits.
In Florida, the scholars would be receiving $1,516 up to 3,792 for the school year 2008-2009. Healy said this Yellow Ribbon Scholarship would make the difference in this project. If more than three war veterans would apply a committee would also be created to screen them.
A native of Syracuse in New York is named as the first Sexiest Vegetarian Soldier from all the contestants who vied for the title. While many students and professionals are having problems with their weight problems, this young soldier believes it’s so easy to control your weight.
His name is Erich Allen, Warrant Officer I, representing the U.S Army. He was chosen by the sponsoring People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Though PETA also chose each one from the US military branches but Allen emerges among the top candidates to be proclaimed as the sexiest vegetarian soldier. This award shocks Allen but gladly accepted it as it shows he is very successful in his diet plans to become one of the most-fit soldiers in America.
The contest made possible by PETA was a tribute to all the men and women of the military organization who always uphold the constitution of the United States of America. Allen received a PETA shirt, a basket loaded with chocolates and goodies.
In 1991, Allen joined the army and now works in the military headquarter in Fort Rucker. He is so concerned about his health as well as the environmental impact of animal agriculture in the country. This made him to love animals and to stay fit by eating only non-meaty food to maintain his fit body and to be able to stay fit in the military.
Allen said he was encouraged to become a veggie soldier when he watched a video which talks about animal farming. After he saw the video he decided to quit eating meat. He believes what he was doing was very unethical treatment to animals.
Few months after eliminating meat, Allen noticed his energy is increasing day by day and he was also able to lose weight in the process. He realized that becoming a vegetarian is really healthy for anybody who wants to make a diet. He said for now he continually does what he has started.
PETA executive vice president Tracy Reiman said Erich vegetarian diet has become a passion that brings happiness for him to continue doing what he thinks and believes is right.
With this good news many schools world wide are also happy with the life of Erich Allen, saying that students and professionals of today should also be concern of their health as well as in proper treatment of animals.
In order to uplift the condition of these military children that been enrolled to the boarding military schools especially to those learners whose military parents where deployed to overseas for military mission, the Military Armed Forces US Foundation once again conducted a military education program that will uplift the emotional condition of these children. With the partnership of the different schools in the country, Operation Caring Classroom was been created. This program will provide the opportunity for civilian students to learn about military life and at the same time support those military children in the military boarding schools and acknowledging the sacrifices that been made by their families in defending the nation. Since, this program will allow those military learners in the military boarding schools to have a correspondence in non military schools. As a result, these communication or interaction between the children coming from non military families and children coming from the military families will be a good venue to learn from each other, appreciate each others life and most of all gain support especially to the part of the military children and as well towards the duty that there parents rendered in the nation.
Congressman Connie Mack nominated a certain Jordon Adcock at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis as well as 29 other students who are part of the 14th Congressional District in New York. This, aside from the 17 students who have successfully gained entry into the military academy, which Mack also nominated.
The students were now considered in various military academies such as Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, US Air Force Academy, as well as the Coast Guard Academy. All these academies are not requiring a congressional nomination.
Adcock is the only one among the applicants who attended a public high school and one of five students from Cape Coral who successfully received a direct nomination from the good congressman.
His mother named Melissa was also very excited said Jordon ran inside their house when he received the letter. He was very proud to have been chosen as one of the recommended students of Congressman Mack. The career orientation as well as other requirements which included Jordon made him one of the best candidates for the military academy.
It was learned that Adcock’s dad and grandfather were also former Navy members although they did not graduate from the US Naval Academy. This is the main reason why Jordon is also inspired to continue the good tradition that the family has started – like servicing the people of America as members of the Naval Academy. But he clarified that he can join any service oriented offices in the government.
In his younger days, he said, he’d been always interested in History Channel where military shows are usually shown. This is, perhaps, the reason why he also has fascination in the military academy.
Mack’s press secretary Stephanie DuBois said the situation of Mack is extra ordinary because he has two nominations.
Jordon’s mom, Melissa, was even very proud of her son who’s been an excellent student of the school. Just like many students, he also wants to undergo a special career orientation in the previous years but at this time only it was realized. | <urn:uuid:c3d6ea05-e2f2-4d79-af8b-9574fc13e3ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.military-school.org/blog/index.php/2008/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981073 | 1,855 | 1.75 | 2 |
Do I have to tell the truth in my query? I mean about the plot.
Yes, but you don't have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If one sentence of truth is going to necessitate three paragraphs of explanation, better to tell a half-truth. For instance, say your hook is:
You might want to avoid explaining all the extenuating circumstances that make this a reasonable decision by softening the hook to:
Ellen's ex-con boyfriend has tried to kill her six times in the past two weeks, but now she's considering accepting his marriage proposal.
Her hunky guy isn't exactly a model citizen, but Ellen's always been attracted to the roguish type. Can she finally tame this bad boy?
If your query states that the hero and heroine of your romance novel live happily ever after, and the editor reads your manuscript only to discover that the hero ditches the heroine on the eve of their wedding and marries her despicable rival, you won't be getting any future manuscript requests.
If your thirty-year-old main character does something so stupid that even a five-year-old would know better, you have two choices in your query:
1. Don't mention it at all.
2. Declare that your main character is four years old.
I recommend #1. A lie of omission is better than a bare-faced lie that will be exposed on page 1. | <urn:uuid:af63ab23-4a87-40ab-aa30-19ce1cf93f9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.evileditor.blogspot.com/2008/08/q-151.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96995 | 299 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The idea that we use only 10% or 20% of our brains is a myth, scientists say; we actually use most of it. What we don’t know too much about is how it works — how each part of the brain does what it does, how it interacts with the other parts of the brain, as well as the rest of the body, and why things go wrong, causing individuals to lose their ability to function normally, due to brain damage and diseases.
But an Israeli organization, aptly named Israel Brain Technologies (IBT), intends to discover the secrets of the brain — and is offering a bounty of $1 million to anyone who can come up with a breakthrough brain technology, one that will make life better for everyone. Aptly named the Global B.R.A.I.N. (Breakthrough Research And Innovation in Neurotechnology) Prize, the award will be decided upon by a panel of judges who will evaluate the proposed innovations for their soundness, practicality, innovation — and vision, said Dr. Rafi Gidron, founder and chairman of IBT.
“The next wave of technology development is going to be brain technology — understanding how it operates, building devices that will interface with the brain, and understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” Gidron told The Times of Israel. “We believe that Israel has all the ingredients needed to make great strides in this industry — signal processing, computing, medical devices, networking, video, and much more. Dealing with the brain is an interdisciplinary affair, because so many technologies are involved in what the brain controls and is capable of.”
One of IBT’s aims is to build devices that will interact with the brain, providing a benefit to an individual using Israeli-bred brain technology. Already there are examples of brain-machine interaction, said Gidron: Over 200,000 people around the world have a “bionic ear,” properly known as a cochlear implant (CI), which provides profoundly deaf people with the ability to “hear” electronically; and new technology that allows Parkinson’s patients to receive “deep brain stimulation,” which enables them to once again control their bodies.
Gidron sees bionic hearts, artificial eyes, direct brain downloads, and more. “The B.R.A.I.N. Prize will bring together the best minds across geographic boundaries to create the next generation of brain-related innovation, from Brain Machine Interface to Brain Inspired Computing, to urgently needed solutions for brain disease,” said Gidron. “It’s a global brain- gain. Our aim is to open minds… quite literally.”
That is what the B.R.A.I.N. prize is all about, said Gidron. Winners could help diagnose and treat neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and autism, and help unleash our intellectual power exponentially. Likewise, they could create the next cutting-edge device that will alter our day-to-day lives for the better. Winners will be chosen by a jury composed of internationally recognized leaders in science, technology and industry. The million-dollar prize will support further development of their technological breakthrough, by accelerating the success of their emerging technologies.
Although it sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky, Gidron has both feet firmly planted on the ground. Currently an investor, Gidron was the founder and co-CEO of Chromatis, which was sold to Lucent for $4.5 billion 12 years ago.
The vision for brain technology research, said Gidron, comes from President Shimon Peres, whom Gidron calls “a real visionary, a man who foresaw and helped lead the Israeli revolution in areas like biotech, nanotech and aviation, among others.” Introducing IBT and the B.R.A.I.N. Prize at the annual conference of the High-Tech Industry Association (HTIA) Wednesday in Jerusalem, Peres said that “there is no doubt that brain research in the next decade will revolutionize our lives and impact such major domains as medicine, education, computing, and the human mind, to name but some.
“Israel is well positioned to assume a leadership role in the emerging neurotechnology industry that promises to make the world a better place.” The brain, Peres said, “has allowed us to create artificial brains, but not to explore our own brains. We have to learn more about ourselves, about how we make our choices in life.”
There are many existing Israeli companies that Gidron sees contributing to “brain tech.” One of them, for example, is BrainsGate, which has developed a device that enhances blood flow to a patient’s brain for up to 24 hours. BrainsGate’s therapy consists of a miniature electrode implanted through the roof of the mouth in a local anesthesia procedure comparable to dental treatment. The implant stimulates a nervous center, which increases cerebral blood flow.
Israel is also the home of one of the world’s biggest suppliers of neurotechnology devices, Alpha-Omega. And ElMinda’s Brain Network Activations is already being utilized by leading pharmaceutical companies for monitoring the effects of their drugs on the brain as an integral part of their drug-development programs.
Gidron expects many more companies working in this space to emerge in the coming years. “A report by analysts at McKinsey & Company shows that Israel is uniquely positioned to develop leadership in Brain Machine Interface (BMI) and therapeutic neuro-stimulation devices for treating a wide variety of brain disorders. This research will have all sorts of implications for daily life in the future,” said Gidron. “The brain is more powerful than any supercomputer and uses less energy than a 20-watt light bulb. We, indeed, have a great deal to learn from it.”
|Like us on Facebook||Get our newsletter||Follow us on Twitter| | <urn:uuid:dd891e59-d4c7-417b-b578-4b5018362530> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesofisrael.com/from-start-up-nation-to-brain-nation-with-a-million-dollar-prize/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944985 | 1,266 | 2.84375 | 3 |
News From New York State
Senator Shirley L. Huntley
For Immediate Release: March 30, 2012
Contact: Antonio Rodriguez | firstname.lastname@example.org | (518) 455-3531
Senator Shirley L. Huntley Passes Legislation to Prohibit Brokers and Lenders From Deceiving Borrowers
Law would prohibit mortgage brokers or lenders from receiving unjust compensation on home loans.
(Albany, NY) Senator Shirley L. Huntley (D-Jamaica) announced that the New York State Senate passed legislation, S. 886, to protect potential homeowners from being directed into a loan with higher payments or rates due to the compensation a mortgage broker or lender would receive. These unfair practices are termed as yield spread premiums (YSP), and have grown exponentially within the last decade.
“Buying a new home can be a stressful and agonizing process,” Senator Huntley explained. “And the notion that a mortgage broker could get away with by not being completely honest with their client is an injustice that no potential home owner should have to worry about.”
Yield spread premiums or YSP’s are a form of compensation that a mortgage broker receives from the original lender for selling an interest rate to a borrower. According to a letter addressed to Federal Reserve Chairman in 2008, YSP’s provide an inappropriate financial incentive for mortgage brokers.
Under the new law, banning the use of yield spread premiums will prohibit mortgage brokers or mortgage lenders from receiving compensation that is based on or varies with the terms of any home loan.
The borough of Queens has been growing steadily over the years and has now become the second most populated borough in New York City behind Brooklyn. Many new families and individuals are moving to Queens seeking to buy homes. The ban on YSP’s will allow these residents to purchase homes without being overburdened by unfair interest rates.
“By eliminating YSP’s, we are taking the necessary steps in protecting our future home owners,” Senator Huntley concluded. “I am proud that this regrettably common and misleading practice will no longer be tolerated in New York State.”
The bill is awaiting action in the assembly. | <urn:uuid:fd5c658d-8c02-43e4-8fd8-190a374d17e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nysenate.gov/print/141111 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953457 | 466 | 1.59375 | 2 |
On Friday, Nov. 30, Webster Hill Elementary School welcomed approximately 500 children and adults to celebrate "Around the World in 80 Minutes."
Six continents were represented by over 30 countries. Families from Webster Hill displayed educational information and authentic artifacts, cooked amazing foods, wore beautiful clothing, and shared the love of their culture.
A family stage allowed children to show their Irish step and Brazilian dance talents. A mother danced a Puerto Rican salsa dance with her son in traditional jíbaro clothing, while a mother of a first grade student sang in Ukrainian.
It was then that the sounds of drumming filled the air. Two Vietnamese students, in the tradition of Chinese/Vietnamese New Year, took the guests and participants out of the cafeteria and down the hallway.
The culminating event was held in the auditorium in front of a capacity crowd. The Latin trio Surcari, with the help from dozens of student volunteers, took us through the songs and sounds of Latin America.
It was an evening of amazing music, delicious food, spectacular performances, and information to be learned at each of the tables.
Principal Jeff Wallowitz reported, “My favorite part of the evening was the beautiful pride everyone had in their culture and the genuine curiosity everyone had in the culture of others. It was a night of sharing and respect and a perfect example of why Webster Hill is so special. How fortunate are we to be in a school with so much to appreciate and learn from each other.”
Dr. Nancy DePalma, interim assistant superintendent for instruction and curriculum reported, “Darci and helpers did a phenomenal job of pulling this wonderful community builder together. I think I most enjoyed the books from each country represented and the native clothing – exquisite! Talk about culturally relevant pedagogy in real time!”
Hats off to ESOL Teacher Darci Melchor and her team of parents and teachers for organizing the event. Months of planning, visiting area restaurants for donations and working collaboratively on the display boards paid off.
In the words of many family members and staff who attended, “This night was perfect. When are we doing this again?”
Submitted by Webster Hill Elementary School | <urn:uuid:07c16943-7180-4600-892b-9ee99a654a48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westhartford.patch.com/groups/schools/p/webster-hill-celebrates-its-diverse-cultures-in-aroun1b8b05c8f6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964518 | 452 | 1.796875 | 2 |
A number of phenomena we observe in India in the last few years can be interpreted as incipient capital flight:
1. Gold imports have risen sharply, both in value and volume terms. The nature of the gold demand has also changed. In recent years, we have seen a significant amount of gold being bought by the rich as an investment. A poor household buying gold jewellery could be interpreted as a form of social security, but a rich household buying gold bars and biscuits is a form of capital flight. Instead of dollars or Swiss francs, they are converting rupees into gold.
2. Many Indian corporates are investing more outside India than in India, often on the ground that the investment climate in India is poor.
3. It is difficult to explain India’s large current account deficit and poor export growth solely on the basis of low growth in the developed world. First, many of our competitors in Asia and elsewhere are posting large trade surpluses in the same environment. Second, the depreciation of the rupee has improved competitiveness of Indian companies in world markets. Indian companies used to complain loudly about their lack of competitiveness when the dollar was worth only Rs40, but with the dollar fetching Rs55, these complaints have disappeared. I fear that some of the current account deficit is actually disguised capital flight via under-invoicing of exports and over-invoicing of imports.
While economists have focused on the impossible trinity (open capital account, independent monetary policy and fixed exchange rates), I am more concerned about the unholy trinity that leads to full-blown capital flight. This unholy trinity has three elements: (a) a de facto open capital account, (b) poor perceived economic fundamentals and (c) heightened political uncertainty. I believe that the first two elements of this unholy trinity are already in place; we can only hope that the 2014 elections do not deliver the third element.
While our policymakers keep up the pretence that India has a closed capital account, the reality is that during the last decade, the capital account has in fact become largely open. Outward capital flows were largely opened up by liberalising outward FDI and allowing every person to remit $200,000 a year for investment outside India.
This means the first element of the unholy trinity (an open capital account) has been in place for some time now. If the other two elements were also to materialise, a full-blown capital flight is perfectly conceivable. India’s reserves may appear comfortable in terms of number of months of imports, but in an open capital account, this is not a relevant metric. What is relevant is that India’s reserves are about 20% of the money supply (M3), and in a full-blown capital flight, a large part of M3 is at risk of fleeing the country.
Prof Varma teaches at IIM, Ahmedabad | <urn:uuid:4e5245e1-6491-406c-b81b-ff23dd9ba3b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dnaindia.com/money/1808664/report-signs-of-incipient-capital-flight | 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 | 0.960848 | 596 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Scientists suggest reduction in meat intake to help control climate change
While carbon dioxide and methane are gases that largely add to the effect of global warming, it is nitrous oxide and its increasing levels that scientists are concerned about. Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center say the population of the world will have to cut down on their meat consumption by a good 50 percent, if they want to cut down nitrous oxide emissions by the same amount by 2050. That will lead to a more stable global climate and will keep the effects of global warming under control. But why do we need to cut down on meat to stop nitrous oxide emissions?
Research has shown that nitrous oxide is predominantly released due to the use of fertilizers and extensive use in this regard is hard to control as the world already has many hungry mouths to feed. But the problem lies in growing feed crops for animals that we later consume as meat. This generally results in far greater production of nitrous oxide when compared to crops that we consume directly. So, instead of growing feed crops for animals, scientists suggest that we cut down on meat and spend more of our resources in growing crops that we can actually consume and use far less nitrous oxide fertilizers.
Unlike carbon and methane emissions, cutting out nitrous oxide is far more difficult as current agricultural process uses it widely. While scientists are advocating on new practices that involve less fertilizers and enrichment of soil using natural methods, somehow the technology is still not reaching the farmers at grass root level due to both economic and political constraints. Of course, the research only suggests a cutting down on meat intake and the idea is not to convert everyone into a vegetarian.
If we did turn everyone vegetarian, we would be placing an incredible amount of pressure on agriculture that might just not be practically viable. The best way forward at this point, according to Dr. Eric Davidson who revealed the study results, is to reduce beef and pork consumption and substitute it with more chicken and fish. | <urn:uuid:458516f0-fde3-496b-9b7f-4009af4d2b25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecofriend.com/scientists-suggest-reduction-meat-intake-help-control-global-climate-change.html | 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 | 0.956898 | 397 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Assemblyman Michael A. Montesano (R,I,C-Glen Head) is pleased to see the start of the long process to repair the Tappan Zee Bridge, which is a vital lifeline for commuters in the lower Hudson Valley and the tri-state area. The federal government recently agreed to expedite the process of review and approval for the necessary repairs to the bridge’s aging infrastructure. As one of 14 projects chosen across the country for this expedited review process, the elimination of some bureaucratic red tape is essential to the success of the repair project.
“It is long past time we address the Tappan Zee Bridge’s ‘50s-era infrastructure,” said Montesano. “I am pleased to see the federal and state governments finally cut the red tape, speed up the approval process, and make the safety of New York’s commuters a top priority. With 120,000 cars crossing the bridge every day, it is imperative that we address the lingering safety concerns and begin to physically repair the bridge.”
A major concern and impediment to the restoration of the bridge has been the state’s Dedicated Highway Bridge and Trust Fund. In 2009, the comptroller’s office released a report stating that the trust fund’s ability to pay for highway and bridge capital projects was delimited after substantial amounts were diverted to pay for state agency operations and debt-service payments.
“Because Albany’s political class has raided our trust fund to pay for pet projects, funding for this overdue, extensive, and expensive bridge repair is going to wind up being a deferred tax on future New Yorkers,” said Montesano. “It is time that a real financial plan is set up between now and spring 2013 when work on the bridge is expected to begin.
“With our state still stuck in a financial mess, it is important that a timeline and budget for the Tappan Zee’s reconstruction be put in place and adhered to by force of law. I do not want to see more back-door borrowing to pay for current spending. Let’s rebuild economically and politically, by setting out reasonable goals for the bridge’s reconstruction – including reducing or eliminating those regulations which do not serve a safety-related purpose – and holding spendthrift Albany insiders accountable to the Empire State taxpayers and commuters.” | <urn:uuid:6478cb5f-1f44-4aa0-befa-3703ef9dab57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=015&sh=story&story=44785 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945783 | 501 | 1.5 | 2 |
Fastener Quality Act
U.S. Public Law 101-592
The Fastener Quality Act (Public Law 101-592) has been passed by the United States Congress and is law. This far-reaching piece of legislation is intended to eliminate counterfeit fasteners from the marketplace. Counterfeit fasteners are fasteners made from something other than what is indicated by the head mark and will not perform to the strength level indicated.
The law requires that certain fasteners - mainly threaded fasteners which are grade marked or quenched and tempered - be inspected and tested in an accredited labratory, certified by their manufacturer to conform to stated standards, and delivered in packaging that is marked with the lot number.
John Deere fasteners meet these requirements! | <urn:uuid:713248a1-d40a-4d9d-8cce-4dc5cd00286d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenpartstore.com/Fastener-Quality-Act_ep_49-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962489 | 154 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Our oceans comprises about 90% of the living area on the earth.The huge size of the oceans lets it be able to support all types of living forms life.
Here we see a creature with many legs that resembles an octopus. It isn’t though, It is an early form or a larva form of a tube anemone.
The larve is extrememly young and if only about 0.4 inches wide. It has tentacles which it will need to use once it reaches full size. There is also a dark area in it central area which is it’s stomach. This one looks like it contains food showing that the hunting ability for food has been learned.
The anemone lava was not long ago inventoried during a Census of Marine Life. In the census, many types of life that are hard to see are orgainized and documented. | <urn:uuid:42f2e36b-80af-4222-9cf8-9bce51af3611> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.funnyanimalsvideo.org/the-hard-to-see-creatures-of-the-oceans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96685 | 181 | 2.984375 | 3 |
We all know that agriculture is an important part of South Carolina’s heritage, but did you know that agriculture-based businesses play a critical and expanding role in the state’s economy? In fact, agribusiness is one of the largest economic clusters in the state and a critically important part of the knowledge-based economy.
Located in agriculture-rich Saluda County, our curriculum will give you the hands-on training and in-depth classroom instruction to understand and master the daily requirements of a career in agriculture. And because we work directly with some of the major agribusinesses in the region to develop our curricula, you’ll be qualified to enter the workforce with the skills that employers need, or to operate a farm of your own.
Piedmont Tech’s Horticulture Technology program will give you the tools you need to succeed in one of South Carolina’s largest industries. With the support of a diverse group of instructors, you’ll get hands-on experience through our campus greenhouse complex, the Landscapes for Learning project and an extensive co-op program. And with our extensive transfer agreements with Clemson University, you can be sure that your education here creates a foundation for success. | <urn:uuid:5e5b8a24-5482-4f6b-a8ac-94c161fe402b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ptc.edu/academics/schools-departments/agriculture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929449 | 254 | 2.15625 | 2 |
HIPAA Security Rule - Intro for New Managers
This is a very simple introductory screencast for new managers in a HIPAA covered entity. It can also help new I/T staff understand where to start their research in HIPAA security rule compliance. It explains the best place to go for the essential resources and information they need to understand how well their organization complies with the HIPAA security rule.
The direct link to the NIST special publications referred to in this video is:http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/securityrule/securityruleguidance.html
The Administrative, Physical and Technical Safeguards referred to in the Security Standards Matrix, found in Appendix A of the Security Rule, will be the subject of future videos.
If you need any consulting regarding HIPAA compliance please contact us at our company Evanah I/T Services.
Ron Grove draws on over ten years of training, network administration and development experience. He loves to work with new technology and see how that technology can be best utilized by his clients. If you are interested in consulting services with Ron, you may contact him through his company website Evanoah I/T Services. | <urn:uuid:6f87ebde-f8bc-4db1-ada5-4ab48f3e72ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rongrove.com/Article/ViewArticle/33/hipaa-security-rule---intro-for-new-managers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931039 | 250 | 1.53125 | 2 |
New CYCLE LA VIA Mural on Sunset
It’s already been covered in Will Campbell’s [sic], dudeonabike, Biking in L.A., and Streetsblog, and making its way around facebook, but you heard it here sixth! There’s a new CicLAvia mural in town. It’s in Silver Lake, on the south side of Sunset Boulevard, just west of Benton Way. For a panoramic shot of the entire mural, see this image by Will Campbell (who also shot this great CicLAvia Video.)
The mural is by Caché, EyeOne and Skypager. In addition to large lettering stating CYCLE LA VIA, it depicts various animal cyclists and upraised U-locks. It’s similar to the, also by EyeOne and Caché, Ride On mural (No.9 here) at the Hel-Mel Bicycle District.
If you look closely, you can spot two plaques that pre-date the mural by 71 years. Here’s a close-up of one:
These walls were built during the economic stimulus programs of the Great Depression. There are similar plaques on other ’30s and ’40s construction projects, including the Pasadena Avenue Bridge and Marmion Way Bridge – both over the Arroyo Seco. | <urn:uuid:395c0caf-86f5-413f-b3e1-537cc0873617> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ciclavia.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/new-cycle-la-via-mural-on-sunset/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950106 | 286 | 1.523438 | 2 |
On Veterans Day, UCLA student Antonio Raimundo honors his grandfather who fought in both World War II and the Korean War, and protests the discrimination suffered by Filipino veterans from the U.S. government.
PILIPINO VETERANS TREATED UNJUSTLY
The following opinion piece appeared in the UCLA Daily Bruin (page 9) on November 10, 2003 http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=26238
DAILY BRUIN COLUMNIST
Veteran's Day is supposed to be a day of remembrance dedicated to those who have served our country, a day to honor those who have fought, bled and died for the United States. Some of those heroes, however, are being ignored. They've been humiliated by the U.S. government, denied veteran status, and excluded from veteran medical benefits for decades.
In 1941, President Roosevelt drafted about 200,000 Pilipino soldiers into the American military services. These soldiers fought against the Japanese in World War II under U.S. command. According to Al Garcia from People's Community Organization for Reform and Empowerment, if you count both regular soldiers and irregulars (i.e. guerrillas), the total number of men who fought is closer to 400,000.
And they died, too, by the tens of thousands – more than half were killed in combat.
In exchange for forced induction into the American armed forces, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised the Pilipino soldiers U.S. citizenship and full GI benefits.
But in 1946, the U.S. Congress passed a law, the Rescission Act, that reneged on FDR's promise. This law targeted Pilipino soldiers and made them the only group of foreign-soldier veterans (out of 66 countries) the United States refused to recognize. They were stripped of veteran status, benefits, and were not even granted citizenship until 1990.
Time is running out for these men – only about 30,000 are still alive. But they are much more than just numbers.
My grandfather is among these veterans. He was a participant of the infamous Bataan Death March. In April 1942, after the largest surrender ever of an American army on the Bataan peninsula, the Japanese captured 70,000 prisoners, both American and Pilipino. Some fled, but most were forced to march more than 60 miles through an unforgiving tropical climate to POW Camp O'Donnell. The march gets its name from the 5,000 to 11,000 men who died along the way.
My grandfather walked that long, hot road, guarded by a Japanese soldier. One day, they passed a sugar cane field. Somehow, even though neither spoke the other's language, my grandfather convinced the Japanese soldier to let him pick some sugar cane to eat. The Japanese soldier liked my grandfather because he reminded him of his own son, who also served in the Japanese military. How they managed to communicate is beyond me. Maybe the Japanese man simply realized that they were two regular people stuck in the middle of a senseless situation.
I am sickened to think that, according to our government and despite having fought for his country, a man such as my grandfather is not "entitled" to be honored on Veteran's Day. The approaching holiday only pours salt in the wound.
This problem is not some far-off and abstract government issue – it is right here in California, alive and breathing. It is sometimes difficult to put a face on the victims of the U.S. government's actions because they are often a world away, in places like Iraq, Vietnam or Afghanistan, outside of most Americans' understanding. But Colonel Pedro Crisostomo, my mother's father, lives in Fremont, Calif., and you can go and meet him if you want.
He doesn't get treatment at the Veterans Affairs hospitals. He is not recognized by the government for heroically serving in two American wars (he fought in Korea as well). But he walked the Death March so that I might someday go to college. He walked the Death March to ensure that all of us could live free. It is a terrible shame that I now have to write this column so his service will not go unnoticed.
I suppose that this is a bit dramatic, and maybe unnecessary. Any decent person, when presented with these painful facts cannot feel anything but sympathy and support for these shortchanged men – the issue makes its own case without any help from me. But the problem is, no one knows about their struggle. And that is why I'm writing this column – so that more people are aware of this gross and revolting injustice.
It is my hope that increased awareness will lead to increased support for S. 1213, the Pilipino Veterans Benefits Act, that will grant these veterans some (though not all) of the benefits they were promised. It is about time the government owned up to its shameful treatment of these men and made amends.
As you celebrate this Veteran's Day, remember these forgotten soldiers by writing a letter to your congressman, supporting the Act. Call KCET and ask them to air the PBS documentary, "Second Class Veterans" again. Director Rick Rocamora filmed the lives of some the Pilipino veterans who reside in San Francisco.
Do not let another year pass without recognizing all of our American heroes.
Raimundo is a fifth-year political science and economics student. E-mail him at email@example.com.
Published: Monday, November 10, 2003 | <urn:uuid:05eccd85-4602-4449-95a6-00523010151d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://international.ucla.edu/cseas/news/article.asp?parentid=5121 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971076 | 1,150 | 3.25 | 3 |
Based on the biblical doctrines, is it possible to achieve a completely holy life without any sin during our lifetime after salvation?
Absolutely not. The notion that was has become sinless can only be thought from a heart blinded by wicked pride.
The bible makes the model prayer to be a daily confession of our daily sins. The moment any man thinks they have gone a day without sinning is the moment this prayer becomes insincere hypocrisy of the self-righteous.
Even the most holy men that have ever lived never thought for a moment were were free from sin but bitterly complained about the sinfulness.
Of course John Calvin, Luther and all the reformers understood these verses by Paul was a description of his 'Christian' experience.
Sufficient to say there is no biblical warrant to suppose we can for a moment be without sin. If I ever met a person who loved God with all their heart, which is the greatest command, I would ask them to sign my bible and I would sell everything I have and follow that person.
Of course we know that would not happen as only Jesus was perfect.
The Bible state that human are born sinful.
But John Wesley wrote a book named A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (short explanation of the book). The book is still debated to this day. I do not know any other christian or evangelical demonination that would argue in favor of perfection this side of heaven.
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The Catholic might say, "yes" and point to the doctrines surrounding the Virgin Mary. But, this does not really answer the question as you asked, whether it is possible to achieve this life (Mary was exempt from original sin).
While the testimony of the Saints is unanimous in the fact that you can live in near-sinlessness state (where you are free from mortal sin) (Fire Within by Dubay goes into some detail about John of the Cross's and Teresa of Avila's thoughts on this), the fact that there is a requirement that the faithful go to confession during Lent suggests that the Church does not believe that it is possible to go a year without sin.
There is disagreement on this. Many denominations believe that we always sin, some going so far as to say that even our best is still sin to God, even after salvation. Others, such as the Nazarenes, teach a doctrine called Entire Santification, which claims that by wholly submitting to the Holy Spirit, it is possible to reach a point at which we no longer sin. In spite of that teaching, I've never met someone who claims that they are no longer sinning.
Even Paul wrote of doing what he knew he shouldn't do, and not doing what he should. None of the Biblical characters are ever depicted as reaching a point of no longer sinning.
No, and here's why.
When I was young, I went to a Catholic grammar school. The teachers made it perfectly clear: Follow the Ten Commandments if you want to go to Heaven.
Now you may have noticed - The Decalogue, for the most part, is a list of things that you must not do if you want to go to Heaven. So as a child I wondered: If that's the case, and Heaven is what all Catholics strive for, why don't parents prevent their children from participating in society in order to absolutely ensure that they will honor this list of "don'ts" and virtually guarantee their passage to Heaven?
Of course, as I got older, I realized how absolutely absurd this idea was, but I actually think that my childhood "literalist" interpretation of the Ten Commandments might help to illustrate my point.
To live the life of a Christian is to live the life of Jesus. If you "Love thy neighbor as thyself", to your fullest capacity, every day of your life, then you've done just that. At the risk of sounding irreverent, you may think of the Ten Commandments as guidelines to help you decide how you can "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself."
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that you ignore the Sabbath, and disrespect your parents. I'm just acknowledging that living life at any time in any society will present problems and conflicts. Our imperfect human vessels may "sin" and violate the Ten Commandments from time to time. But at the end of the day, if you endeavor to "Love thy neighbor as thyself", you really can't go wrong. | <urn:uuid:2a20758c-33d6-428c-9865-997fa28f6ac7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/9239/is-it-possible-to-achieve-a-life-without-sin-on-earth/9309 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972185 | 917 | 1.585938 | 2 |
LoDI is a major research center at the University of Louisville (UofL) with a specific aim to develop new models, technologies and decision support systems that will help the private and public sectors cope with the dramatic changes taking place in the logistics and distribution industry. There are several exciting changes taking place in the world of logistics and distribution that make this an opportune time to invest heavily into research in this area. LoDI will focus on the development of advanced models and algorithms to design, operate and manage the systems efficiently and effectively in light of the new realities faced by next generation logistical and distribution systems. LoDI will focus on the following research areas:
- Develop of next generation models and algorithms to design, operate and manage logistical systems efficiently and effectively using continuously generated multivariate data.
- Create Mathematical Models for Logistics and Distribution.
- Design, develop and implement cyberspace network infrastructure and network security protocols to support on-demand collection and dissemination of data to authorized users.
- Develop advanced models to mine the multidimensional data and use it for adaptive, real-time monitoring, control and decision support.
- Explore logistics and distribution of Health Care products and services.
- Develop linkage between supply chain orientation and portability.
- Study the effect of logistics service on customer loyalty.
- Develop integrated logistical and distribution systems that are inexpensive and can sustain operation in hostile environments.
- Study the integration and synergistic advantages achieved by using information from available technologies in logistics and distribution.
- Serve as a repository of state-of-the-art information pertaining to new technologies, their integration as well as applications.
- Initiate development of technology roadmaps, and white papers on the subject, serve as a national think-tank, conduct benchmarking studies of alternative technologies, and pursue leading edge research in collaboration with industry on areas of mutual interest.
In many systems, including logistical systems, the information on which a planning decision is based, is significantly different from the information that exists at the time the decision is executed, thereby severely limiting the value of the original decision. Organizations can use new technologies and the underlying models and decision support systems we will develop, to design effective and efficient supply chains that transfer products seamlessly and smoothly over the entire distribution network, even in the face of fast changing information, and disturbances caused by forces internal or external to the system.
LoDI will develop mechanisms that will be of high value to companies in the private and public sector. LoDI will partner with federal agencies and private corporations in pursuing research projects. These projects will be tailored to meet the needs of the industry in the private and public sectors and advance institute goals. | <urn:uuid:4f856682-4b87-40d4-ac15-11707339b353> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://louisville.edu/lodi/goals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932338 | 542 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Your printer's manufacturer doesn't want you to use your printer to just print and scan. They want to install bloated apps, eat memory, and to constantly nag you for more ink. Trim your printer setup to the minimum with this five-step guide.
Image via Kevin Cortopassi.
Mac owners and brave Linux adherents don't really need this guide. Oversized, heavily branded printer software does exist for Mac platforms, but you can use most any printer by simply plugging it in and hitting Command-P in an app. Linux, for the most part, works the same way, with the essential driver bits baked into the core of the system.
That leaves Windows. A hardware driver is supposed to be a simple, mostly hidden interface, but the majority of printer installation packages—whether installed off the CD in the box or from the printer maker's web site—want to do far more than just explain a printer's inner workings to your system.
When you're cleaning up a slow-going system, look in the system tray, or hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc. You'll likely find one or more apps running that do nothing more than wait for a printer or scanner to be connected, then somehow pop up and do, well, something. Some printer makers step a bit further, installing toolbars in your browser for supposed "smart printing," and installing a whole mess of software for image editing, photo retouching, project printing, and scanning that's far less useful than a lot of free software.
If you're the victim of a printer maker's overly ambitious plans, here's a sequential guide to getting rid of the bloat and reclaiming working memory, hard drive space, and some semblance of sanity in your printer setup.
Step One: Uninstall What You've Got
If it's a printer you're using at home, go ahead and wipe out whatever software you've got on your system associated with it. You don't want remnants of other drivers and software hanging around when you start over—trust me on that. Hit your Start menu, select the Control Panel, then click "Uninstall a program." Search for your printer maker in the upper-right corner ("HP," "Canon," "Lexmark," etc.). You might be surprised at all the stuff that's there.
Click each item, starting with the most primary-sounding item, and hit "Uninstall/Change." If you're lucky, you'll get a prompt from that main item to uninstall everything; otherwise you might have to doggedly detach each piece individually. You may also have to restart your system once or twice, too, and maybe immediately. When I was cleaning up my system's printer setup, HP's software didn't really give me a choice.
Note: If you're using Windows XP or a similarly older version, I recommend using Revo Uninstaller, especially its portable (a.k.a. no installation needed) version to do your wiping. It's not quite as necessary with Windows Vista/7, but it's still a pretty good app, despite how buried the free version is on Revo's web site these days.
Step Two: Try Windows Update First
Power up your printer and plug its USB cord into your computer while Windows is running. Microsoft has a pretty extensive library of printer drivers, especially for popular printers that aren't brand-new, and if your system is connected to the web, Windows might be able to automatically download and install a driver—possibly a smaller driver package than the manufacturer offers, too. It could just be the same kind of plus-sized installation, too, but installing through Windows gives you access to regular, automatic updates. If you luck out with Windows' automatic installation, skip ahead to the Cleaning Out Auto-Starters section.
Step Three: Grab the Latest from the Web
If Windows can't fix up your printer automatically, head to your manufacturer's web page, then look at the top of the page for the "Support," "Support & Drivers," or "Support & Downloads" section. You'll be asked to enter in your model number, then likely pick which version of Windows you're running (Unsure? Click the second question here).
More than anything, be on the lookout for a more stripped-down version of your printer driver—one without all the extra software and "utilities." You'll know this by the smaller download size, which is usually listed. You may be out of luck, like me, and be stuck with a 200 MB download. Hold your nose, click to save it, and grab yourself a coffee while it downloads.
Step Four: Cut Down the Cruft
That coffee wasn't a cheap transition—well, that's not all it was. You'll want to be paying attention when you install your software. I've installed my own HP printer drivers at least a dozen times, and I just noticed for the first time that I could limit the software it installs. It's a blue link that looks like part of a license agreement (see in the image above). Those "Click here to customize" links are often pretty subtle and tucked away—printer makers want everything to be easy, and they also like the profits from "Buy supplies" links. Look for them and use them if you can, keeping only the most basic software. Hopefully they're labeled as such—driver software, printing functionality, and so on.
Check that your printer actually works: print a test page, if offered, or simply print out a simple document or web page. Now that we know it's installed and operational, let's scale things back.
Head first to your Startup folder in your Start menu (Programs/All Programs->Startup), which is the nicest way software can suggest you run something on your computer automatically. In my case, my printer isn't always connected to my main laptop, and even if it was, I'm only scanning things occasionally. So I don't need a "Digital Imaging Monitor" running on my system at all times. Right-click on the entry in the Startup folder and hit Delete. You didn't delete the program, just the shortcut, so you can always add it back if it's useful.
Now we're going to check out what other goodies our printer people asked our system to automatically start each time. Open your Start menu and enter
msconfig and press Enter (on Windows XP, enter
msconfig into the "Run" item on the Start menu. Click on over to the Startup tab.
Look through this list for your printer's manufacturer. It's never good to make bold pronouncements about computer issues, but I can say that I've never encountered a situation where a computer needed some kind of auto-starting, printer-related app to print. When it's time to print, your app contacts the driver, which feeds the printer, and your paper comes off the roller. When you're done, hit "Apply." If one of your apps really was needed, you can always head back into
msconfig and re-check the app, so experiment with a clear conscience.
Unsure of which apps you actually need? Note the name of the application, usually ending with ".exe," and enter it into the search box at Sysinfo.org's Startup List. You'll likely find it there, along with a letter-coded recommendation on whether you need to keep it running or not: N, U, and X are safe to un-check in your
Step Five: Install Great, Lightweight Alternatives for Scanning and Photo Editing
If you've installed the basic printer and scanner driver for your system, that's all you really need to actually print and scan. Printer makers offer you scanning apps, maybe the kind that auto-load when you lift your scanner cover, and image/photo editing tools, but you've probably never heard any tech blog rave about such an app's greatness.
Scanning (and Faxing)
I asked on Twitter for recommendations on alternative apps for scanning, and got quite a few responses. I'm also a little embarassed to admit that I didn't realize that Windows Fax and Scan was available in all versions of Windows 7, and the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. It's a pretty straightforward tool for simply grabbing a document from your scanner, saving it to your hard drive, and getting on with your life. It can also handle faxes, if your system is set up with a phone connection.
Twitter user hqraja suggested FreeKapture, as well. But the majority of respondents noted that their favorite image editing apps—Paint.net, Picasa, and more—offer their own scanner functionality, usually tucked into an "Import" function in the File menu.
Simple Image Editing Software
You can read up on our readers' general favorite picks for image editing, but they tend to be a bit more in-depth than the average user needs for simple touch-ups, light fixes, and cropping/resizing—except Picasa. Picasa is a great tool for editing, red-eye-reducing, cropping, and emailing or backing up photos, as we suggested in a feature on setting up your folks. If you wanted a more straight-ahead editing tool, Paint.net is the next level up.
With just your drivers installed, your auto-starting items reduced, and better scan and edit software installed, your system, and hopefully your workflow, is a bit cleaner and more agile. If you've done your own printer purge and have further tips, we'll gladly hear them in the comments. | <urn:uuid:c8fe45f1-6b8a-417f-a0b8-1cf00dcf20a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lifehacker.com/5730574/de+crap+ify-your-windows-printer-or-scanner-setup?tag=optimization | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944018 | 1,981 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The new surface transportation law, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st
Century (MAP-21) took effect on October 1, 2012. Yesterday, the United
States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) issued interim guidance on the
new Transportation Alternatives program (TAP) that was established under the
MAP-21. The TAP replaces the
Transportation Enhancements program and also includes the Safe Routes to School
(SRTS) and Recreational Trails (RTP) programs. Overall the guidance should be
helpful to states and MPOs as they implement the bill.
The following are some highlights from the guidance document
that landscape architects may find useful:
Landscaping and Scenic Enhancement Projects:
- MAP-21 changes the “landscaping and scenic
beautification” eligibility category to “vegetation management.” However, landscaping and scenic enhancement
projects ARE eligible under TAP as
part of the construction of any Federal-aid highway project, including
TAP-funded projects. But, TAP funds cannot be used for landscaping and
scenic enhancement as independent projects.
- Under the “vegetation management” category,
routine maintenance is NOT eligible as a TAP activity except under the RTP.
Recreational Trails Program:
- All RTP provisions and requirements remain
unchanged under MAP-21.
makes RTP funding a set-aside from the TAP.
However, the governor of a state may opt out of the RTP if it notifies
the DOT Secretary not later than 30 days prior to apportionments being made for
any fiscal year.
- If a state opts out of the RTP, the funds remain
as TAP funds.
- If a state opts out of the RTP, the state may
still carry out trail projects under the TAP.
However, the trail projects would then be subject to all TAP
Safe Routes To School:
- Due to its consolidation with TAP, Safe Routes
to School projects will now fall under the same match requirements as most
other transportation projects—80 percent federal funding with a 20 percent
local match. (Under the previous surface transportation law, SAFETEA-LU,
SRTS projects received 100 federal funding).
- SRTS coordinators are not required under MAP-21
but are eligible for funding under TAP.
Thus, states may decide to retain their SRTS coordinators and use TAP
funds to pay for them. (Under
SAFETEA-LU, SRTS coordinators were required).
MAP-21 eliminates the National Scenic Byways
program. However, the following projects
that may have been eligible under the National Scenic Byways program are eligible
construction of turnouts, overlooks, and viewing
historic preservation and rehabilitation of
historic facilities related to a byway; and
bicycle and pedestrian facilities along a byway.
The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) entire guidance
document on the Transportation Alternatives Program may be found here. For
additional information, please visit FHWA’s MAP-21 Resource
ASLA recently hosted a webinar Staying Active on Active Transportation:
Implementing MAP-21 for Landscape Architects that discussed some of the
changes to active transportation programs under TAP and urged landscape architects
to become active in state and local advocacy efforts on behalf of these
programs. ASLA Government Affairs will continue to keep members up to date on issues affecting landscape architects as MAP-21 is implemented.
an advocate for the landscape architecture profession. Join ASLA today. | <urn:uuid:1284b68a-dcdc-4965-9abd-19ee6225a7e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asla.org/NewsListingDetails.aspx?id=37752 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91135 | 773 | 1.820313 | 2 |
I’ve been a fan of Ben Stein’s financial writings for years, but this is the first book of his that I’ve picked up. Could it possibly be as good as his columns? Is it worth reading at all?
A large portion of the book (chapters 7 through 13) really focus on issues that many people begin to face in their thirties, and this provides the central meat of the entire book. It provides some general financial rules of thumb in several different dimensions of life during the third decade of life.
On a career in your 30s Basically, the book indicates that for the most part, the biggest acceleration in salary you will have in your life occurs in your 20s because early on is when you can demonstrate the greatest increase in your skill set. How can you leverage this? By remembering that a 10% raise when you’re making $25K is the same net increase as a 5% raise when you’re making $50K (ignoring taxes, of course).
On being single in your 30s The book advocates that as long as you’re single, you should put effort into staying competitive in your career, as married life often can fill up a lot of time that you would have otherwise used in building up your career. Continue to invest in your own human capital with time and money.
On being married and setting up a home in your 30s If you’re married, learn how to start living well within your means and saving money for a home. This means being frugal and cutting down on unnecessary expenditures, and taking that extra money and socking it away until you have a house down payment. If you “can’t” do this, then you are opening yourself up for a lot of risk in the event of job loss.
On having children in your 30s Children are wonderful, beautiful, amazing things – but they’re also expensive things. Plan ahead by having a “saving for baby” account if you’re going to have one in the future, then use that when it comes time to actually have one, as you’ll have start-up costs and a nice increase in your monthly budget.
Investment changes? The book is still in favor of being rather aggressive with retirement savings throughout your thirties, though depending on your specific plan, you may want to readdress things when you get near the end of that decade.
The remainder of the book discusses life at 40 and beyond – we’ll look at that tomorrow.
Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life is the twenty-first of fifty-two books in The Simple Dollar’s series 52 Personal Finance Books in 52 Weeks. | <urn:uuid:82d2e80a-6561-45c0-8d23-3532192f2b28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/03/28/yes-you-can-get-a-financial-life-the-30s/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975134 | 567 | 1.671875 | 2 |